Chapter 573: Return to Zone 014
The Paper Servant Master vanished amidst the fluttering papers.
Xu Huo remained standing in place, having somewhat figured out the mindset of this Super Player.
He believed in the guidance of "fate" on the premise that by going with the flow, he could see where the end point of "fate" truly pointed. Just like how he had obtained part of the "Field Battle Angel" and received some information, but the item itself was not valued by its owner. What he wanted to investigate was the reason for the Super Item's reappearance.
The other party had not revealed any further information, and Xu Huo had no way to guess more. However, one thing was clear: he was temporarily safe. If another player holding a piece of the Super Item really showed up, he could conveniently hand them over to the Paper Servant Master to deal with.
Yet he had obtained the "Angel's Fangs" a long time ago, and during that time, no one like the Paper Servant Master had appeared... Perhaps someone had appeared without his knowledge, but this also indirectly confirmed the Paper Servant Master's words.
There was no point in staying in Clown City any longer. He opened his Personal Panel and took out his Return Ticket.
*
Ting City had just fallen dark. The streetlights were still on, but there was absolutely no one walking around. As soon as Xu Huo took off his mask and walked out of the teleportation alley onto the main street, he felt two pairs of eyes locking onto him from the darkness.
"Ting City emergency broadcast. Recently, criminals have been active in the urban area. Citizens are advised not to go out after dark!"
Temporary loudspeakers had been installed everywhere on the streets. The same broadcast played three times in a row. By the time Xu Huo reached another street, the emergency broadcast sounded again.
He glanced at the surveillance camera positions, knowing this was a deliberate reminder to him. Looking left and right, he chose an inconspicuous alley and walked in.
Soon, the two people tailing him appeared. They wore hoods, sneaked along while avoiding the cameras, and after communicating with hand gestures, they split up to flank him from both sides of the alley.
Half a minute later, only the sound of two "clangs" of heads being cracked open came from the alley. Soon after, someone else walked out of the darkness.
After cleaning the blood off his hands with a Cleaning Agent, Xu Huo headed toward the residential area where his rental apartment was located along the wide, empty streets.
At this hour, there were absolutely no pedestrians on the road. After he dealt with the two players, the Special Defense Department didn't even come out to clean up the mess, which showed how bad the situation in Ting City was.
He took out his phone, charged it up, and after turning it on, hundreds of messages flooded in at once. Most of them were from Yuan Yao and the others. Yan Jiayu had invited him twice to explore Random Instances. Hu Wenhu had fallen into a player's trap in an Instance, contracted a Xenomorph toxin, and had now gone with Zhou Ning to Jing City to participate in drug trials.
Liu Jia told him that someone had seen a person resembling Professor Han in an Instance. She said she would verify it with the Special Defense Department, but there had been no follow-up in the month since that message.
There were also messages from Yu Qingqing, asking him to analyze Instance processes to figure out how to improve ratings, and a condolence message from Tang Guangbo, telling him to visit Ms. Fang if he came back, because after receiving outside information, she was worried he had died in the game.
Others included messages from Professor Lan and Huang Junjie.
Professor Lan tried to persuade him to participate in player experiments, while Huang Junjie mentioned a very important piece of information: the change in the international situation of Zone 014. Major powers, in order to gather resources, had begun frequently launching wars abroad. In the past two months, three more small countries had completely disappeared.
Xu Huo then scrolled to the messages from Nie Xuan and Team Leader Wu. Both mentioned the same thing: asking him to support the border.
They didn't go into detail. He exited the interface and opened the news, only then learning that the country had already fought two defensive battles on the border. The scale wasn't huge, but both sides had players participating. Certain Traits and items could render weapons useless, resulting in heavy casualties.
Furthermore, the domestic situation was unstable. Many foreign players had infiltrated. While these people caused chaos, others took the opportunity to loot. Two cities had suffered terrorist attacks with heavy casualties. Driven by certain malicious players, there was a phenomenon of entire city populations fleeing.
Elite players had to be used on the cutting edge, so large numbers of armed forces were mobilized across the country to suppress these emerging players.
But this situation was only a temporary relief. Both in the open and in the shadows, people kept jumping out to cause trouble, keeping everyone on edge. To reduce losses, the governments of some cities urged citizens to reduce travel and absolutely not go out at night.
But compared to other countries, this was still considered good. Currently, every country in Zone 014 was in a state of panic. Regardless of whether they were large or small, conflict incidents erupted almost daily. Besides violent attacks, there were also malicious acts like poisoning water sources to cause Xenomorphization.
News filled every online platform, constantly refreshing.
Although he had anticipated this situation might occur, it happening so quickly caught Xu Huo off guard. According to normal thinking, at this stage, countries should be busy cultivating their own players. Prematurely investing combat power and resources into war was detrimental to both sides.
Unless something had happened that forced the major powers to act this way.
While walking, he quickly browsed through this information. Finally, he looked at Yuan Yao's messages. Most were nonsense, with only two points of information:
First, Li Chun had been tricked away by Yu Qingqing.
Second, the original apartment complex had been burned down. He had moved his things to the opposite side of the Special Defense Department.
Following the new address, before he could even go upstairs, Team Leader Wu's call came through. After answering, the other party sounded quite delighted, "Xu Huo, you're really back! I couldn't believe it when I received your signal!"
"Is the situation really that difficult now?" Xu Huo frowned. A player, even a B-grade player, couldn't play a decisive role in a war on the scale of a nation, let alone a low-level player. Team Leader Wu's eager phone call indicated that the situation might be more difficult than he had anticipated.
"You've already seen the news. Many players are now voluntarily going to support." Team Leader Wu's voice was grave. "But that's not the most urgent matter. The biggest crisis right now is that the Xenomorph toxin has started to spread."
"The Xenomorph toxin doesn't just affect players; ordinary people are not immune either. Some players brought the toxin to the battlefield, using a one-for-one method to spread it. Not only that, but someone has refined and upgraded this toxin, using special channels to dump it into reservoirs, causing a large number of ordinary people to be poisoned."
"There are many symptoms of poisoning. Some people will gradually weaken until they are bedridden and die, but there is also Xenomorphization, especially among players... Currently, what we are defending against on the border are large numbers of Xenomorphized players. They were concentrated and sent over."
Xu Huo understood. This was about dragging everyone down with them.
"What was the trigger?"
"A group of players from small countries." Team Leader Wu said, "Their countries have already disappeared now."
"I contacted you to ask if you have obtained any new Antidotes from Instances. The Antidotes we have developed so far can only delay symptoms and postpone death. The Antidotes brought back from other Instances are too few in number and cannot completely eradicate the toxin."