Chapter 677: Someone in the Fog
With too few clues and too many possible directions, there were very few attempts that could be made without knowing exactly what was killing people in this instance.
Xu Huo placed his phone on the chair facing the door and signaled Yi Pei to wake up the administrator.
"You want to use him as a test?" Yi Pei said. "What the phone records and what the eyes see might not be the same."
The best method was to use a person as a test.
Xu Huo understood her meaning. "We can't find a ready-made person right now. Let's try recording with the phone first."
"This guy definitely won't dare to open his eyes." Yi Pei woke the man up. He was clearly conscious, keeping his eyes tightly shut and refusing to open them.
"Using a prop will make him obedient." Yi Pei first stuck a sticker on his forehead. "Open your dog eyes wide!"
The administrator's two eyelids uncontrollably snapped open, grotesquely pulling apart to the sides.
After looking at the man forced to "open" his eyes for two seconds, Xu Huo patted his shoulder and casually stuck a piece of candy on his back. "Your eyelids are bluish. Your heart and lungs might not be in good shape. Find time to see a doctor."
The administrator looked at him with tears in his eyes as he walked out of the room.
Yi Pei had already used a prop to immobilize his body. She set up a small mechanism behind the door, pulled the man over, then squeezed out through the door crack and closed it.
Twenty seconds passed. The small mechanism behind the door clicked shut. Yi Pei immediately pushed the door open, but the room was already empty. The chair and phone were still in their original positions, and the window was open.
The two looked down from the window, but there was no trace of anyone outside.
"Not a single sound," Yi Pei said. "An ordinary person couldn't possibly do that."
"Let's go out and look." Xu Huo pocketed the phone, released the "Unpredictable Screaming Chicken," fed it, and followed it as it jumped out the window.
Yi Pei hesitated briefly before following.
The fog outside was thick, visibility extremely low. Xu Huo and Yi Pei were careful enough when going out, but they still attracted the attention of other players. Soon after, two people climbed out of their rooms and landed cautiously on the ground.
Of course, most people just watched from behind the curtains.
The nighttime Four Directions Palace City was like a dried corpse compared to daytime, completely devoid of any living aura. After leaving the county town, the only sounds in the woods were their footsteps.
The thick fog clogged the air. Walking through the woods, they could barely feel any airflow. A sense of oppression surged from all directions, so tangible it felt like carrying a heavy load.
The screaming chicken kept pecking at the ground as it walked deeper into the woods, gradually getting farther away. Yi Pei hesitated. "Didn't you come here during the day? You didn't find any traces. Would the administrator come here?"
"Daytime is daytime." Xu Huo wasn't sure either; he was just following to take a look.
After taking a few more steps, he suddenly stopped and turned to look to the right. Through the thick fog, he could barely make out a figure standing less than ten meters away.
"What's wrong?" Yi Pei's eyesight was poor; in this situation, she could barely see anything. She turned toward Xu Huo's direction and asked.
"Someone's there." Xu Huo pulled out the Crimson Sword and slashed forward!
The sword energy swept through, cutting down the nearby trees, but the figure disappeared before the trees broke.
Yi Pei sensed in the direction of the sound. "I didn't detect anyone. Did you see an illusion?"
"Not sure." Xu Huo continued walking forward with his sword raised. At such a short distance, he should have been able to hear the other person's heartbeat and breathing, but that figure had appeared out of nowhere and could move, yet it didn't emit any living person's aura.
Was it a prop?
After going deeper into the woods, the screaming chicken still showed no sign of stopping. If they went much further, they would reach the pond. He stopped, turned around, and said, "Let's head back."
Yi Pei's expression suddenly changed. She grabbed his arm tightly and mouthed a silent word: So many!
So that figure hadn't been a coincidence. Xu Huo scooped up the screaming chicken with one hand and grabbed Yi Pei's shoulder with the other, activating his trait to quickly leave the woods.
"They're following!" Yi Pei whispered as they moved.
Xu Huo also sensed three objects moving around him, their speed not even slower than his. They maintained a certain distance to his left and right but didn't close in.
"Don't fight!" Seeing Yi Pei take out a box-shaped prop, he immediately said, "Let's get out of the woods first."
Yi Pei's perception method was different from Xu Huo's. She also knew those "people" weren't approaching, but the dense, crushing sensation her trait fed back made her scalp tingle. "How many are there...!"
Before she finished speaking, a scream suddenly rang out not far away. It sounded like a woman.
"It's the two players who were following us!"
"Help... help!" After the woman's scream came a man's agonized cry, which abruptly stopped after two seconds.
The smell of blood spread. Something in the woods began to stir restlessly, rustling like snakes or insects crawling through the grass.
Sensing that something was also gathering ahead, Xu Huo leaped high by stepping on a tree, jumped into the air, and grabbed the String to ascend.
"I'll speed us up!" Yi Pei tucked a rocket model under her arm, and the two were propelled forward by a burst of force!
Xu Huo retracted the String twice, only grabbing it firmly to land when the rocket prop's momentum was nearly spent.
By then, they were near the hotel. Without wasting any time, they rushed toward the hotel without stopping.
Only when the two successfully entered the hotel did the clinging, bone-piercing sensation of being watched finally disappear completely.
"What on earth was that?" Yi Pei said. "It didn't feel like living people. Could it be some kind of special prop?"
There were too many of them. Xu Huo couldn't be sure for now. He said, "We can't stay in the hotel. We need to change places tomorrow."
Yi Pei immediately withdrew her hand from the wall relief. "Did the phone capture anything?"
They had gone to chase the administrator earlier and hadn't had time to watch the video.
Xu Huo took out his phone, hesitated for a moment, then put it away again. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."
Yi Pei nodded. "It's safer to look during the day. I'll go back to my room now."
As soon as she left, there was another knock from upstairs. Xu Huo returned to the window. Moments later, he saw a player walk out of the main entrance and disappear into the fog within seconds.
He glanced toward the residential courtyard, hesitated for a moment, then finally pulled the curtains shut.
The next morning, players came out one after another. The missing people were quickly accounted for.
The couple who had arrived yesterday, the male player who had clashed with Xu Huo, and another female player who had arrived two days earlier—four people in total were missing.
"I didn't expect you to still be alive." Liu Shiyan looked at Xu Huo in surprise. "Did you find any clues last night? Don't be stingy. Share them?"
"There are clues too." Xu Huo discreetly glanced at Cao Dong, whose eyes were dark-ringed. "Staying in the guesthouses is safer than the hotel."
Liu Shiyan gave a fake smile. "Then go stay in a guesthouse. The two who left the day before yesterday both went missing last night."
(Chapter End)