Chapter 682: Small Insects in the Wound
Most of the players present had entered the instance no more than five days ago. Those who still had days left were unwilling to take this risk—if things didn't go according to Art Style's plan, the remaining time might force them to face the instance's counterattack.
A few whose time limits were closer were genuinely tempted, however.
Because they had started experiencing certain hallucinations.
What happened to the player who set the hotel on fire today could very well be their tomorrow or the day after.
As for Art Style's idea, Xu Huo wasn't entirely opposed to it either.
The only problem at the moment was that they knew too few clues. The instance introduction hadn't mentioned any rules that couldn't be violated—players had to figure everything out on their own.
The current situation was like being livestock locked in a pen. The pen owner, beyond their understanding, would occasionally pull a few out to slaughter. They could sometimes see the reaching hand and the knife, but they couldn't grasp the true pattern of the pen owner's behavior.
The rain began to ease. Fang Penghui glanced outside. "Whatever we do, we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning."
By this point, the players had clearly split into three groups.
The first group, represented by Art Style and Brother Stone, leaned toward taking the initiative.
The second group, including Fang Penghui, Tian Kun, and Wei Xian, hoped the players could unite to deal with the possible instance purge two days later.
The third group consisted of lone wolves like Xu Huo and the black-shirted player. Their thoughts were unclear, but they obviously didn't want to act with the other two groups.
"What do we do with the corpse?" Liu Shiyan asked. "If corpses tend to move toward the instance core, using this one might yield some results."
Brother Stone walked over to the burned player's corpse and put a collar around its waist—the eviscerated body was thinner than expected. The collar had three oval-shaped signal tubes attached.
Seeing the other players' restless expressions, he explained, "The flare's light can burn continuously for two hours. Unless we're unlucky and the corpse moves too far in this foggy weather, everyone should be able to see where the signal lands."
"Aren't there two more corpses over there?" the female player beside him said nonchalantly. "And if that's not enough, there are plenty more people nearby, aren't there?"
Not to mention that the people in this county town weren't exactly normal—even if they were ordinary humans, players killing to clear an instance wasn't anything new.
"But don't kill too many," the female player added with a smile. "We don't know how many players will go missing tonight."
Regardless of what others thought, several more players used items on the corpse to ensure they could get the information immediately before leaving the small courtyard one after another.
Items had usage limits. It was just past midnight, and with the heavy fog outside, even if the signal came back, players couldn't go looking for it right away. So Brother Stone and a few others stayed behind, planning to wait until dawn.
Xu Huo walked at the back of the crowd. Just as he was about to step out of the courtyard gate, he felt something and turned back to look at the spot where the burned player's corpse lay.
"What's wrong?" Yi Pei asked.
Xu Huo rubbed his temples. "Nothing. I just felt like someone was watching us from over by the corpse."
Yi Pei looked in that direction. Even with her blurry vision, she could make out the two dark hollows in the corpse's eye sockets. Frowning, she said, "Let's hurry up and leave."
The two were heading in different directions, so they parted ways after leaving.
Xu Huo walked alone through the thick fog. With limited visibility, he had to follow the row of residential houses toward his lodging. But after just a few steps, he felt his footsteps grow heavier—as if another set of steps was overlapping his own!
His expression darkened instantly. He closed his eyes and swung his sword behind him. About two seconds later, he heard a streetlamp fall over more than ten meters away.
Scanning the surroundings, he picked up his sword and continued forward.
But he hadn't gone far when his footsteps, which had just returned to normal, grew heavy again. This time, several sets of footsteps matched his rhythm perfectly—no sound, no people.
Compared to last night, this situation seemed even more bizarre. A shrunken corpse was still a corpse—as long as it was a physical object, it could be sensed. The footsteps followed him from behind and to the sides. If there was no one there... was he hallucinating?
Even if this instance had mental interference, it shouldn't manifest in him so quickly.
After a moment's thought, Xu Huo took out the "Universal Lubricant." As soon as he used the item, a grain-of-rice-sized pebble fell from the back of his shoe.
"So it was an item." With so many players around, anyone could have planted it. He tossed the pebble into his luggage compartment and quickened his pace back to his lodging.
The old man still had the lamp lit. Seeing Xu Huo return, he seemed relieved, closed the door, and went back to his room to sleep.
Xu Huo sat on the makeshift bed set up in the main hall and unwrapped the bandage on his hand to check the wound.
As expected, the injury had relapsed. The redness and swelling had spread.
If the King Fungus wasn't working, it meant this wasn't ordinary contamination or poison.
He took out the previous medicine bottle. The piece of flesh he had scraped from the wound had turned somewhat white. The medicine's color hadn't changed, but a layer of something like grease floated on the surface.
He picked out a bit and examined it under the lamp. Inside the grease were tiny, round, long-legged transparent creatures. They had low mobility and were hard to distinguish without close inspection.
"Insects?" Since entering the game, Xu Huo had encountered plenty of toxins and contaminants. He only knew one type of insect—the skin-stripping worm, a strange worm that could quickly devour human flesh and blood. Afterward, he had looked into some information on mutated insects. The more dangerous ones were venomous, with new toxins that were hard to cure. Others, like the skin-stripping worm, which only caused flesh wounds, were nothing special.
But who would have thought that such tiny creatures, smaller than a speck of dust, could have such a strange use? The medicine couldn't kill them, and they clearly had good reproductive abilities—otherwise, the wound wouldn't keep festering.
If not for the self-healing agent and the player's own recovery abilities, these little things would have already eaten away a good chunk of his flesh.
Scraping off some rotten tissue, Xu Huo made a simple water bag and wrapped it around the wound.
He didn't pour out the insects in the medicine bottle. Instead, he tossed in some wood chips, food, and small stones, then sealed it again and put it back in his luggage compartment.
After handling that, he lay down to rest. He had only closed his eyes for what felt like a moment when the lamp in the main hall suddenly went out. Then, from the side door came a "creaking" sound, like someone opening a long-unused wooden door.
"Brother Xu? Brother Xu?" A little girl's voice sounded in the darkness. "The power's out, it's so dark. I'm a little scared. Do you have a light?"
Xu Huo sat up. The lock on the side door was gone, and the door had cracked open. A strange feeling surged through him. "I'd like to see what's playing tricks in the dark!"