Chapter 683: Come Out If You Dare
Xu Huo stood up and walked step by step toward the side door.
At this moment, both inside and outside the house were pitch black, yet the side door was exceptionally clear, visible in every detail even in the darkness.
In that instant, his brain stopped thinking, leaving only a single, pure, intuitive thought: go in and take a look.
It was an indescribably strange sensation. At this point, Xu Huo had completely forgotten the word "danger." Without any purpose, he simply wanted to "go in and take a look."
Just as he reached for the door handle and was about to push it open, something suddenly pressed against his back. In that split second, he snapped out of this "obsessed" state, forcefully slammed the door shut, and turned around to look behind him. The grandmother and grandson had silently appeared right at his back.
The two people with red-rimmed eyes lunged at him simultaneously. Xu Huo pressed one hand down on the little girl's head, used his umbrella to shove the old woman away, and casually sprinkled some sleeping potion.
The grandmother and grandson collapsed to the ground one after another. At that moment, Xu Huo's mind began to wander again, involuntarily turning back toward the door behind him. But after grabbing the door handle, instead of being possessed by the urge to go in and look, he put on the "Stick Like Glue" and smeared the mucus secreted by the clothing all over the lock and the cracks of the door.
A bizarre impulse drove him to break in, but Xu Huo wasn't about to fall for it now. He hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door to counteract the mental influence, then knocked on the door panel. "Come out if you dare."
"But I guess you can't come out anyway. Can't even open a wooden cabinet door... No hands, no feet. This 'god' of yours doesn't seem all that impressive."
A rapid "clacking" sound came from behind the door. The unconscious grandmother and grandson silently got up again and charged at the side door, but Xu Huo blocked them first, tied them up with a rope, and tossed them into a corner. Then he let out a pitying sigh toward the door. "How pathetic."
This seemed to enrage the "god" in the room. Red light seeped through the cracks in the door and windows. In an instant, the deathly silent courtyard came alive. Within seconds, the courtyard gate burst open, and residents from the nearby houses poured in through the main entrance, like driven animals, crazily hurling themselves at the room containing the idol.
Xu Huo brought the grandmother and grandson outside but didn't rush to leave. He crouched on the courtyard wall, observing the light inside the room.
After a moment, he concluded that the red light could affect ordinary people's minds but had little effect on players. During this time, someone broke the door and windows, letting out more light, but it still couldn't sway his sanity.
After thinking it over, he raised his voice. "Is that all you've got?"
The crowd's assault on the house came to an abrupt halt. Then, in perfect unison, they turned their heads, bloodshot eyes staring at him from different angles.
Xu Huo rubbed his chin. Damn, they nearly twisted their heads a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
He clapped his hands twice symbolically. "Full marks out of a hundred. I'll give you sixty this time."
Perhaps his repeated dismissive attitude had enraged the idol in the room. Starting from this courtyard, red lights flickered on one after another in the surrounding yards. The sounds of doors opening and closing echoed continuously. Residents from the county town converged from all directions, like walking corpses, chasing and blocking him.
Xu Huo leaped up and down along the courtyard walls, moving at a moderate pace, leading the residents toward the hotel. As the crowd grew larger, he spotted a few players mixed in among them. Their expressions were blank, identical to those of the local residents.
"What's going on?" A black-shirted player jumped out from a courtyard and followed behind Xu Huo.
"Can't you tell? The god has gone berserk," Xu Huo said as he ran. "Probably just impotent rage."
The black-shirted player looked up at him seriously and, seeing that his expression showed no sign of joking, said, "Looks like this god isn't that powerful either."
As they moved through the streets, more and more players joined Xu Huo and the black-shirted player's group, running out of the county town together.
"Where are you taking them?" Fang Penghui immediately saw through Xu Huo's plan. "To the pool? What's over there?"
"We'll only know when we see it," Xu Huo said, unable to be certain. During the day, the county town was perfectly normal, with no visible problems. Since this wasn't the core location of the instance, time might also be a variable, so he had to go there at night.
The previous night, he and Yi Pei had been trapped in the woods. Even if they called all the players, they might not have the advantage, but if the entire county town's population surged in together, things might be different.
"There are still a few players in the crowd," Tian Kunwen said as he caught up.
"Forget about them. They're probably beyond saving," Fu Danhong said. "Be careful not to look at the spilled idol!"
Some players had already fallen victim. The remaining ones became extremely cautious, pulling up their clothes to shield their sides and trying not to look at the source of the red light.
However, just as the players led the county residents in a mighty charge into the woods, the red light in the town suddenly vanished completely. The running crowd gradually slowed down, their rigid eyes slowly returning to normal. Someone scratched their head and asked, "How did I get here?"
The person next to them also scratched their head and said, "Maybe I was sleepwalking. It's not even dawn yet."
"Oh, it's still raining! I'm soaked through!"
"Move it, you guys in the back! What are you standing around for? The sooner we get back, the sooner we sleep!"
"Which bastard stepped on my foot..."
"Don't push! What's the rush, trying to get reincarnated?"
...
Half a minute ago, they had been like puppets on strings, devoid of consciousness. Now, they had returned to their normal state of noisy banter and anger. But despite the commotion, not a single person questioned the situation. Instead, they were all highly agitated, wearing smiles that sent chills down one's spine, laughing and chatting as they dispersed.
Even as they followed them back into the town, they could hear people complaining about how their doors and windows were broken and saying they'd fix them tomorrow.
The players stood by the hotel, looking at each other in bewilderment.
The only silver lining was that the few players who had been in a daze also came back.
"What exactly happened?" Fang Penghui quickly pressed for details.
The few people were a bit dazed, completely unable to recall the experience of walking with the crowd. They vaguely described what had happened before the incident.
Piecing together their accounts, it seemed that out of curiosity, they had opened the wooden cabinet housing the idol, seen the stone eye inside, and the moment the red light flashed from the stone eye, they lost consciousness.
"None of them were staying in the room with the idol, but they were still lured into opening the door," Fang Penghui frowned. "A player's willpower far exceeds that of an ordinary person, yet they didn't show any signs of waking up during that time. This instance boss might be quite difficult to deal with. It probably stopped early because the timing wasn't right."
"Timing isn't right?" Wei Xian looked puzzled.
"The longer you stay in the instance, the deeper the mental influence," Xu Huo added. People who initially felt nothing gradually began to sense a strange gaze and, driven by this force, would voluntarily open the door. By the fifth or sixth day, if a player's mental strength wasn't strong enough, just the gaze from the eyes could drive them mad.
If they were easily swayed and had no concept of using traits or items, then players were no different from ordinary people.
The beginning of this chapter is based on an experience from the author's childhood. Roughly speaking, one morning upon waking up, I was unusually clear-headed. I saw light outside the window and, for no reason, felt that the sky was very bright. I didn't think about anything else—just one thought: it's dawn, I want to go out and play. I didn't know where to go; I just wanted to go outside. But just as I was about to leave, my mom heard the door open and called out to me, waking me up. When I looked outside again, I realized it was only around five or six in the morning, a dim twilight, with the distance still very dark. I got scared, quickly pulled my foot back, closed the door, and went back to sleep. Thinking about it now, it's quite amusing. ^_^
(End of Chapter)