Chapter 763: There Are Still Many Good People
In the end, they concluded that Zone 009 might have had players appear much earlier, with the representative figure being that descendant of the Shang family who rebuilt the Museum City. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain his alibi, which was as flawless as a doppelganger.
So many people had gone missing, but their bodies were never found, yet their death videos had been genuinely recorded. Given that someone was frequently traveling back and forth to a certain location with living people or corpses, the scholars believed the videos were actually filmed in the hotel, just in that surface-invisible space.
Since the Shang descendant could enter and exit, this place could very well be an independent small space. Such a stable small space was not common and might even become a separate instance—that's right, Zone 009's government already knew the secret that players could become instance holders. If they could obtain an instance, it would be far more valuable than any high-level item.
But until Zone 009 fully merged into the game world, they never succeeded. During that time, more people chose to give up, especially after the game world fully opened. This stubbornly unconquerable place became a chicken rib—tasteless but hard to abandon—with only a few people still persisting.
So many had died before. Teacher Pan and his group came fully prepared, at least ensuring they could return alive even without results. Unfortunately, they never expected that even holding tickets to enter would be useless.
According to Teacher Pan's latest diary, the moment they entered with tickets, they first cleared the instance. After being trapped in the corpse-hiding space, all other tickets and return tickets became invalid.
Regarding this, Teacher Pan speculated it might be due to the space's peculiarity. After all, the game world was so vast that any kind of existence was not surprising.
Xu Huo had a slightly different view.
When he found the potion, a strange device appeared on the puppet's wrist. Although the thing self-destructed, the fact that it was stored together with the potion was unusual in itself.
If Dr. Wu had deliberately left the potion there, this was undoubtedly a way to leave a lifeline for players who found it. Evidence showed that even tickets couldn't escape the space, but when that device activated, all players were ejected from the space. This couldn't be mere coincidence.
Moreover, that space could receive game notifications yet couldn't use tickets, which clearly contradicted the game rules. Where the game could connect, tickets should pass unimpeded.
From the hints in the psychotherapy room, to the matching puppets, to the potion hidden inside the puppet—this almost told him one fact: someone was indeed painstakingly distributing the potion, even using this method to screen players.
Some potions could be found in certain instances, but none were hidden this deeply. Besides, if this really was an S-grade potion, it proved that Dr. Wu's travels through various worlds were no longer just about escape. Being able to evade Stellar Corporation's tracking and possessing some special skills was not strange. Game rules were also made by people, and turning a space into a special zone that only received signals one-way was not hard to understand.
But he couldn't verify any of this for now.
When Teacher Pan and his group came out, they hadn't left the instance even when facing life-or-death crises, which meant Xu Huo's earlier guess about the instance's one-day cycle was at least half correct. Because the final clearance information didn't mention whether the time mystery was solved, his guess wasn't entirely right, but the fact that Lin Zhenhuai and the others couldn't leave was true.
Putting away the materials, he rushed to the Doll Clothing Store before dawn.
The Doll Clothing Store was the only place besides the Corpse-Hiding Hotel that had puppets. If Dr. Wu had really appeared here, perhaps he had hidden more than one potion.
No more players blocked his way this time. When Xu Huo arrived at the Doll Clothing Store, he found at least half the dolls had been torn apart. The remaining dolls were still tenacious, greeting him with steel needles the moment he entered.
After kicking away two charging dolls, he closed the door, put on his invisibility cloak, and walked further inside.
The dolls, with poor vision and hearing, lost their target, randomly threw a few steel needles, and then collapsed one by one. Xu Huo rummaged through the debris and found, in a corner pile of old abandoned dolls, one holding a smaller doll.
He didn't see any with knives, but this one matched the child figure from the nursery rhyme.
He dismantled the doll's limbs and finally discovered a card slot in its abdomen, but when opened, it was empty.
The potion had already been taken.
Sighing softly, Xu Huo put the broken doll into his luggage compartment, searched a bit more, and then left.
When he stepped outside, it was already broad daylight. Not far away, several players were fighting, including Xiao Ling and Yu Guangnan. He glanced at them and looked away, moving from the entrance to a shop several dozen meters away. He walked in slowly, then came out a few minutes later, throwing the eagle's corpse he was carrying to the ground.
"At least there are still smart people." Of Teacher Pan's scattered group of three, only Eagle had come. Lin Zhenhuai and the injured Peng Fengnian hadn't followed him again.
Time was about up. Xu Huo didn't plan to linger any longer. With a few quick accelerations and stops, he appeared at the Museum City exit, pushed open the door, and walked straight out.
He didn't plan to leave Zone 009 for now, so he first used Sun Bo's phone to check the nearby map, found the nearest car rental place, got a vehicle, and drove along the "No Random Instance Safe Route" published on the official platform.
The arrival of a large number of players wasn't a good thing. Those who came early had already cleared or failed their instances and come out. Although Zone 009 had been in the era of universal players for some time, it couldn't fully control them. Many were causing trouble, and bloodshed was common along the way.
Driving onto a national highway, Xu Huo found the road ahead blocked. Looking out, he couldn't see the end. He walked to a bus parked nearby and knocked on the window.
The driver cracked the window open and asked warily, "What do you want?"
"I just want to ask what happened up ahead. Why is it blocked so far? My phone's dead, so I can't receive any messages," Xu Huo said.
"Go away, go away! I don't know either!" The driver waved impatiently, but at that moment, a muffled thud came from the back seat. One of the tightly drawn curtains was yanked open violently, and a woman's face appeared by the window, urgently trying to say something, but she was quickly pulled back by her hair.
The curtain fell again. The driver stared at him. "Kid, I suggest you know your place..."
Before he could finish, a deep groove suddenly appeared around his neck, and he was lifted backward. Xu Huo raised his index finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, then said, "Please open the door. I want to take the bus."
The driver, struggling weakly, reached out and pressed a button near the steering wheel. The bus door hissed open. Xu Huo smiled. "In times like these, I can still catch a ride. There are still many good people out there."
(Chapter End)