Chapter 768: Old House in the Woods
Using the immigration bureau's network platform, Xu Huo contacted private detectives near the residences of the two families, commissioning them to investigate the families' pasts.
The doctor who appeared at the Seventeenth Hospital hadn't taken the children away immediately; their deaths all occurred after a certain period of "growth." This suggested that the "doctor" wasn't focused on guarding one or a few specific "seedlings," but was casting a wide net.
Shang Shuming might have been one of the fry in that net as well. As for whether the person who later appeared before Peng Ya and the others was truly the real "Doctor Shang," that was uncertain.
At this point, he began to feel that the doctor who had appeared at the Seventeenth Hospital back then wasn't a lone operative. He might have had many companions, and they might all be digging for and cultivating successors. "Doctor Shang" might not have been that original doctor, nor was he necessarily the real Shang Shuming. The identity of a psychologist might just be a guise they used to walk through different worlds.
The only thing that could be confirmed was that Shang Shuming had already become a part of this group. The next step was to see if any of the children taken from the welfare home had been similarly selected.
The sky was gradually darkening. Xu Huo planned to spend the night here. Just as he was about to move a table to use as a bed, a loud banging sound suddenly came from outside, followed by a strange odor drifting in. The next second, the scenery before his eyes changed.
Under the torrential rain, he found himself face to face with a ghastly, deathly pale face.
Their eyes met. The other person stared at him without moving, and he stared back without moving.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning split the sky, briefly illuminating the dim forest. The deathly pale face blinked, its bluish-white lips trembling a few times before it managed to force out words, "Hey... I don't suppose you have any food..."
Xu Huo shifted his gaze. There were four other people nearby. They were standing or sitting under a tree to shelter from the rain, their expressions and postures all lacking vitality. When the "deathly pale face" spoke, they all stared straight at him, and someone couldn't help but swallow.
These people looked truly miserable. They had probably been caught in the rain for too long, and everyone was showing signs of hypothermia.
Opening the "Umbrella of Justice," Xu Huo took some food from his luggage compartment and handed it over. The "deathly pale face" snatched it with trembling hands, tearing open one of the sealed bags with their teeth while tossing the rest to the others. For a moment, the sound of their chewing and swallowing nearly drowned out the rain.
After wolfing down the food in a few bites, they tilted their heads back to drink rainwater on the spot. Having eaten and drunk their fill, the five of them stared at Xu Huo with eyes that gleamed green.
"If you're still hungry, you could consider killing one person," Xu Huo said unhurriedly, wiping the rain from his face with a handkerchief. He took the opportunity to survey the surroundings. As far as the eye could see, the trees were all identical, making it look like a vast primeval forest.
"We don't eat people," the "deathly pale face" said, wiping the rain from their own face. "If we were cannibal players, we wouldn't have starved to this state."
Xu Huo ignored her outstretched hand. "This should be a random instance site, right?"
The "deathly pale face" withdrew her hand without any embarrassment and introduced herself, "My name is Lu Zhen. We've been in here for several days, but we're all trapped in the forest. We haven't received any instance notification, and we can't find a way out. We don't know what's going on."
The others chimed in, "This damn game probably plans to trap us all here to starve to death! We keep going in circles, always ending up back where we started!"
"So you've been getting rained on here for several days?" Xu Huo said after listening to them.
Their faces were probably frozen stiff from the cold, and they could only barely show a hint of embarrassment in their eyes. Their expressionless looks carried a sense of giving up in despair.
Even a newbie player wouldn't fail to find the instance site. Besides, random instances generally have no player limit; whoever comes, comes. Xu Huo hadn't entered with a ticket, so there was no need to wait for a certain number of players before the instance would start.
Without saying anything more, he turned and left. Lu Zhen quickly took a few steps after him. "Are you going to find a way out? Take us with you."
Ignoring the five people behind him, Xu Huo walked and stopped intermittently. A few minutes later, he encountered another group of players getting soaked in the rain.
The two groups exchanged glances. The man in the raincoat at the front of the opposite group nodded at Xu Huo.
The two groups silently and tacitly moved forward in the same direction. After another ten minutes or so, an old villa faintly appeared ahead in the forest.
"Why?!" Lu Zhen blurted out, and her companions behind her looked equally incredulous.
But no one cared about their thoughts. Xu Huo and the raincoat man's group were the first to approach the villa and knock on the front door.
The door was opened by a good-looking female player. She smiled warmly at Xu Huo's group. "Oh my, so many people have come! Come in, come in! It's raining so hard out there, hurry up and warm yourselves by the fire!"
There were eight other players in the main hall. Half of them, like the female player, had dry clothes. The other four were gathered around the fireplace, looking like they hadn't arrived much earlier than the newcomers.
These people, including the raincoat man's group of seven, were in relatively good condition. Only Lu Zhen's group of five looked deathly pale and utterly miserable.
Their appearance was impossible to ignore. Faced with everyone's stares, these few immediately showed their weakness.
The female player who had opened the door smiled warmly and took Lu Zhen's hand, patting it gently. "Don't be scared, little sister. It's not like we're going to eat you. Warm yourself by the fire, steady your nerves. We still have to clear the instance."
Lu Zhen struggled to pull her hand away. She glanced at Xu Huo first before moving with her companions toward the fireplace. The living room wasn't small, but it wasn't that big either. All the players were in sight. If something happened, the other players wouldn't just stand by and do nothing.
The female player stood still, her gaze sweeping over Lu Zhen's group one by one before landing on Xu Huo. Seeing him holding an umbrella, she reached out to touch it directly.
Xu Huo lifted the umbrella slightly and gave a faint smile. "This is my treasure. Ordinary people can't touch it."
Several pairs of eyes in the living room, both obvious and covert, fixed on the umbrella before quickly looking away. The female player flicked her hair and said in a seductive tone, "Don't be so tense, big brother. We're all in the same boat. Getting to know each other a bit is better for cooperation, isn't it?"