Free Web NovelToo few clues had emerged, and too many directions could be explored. With absolutely no understanding of what exactly was killing people in this dungeon, the attempts that could be made were extremely limited.
Xu Huo placed his phone on a chair positioned directly facing the hotel room door and gestured for Yi Pei to wake up the Administrator.
"You want to use him as a test?" Yi Pei said. "What the phone captures and what the eyes see might not be the same."
The best method was to use a person as a test subject.
Xu Huo understood her meaning. "We can't find a ready 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 but kept his eyes clamped tightly shut, refusing to open them.
"Once I use an item on him, he'll behave." Yi Pei first stuck a sticker on his forehead. "Open your dog eyes wide!"
The Administrator's two eyelids uncontrollably pried apart, stretching open in an eerie manner.
After staring at the man whose eyes had been forcibly "opened" for two seconds, Xu Huo patted him on the shoulder and casually stuck a piece of candy to his back. "Your eyelids are bluish. Your heart and lungs might not be in great shape. Go see a doctor when you have time."
The Administrator looked at him with tears in his eyes as he walked out of the room.
Yi Pei had already used an item to immobilize his body. She set up a small mechanism behind the door, pulled the man over to it, then squeezed out through the door crack and closed the door behind her.
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 remained exactly where they had been placed, and the window was now open.
The two of them looked down from the window, but outside there was no trace of the man.
"Not a single sound at all," Yi Pei said. "An ordinary person couldn't have done that."
"Let's go out and take a look." Xu Huo pocketed his phone and released the Elusive Screaming Chicken. After feeding it, he followed it and jumped out the window.
Yi Pei hesitated briefly, then followed behind him.
The fog outside was thick, visibility extremely low. Even though Xu Huo and Yi Pei had been careful enough when going out, they still attracted the attention of other players. Shortly after, two people climbed out of their rooms and cautiously landed on the ground.
Of course, many more simply watched from behind their curtains.
The Sifang Palace at night, compared to during the day, was like a dried-up corpse—completely devoid of any living breath. After stepping out of the county town, the only sounds in the forest were their own footsteps.
The heavy fog clogged the air. Walking through the woods, they could barely feel any air movement. A suffocating pressure surged from all directions, so visceral it felt like they were walking under a heavy burden.
The Screaming Chicken kept moving deeper into the woods, pecking at rice as it went. It was starting to wander a bit far. Yi Pei hesitated and said, "Didn't you come here during the day? You didn't find any traces. Would the Administrator come here?"
"Daytime is daytime," Xu Huo said, not entirely certain. He was just coming to take a look anyway.
He took a few more steps forward, then suddenly stopped and turned his head to the right. Through the dense, heavy fog, he could barely make out a figure standing less than ten meters away.
"What's wrong?" Yi Pei had poor eyesight. In these conditions, 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!
Sword energy swept through, severing the trees nearby—but the figure had disappeared before the trees even fell.
Yi Pei sensed in the direction of the sound. "I didn't detect anyone. Are you seeing illusions?"
"I'm not sure." Xu Huo carried his sword and continued forward. At such a short distance, he absolutely should have been able to hear the other person's heartbeat and breathing. But that figure had appeared out of nowhere and could move around, yet it emitted no trace of a living person's presence.
Was it an item?
After going deeper into the woods, the Screaming Chicken still showed no signs of stopping. If they kept going, they would soon reach the water pool. Xu Huo stopped in his tracks, turned around, and said, "Let's head back."
But Yi Pei's expression suddenly changed. She grabbed his arm fiercely and mouthed a silent phrase: So many people!
So the figure that had appeared wasn't a coincidence. Xu Huo scooped up the Screaming Chicken with one hand, grabbed Yi Pei's shoulder with the other, and activated his characteristics to quickly escape from the woods.
"They're following!" Yi Pei said in a low voice as they moved.
Xu Huo also detected three objects moving around him at a speed that wasn't even slower than his. They kept a certain distance on his left and right, not closing in.
"Don't fight!" Seeing Yi Pei pull out a Square Box item, 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, squeezing sensation her characteristics fed back made her scalp tingle. "How many are there...!"
Before she could finish speaking, a sudden scream rang out not far away. The voice belonged to a woman.
"It's the two players who were following us!"
"Help... help me!" After the woman, a man's agonized cry followed, then abruptly stopped after just two seconds.
The smell of blood spread through the air. Something in the woods began to stir restlessly, rustling like snakes and insects crawling through the grass.
Sensing that things had also surrounded them from ahead, Xu Huo stepped on a tree and leaped upward. After jumping into the air, he grabbed the piano wire to ascend.
"I'll speed us up!" Yi Pei tucked a rocket model under her arm, and the two of them were thrust forward rapidly by the propulsive force!
Xu Huo released the piano wire twice and only grabbed it firmly again to land when the rocket item's propulsion was nearly spent.
By then, they had already reached the vicinity of the hotel. Once on the ground, they didn't waste a second and rushed toward the hotel without stopping.
Only after the two successfully entered the hotel did the clinging, bone-piercing sensation of being watched completely disappear.
"What on earth was that?" Yi Pei said. "It didn't feel like living people. Could it be some kind of special item?"
There were too many of them. Xu Huo couldn't be certain for now. "The hotel isn't safe to stay in anymore. We need to switch locations tomorrow."
Yi Pei immediately withdrew her hand, which she had been pressing against the wall relief. "Did the phone capture anything?"
They had gone to chase after the Administrator just now and hadn't had time to check the video yet.
Xu Huo pulled out his phone, hesitated for a moment, then put it away again. "Let's talk about it tomorrow."
Yi Pei nodded. "It's safer to look at it during the day. I'll head back to my room then."
Just after she left, knocking came from upstairs again. Xu Huo returned to the window, and a moment later, he saw a player walk out through the main entrance, disappearing into the fog within seconds.
He glanced toward the residential courtyard, hesitated for a moment, then finally pulled the curtains shut.
The next morning, the players came out one after another. The missing people were quickly accounted for.
The couple who had arrived just yesterday, the male player who had clashed with Xu Huo, and another female player who had arrived two days before him—four people in total had gone missing.
"Didn't expect you'd still be alive." Liu Shiyan looked at Xu Huo with surprise. "Did you find any clues last night? Don't be so stingy—come on, share them with us."
"There are some clues." Xu Huo discreetly glanced at Cao Dong, whose eyes were ringed with dark circles. "Staying at the guesthouse is safer than staying at the hotel."
Liu Shiyan smiled thinly, without any warmth. "Then why don't you go stay at the guesthouse? Those two who left the day before yesterday—they both went missing last night."
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