Chapter 675 [(*^▽^*)]

Xue Rui pulled Lin Leyou through the long corridor, intending to take the elevator downstairs, but he hesitated when the elevator doors opened.

The two stared at the empty elevator, and in the end, Lin Leyou followed Xue Rui down the stairs.

As they left and pushed open the stairwell door to go downstairs, the elevator doors closed and continued running.

Upon arriving on the first floor, I found that many lights were off and the number of staff had decreased significantly, presumably having returned to the second floor to rest. Only the security personnel on duty were still patrolling various corners of the hotel.

When they arrived at the restaurant, they found that there were still some people there.

There were both players and staff members. After all, food cooked that day couldn't be eaten the next day. A lot of leftover food was eaten by the staff. Of course, what couldn't be finished had to be destroyed.

The restaurant closes at 11 p.m. and opens at 5 a.m., which is a reasonable time.

By this time, many foods were no longer available, but fortunately, hot meals were still available.

Their arrival didn't attract much attention. After quietly finishing their selections, the two moved to a dimly lit corner and ate while chatting quietly like the other people.

After they finished their late-night snack, only a few lights remained in the restaurant, and there were fewer than ten people left. As soon as they got up to leave, a waiter came over to clean up the place and waited for the other two players to leave. Once everyone had left, they could wait until 11 o'clock and go back to rest.

The lights in the hallway were all voice-activated. As they walked, the lights on the first floor turned on with the sound of their footsteps, illuminating their figures. Xue Rui pulled him upstairs.

They walked very slowly, and with each floor they went up, the lights on the floor below would go out. In this way, the lights would come on one by one and then go out one by one.

After arriving at their floor, Xue Rui and the others did not leave the hallway. He directly pulled Lin Leyou to sit down in the hallway. Lin Leyou was a little confused, but she still sat down with Xue Rui.

Lin Leyou asked discreetly, "Should we wait here?"

Xue Rui silently pulled Lin Leyou into his arms. "Yes."

If they stay inside, they won't know what's happening outside immediately. So they might as well stay outside and get the information they need right away.

Lin Leyou didn't object. Instead, she leaned against Xue Rui in a comfortable position, took out her phone, and started playing games.

Although he couldn't connect to the internet and had no signal, he had prepared a lot of single-player games in advance, just in case he encountered such a long and boring time.

Time passed by, and soon it was eleven o'clock.

Eleven o'clock is the time for all staff members except security to go off duty and rest. Apart from the two staff members on duty on the first floor, everyone else went back to the second floor to rest.

They could even hear the sound of many people walking down the stairs below, but all of them would push open the door and leave as soon as they reached the second floor. Before long, the entire corridor returned to deathly silence.

No, that's not right. The wind and rain outside are still very loud, and it seems that the temperature inside the hotel is gradually dropping. Lin Leyou even felt a little cold.

After the last staff member left through the second-floor stairwell door, Xue Rui and Lin Leyou suddenly sensed a strange atmosphere, as if the world before and after 11 o'clock had changed slightly.

But neither of them could explain exactly what the change was.

Lin Leyou leaned against Xue Rui, seemingly oblivious, playing on his phone. Xue Rui, on the other hand, was holding Lin Leyou, looking at the phone in his hand, and his hands were on Lin Leyou's waist, which were not behaving properly. But Lin Leyou was too lazy to care about him at the moment.

The two of them were like elementary school kids secretly having a romance in an empty stairwell, completely unaware of the darkness around them.

Of course, there was no one else in the hallway. Even the security guards patrolled by elevator. They might think of walking through the hallway to take a look, but when they would do so depended on when they thought of it.

Time slowly passed, and soon it was twelve o'clock. Just then, they heard the door to the first-floor hallway open, and then the lights on the first floor came on.

A person's footsteps slowly approached from above, but the two of them didn't react at all. They just stayed there playing on their phones. Lin Leyou, however, closed the game and opened the news.

There was no signal to begin with, so there shouldn't have been any updates, but when he refreshed the news about the resort island, he found that there were updates. How did that happen?

The footsteps below grew closer and closer, and it seemed they were about to reach their floor. But for some reason, when they reached the next floor, the person pushed open the stairwell door and left.

Neither of them had any intention of finding out who this person was. Instead, they clicked on the news to check it out and found that the news was updated at 11:00, which was the time when they both felt that the atmosphere had changed.

The news article was very simple, consisting of just a few sentences and a very blurry photo. The photo showed a swimming pool next to the hotel, the one closest to the hotel, visible from the hotel room balcony. Due to the storm, only a silhouette was visible in the photo; most of it was obscured, especially…

Xue Rui muttered to himself, "There seems to be something dark in the pool."

Lin Leyou nodded, and the two exchanged a glance before getting up and leaving the stairwell. When they pushed open the stairwell door, the corridor in front of them was also somewhat dim.

The small lights on the ceiling should all be on, but now, perhaps because it's late at night, only one light is on every two, making it look eerie and terrifying.

Fortunately, the two of them weren't bothered by such a small scene and went back into Xue Rui's room.

The two wanted to go to the balcony, but once inside, they realized that the sliding door to the balcony couldn't be opened easily. It was raining heavily outside, and if they opened it, the rainwater would flow directly into the room, making a mess of the living room.

They weren't in a hurry. Instead, the two of them searched every corner of the room, leaving no pipe unchecked, and finally found something.

Lin Leyou found it in a crack under the bed. He tossed a black listening device, no bigger than a grain of rice, onto the coffee table in the living room.

Upon seeing this, Xue Rui crushed it with his fingers, then went to the toilet and flushed away all the fragments. "Is this all?"

Lin Leyou: "This is all I found. What about yours?"

Xue Rui shook his head, "No, there should only be this."

Lin Leyou found it strange, "You mean this is a prop?"

Xue Rui, "I don't know, but..."

Lin Leyou said, "Someone planted this listening device here while we were out."

Xue Rui: "I don't know who it is. The enemy is in the dark while I am in the light. I'm in a very passive position."

Lin Leyou thought for a moment, then pulled Xue Rui back to the room. "Don't worry about it, let's just go to sleep and rest. Your task is to survive to the end, don't worry about anything else."

Xue Rui looked at him, "And what about you?"

Lin Leyou said, "I just don't believe that players with the strength to come to this level of difficulty wouldn't even survive five of them. If that's the case..."

Xue Rui thought about it and agreed. "You mean, you should just let your task take its natural course?"

Lin Leyou shook his head, "Of course not. I don't need to lift a finger at the beginning. I'll filter out the incompetent ones first, and the rest will be the real pros who are easy to help out. It will be much easier for them to help out later."

Xue Rui thought for a moment, "Perhaps if there are enough surviving players, you can initiate a hidden quest."

Lin Leyou shook her head, "No need, I'm fine as I am."

Xue Rui didn't refute it. Lin Leyou's approach was indeed quite good. He accumulated points every day. After all, the points earned from renting out gold-tier defensive items were equivalent to those from an S-rank difficulty dungeon in a day.

Xue Rui: "In that case, shall we rest first?"

The two lying in bed couldn't resist. Before going to sleep, Lin Leyou took out his phone and refreshed it again. This time, the news wasn't updated; it was still the same one they had seen in the hallway earlier.

Lin Leyou said, "The pool is blurry with dark patches. I don't know if it's a lighting effect or if there's something in it."

Xue Rui: "We'll know when it's light."

Or perhaps there's no need to wait until dawn, since ten security personnel patrol the hotel at night and might notice something unusual in the pool not far in front of the hotel.

Lin Leyou glanced at the text above. It was very short, just a few simple sentences. The gist of it was that a certain resort island had been hit by a once-in-a-century catastrophic storm and had been completely cut off from the outside world.

The photo appears to be of a swimming pool, but it actually refers to the storm outside; the pool was accidentally included in the shot. Whether the pool was truly in the photo by accident remains to be seen…

Lin Leyou didn't pursue that point. Instead, she put away her phone, snuggled up to Xue Rui, and said, "Go to sleep."

The two stayed in the room the whole time. Even after they woke up, it was still pitch black outside and there was a raging storm. They didn't get up and wander around. They waited until six o'clock before getting up to wash up.

Lin Leyou said, "I need to go downstairs to eat first, then we'll gather early and start work at eight o'clock."

Xue Rui nodded. "Let's go, let's get up."

After leaving the house, the two did not stay together again, but went their separate ways. Lin Leyou went to the restaurant to have breakfast. She did not encounter many people along the way. She guessed that some people were still sleeping in their rooms, or had already disappeared, but no one had noticed yet.

When he arrived at the restaurant, he saw his colleague from yesterday, who was dressed casually and chatting with a female tourist with a big smile on his face.

He raised an eyebrow, not wanting to disturb him.