61 Tokyo Dream 02

◎All 99 spectators trapped here died today◎

Zhu Heng slept for a whole day and night. If the city-wide alarm issued by the system had not been too loud, he thought he could have stayed in bed for half a day longer.

【warn! 】

【warn! 】

[High-risk instability has been detected in the "Tokyo Dream" dungeon. The dungeon difficulty has been increased from F to S, and a data repair is being requested.]

It turned out to be another S-level copy, and I got to it from F-level by climbing the Sky Monkey.

Zhu Heng stood up and walked out of the room. In the corridor, Helan Dao was neatly dressed and standing at the door leaning against the wall. It seemed that he had been standing there for a long time.

"Waiting for me?" Zhu Heng closed the door.

He Landao raised his hand and pointed at the ceiling: "How can we carry out an S-level mission without bringing our minions?"

Zhu Heng rolled his eyes at him.

They left the central building together. A wooden passenger boat was moored at the entrance. Zhu Heng stepped onto the deck first. "Is this the transportation to the 'Tokyo Dream' instance?"

The boat swayed twice. Helan Dao followed behind and extended his hand to protect it. "Yes, it's a Northern Song Dynasty ship. We're going to Dongjing, the capital of the Great Song Dynasty, and we'll pass under the Rainbow Bridge."

"Hongqiao?" Zhu Heng repeated.

As he spoke, he bent over and lifted the curtain. When he saw the scene inside the boat, Zhu Heng was stunned.

"It's the bridge in 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival'." Helan Dao explained. He noticed Zhu Heng's pause and looked inside.

There were already two people sitting on the boat. One of them was wearing a green shirt, with black hair that fell to her waist. Her body was as soft as a spring willow, and her face was as calm as autumn water. She looked like she had a soft light filter on her. It was Liu Qiaoer.

The man sitting next to her was wearing a short Song Dynasty jacket and was as lean as a monkey. Seeing someone board the boat, he stood up and handed them two business cards. "I'm Xiao Zhao, an A-level elite member of the Song Dynasty Group, from the Central City Archaeological Team. I've long heard of you two."

Zhu Heng glanced at him and asked, "Have you seen me?"

Xiao Zhao rubbed his head and said, "I watched the entire live broadcast of your last instance."

Liu Qiao'er smiled maliciously and said, "Xiao Zhao has told me everything about you. To thank you for your help in the last dungeon, as the leader of the Song Dynasty team, I will escort you throughout the rest of the mission."

Zhu Heng said expressionlessly, "Can I refuse?"

"No." Liu Qiao'er turned and shouted towards the stern, "Boatman, start the boat!"

Along the way, Zhu Heng always felt something was strange.

Because Liu Qiaoer always looked at him with an inquiring look, glancing at him from time to time, but when he looked back at her, she pretended to look away casually.

Just when Zhu Heng was about to speak, the boat stopped.

"Are we there yet?" Xiao Zhao was surprised.

Zhu Heng noticed that Liu Qiaoer's expression was a little confused and surprised - it was obvious that they had not arrived in Tokyo yet, and the stopover was beyond Liu Qiaoer's expectations.

The boat rocked twice, the draft deepened, and a steady and powerful sound of footsteps came from the deck.

The light inside the boat came on and someone lifted the curtain.

"Hello, I'm the new player Augustus. This is my first time in the Eastern region. Thank you for your guidance." The newcomer greeted them. He had medium-length black-brown, slightly curly hair and grey eyes with a hint of blue, which was very handsome.

Augustus? Zhu Heng frowned.

Isn't that just...

He turned to look at the two people sitting next to him. When Augustus appeared on the deck, Helandao and Liu Qiaoer's expressions were each wonderful.

Liu Qiao'er was better, with no other expression except surprise. He Landao was not so polite. He did not hide the disgust on his face and said in a bad tone, "Why are you here?"

"I heard you guys in the Eastern Region have another S-rank dungeon. I'm curious." Augustus sat down in the empty seat next to Liu Qiao'er. "What a coincidence! Long time no see, Prophet Girl."

Liu Qiaoer was stunned for a moment, then nodded.

Liu Qiao'er was a little uncomfortable as she hadn't heard such a familiar name for a long time. Her gaze shifted from Augustus to Helan Dao. When the two stood together, she finally understood - it turned out that the East Asian child had always been in the central city, but she didn't recognize him.

Augustus seemed to be a chatterbox, and he started chattering non-stop as soon as he sat down: "It's great to have cleared the Silk Road. There are no restrictions on coming and going between the East and the West now."

Liu Qiaoer opened the wooden lattice windows on the boat. At some point, a beamless rainbow bridge made entirely of wood came into view, stretching across the river ahead.

"We've finally arrived." Liu Qiaoer said softly, attracting everyone on the boat to look outside.

There was a creaking sound overhead. The boatman was lowering the mast. The boat was slowly approaching the Rainbow Bridge. There was a noise of people on the bridge, but no one was in sight.

There was a sudden vibration in the boat. Xiao Zhao subconsciously grabbed the handrail in front of his seat. Looking back, he found that except for him, everyone else on the boat was as steady as a rock, with their buttocks firmly stuck to their seats, not moving at all.

Xiao Zhao's face looked a little dull, as if he were a fool.

There was another vibration from the bottom of the ship. Zhu Heng stuck his head out and looked outside - the ship did not pass through the bridge hole as he thought. At this moment, the bottom of the ship was pressing on the bridge, looking like a roller coaster with the bridge as its track.

As the boat steadily drove onto the bridge, everyone on the boat fell backward due to inertia. Fortunately, there seemed to be invisible seat belts on the seats that fixed them firmly to the seats so that they would not fall.

Augustus whistled. "What kind of new way of entering is this?"

The boat slowly sailed from one end of the Hongqiao Bridge to the other. After passing the highest point, it dived and accelerated along the curve of the bridge. The boat plunged into the river and water instantly poured into the cabin.

Zhu Heng felt a knot in his abdomen, a heavy sinking sensation. His chest and lungs didn't feel the discomfort of water filling them, as he'd imagined. He opened his eyes and was surprised to find he could breathe freely underwater.

There is also a "Rainbow Bridge" underwater, which forms a complete circle with the one on the water surface, but it looks different when you look closely.

At the junction of the two rainbow bridges, which is the starting point and also the end point of the "circle" they are driving on, the bridge is twisted into a knot here. The shape formed by the two rainbow bridges is like a Möbius strip.

The passenger ship continued to glide along the predetermined track in the water, but Zhu Heng noticed something strange.

They, along with their boat, seemed to be photographed as a two-dimensional plane, clinging to the bottom of the underwater bridge. As the passenger boat gradually passed the "knot", they moved from the inner surface of the bridge to the outer surface of the bridge, where the boat stopped, and now it has restored its three-dimensional appearance.

The surrounding environment has changed.

Everyone looked around and saw a crowd on Rainbow Bridge, willows lining the banks, and a street lined with stalls stretching as far as the eye could see. The sky was a faint cyan, and a breeze blew from the banks of the Bian River, bringing a gentle warmth with a hint of coolness. It was early spring, and the air was filled with a sweet fragrance.

Xiao Zhao was a little excited. "When we came to Tokyo to carry out missions before, we just went straight in. I didn't expect that this mission would be upgraded to S-level, and we would be turned into a two-dimensional plane first, entering from 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival'."

Liu Qiaoer straightened her hair, stood up and left the cabin: "Okay, stop looking so inexperienced."

Xiao Zhao shut up in disappointment and followed everyone off the boat.

Xiao Zhao's words reminded Zhu Heng, and Zhu Heng casually asked, "So, what went wrong with the dungeon system this time?"

"You don't know?" Xiao Zhao was a little surprised.

Zhu Heng didn't feel like talking. He had slept for a whole day and night, and just as he woke up, he was caught by Helan Dao. He didn't have any eavesdropping devices in his dream, so he wondered if this was normal.

But it was not appropriate to say this. It seemed that except for him, everyone else had done their homework before coming. His idiotic appearance seemed to confirm the rumors of Zhu Heng taking the back door - he had only participated in four dungeons and entered the central city before completing the S-level dungeon. The news of Zhu Heng's "back door" spread throughout the entire Eastern Archaeological Team, although to some extent, Zhu Heng did take the back door of Helan Dao.

However, Zhu Heng felt unashamedly that he was completely worthy of this backdoor.

Augustus condescended and said, "The simple explanation is that all the spectators and players who entered the 'Tokyo Dream' instance are trapped here and cannot leave."

He glanced at Helan Dao and continued, "This is different from your last instance. The audience players being trapped wasn't the original setting of 'Universal History'. It must be that external factors interfered with the system. In short, the system detected the risk of losing control in this instance, so it needs new audiences—us—to come in and make amends."

"What was the original copy mission?" Zhu Heng asked.

Xiao Zhao continued, "According to the previous ratings, 'Tokyo Dream' is just the simplest copy. The task is to visit and appreciate 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival'. For the audience, it is pure fun. If there is no accident, people in the central city basically won't touch this kind of task." Not to mention mobilizing his team leader, or even people like Augustus.

"As for now..." Xiao Zhao was speaking when the crowd around him suddenly exploded with a buzzing sound, and everyone's eyes looked towards the upper reaches of the Bian River.

A floating corpse slowly floated over.

The river water was muddy and yellow, and the red dress of the floating corpse was soaked to a shine, and the bulging fabric wrapped around the body. The corpse was in a strange posture, her body straight and straight, lying on her back in the river, a strange smile on her pale face.

Xiao Zhao hugged the railing and retched.

Liu Qiaoer retreated tactically: "Don't spit!"

Xiao Zhao obeyed his leader's order and swallowed the food in his throat again. His expression turned horrified. "What was that just now? Didn't the system tell us there were any deaths before we got here?"

Zhu Heng had been looking at the upper reaches of the Bian River when he suddenly said to Xiao Zhao, "Stand aside."

Confused, Xiao Zhao took two steps forward, thinking to himself, "I'm not blocking your view." He glanced at Zhu Heng and saw that his gaze was fixed on the upper reaches of the Bian River, so Xiao Zhao casually glanced in that direction.

This glance almost cost him half his life.

At the end of the river, a layer of black edges rolled up, like swarms of ants, densely packed along the river and floating into everyone's sight. When they took a closer look, they found that these were not ants at all, but straight corpses!

The corpses had strange smiles on their faces and were arranged in an orderly manner, one next to the other, in staggered rows without a single gap.

Xiao Zhao finally couldn't bear it anymore and vomited all over the floor. Fortunately, he moved aside a distance in advance so that the vomit would not splash on others.

Augustus was stunned. It took him a while to react, then he gave Zhu Heng a thumbs up.

At this moment, the system sounded a notification: [Today marks the 100th day since the "Tokyo Dream" dungeon malfunctioned. All 99 viewers trapped within have died today. Death is irreversible, but blood debt must be repaid with blood. The system will replay the events of the past 100 days. You will be sent back 100 days. Your mission is to find the murderer and bring him to justice.]

As soon as the system finished speaking, the scene before everyone's eyes changed.