Chapter 90: Xinlian Hotel (XII)
Zhang Huawei yelled at the door of the store: "I'm not going in, get out!"
The monster in the store: "Oh, how can I get out? I'm very busy, comrade, please help me!"
Zhang Huawei: "If I help you, who will help me later?"
Monster: "Hey, are you totally helping me? Isn't this something you bought with your own money? Isn't helping me also helping yourself?!"
Gao Zhanyuan: “…………” This monster is so good at quarreling.
Zhang Huawei blurted out: "Fuck, I don't want it anymore——"
"--Are you going to waste food?" The monster's voice suddenly became hoarse and extremely gloomy.
It seemed that as long as Zhang Huawei dared to say the word "yes", it would immediately pounce out from the darkness and bite his throat hard.
Zhang Huawei fell silent and swallowed his saliva.
He struggled and took a step back, but found that there were invisible barriers blocking his back and on both sides, leaving him only one way forward. He couldn't help but curse.
"Just go in. You can go back to the game anyway if you die." Gao Zhanyuan said lightly.
"You make it sound like dying is easy. Why don't you try it?" Zhang Huawei jumped up and down.
Gao Zhanyuan was speechless to him: "Didn't you choose this restaurant? How about you go to the barbecue restaurant and I'll take care of this one? You can't expect me to take care of both restaurants, and you'll get it for free?"
Zhang Huawei was choked, his face turned red, and he was extremely embarrassed and angry.
...Who are you insulting!
He clenched his fists, took two quick breaths, muttered "Who got it for free" under his breath, gritted his teeth and walked towards the storefront.
Gao Zhanyuan followed behind him.
Zhang Huawei: "? Why are you following me?"
Gao Zhanyuan turned on the flashlight mode on his phone: "Are you stupid?"
Zhang Huawei: “…………”
Damn, he also felt like he had become a fool!
The two men walked into the dark fruit shop cautiously.
——Zhang Huawei didn’t want to ask Gao Zhanyuan why he followed him in… He just thought that this guy was really greedy for the fruit… Hmm… Maybe it was true… After he got the fruit successfully, since this guy came in with him, he could let him have a taste, cough…
The flashlight beam formed a thin beam in the darkness.
Gao Zhanyuan shook his phone left and right and found that no matter where the light hit, all they could see was nothingness, as if they had stepped into a chaotic universe instead of a fruit shop.
Zhang Huawei's nerves were as tense as a string.
He took two steps forward and his right leg suddenly hit something in the dark. He hissed in pain and subconsciously reached down and touched a basket.
Is it a basket for fruit?
He suddenly remembered something crucial.
The full slogan of this store is: This is the most diverse fruit salad in the whole university town! Bananas, blueberries, strawberries, apples... are rich in various vitamins that are good for the body. Cut into pieces and pour a scoop of ice cream and two scoops of yogurt on them, it is refreshing and comfortable! (The store manager's knife skills are neat and pleasing to the eye, but his eyesight is not very good [covering his mouth and laughing] If you find that he cuts the wrong thing, please throw the fruit to him immediately!)
——They have to bring a fruit!
Zhang Huawei quickly bent down and reached into the basket. Gao Zhanyuan's low voice came from the side: "What are you doing?"
"I'm touching the melon, it looks like a papaya..."
Zhang Huawei just picked up a papaya at random and held it in his arms. As soon as he stood up, he felt something passing over his head, making his face itchy.
He touched his face and knocked off a few strands of hair.
Zhang Huawei: “…………What was that just now?!”
"What? What?" Gao Zhanyuan didn't notice anything and was still looking forward.
The next second, a flash of silver light flashed between the two of them, and Zhang Huawei suddenly felt a chill on his left shoulder, as if his sleeve was gone.
This time Gao Zhanyuan also saw it clearly, and the two of them: “…………”
——That’s a fucking long watermelon knife!
At the same time, the voice of the monster who had been greeting them just now sounded from the depths: "Hey, manager, you cut the wrong thing again, that's the customer, not the fruit!"
The next second, silver light struck Zhang Huawei!
"Fuck you——" Zhang Huawei dodged and said, "Gao Zhanyuan! Gao Zhanyuan! Light! Light!"
The flashlight suddenly swept towards Zhang Huawei, but the beam still only swept into the void, and they did not see the figure of the knife-wielding monster!
Silver light appeared above Zhang Huawei's head. At this moment, adrenaline was rapidly secreted, and Zhang Huawei's potential burst out -
He bent his upper body backward, and his round waist formed an extremely difficult arc, and then he bent down!
——But he couldn't do it after bending it to 60 degrees!!
He screamed, lost his balance and fell to the ground. The machete hit him right between his legs and he almost peed himself.
Gao Zhanyuan's anxious voice came from the side: "Zhang Huawei, try turning on the flashlight yourself, mine can't reach you!"
Zhang Huawei picked up Papaya and turned over to crawl forward, trembling with fear: "What the hell, if you can't take the picture, then I can?!"
"Don't you realize that this knife is only following you? You are the one in the bureau. Maybe it will be useful if you use a flashlight!!"
Zhang Huawei was so frightened that he couldn't hear anything else: "I-I-I'm going to throw the melon!"
"?" Gao Zhanyuan cursed, "You didn't even see where the monster was, where are you going to throw it?!"
"Just throw it in the direction the knife is coming from!"
Gao Zhanyuan wanted to stop it, but it was too late. He heard the sound of the melon falling to the ground and breaking.
The next second, a low roar sounded in the store, like the roar of a giant beast, and the sound shook the entire space.
"——You actually wasted food!"
A ray of silver light fell half a meter away from Gao Zhanyuan, like a thunderbolt striking the ground.
Gao Zhanyuan felt a warm liquid splashing on his face.
Dead silence.
With two hisses, the lights in the store came on.
Inside the narrow shop, a burly, pure black monster stood in the middle holding a machete, looking menacing with a trace of anger on his face.
On the ground in front of it lay a broken papaya.
Zhang Huawei is missing.
Gao Zhanyuan was stunned for a few seconds, raised his arm to wipe his face, cursed, and ran out of the store.
*
When he ran back to the stone table, Zhang Huawei had already collapsed on the ground, and Shen Leng was resting his arm on his shoulder with a worried look on his face.
Gao Zhanyuan took a breath and cursed, "Why are you in such a bad mood? Didn't you realize that the knife can't be used accurately in the dark? You could have turned on the flashlight. As long as your flashlight can illuminate the monster, you can just throw it at it and it will be fine. You - forget it, I think you shouldn't go. Just rest here and I'll go take care of those two stores!"
As he turned around, Zhang Huawei suddenly took off the schoolbag on his back and threw it to the ground.
Gao Zhanyuan paused, glanced at the schoolbag, and calmed down: "It's no use getting angry. If you still have energy, you might as well use your brain to think about how to solve this instance and where the monster generator is."
Zhang Huawei cried and shouted, "If I had a brain I wouldn't have made that mistake just now!!"
Gao Zhanyuan: "Hey, you still know? That's right. If I think about it carefully, it seems that your brain is not as good as mine. Otherwise, I should stay here to find a solution, and you go to fight those two stores physically? At most, I can ask the night market player you correspond to to send you back a few more times."
Zhang Huawei: “…………”
Shen Leng: “…”
You are really good at adding fuel to the fire, brother!
Zhang Huawei glared at Gao Zhanyuan angrily, his eyes bloodshot, as if he wanted to pounce on him and bite him.
After Gao Zhanyuan finished speaking rudely, he restrained his expression and his chubby little face became cold again.
He said, "Hey, seriously, you and my eldest brother are from the same school. You got in by yourself, right? If you can get into science and engineering, how bad can your brain be? You must be smarter than me, right?"
Zhang Huawei froze, clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and looked at the ground.
"I can think of a solution to the problem in that store just now. Can't you? You just have a bad mentality. Adjust yourself, top student."
“Cheer up!”
Zhang Huawei remained silent.
"Leave."
In his sight, Gao Zhanyuan's feet walked towards the garbage street without hesitation.
He pursed his lips and raised his eyes quietly, and saw the brave and fearless back of the little boy with blond hair.
A strand of silly hair stood up on the top of the head, swaying with every step. The figure strode forward, getting farther and farther away, gradually blending into the bright lights.
Shen Leng squatted beside him, still a little worried: "Are you okay?"
"...I'm fine." Zhang Huawei stood up sullenly and patted his butt.
He was quite dejected, and with a turn of his eyes, he glanced at the glittering crystal coffin diagonally in front of him.
The crystal coffin stared back at him in silence.
...No, you are definitely a pit!
Zhang Huawei pursed his lips, took a step forward, picked up the schoolbag he had thrown on the ground, and took out the letter from home and the train ticket from it.
He turned around and sat down on the stone bench, staring at the two things and began to rack his brains.
*
7:03
Beside the stone table, Shen Leng was sitting there with his head nodding, dozing off, while Zhang Huawei was frowning in deep thought.
Mu Yu suddenly appeared and scared the two men.
Shen Leng quickly wiped the saliva from his mouth and asked, "Did the clay pot fish head shop...fail?"
Mu Yu let out a breath and nodded.
After being transferred into the clay pot just now, he tried to push the surrounding side dishes out of the pot, and then connected to the fish head man's brain waves, asking it to call 10233 - the market supervision phone number mentioned in the rules, to report the store for unsanitary conditions...
The method might be a bit cunning, ahem... but it didn't work in the end anyway, because when the market supervisors came, the boss had already cleaned up the side dishes that Mu Yu had pushed out of the pot. Later, the fish head man was arrested for making false reports, and Mu Yu's body had reached its limit, so he was sent back by Lu Chongnian...
Unbearable to look back on.
Mu Yu grabbed a handful of hair and looked at Shen Leng: "How are you? Have you ever been teleported?"
"Yes, I was teleported on the spot around the 10th minute!" Shen Leng said.
Mu Yu touched his chin.
Sure enough, different foods can be provided to players for different periods of time. Although 10 minutes is still a bit short, it is at least longer than the time for milk tea.
At this moment, Gao Zhanyuan suddenly appeared next to him and fell on the table - this guy was also teleported back!
Zhang Huawei's eyes widened: "You failed too?!"
"Get lost, of course I succeeded!" Gao Zhanyuan jumped up and said to Mu Yu, "Brother Yu, the time that Fruit Fishing can give is about four minutes!"
He had just successfully passed the fruit salad shop using his own method. After eating, he ran to the kebab shop. He was teleported back just after placing the order. The whole process definitely took no more than four minutes!
"That's all? I thought he could be longer than the fried food store manager," Zhang Huawei muttered, "That's not much different from the time it takes to make milk tea."
Gao Zhanyuan squinted at him and said, "You're still complaining? In this kind of game, one extra minute can save several lives! It's just like your college entrance examination. If you score one point more than others, you can move up a few thousand places..."
Zhang Huawei now only dared to urge him in a low voice: "How can there be so many..."
Mu Yu pondered.
At present, the shelf life of these foods is indeed very short. I wonder how the barbecue restaurant and the casserole fish head restaurant will fare.
He turned his gaze to the letter from home and the train ticket in front of Zhang Huawei and asked, "Zhang Huawei, are you studying these two things?"
"Ah? Oh yeah!"
Zhang Huawei really couldn't handle Gao Zhanyuan. Luckily Mu Yu cue him. He quickly picked up the two things and said, "I, uh, I just thought about it and felt that we could actually try the 'go home' option. Anyway, this is definitely not a sure-kill option!"
"What do you mean?" Shen Leng, who had not been willing to disturb Zhang Huawei before, asked curiously.
"Look at this family letter. It mentions that home is always a haven. If you don't know what the right choice is outside, you can go to bed... The focus of this letter is actually 'our growth', right?"
When Zhang Huawei analyzed these, he seemed to have regained some confidence.
"We are now a group of children who have left home at a young age and are ready to live independently. We have three choices: one, to walk forward on our own two legs; two, to go to bed and let this dead machine make choices for us; three, to go back home and rely on our parents... This entire instance is designed around this theme, so the focus is definitely on these three options."
"Think about it, there are only three choices in total," Zhang Huawei pointed at the hotbed behind him, "Between this thing and 'Go Home', only one of them must be fatal, right?"
"As for the other option, I think it's more dangerous. The player might be in danger of death, but if they can survive successfully, they might be able to reach the end directly, which is where the answer to the whole puzzle is!"
Shen Leng was stunned when he heard this, while Gao Zhanyuan was a little suspicious: "How can you be sure that there is only one fatality? This game was not designed by you."
Zhang Huawei choked: "...Then the people who designed the game should pay attention to balance, right?! If two out of the three choices are certain to lead to death, then what is the point of playing the game? Isn't there no choice at all!"
Mu Yu was listening and thinking at the side.
In fact, he had considered the option of "going home" before... He even thought that the monster generator might be at "home".
But they have no idea what kind of place "home" is or where "home" is.
The hidden information of this copy is here. Once they get on the train without knowing anything and let the train take them back to "home", they may eventually be sent directly to where the answer is, but they may also face great danger without warning.
And when that time comes, how many players can make it through and survive?
A return of 100 corresponds to a risk of death of 10,000, which is not very cost-effective. After all, there is no free lunch in this world.
But at the same time, Mu Yu didn't dare to say whether there would be problems if they ignored this option.
——Because, as I said before, all the settings in the copy will not be useless.
Even the "hotbed" has functions that they cannot avoid and must use, so can they completely ignore this train ticket?
If there really is such a thing in the dungeon game, they can just put it aside and ignore it. Then the players may have to reflect on whether they have made a wrong move.
At this moment, watching Gao Zhanyuan and Zhang Huawei bickering, Mu Yu raised his eyelashes and said, "So, what you mean is--"
When his eyes reached the place where he was looking, Zhang Huawei stopped talking and his expression became obviously nervous.
He cleared his throat and said calmly, "I, I am willing to take this risk for everyone and try to get on the train. But, um, I may need to borrow the food that has been in supply for the longest time..."
As soon as these words came out, Gao Zhanyuan's face instantly fell.
If he was still "playing" with Zhang Huawei just now, he was really unhappy now.
"Oh, after all this talk, it all comes down to this," he sneered, "What do you mean by 'borrowing'? How are you going to pay it back? Can you spit out what you've taken in?"
Zhang Huawei froze, his face flushed instantly: "...If I really have to get on that train to explore the way for you, then I must set off early, right? I may not be able to come back after leaving the fog. If I don't eat the food that takes the longest time, what should I do with the night market player I correspond to?! I'm not doing this for myself, I'm doing it for someone else!"
"'To explore the way for you'?" Gao Zhanyuan pointed out bluntly, "Does it mean only for us?"
Zhang Huawei was so excited that his saliva spurted out: "It's for me! It's also for myself! I was wrong, okay? I, I just like to take advantage of others, I admit it! But what did I say wrong? If I drank the milk tea and set off, the night market player I corresponded to would have died before the train took me to my destination. Isn't his life worth anything?!"
"What I'm upset about now is not this matter, but that we worked so hard to scout out the restaurants, and you said you wanted to get on the train, so you want us to give up the best food to you. You're just making up your mind. Is this all you can think of? And are you sure you can succeed?" Gao Zhanyuan said coldly, "Even if we really have to get on the train, we don't necessarily have to send you. Since the food that has been served the longest has to be used, we absolutely cannot let anyone waste it."
"Who are you saying is wasting--" Zhang Huawei was so angry that his face turned red and his neck became thick. He slammed the table and stood up. However, when he met Gao Zhanyuan's cold eyes, he froze, and all the strength in his body seemed to be removed in an instant.
He sat back down, lowered his head, slumped his shoulders, and said angrily, "Forget it, whatever you want."
...Mu Yu felt that the conflict between these two people seemed a little deep.
He thought about it and said, "If we really have to get on the train, then we must use the food that takes the longest time to offer to that person, but I think we can put this matter aside for now and talk about it later... We haven't even explored the remaining two stores yet, and we don't even know how many minutes the remaining two types of food can be used!"
There's no need to argue so intensely now!
"You're right." Zhang Huawei said weakly.
After he finished speaking, his figure suddenly shook, and he said with despair: "I seem to have been teleported again just now."
Shen Leng, who was sitting next to him, said: "I think so too..."
"It seems that things are not going well with the youth group—wait," Mu Yu's eyes gleamed, "I seem to have an extra memory in my head!"
Everyone looked at him immediately.
*
Xinlian Hotel.
A lot of things happened on their side in just over ten minutes...
Yu Ning just tried to break out of room 203 again, but failed.
Xu Jin also tried room 201 again, but also failed.
And Wang Hao - he was teleported back to the starting point without doing anything just now. The crystal he got was gone, and the room card taken away by the front desk was also returned. It was estimated that the corresponding player on Garbage Street did something, and the players on Night Market Street reversed time.
He was helpless and could only enter 204 again, and fortunately he succeeded again.
And Yan Shaowen, just now, successfully solved the problem of room 202 in one and a half minutes and got a purple heart-shaped crystal.
When asked how he solved the problem, he downplayed it.
"Since you know the copy wants to confuse you, why don't you just stay awake? Loosen your fist, and the crystal will be in your palm."
The other three people: “…………”
It sounds so simple! It sounds so simple!
"So, what does it mean to carve words on the table?" Wang Hao asked confusedly.
The memory Yan Shaowen just gained was——
The twelve of them stood in the white space. This time, they were divided into four groups of three according to the structure of young, young and old people. There was a table in front of each group.
A line of golden subtitles was floating in the air, requiring each group of young and child players to follow its instructions and carve their names on the corresponding positions on the table.
At the same time, garbage street.
Everyone gathered around Lu Zhongnian's booth.
Lu Zhongnian moved all the handmade bags on the table, leaving the entire table empty, and said, "All the youth players will carve their names on the left side of the table, and the young players will carve their names on the right side."
"I think the positions of these names may be related to the life progress bars of the two groups of people."
"What? What do you mean?" Hong Yang didn't understand.
Lu Zhongnian raised his head and said to them, "Have you noticed that so far, every time the NPC stops, it disrupts not just a corner of our desktop, but our entire desktop."
Everyone was startled, and then recalled——
Yes...it seems so!
Every time an NPC stops in front of their table, no matter if it's just one NPC or a group of NPCs, no matter if they pick up two or three items or seven or eight items, the items they choose are distributed all over the table, not in a single place!
The result is that their entire desktop is messed up.
Lu Zhongnian said slowly: "Therefore, when we tidy up the desktop, we always tidy up the entire desktop, and the corresponding progress bars of the youth group players and the child group players will be pulled to the origin at this time. They will return to the original position of the copy, and their physical condition will also return to the beginning."
"But what if their progress bars were originally separable?"
Lu Zhongnian placed his hands on the left and right sides of the table respectively.
"Since the copy specifically divided the positions on the table for the two groups, then these two positions must have their uses."
Lu Zhongnian bent down, picked up a handmade bag on the ground, and placed it on the upper left corner of the table.
Then pick up the other one and place it next to it.
He took up the handmade bags one by one, filling up the entire left half of the table, then waved his hand, shuffled them, and rearranged them.
He repeated this confusing process three times, and finally someone couldn't hold it in any longer.
A [? ] appeared on his right arm.
Are you experimenting?
The handwriting was clearly Yan Shaowen's, and Mu Yu's handwriting did not appear, which seemed to mean -
"Mu Yu's progress bar wasn't moved?!" Jiang Shuyue asked in surprise.
This table can really be separated and organized!
They can control the life progress bars of young players and young players separately!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
