Chapter 73 Volcanic Eruption The infusion room seemed to have fallen into an endless silence…
They only had half an hour left to have a safe time outside the infusion room.
Liang Jun was startled, and her outstretched hand landed on the sticky, blue-green door.
The light was dappled, and the shadows of the crowd gathered together looked like a group of huge black monsters, looming over the motionless door panel.
"What's going on?!"
Gu Keke, who had been watching Liang Xun's movements closely, was also taken aback. She was the first to react and hurriedly pushed the door open, but it still had no effect.
Liang Jun could sense that the concentration of the surrounding gas was becoming increasingly intense. Her eyes even felt like they were about to tear up because of the stinging sensation.
We can no longer sit idly by and wait for our demise.
With a determined heart, Liang Jun clenched her fist and pounded on the door with all her might.
The seemingly dilapidated door panels miraculously blocked her attacks time and time again. Even so, the door panels still shook violently due to her violent actions.
Amidst the chaotic noise, Liang Xun caught the sound of iron chains and golden locks clashing against each other from across the door.
There are people inside.
They even locked the front door from the inside.
The clanging of metal, which should have been a pleasant, crisp sound, now sounded like a cold, death knell to outsiders.
Luo Chuange and Lao Ren also sensed something was wrong, and they crowded around Liang Xun and Gu Keke, waving their fists and pounding on the door.
After several punches, their skin was rubbed raw and swollen, but the seemingly fragile door remained standing, tightly shut.
"Open the door! I know you're inside!"
A simple lock on the door was enough to leave them feeling helpless.
Driven to desperation, Luo Chuange could only strain his neck through the crack in the door and shout inside, "Open the door for us! Let us in quickly!"
There was a faint space between the cracks in the door, right next to his ear. Luo Chuange caught the sound of footsteps approaching, but just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the footsteps suddenly stopped.
Immediately afterwards, a familiar female voice rang out from afar—
"Don't open the door."
Apart from Luo Chuange, no one noticed the conversation between the players inside the door; Lao Ren, who was right next to him, was still pounding on the door desperately.
He raised his hand and grabbed Lao Ren's arm, which was still trying to wave.
"Don't make any noise, there are people talking inside."
Liang Jun and Gu Keke also noticed his whisper. After exchanging a glance, they put their ears close to the small gap.
The woman's voice could still be heard, "We scraped together the money and finally managed to buy this prop gold lock. Even if we give you the key, it's definitely not for you to open the door whenever you want."
"But...that sounds like Brother Ge's voice..."
The person whose footsteps were walking was clearly closer to them.
This time, not only Luo Chuange, but also Liang Xun and Gu Keke easily recognized that the speaker was Shao Feng.
"Sister Jiang, Brother Ge and the others should all be here. We need to open the door and let them in..."
"You dare?!"
Jiang Chunhua seemed to have knocked something over; the sound of the shelf falling over came along with her shout, "We're not even sure if the people standing outside are human or ghosts, how can you be so sure it's your Brother Ge whom you only met once?!"
There was another sound of footsteps, but this time they were more hurried.
Not long after, a crisp slap rang out.
As Shao Feng mumbled, Jiang Chunhua's fiery voice seemed to grow even closer.
"You can open the door if you want, but if you let anything unclean in, you'll be the first one killed!"
Even if Lao Ren hadn't been pressed against the crack in the door, he could have heard everything Jiang Chunhua was making, no matter how loud it was.
He already harbored a great deal of resentment towards Jiang Chunhua.
She always looks down on everyone. When she needs someone, she wags her tail and fawns over them; when she doesn't need them, she kicks them far away.
He's been unhappy for a long time.
Driven by the instinct for survival, Jiang Chunhua's words were like the critical temperature at the last moment of a volcanic eruption.
Old Ren flew into a rage, no longer caring about what was polite or offensive. He strung together every word that flashed through his mind and unleashed a torrent of unrestrained curses.
"Jiang Chunhua, can you open your damn eyes and take a good look! Standing outside the door is your father! Not some inhuman ghost you're talking about! If you don't let us in tonight, you might as well never come out again! Even if I become a vengeful ghost, I'll be the first to tear you apart!"
The barrage of profanities stunned everyone else for a moment, but Lao Ren continued to spew forth profanities like a tap that had been turned on and had maximum power.
He didn't forget to knock on the flimsy door a couple more times, yelling, "Open the door for me right now!"
The infusion room seemed to fall into an endless silence.
They couldn't see Jiang Chunhua's hesitant yet silent expression; nor could they see Shao Feng covering his face, seeking another reliable look.
All they could catch was Tang Cailei's calm and unhurried voice a few seconds later—
"Go open the door for them."
In relatively dim environments, a person's vision will be affected to some extent, but correspondingly, their hearing will be infinitely more sensitive.
Just now, Liang Jun heard the sound of the iron chain hitting the ground from the other side, and a few seconds later, she caught the ear-piercing friction sound of the hinge turning.
The infusion room was brightly lit by incandescent bulbs, and everyone's vision seemed to be fully illuminated at this moment.
Shao Feng faced them directly. After the door opened, he moved to the side of the door, lowered his head and lowered his eyes, trying his best to avoid everyone's gaze on the left half of his face with the handprint.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."
It's not appropriate to start small talk at this time.
Their most urgent task right now is to get into the infusion room.
When all six of them were brought into the space and the chains were locked again, the tension that had been gripping them finally subsided.
Although Shao Feng tried to avoid it, Gu Keke still noticed the unusual expression on his face.
Who hit you?
Gu Keke's eyes were filled with heartache, as if she could feel the pain of the slap coming on her face. "Don't you know you shouldn't hit someone in the face..."
"It's alright..."
Shao Feng smiled awkwardly, but deliberately avoided the topic of Jiang Chunhua.
From the moment she entered the new venue, Liang Jun was already quickly taking in her surroundings.
Above the entrance to the infusion room, a cookie-shaped clock hangs high on the wall. Its surface is sprinkled with what appears to be randomly scattered chocolate chips, which actually correspond to various points in time.
If nothing unexpected happens, the chime they just heard outside the door probably came from here.
"Looking at the clock?"
Without her noticing, Jiang Zhiling had already walked from the corner of the infusion room to her side.
Liang Xun subtly took two steps back and nodded to her, "This is..."
"This should be the only timekeeping device in the entire emergency aid station."
Jiang Zhiling smiled at her in a friendly manner, then stood next to Shao Feng.
"You should have heard it outside the door. This cookie clock chimes every hour on the hour, but the sound isn't very penetrating, which is why we didn't hear it in the lobby on the first floor."
Her attempt to project a friendly smile didn't last long, as it was replaced by an emotion called "apology."
Jiang Zhiling led the group further away from Jiang Chunhua, then whispered an apology, "I'm so sorry, we didn't choose to open the door directly at first because we were worried about what unknown risks might be outside..."
"Girl, you don't need to apologize to us!"
Upon hearing this, Lao Ren waved his hand, interrupting Jiang Zhiling's prepared speech.
“Although I was in a hurry just now and said a lot of nasty things to your sister, I apologized to her—but you are completely different from her! Your sister is inherently malicious, and you don’t need to apologize on her behalf at all!”
Old Ren, as if he had to get this off his chest, craned his neck towards Jiang Chunhua and shouted in a voice almost everyone could hear, "They're both born of the same mother, so how come the older and younger sisters are so different—"
Luo Chuange wished he could just cover Lao Ren's mouth with his hand and say, "Stop talking!"
And Jiang Zhiling, one of the parties involved, is standing right in front of everyone.
She couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry, so she could only force a smile that looked even worse than a grimace, and stood awkwardly in place.
Seeing that Lao Ren was being dragged backward by Luo Chuange by his clothes, Gu Keke stepped forward and blocked Jiang Zhiling's path.
"Why don't you tell us about this place? It's getting late, everyone should try to get some rest, we have a new challenge to face tomorrow."
Jiang Zhiling was extremely grateful to Gu Keke for resolving her predicament.
She quickly composed herself, grabbed Shao Feng's hand, and the two of them walked directly to the front of the group.
“We had already thoroughly investigated the overall structure of the infusion room before you arrived.”
Jiang Zhiling led them towards the opposite corner of her main camp.
"This place is no different from a typical community clinic infusion room in the real world. Except for that cookie clock, everything else is normal."
Jiang Zhiling glanced around at the empty areas and said, “There are plenty of empty seats here. It would be no problem to accommodate more than a hundred people at the same time.”
Seemingly noticing Liang Xun's keen interest in the seats, Jiang Zhiling further explained, "Each player is provided with an IV drip stand and an adjustable chair. The stand can be detached; I've tried it, and it can be used as a handy weapon if necessary. The chair can also be adjusted to a near-flat position. Although the overall material is rather hard, it's still manageable for a night."
"Thanks."
Jiang Zhiling gave them these important clues free of charge, and Liang Jun felt it was necessary to express her gratitude.
But compared to these clues, what Liang Jun was more concerned about was the partition that was always between the seats.
It is very similar to the partitions in the Wilson College cafeteria.
In each row, there is an opaque blue partition between every two seats. This device may be intended to protect the privacy of patients, but for players in a dungeon, it is an extremely unsafe place.
Fortunately, the two rows of seats across the aisle are facing each other. This means that as long as players sit opposite each other, they can observe whether their teammates are in a safe environment.
"In general, this is what the infusion room looks like."
After briefly emphasizing a few more points, Jiang Zhiling pointed to the corner where Jiang Chunhua was, "We'll rest in that area for now. If anything happens, you can come and find me or Shao Feng."
"Yes, yes..."
Shao Feng scratched his head sheepishly; the handprint on his face had mostly disappeared.
Just as they were about to turn and leave, Liang Jun called out to Shao Feng, who was lagging behind.
"How did you break through that invisible wall?"
Shao Feng stopped and thought it over carefully.
"To be honest, we couldn't think of any other way, so we just used the most basic method: waiting and watching at the entrance. I was resting against the invisible wall, but for some reason, I suddenly missed and fell into the stairwell, which gave me quite a fright..."
Shao Feng patted his chest with lingering fear, as if he were telling a story to everyone, but it was the storyteller who was actually there.
Seeing that he couldn't get to the point, Jiang Zhiling pulled him behind her.
"In short, we suspect that the invisible wall will open automatically at a certain fixed time."
Jiang Zhiling's explanation was more organized than Shao Feng's: "Because after the air wall was opened, we tried to find some mechanisms in the vicinity, but to no avail."
Yes, yes.
Shao Feng played the role of the straight man, saying, "Ling'er wanted to go to the central hall to find you and ask you to come with her. But after searching for a long time, she couldn't find you anywhere. Plus, Brother Tang and Sister Jiang kept urging us to go in quickly, so we had no choice but to come in first."
So that's how it is.
Based on their accounts, Liang Jun briefly compared the timeline in her mind and realized that the invisible wall was activated around the time they were at the vending machine exchanging supplies.
Liang Xun wanted to ask something more, but before she could speak, Jiang Chunhua, who was in a distant corner, shouted loudly in their direction, "It's almost 3:30, hurry back to sleep!"
Jiang Zhiling stuck out her tongue helplessly, showing a rare hint of playfulness and cuteness.
"My sister's urging us, so we'll head back now. Remember to come find us anytime if you need anything!"
After saying that, they ran off in the opposite direction to the corner.
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Author's note: Mint is finally back in her little nest!
Starting today, I'll be posting daily updates with all my might! Stay tuned!
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