Chapter 72: The Colorful City 1 Are you here to spend money?
——"Things seem to be getting out of control."
——"What should I do? It's really distressing."
——"But it doesn't matter. After all, what can he do? It would be so fun if he blew this place up! I can't wait!"
——"He seems to have fallen in love with a man. Did you see that? How does it feel to be abandoned? It turns out that even you will be forgotten. It's really surprising."
*
An Rao was dragged out of the passage by Baichuan and Scar Man. The originally bulky doll costume played an extremely important role in the passage - it perfectly prevented him from getting injured when being dragged by a violent man like Baichuan.
Outside the passage is the familiar small square. At the end of the small square, next to the ticket gate for the amusement projects, stands a beautiful Blythe doll-shaped staff member. However, the special thing is that the doll staff member's hair is bright colorful, which looks a bit eye-catching.
But there was no time to worry about all these. The most important thing now was to get rid of the pursuers and escape into the game immediately - no matter what game it was!
It was still early, and there were no other players in the small square. The Blythe doll staff, who had been keeping their heads down and silent, sensed the arrival of the players and immediately switched to welcome mode. They raised their hands high in a standard exaggerated voice and jumped to greet the players who rushed over: "Welcome to the colorful city. You need 600 points to enter the city! Please swipe your wristband!"
"So expensive?!" Su Ming felt the pain even as he ran for his life.
"Because the cost of the costumes is included!" The beautiful and sweet Blythe doll with colorful hair sweetly explained the tourists' doubts.
"Excuse me, what are the rules of this game?" An Rao asked Su Ming and Shi Yirou when he swiped their wristbands.
"What are the rules?" Blythe doll blinked her beautiful big eyes and looked at An Rao in confusion. "There are no rules. This is a city experience game. You can play around and interact with the staff inside!"
An Rao's heart suddenly sank. No rules? What's the point of playing without rules? Interacting with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse?!
"Go in first!" Baichuan said, seeing that several staff members were almost catching up with him.
Baichuan insisted on waiting until Anrao and the scarred man were both safely inside before he quickly swiped his card and entered the gate. A staff member with quick hands had already grabbed the back collar of Baichuan's shirt. There was a "squeak" sound from the fabric, and the black shirt was torn, revealing a small, hideous silver scar on the back of his neck.
The moment the gate closed, Baichuan turned around to confirm whether these staff members would enter the game, but he saw that they were staring blankly at the game entrance like meerkats. The cartoon pig, puppy, cat, and lamb dolls just stared at him expressionlessly.
*
They came to a city.
In a beautiful, bright and prosperous metropolis.
Five people, covered in wounds and blood, with their hair all stuck together with blood and sweat, stared at everything in front of them in amazement, thinking that they had returned to the real world. No, to be more precise, they thought they had traveled to the future.
The transparent sunlight poured down in the early morning, and cute white clouds like marshmallows floated in the blue sky. The ground was a beautiful Morandi gray-blue. The roads were empty, and the green plants on the streets were lush and verdant. Maybe because the players had not gathered yet, no pedestrians were seen on the road, and the game had not officially started yet.
However, this clean and beautiful city made An Rao feel very uncomfortable, but he couldn't tell what kind of discomfort it was. It was as if he had entered a newly opened hotel. Everything was new, so new that it lost its sense of reality and made people feel uneasy.
"Wow, these green plants are so lifelike!" Su Ming exclaimed in a low voice, "The amusement park really spent a lot of money!"
"Shh! Be careful!" Shi Yirou asked the half-grown child to quiet down. Su Ming's whispered exclamation did not attract anyone's special attention. A city that was so beautiful that it looked fake had fake green plants, which was a very reasonable combination.
"Thank you for what you did just now." An Rao said to the scarred man beside him. If he and Bai Chuan had not dragged him together, the consequences would have been disastrous. Moreover, after a horrific and bloody night at the circus, An Rao felt that this fierce-looking scarred man was not as heartless as he seemed.
"It's okay." The scarred man still had a grim look on his face. "There's something I think might be useful to you. Last night when I was dragged to the match, a rabbit came over to check my wrist and another guy's wrist before we went on stage. After seeing a black snake tattoo on the other guy's wrist, he took him away and replaced him with someone else to fight me."
"Black snake tattoo? What does it look like?" An Rao asked, suppressing his surprise.
"A black snake, wrapped around my wrist, with its mouth wide open, spitting out its tongue." The scarred man added, "I don't know what this means, but it should be a message. You are all smart people, maybe this information will be useful to you."
An Rao and Bai Chuan looked at each other and said, "Brother Shi, enjoy the game. I hope we can all go home soon."
The scarred man smiled almost self-deprecatingly: "Thank you, you too."
A voice was heard, and the five people stopped talking. Other players began to enter the venue.
"Bang." A little boy suddenly rushed out from somewhere, ran madly and bumped into Shi Yirou's legs.
The game begins.
"I'm sorry!" The little boy apologized in a baby voice. Shi Yirou lowered her head and was about to ruffle the little boy's hair when she suddenly exclaimed softly, "Ah! His hair!"
The hair of this little boy with a watermelon head is actually colorful! The boy's smooth, medium-length hair is evenly distributed with seven colors: yellow, orange, red, cyan, purple, blue and green!
Now everyone clearly realized the peculiarity of this city, and An Rao also found the reason for his discomfort. In the colorful city, except for the sky plants which could not be changed, the entire city, whether buildings or signs, were colorful, and the color saturation was very high. It looked like the hair of the Blythe doll staff standing at the door checking tickets, which made people feel very irritated.
Suddenly, the street was crowded with people, and the road became busy. The unique noise of a busy street filled the eardrums. The pedestrians coming and going on the street were of all kinds, but they had one thing in common: they all had the same colorful hair as the little boy in front of them.
Long hair, short hair, buzz cut, curly hair, perm, updo, ponytail, bun, all kinds of hairstyles are the same as in the real world. The only different and absolutely unified thing is the color, which is exactly the same evenly distributed yellow, orange, red, indigo, purple, blue and green!
"Oh, you kid! You run around aimlessly all day long, why don't you apologize to others!" An old lady who also rushed out from nowhere, grabbed the child and scolded him.
"Ah, grandma, it's okay. He has already apologized." Shi Yirou persuaded in a gentle voice.
"Hey?" The old lady looked up at Shi Yirou, then at the others, "From outside the city?"
"Hey? Old lady, how did you know?" asked a player.
"Hair," the old lady said with disdain, "Look at your hair, it's either black or yellow, and there are even black and white ones!"
"Isn't black hair, yellow hair, gray hair very common?" another player asked in confusion.
"Oh, it's obvious that he is not a good person. Xiaobao, let's go!" After saying that, the old lady took the child and disappeared in an instant.
"Hey?" a player cursed, "Old witch, she's so old and still has her hair all different colors, I think she's sick!"
No, An Rao immediately took out the map from his pocket. The fourth game icon had appeared. It was a rainbow. Looking at the rainbow hair all over the street and then looking at the seven colors on the rainbow that completely corresponded to the hair, An Rao suddenly understood the name of this city, the Colorful City. It means that the people here particularly like colorful colors.
"Hello," a player approached An Rao and the others, "It seems that your last game was very dangerous!"
An Rao and the other five looked at each other. They were all covered in blood and bruises, looking in a miserable state. Compared with the other players who had just rested in the hotel for a whole day and night to avoid the park closing day, they were in a completely different state.
"Not bad," An Rao didn't want to say more, but introduced himself generously, "My last name is Lin, and I'm a doctor. Just call me Doctor Lin."
"My name is Sissi and I'm a clerk in the real world, but it doesn't matter here," the girl who called herself Sissi shrugged, "I hope I can survive this game."
A very typical player's defensive version of the self-introduction, including the name, all invalid output.
Then everyone introduced themselves, and as you can imagine, everyone’s responses were ineffective.
An Rao counted them and found there were fourteen people in total. He didn't know if this number had any deep meaning.
"So you five people who entered the game first didn't see the rules of this game?" said a girl named Shao Yun.
"No," An Rao shook his head. He always acted as the mouthpiece of their team in front of strangers. It was simply the instinct of a lawyer to speak for others. "The staff just said that this is an immersive city experience game."
"Impossible, there must be something we overlooked!" said a programmer named Li Ke. When this person first introduced himself as a programmer, Su Ming and Shi Yirou felt uncomfortable. Although a scum cannot represent the entire industry, Cheng Lin in the haunted house did leave a huge psychological shadow on everyone.
"Bah! Another out-of-towner!" A trendy young man with a head full of rainbow-colored dreadlocks spat at them, "Get out of here!"
"Yeah, why are you coming to our colorful city again? Disgusting!"
Passersby with rainbow hair saw these fourteen eye-catching people and immediately showed disgust on their faces and tried to avoid them, as if they were something very dirty.
All players:?
Is it so unfriendly? What kind of immersive experience is this? Are you just paying for it?
"Let's walk around first." Baichuan, who had been silent, spoke. As soon as the handsome man opened his mouth, he got the approval of the ladies. There was even a girl who ran directly to Baichuan and naturally took his arm.
"Brother, you are so calm, you must be really good!" Shao Yun is a beautiful anchor, and at this moment she is blinking her eyes and looking at Bai Chuan, wishing she could stick to him, "Brother, where are you staying in the hotel? This game is so weird, I am so scared, brother, can you play with me?"
An Rao: ...Sister, you have passed the fourth level, okay?
"I don't want to team up with anyone." Baichuan pulled his arm away neatly.
An Rao:?
Su Ming leaned close to An Rao's ear and whispered, "Boss, I have reason to suspect that Brother Bo is calling us inhuman."
An Rao: "Get lost!"
Fourteen players with solid-colored hair walked among the bustling crowd of rainbow-haired people, as if fourteen solid-colored chocolate beans were sprinkled in a pile of rainbow gummies. They were particularly eye-catching, and the citizens of the Colorful City also avoided them, expressing their disdain very frankly without any concealment.
Quite straightforward.
An Rao looked around the city as he walked. Except for the strange hair of the people and the extremely high color saturation of the entire city, the rest seemed to be no different from an ordinary prosperous metropolis.
Oh, if you have to say a difference, there is. There are a lot of barber shops on the street, their number is almost comparable to the pharmacies on the street in the real world. Every few steps you can see the rotating lights unique to barber shops, but the ribbons inside the lights are colorful.
"Aren't there too many barber shops? I think this place should not be called the Colorful City, it should be called the Tony City." Su Ming complained.
"No, the people here have weird hair." Shi Yirou said.
"Sister Yirou, you didn't just realize that there's something wrong with their hair!" Su Ming was shocked.
"No, I mean, their hair will change color." Shi Yirou stared at the person sitting on the bench in front of her and looking at her phone. "Look, her orange hair seems to have become a little brighter just now."
"Ah? No..." Su Ming frowned and looked for a long time, "Aren't they all orange?"
The person sitting on the bench felt the gaze at this moment, looked up at the person in front of him, and after discovering that their hair was all solid color, he seemed very angry, glared at them fiercely, and immediately stood up and left.
"The red hair seemed to light up a bit just now."
"It's the light that's changing. How can hair be like a light bulb, sometimes bright and sometimes dim?"
"Little one, how do you talk to your sister?"
"Although I couldn't see the difference either, Yirou studied painting and I trust her judgment. Let's make a note of this question and pay more attention to it in the future." An Rao came over to smooth things over.
"This city is weird, whether it's their attitude towards us or the hair of the citizens, it's all weird," Kashiwa said, "and I don't know where the rules of the game are, so I have a suggestion."
"You say." An Rao didn't even ask why.
"In order to avoid the situation in the past where everyone was unable to communicate in the employee home, we should also formulate our own rules," said Baichuan.
"Great! I agree! I was so scared that I couldn't communicate with everyone before!" Su Ming immediately cheered in a low voice.
"I agree, but the rules must be very simple and hidden. They must be easy to understand and hidden. It's so difficult." Shi Yirou sighed softly.
An Rao pondered for a while, then looked up and smiled: "It's not difficult. In an emergency, saving your life involves only three choices: obey the boss's orders, disobey the boss's orders, and run."
"Yes," Baichuan also nodded in agreement, "The things that need to be decided at the moment of life and death are very simple. We can express it in the simplest way. One means to continue according to the boss's instructions, two means to stop if you don't listen to the boss's instructions, and three means to run quickly."
"Okay, let's settle it!" An Rao was a little excited. "Usually, we use fingers to represent one, two, and three. If that doesn't work, we can use symbols. Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, or even Chinese characters will work!"
At this time, a colorful luxury car slowly stopped in front of the players, and a man wearing a wide robe similar to the clergy in the real world walked towards the players quickly. The highly saturated colorful robe fluttered in the wind because of his almost running pace, and the whole man looked like a running rainbow.
The man walked to the nearest player and stopped, bowing deeply to everyone, then said politely: "Papa said that the fourteen outsiders who had agreed to come to the castle as apprentices have arrived. Please come to the Holy Light Castle to meet Papa at noon."
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