Chapter 19 Let's set sail, ███! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...
[You stared directly at ████ in the sea, and your spirit was shaken...]
[SAN value: 11/?]
Xue Chao covered his head and fell off his office chair to the ground. The eerie, scaly images that filled his vision resembled some kind of reptile, crawling across his cerebral cortex. The next second, they were obscured by the black leather trench coat in the camera booth, like a night sky covering the heavens, and everything went black before his eyes.
The entire dungeon trembled, concealing some terrifying hissing sound. Whispers lingered in the waves, like water entering the body through the five senses, diluting the blood and causing sluggishness, even dizziness.
Not only that, he also seemed to hear a sharp sound as if something was piercing through something.
Behind every door, whether prisoners or guards, even insects crawling through the cracks are not spared; their minds are like circuit boards that have been washed away, short-circuiting on the spot.
Xue Chao propped himself up slightly, then suddenly slammed his head against the edge of the mahogany table. The immediate pain brought him back to his senses, and his vision gradually returned.
He shook his wet hair and looked at the host panel.
There were five cameras in total, but the last one had already gone black.
Comments section:
"Holy crap, the ultimate splicing monster!"
"With both a tail and legs, is it for raiding?"
"The players are all investigators now, and it's a classic cruise ship setting, so it's definitely going to be a role-playing game..."
"But I didn't see the dice system either. Could it be because the host quit and there's no one to keep the secret..."
"At least the host was a minor highlight, adding a not-so-important entry to Lao Qi's impressive resume before dying, but this Wang Song... who recommended him in that 'steaming hell' next door just now, fucku!"
"This is so boring. It's not fun killing people, and it's not fun dying myself. It's not as fun as Brother Shan."
"They tried to scam people by going to the moon, but cutting off their hands and feet to turn them into human pigs is just like Brother Shan, isn't it?"
"This guy became famous by imitating Brother Shan. A bad product is a bad product after all. Do you think you can get third place on the list by imitation?"
"Let's disperse, let's disperse."
The popularity dropped a bit, but Zhu Wen was still the main star, followed by Pu Fengchun. Meanwhile, Wang Song's fate was still uncertain, and he had already been criticized as outdated trash by the audience who had just been cheering for him. The label on him wasn't even his own name, but rather a "low-end version" of another product. Then they laughed it off and forgot about it, as if discussing it any further would be considered inelegant.
Xue Chao had no time to lament his fate. The entire dungeon was still reverberating. The guard team leader seemed to be waking up from the shock. He raised his leg and swiftly kicked the man unconscious again: "Quiet down."
The communicators and telephones were switched off. Xue Chao swept through the intelligence in the room, his fingertips brushing over the team leader's still-steaming coffee, flipping through the papers: Right Harbor map, patrol map, deployment map, duty roster, but no list of prisoners or related documents.
The safe was unlocked with the team leader's fingerprint. Inside were a stack of gold bars, a pearl from a women's accessory set, a pink gemstone earring shaped like a lily, and a high-end lighter. The lighter was made of pure gold and was finely engraved with a lush, towering tree. The bottom was decorated with the words "Yggdrasill" in floral script.
Pearls and earrings are women's items. If a lighter belongs to the team leader, he would definitely want to hang it on his waist and show it off everywhere. He can light eight hundred cigarettes a day just to dazzle others when he takes out the lighter. How could he possibly hide it in a safe and let it "gather dust"?
He smuggled the items from someone of status. As for who in Yougang was patronizing these things, that was the VIP area on the second floor where money was spent like water.
Xue Chao paused, his gaze sweeping over the papers, and picked out a flight schedule from among the many scraps of paper.
This week's flight schedule is similar to the memory of artificial intelligence, but it has one more day—that is, today. Giant Port closed at midnight this morning, and the last flight on the schedule is the Destiny. However, this flight schedule has flights from this morning, and not only in the right port, but also in the left port.
The schedule was definitely not a last-minute idea tonight. He hadn't "betrayed" us yet. Although his title of "controlling Hong Kong" was questionable, it shouldn't have resulted in no schedule for Hong Kong residents.
That was the officer taking the opportunity to make trouble. She originally wanted to shut down the Destiny after it left port, not wanting artificial intelligence to be involved.
The specific ships weren't mentioned, only the number: three arrived, plus two docked at the right port, making a total of five cruise ships.
The approach bridge has been raised, and the boat is ready for the people of the right harbor.
Suddenly, Xue Chao looked towards the entrance to the dungeon. In the control room, Zhu Wen was confronting a guard, looking dissatisfied: "Two people have already gone in, why can't I? Open the door!"
The guard didn't even blink: "We haven't received any instructions from our superiors."
"I got it from your superior, oh dear, I'll talk to her myself!" Zhu Wen directly pulled off the communicator from the guard's waist, but no matter how he pressed it, the communicator didn't respond. "What a piece of junk, out of power?"
Xue Chao acted decisively, grabbing the flight schedule and stuffing it into his pocket. He also took the guard's stolen goods and opened the two doors to the guard team leader's office. He had to find Wang Song before Zhu Wen entered the dungeon.
First, there was that trench coat. Xue Chao still remembered the last black thing he saw; it was Wang Song turning up his trench coat to cover his entire body, probably for defense or to trigger an item.
Secondly, there's Wang Song's camera angle. Although the camera was black, and the comments generally assumed this meant the player had died, he wanted to confirm it himself.
Before leaving, I did some "cleanup work" and left a few things in the peacefully sleeping team leader's communicator.
Xue Chao peered through the crack in the door into the corridor. The other doors remained closed. At the end of the barrier, the intense tremors had subsided, but the terror lingered in the aftershocks, engulfing the silence.
Given the monster's awe-inspiring mental impact, even its mere screams left few people in the entire dungeon conscious.
Judging from the guards' practiced manner, the monster attack was not a sudden event; they were very experienced. The best time for him to act would be when the dungeon calmed down and everything was ready to resume operation.
He waited quietly, and keenly noticed a new line of small text appearing below the black screen: 【Camera position has been relocked】
After a while, the ceiling lights finally lit up little by little, and the gates opened one by one from the outside in. Xue Chao, like a cat under a street lamp, followed closely behind and quickly darted through to the end.
From afar, he saw the floating shadow, wedged in the gap of the last gate.
Xue Chao tore off a piece of shadow, revealing a tattered hem, about the size of a palm. Wang Song's blood was splattered on it, mixed with seawater dripping down. The torn part looked as if it had been bitten to pieces by some sharp-toothed animal.
There was nothing else.
The last gate remained closed. He approached it, and an overwhelming stench, like the corpses of hundreds of dead fish, filled him. The gate, though seamless, offered no respite—what lay outside? Had the scaly monster not left? Or was it a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, including Wang Song's remains?
He cautiously approached the wall and heard the sound of seawater. Suddenly, it felt familiar, just like the sound he heard in E01—the last warehouse in the dungeon had been washed away, leaving not even ruins. Now, the sea was right outside this gate.
Suddenly, between the last two gates, the walls on both sides of him began to descend, revealing a pile of iron cages, six in total, from A to E, surrounding him. The people inside the cages looked at him in terror and let out desperate screams, which nearly deafened Xue Chao.
It's exactly the same as the previous warehouse, except the people are more "energetic" and haven't reached the point of being numb and waiting to die.
"……I see."
The cell at the end wasn't the "end" from the beginning; rather, it became the new end, the new last cell, after the previous end disappeared.
Like a train, each section is a carriage, and the last carriage faces the monster's lair. Every time the monster comes out to hunt, it will gnaw on a carriage.
So the smell comes from the corpses floating outside the gate? But they just died, so even if there was a smell, it should be the overwhelming stench of blood, not like a long-dead, rotting corpse—no, far worse.
It smells like those hyenas.
Xue Chao covered his mouth and nose, recalling the last scene from the camera, skipping over the terrifying scene and stopping at that cold and ominous green.
Scales... Hyenas also have disgusting scales under their fur, and they also give off a disgusting smell.
The stench came from the monster's scales.
Outside the sluice gate, there was the smell of monsters, but Xue Chao could no longer hear their voices—the churning of the seawater, the hoarse roars, like a group of species out of sync with humans whispering in unison—a sound that sent chills down one's spine.
Monsters capable of instantly crushing or swallowing an entire massive underground warehouse are unlikely to play the "lurking" trick. To them, including themselves, there are only a flock of lambs that can be easily destroyed.
A bold idea took shape in his mind, and then the rag in his hand slowly grew longer, like sprouting buds or regenerating cells, pulsating in clusters, and after it "grew" back into a complete trench coat, the idea was finally realized.
Xue Chao could tell without even wearing it that the brand-new trench coat was longer and bigger than before, no longer the size that suited Wang Song—but rather it suited him perfectly, as if it were tailor-made for him.
It feels unusually smooth and hard to the touch, looks a bit like leather, but actually has a strange ceramic texture, unlike any fabric.
Only at the corner of his garment, that tattered piece of "original fabric," remained soaked in Wang Song's blood; clutched in his hand, it left only a handful of bright red.
What if the sea outside the gate isn't hiding monsters that haven't left, but rather the corpses of monsters that can't leave at all?
Wang Song covered his entire body with his trench coat at the last moment, daring to face the monster with it. What if he wasn't panicking or struggling in his death throes, but rather that his trump card had succeeded?
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood.
Xue Chao recalled the knife wound on his left arm, which was the trench coat's ability, Wang Song's trump card.
Wang Song thought that by covering himself with the trench coat, all the monster's attacks would directly backfire. He probably initially wanted to use this trump card to intimidate his opponent, or even force them to "cooperate".
Before the monster broke through the wall, he was probably still thinking that even if there was danger, he could take advantage of the backlash to escape.
The stench outside the gate, several times stronger than that of hyenas, must be the corpse of the monster that was devoured by the trench coat.
But the trench coat isn't without a solution. If attacking will backfire, then let Wang Song "die naturally"... He could be dragged back to the deep sea by the monster and drown, or he could be completely enveloped by the enormous body of another monster and suffocate to death.
When the screen went black, Wang Song wasn't dead; he was completely enveloped, so his vision was completely black. He was suffocated when the camera re-locked on him.
A piece of clothing was caught in the gate and survived, "growing" anew.
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