Chapter 9, Let's Set Sail, ███! Ranked seventh on the player leaderboard, red name...
Players always carry some "contraband" items needed for missions. Yan Bocheng gently pushed the stolen knife to the feet of the person above him.
Apart from the hyenas guarding the central point to distribute the goods, the other hyenas dispersed to conduct spot checks. Yan Bocheng followed one of the hyenas out of the corner of his eye and saw it sniff the two people in front of him, causing them to tremble slightly, but there was nothing wrong with them. The sharp object that Yan Bocheng had framed was ignored.
What are these beasts investigating?
The hyenas then moved closer to him, sniffing as they went, as if they were becoming increasingly certain of something.
"Ho...Woof!"
"Woof woof!"
"Woof woof woof—!"
Suddenly, the hyena on the other side seemed to have noticed something, raised its head and let out a sharp and loud bark. All the other hyenas stopped what they were doing and started barking wildly, one after another, echoing each other. The terrifying roars seemed to lift the ceiling and bring down wind and rain to celebrate with them.
A hyena grabbed a man and threw him to the ground. When the man realized something was wrong, he tried to escape, but the other hyenas immediately surrounded him, buried their heads, and began to tear him apart and devour him without saying a word. The screams quickly stopped, and only the sound of chewing could be heard. One hyena even dragged the man's intestines along, leaving a trail of blood several meters behind, and chewed on them vigorously, filling the air with the stench of blood.
Yan Bocheng glanced at him quickly and immediately recognized who it was. When he was gathering intelligence, he saw the man stealing the NPC's ticket—it was one of the players!
What are the conditions? Will every player be selected?
Soon, the hyenas discovered other "contraband" and began gnawing on the struggling passengers again. After eating three people, they were still not satisfied, and the hyena slowly turned back to Yan Bocheng's direction.
Pu Fengchun was in the same situation. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, but even the cold sweat running down her cheeks and onto the conveyor belt made her afraid that it would make a sound and attract those vicious dogs.
Her thinking was in sync with the players present. Were all the people who were chosen players?
No. Xue Chao recognized that none of the three dead were players.
The first person was a foreigner, Hispanic, bald, and tattooed. He looked like a clueless young man who spent his days hanging out on the streets and playing Italian Mafia-style house, but he was targeted by a truly menacing tattooed man.
The tattooed man originally wanted to steal his ticket, but he also had a blank ticket, so he was threatened to steal other passengers' tickets instead.
The other two are chefs, colleagues from a chain restaurant, who went abroad for an exchange program. All three are NPCs.
What do they have in common?
Xue Chao observed the two passages near the exit again. The hyenas used "scent" to divide the passengers into two categories according to some rule: the left side was generally younger, and the right side was older. Xue Chao also saw a pregnant woman and a disabled person assigned to the right side.
On one side are energetic and vibrant young people, and on the other side are the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled. If you really treat the conveyor belt as a rotating sushi restaurant, then it's like dividing ingredients into superior and inferior ones.
Then, when contacting blood storage facilities, the standard for evaluation is blood itself—blood from young, healthy people is better, while others are considered substandard.
If disabled people are considered to have defects, then why are pregnant women considered defective products?
...Because there is another life inside the body, which is considered another kind of "blood", it is mixed together and the blood is not pure.
Xue Chao suddenly remembered something he had overlooked and pulled up the surveillance footage of the Hispanic young man's appearance again. Although he looked like a show-off dressed as a "gangster," he had a small tattoo at the corner of his eye—three dots forming a triangle. He remembered that this was a common tattoo among criminals, and its meaning came from Spanish.
Mi Vida Loca.
My crazy life.
The first person had been to prison, possibly because they had killed someone and seen blood.
In religious beliefs, blood is a gift from God. If it is stained with the blood of other lives, it is a sin. Therefore, butchers and executioners in the past would hold some rituals of atonement before seeing blood. People who were bitten and killed by hyenas were people who had been stained with the blood of other lives!
The blood that flows from those who have killed animals or people is the blood of sin; it is no longer a defective product, but a waste product.
These players are indeed in danger, being the hardest hit by being bitten and killed—this low-quality, garbage game, which is forced to sell itself, is obviously full of violence and bloodshed. These are all veteran players, and they probably have people on their hands.
Xue Chao felt no sense of crisis. Instead, his mind suddenly shifted, and he licked his lips... This was a good opportunity to retaliate against Zhu Wen.
Players can't just sit idly by and wait to die. When conflict breaks out, it's fine as long as Pu Fengchun isn't the first player to be chosen—he's seventh on the player leaderboard, so his red name should be deep enough, right?
Isn't there another "butcher" who cuts off other people's fingers?
As Wang Song approached the intersection, he frowned, pulled up his collar, tucked in his knees, and completely wrapped himself in his black trench coat, silently gliding past the exit of "top-quality ingredients" like a body bag.
Near the entrance, Zhu Wen, with candy still in his mouth, craned his neck to try and see the details of the hyenas eating.
He prefers furry animals to humans, and he likes them even more if the animals happen to be eating humans.
The little ancestor always believed that heaven, earth, humans, and ghosts all belonged to him, and that any of his thoughts were perfectly reasonable. Who would have thought that the hyena pack would suddenly stop moving, raise their noses to the sky, as if they had smelled something strong, and slowly turn towards his position—it seemed that they didn't like him very much.
He childishly frowned, and the instant all the hyenas charged at him, he leaped into the air. Starfish-shaped darts exploded like fireworks, shooting in all directions and cleanly piercing the throats of two hyenas. The fishing line that the starfish had thrown out of its mouth wrapped around his neck twice to secure it, and he used the momentum to launch himself out.
Enraged, the hyenas gave chase immediately. Amidst their deafening howls, Pu Fengchun heard Xue Chao's anticipated instruction through his earpiece: "It's time to go, ma'am."
Pu Fengchun reacted immediately, silently flipping off the conveyor belt. Taking advantage of Zhu Wen attracting the attention of all the hyenas, she crouched low and hurried toward the exit. Xue Chao provided her with real-time navigation: "Go straight, step over the corpses, then crawl under the conveyor belt, and go around the obstacle on the right. You did a great job. Now keep going to the left, at the ten o'clock direction."
“But the dog went to the left too!” she hissed.
"Stop, cut the line in front of you." Xue Chao didn't give her a chance to be stunned. "If you're any slower, some of the hyenas will turn around and chase you."
Pu Fengchun then noticed the fishing line wrapped around the bottom of the conveyor belt. She used the sharp edge of her earring needle to cut it, and the broken line was pulled away instantly.
Without the line fixed on the left, Zhu Wen, dangling in mid-air, crashed to the right. He reacted quickly, glaring precisely in Pu Fengchun's direction, and swiftly adjusted, but his trajectory still deviated from his original plan.
So he didn't hold back, letting himself crash into the passengers on the conveyor belt. Then he adjusted his posture, stepped on the unfortunate fleshy cushion, and slid into the entrance like a fish. He then silently slipped a silver bead the size of a pen ball through his sleeve, through the fishing line.
The hyenas chased the passengers out of the customs inspection area. The passengers, who had been hit and trampled, frantically climbed down the conveyor belt. Once the hyenas had all run away, the passengers couldn't stay any longer and rushed to the exit in a panic.
Once one or two appeared, three, four, five, and six more followed. Other passengers, especially the players mixed in, immediately got up and fled towards the exit, and the customs inspection area instantly descended into chaos.
Xue Chao calmly said, "Now you can proceed to the left passage."
"【Pu Fengchun】I was just about to say this, isn't this AI a bit ruthless...?"
"【Pu Fengchun】is also good at playing innocent. Little Jellyfish's face was twisted just now, hahaha, he was used as a tool and got humiliated."
Xue Chao had chosen a good position for Pu Fengchun. She could use her status as the seventh-ranked person on the list to cause a big disturbance, and also be the first to escape in the chaos. She had already half her body inside the entrance when Xue Chao suddenly said, "Turn down."
The tone remained calm, but just as she relaxed, it suddenly tightened again, jerking her nerves. Startled, she tumbled off the conveyor belt. A gleaming silver fishing line grazed her face, piercing the exit, and thin drops of blood followed the silver bead all the way down.
That was Zhu Wen's blood, which, to hyenas, was "sinful blood" that required them to kill.
Zhu Wen deliberately sent her own blood to attract hyenas, and Pu Fengchun was also a "wicked player." Once the hyenas realized what was happening, she would immediately become the new bait!
Xue Chao: "Run to the other exit."
Pu Fengchun immediately complied, and a hyena suddenly poked its head in from the exit behind him, its seven deformed legs slamming onto the conveyor belt, and it opened its blood-red mouth to bite off the bloody thread.
She didn't dare to look back. Just then, a few people huddled together and rolled out of the exit, leaving an empty space. With her last few steps, she rushed directly to another exit that was crowded with people.
But the next second, a hand suddenly reached out from the thronging crowd and shoved her away swiftly and decisively, causing Pu Fengchun to fall backward to the ground.
The fear of death gripped her, and she scrambled to the opposite entrance almost without any guidance from the artificial intelligence.
The fishing line that Xue Chao had helped her avoid now mercilessly slashed her ankle, but she didn't have time to care. Blood was flowing everywhere, and the entrance was so close that she didn't even hear Xue Chao's quickened words of protest.
"stop……!"
Pu Fengchun's eyes widened, and he collapsed to the ground again.
At the entrance, several tall hyenas pushed open the curtain, snorted fiercely, and stared at her with their dark green eyes, surrounding her.
Two legs can't beat seven legs; the damned beast chasing her was behind her in the blink of an eye.
The sticky fluid dripping from the sharp teeth seeped through her collar, and the foul breath licked her fragile neck. She stood there numb, feeling as if she were already dead, unable to move at all.
The crowd at the exit noticed new hyenas entering and erupted in screams, pushing and struggling even more frantically.
The cries attracted several hyenas, who then circled Pu Fengchun and her blood, sniffing it as if pondering how to devour her.
Xue Chao clicked his tongue. The loudspeaker at the entrance of the inspection area was ready to unleash a deafening alarm to lure the hyenas away and buy Pu Fengchun a moment to escape.
But just as he was about to do so, he suddenly noticed that the hyena circled around the petrified Pu Fengchun a few times without making any move. He had a sudden inspiration and waited for a moment. The seven-legged hyena actually got bored and walked away first!
Xue Chao was surprised. He should have been right. Although Pu Fengchun was not a powerful player, she must have participated in some dungeons. Even chefs who killed chickens and fish were "justly executed"... How could she have never taken a single life?
The thick, green blood trickled down the back of her neck and across her front, and the dazed woman seemed to be scalded, suddenly snapping back to her senses.
She lowered her head silently, her survival instinct surging back up, and her body instinctively tried to move. A cold command came through the earpiece: "Don't move."
She froze there again. The hyenas sniffed for a while, but finally realized that the pastry that had been delivered to their door was tasteless, and they left one after another disappointed.
Even so, Pu Fengchun didn't dare to breathe out. Following Xue Chao's instructions, he left from the entrance in the opposite direction.
She only had time to catch her breath after she had evaded the chasing hyenas, passengers, and the broken second-floor windows and reached the border inspection area on the third floor.
As she looked up, a huge map of the entire home port occupied the entire ceiling, forming an infinity symbol "∞", which seemed to envelop all who came in as if by fate.
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