Chapter 238 Missing Persons
A strange evacuation operation is taking place in this world full of copies.
Strictly speaking, there are not so many copy games now, only overwhelming floods and escape doors flashing before our eyes.
But not everyone knows what this flood means, so system notification is particularly important.
[All players, please note that the flood countdown is approaching. Please follow the NPC's instructions and enter the escape door together. The door will automatically close after the flood arrives. No one will be allowed to wait after the time is up.]
【Attention all players...】
The inexplicable system reminder scared the players who were fighting in other copies of Infinite Highway, but this was a system notification, so there was no misleading information such as strange rules.
Some players were originally playing thrilling dungeon escape games. They were either fighting with the ghost Qin Wang or preparing for a big fight with props. Unexpectedly, there was a loud noise in the sky, and the administrator who was just ferocious and ready to sharpen his knife to attack the players suddenly appeared, as if he had received a demolition notice, with an expression as if he had seen a ghost.
Among them, convenience stores are the places that respond the fastest.
After all, this was the first place that Qiao Song blew up.
Moreover, the system reminds that what each area hears is different, like an earthquake wave warning, and the countdown begins.
[Ding—Your area is 60 seconds away from the first flood wave arriving, 59, 58, 57...]
The closer they got to Zootopia, the slower the players reacted, but the NPCs responded first.
The players who were originally working in the convenience store and slacking off to look for clues were looking at each other in bewilderment the first second they heard the announcement, and then they were kicked out.
Without exception, the people who kicked them were all the mascots who used to guard the door of the convenience store.
These ferocious ghosts that had previously terrorized the players had participated in a battle somewhere, and their bodies were all damaged to some extent. After being thrown back by a glowing square box, their expressions were even more anxious than the other players'.
"What are you all standing there for? Get out of here and stop looking for clues! Run for your lives!"
On the glass door of the convenience store, a door-guarding advertising poster that had just been thrown out rushed to the door of the convenience store first without waiting for other players to react.
A door suddenly appeared in the open space, with a warm white light coming from inside.
To be precise, it was a fire door with a black frame and a green light on top. There was a small square logo on the top of the door with a little man running away on it.
Standard escape door design.
The player was a little dazed at first, but immediately felt the earthquake-like vibration under the convenience store.
[Ding—Convenience store players, please note, this is the last announcement! The flood will erupt directly in 30 seconds. Those who fail to escape in time will bear the consequences at their own risk.]
With the NPC running away in panic in front and the system broadcasting a reminder in the back, the player had no choice but to believe it.
Whose rules are so big? The NPC guarding the door ran away!
After all, Qiao Song didn't blow up all the convenience stores at once, but radiated the entire map with Zootopia as the center.
Since the players in the convenience store slept directly next to the gunpowder depot, they evacuated the fastest, and other areas were also mostly closed to the public. People tend to follow the crowd when escaping.
Seeing that the NPCs who managed the copy started to run away with terrified expressions, other players, especially those who had heard of the legend of the escape door, ran even faster.
Some players were originally worried about the difficulty of the game dungeon, but they suddenly became grasshoppers in the same boat with the NPC:
"Oh my god, this is the perfect time. Can I pass the level painlessly?"
The same scene happens at various locations on the Infinite Highway, with some people happy and some sad.
But unless they were complete fools, almost everyone was running towards the escape door, and what was extremely strange was that some NPCs would be kind enough to come over and lend a hand occasionally.
It's like a weasel taking chickens to escape famine, which makes players feel moved and nervous.
Soon their complicated emotions were replaced by fear and shock.
A large amount of black water suddenly gushed out from the distant sky. A water column that shot up into the sky, carrying a strange flame, burned a large number of buildings.
But there was no feeling of heat at all. Instead, the surroundings were getting colder and colder. It felt like death was dragging its incomplete steps and crawling one more step towards your direction.
Squeak—
Soon someone witnessed the power of the river.
The players even saw with their own eyes that they reacted too slowly and the escape door was timing it. The players who were not in a hurry to watch the fun had their entire piece of flesh and blood disappear after being splashed by the river water.
There was no pain, but the flesh and blood melted directly into the water like ice water.
"Ah ...
The companion who reacted quickly grabbed the injured man's other hand and ran for his life. At the last moment, he rushed into the escape door that had begun to flash.
The river of life and death completely erupted, like the claws of death, gradually reaching every corner of this road.
The notifications sent by Qiao Song after Zishu was merged into the main system are still very useful.
"So far, 70% of the players on the entire highway have entered the gate."
Cyber City, central control room.
On the electronic screen flashing various data, the number of players' escapes is constantly increasing.
Qiao Song was a little surprised when he heard this: "70%... so low?"
Before she took action, she intimidated a lot of convenience store NPCs. After kicking them back, those guys would probably try their best to help the players escape. Otherwise, they would be beaten to death by Qiao Song later.
After all, Qiao Song and they were not even in the same camp before, and Boss Cai had even used his own employees to beat up Qiao Song.
The former target of pursuit has become my immediate boss, and the thought of it makes me feel cold.
Annie let out a long sigh: "Li Yuan, tell her, did you forget to tell her about the missing persons?"
Only then did Qiao Song look at the little crow behind him.
Li Yuan is no longer in human form, but has turned into a crow that is slightly larger than an ordinary bird and is hanging on the shelf at the back.
Annie and the others also entered the escape door, but Cyber City was a little special. It directly retracted all the hamster ball processing centers around it, and used itself as a steel wool-like flying vehicle to cross the passage that Qiao Song had opened alone.
One of the providers of door opening capabilities is Li Yuan.
Qiao Song's white box was now placed under the crow's feet. A hemp rope made of black feathers connected Li Yuan and the white box like flowing liquid.
【White Box·Skills access sharing】
Qiao Song looked at the box, then at Li Yuan: "Why do I feel like you turned into a crow on purpose? Did you do something behind my back? You feel guilty."
Li Yuan blinked his fiery red eyes and looked around and said something else: "I was going to tell you before, but things have their priorities, and I didn't have the time to tell you then..."
Qiao Song nodded quickly, with an expression that said, "I know you are just trying to fool me, but if you have anything important to say, just tell me first, and we'll settle the rest later."
Li Yuan was stumped for a moment, but he finished his words without changing his expression: "Earlier, Bai Dandan assisted Annie and used the main system to coordinate the query of the population change data of all the players in Zootopia. As a result, a large number of missing players were found."
Qiao Song quickly thought of the 70% parameter that Annie had just mentioned.
"So, the 70% here doesn't mean that 30% of the players didn't have time to hide in the escape door, but that they disappeared from the game from the beginning?"
Disappearance and death are not the same concept. Players on the Infinite Highway are just walking resources. After death, their bodies will be recycled and exchanged for skill cards and soul coins. If they are lucky, they may even have a chance to be resurrected in a shrine.
Qiao Song looked at the crow in front of him, understood what he meant, and asked again: "When you monitor the resurrection game, you can also count the player's soul data, right?"
The crow nodded.
Li Yuan's statement obviously meant that the player's soul disappeared directly.
The little crow hummed, hinting: "The disappearance that can be recorded by the main system means that the soul level has been completely erased. Currently, there is only one thing known that can do this."
Then there is only one possibility left.
Qiao Song: "The water from the river of life and death?"
Li Yuan had a complicated expression: "Perhaps before you woke up, besides Boss Cai, someone else secretly used the river water. Only when the soul returns to the river can it escape the monitoring of the main system."
Qiao Song was born in the River of Life and Death, and she knew what the environment was like under the river.
Every drop of water in it contains a broken soul, and the river is filled with the legacy of the dead.
"Annie has already extracted a very important list of missing persons, and you should know some of them."
Crow tilted his head and looked at George, who was already so tired that he was almost losing weight, on the operating table not far away. He raised his little hand weakly and picked up a piece of paper from the side.
A flexible and simple mechanical claw took the paper from the little mouse and handed it to Qiao Song.
At first glance, there were indeed many familiar faces.
The first one is Qiao Song’s key cooperation partner before he came to Zootopia: the tattoo artist, Baklie.
She frowned. "Isn't this guy in Zootopia? He's also missing..."
Qiao Song added: "As far as I know, Bakri's resurrection quota should not have been used up. He was even unwilling to join any guild before coming to Zootopia."
Anne had processed the rest of the data by then, yawned, and turned the cocktail glass-like mechanical chair around.
"We retrieved his data earlier and checked it carefully. This guy died once, but he didn't enter the resurrection game. Instead, he went to a place where the River of Life and Death was circled and got stuck in a wall."
A large screen appeared in the operation room. Annie put other to-do items on the background and pulled up a very comprehensive real-time map of the infinite highway.
It has completely become the home of the River of Life and Death. Only a few vague red and black dots can be seen, as well as an extremely strange gray patch that is constantly moving like an isolated island.
"Look, this area was previously surrounded by a tributary of the River of Life and Death. Now that you've flooded the entire map, this place has become more conspicuous."
Annie enlarged that area, and Qiao Song suddenly felt his heart pounding.
This small gray spot does not look square from a distance, but more like a leaf-like spindle.
"This is the Happy Cemetery..."
As soon as Qiao Song finished speaking, a vague image emerged in his mind, of rolling waves and a ship about to sink.
She hissed, gnashing her teeth as she pulled out a hot book from her bosom.
Infinite Highway Prequel
"Is there a Voldemort hidden in this crappy book? You react so strongly just by hearing the key words."
Li Yuan looked at her with a subtle expression: "Have you read the Harry Potter series too?" He hid the book together with a bunch of card discs.
Qiao Song answered the question quite frankly: "When I was a kid, I was very curious and almost tore down my study. There just happened to be a whole set of this in there. I showed them all the Lord of the Rings and other things. Don't worry, I'm not interested in games. Why are you so nervous? What are you hiding that I can't see?"
Li Yuan: "That's not the case... I just thought you wouldn't come into the study again..."
Later, Qiao Song in the fantasy world grew up. The strange premonition and the vague memory that was about to be restored made Qiao Song somewhat resistant to the small world of the study.
She may have realized that there were items left there by another person. The study was a special place, an area that mother Shu Ruyue subconsciously cared about the most and did not want too many changes to occur.
In fact, it is difficult to explain logically why there are all kinds of game cartridges and physical novels in the house when neither her mother Shu Ruyue is particularly interested in them.
Annie coughed and said, "Alright, alright, I know you two share a childhood memory system, but what do you think of this area right now?"
Qiao Song rubbed his temples and said, "How is our ship going? Let's go over there when it's ready."
Using the River of Life and Death to flood Zootopia to get rid of Chen Long was one aspect, and another purpose for Qiao Song to make this decision was to screen the remaining unknown areas of this highway.
She hadn't actually been a player for very long, and it would be a waste of time to screen other areas one by one.
To survive in the face of danger, only by overturning the chessboard can we see clearly who is playing tricks under the table.
This time, even if there were any players who still had ulterior motives and were planning other things, they were caught off guard.
After all, Qiao Song directly turned the current world into a situation where only she could control it.
The River of Life and Death is extremely corrosive. It had been hidden deep underground before, as if it was separated from the entire highway by a different dimension.
If they run away now, even if they build the ship, the players' skills and props will probably be affected after a while, and the administrator NPC is no exception.
Therefore, it is not possible to cheat and fly over or open a portal to reach the Happy Cemetery.
Li Yuan pulled up a picture in real time: "A total of 172 players' shrine fragments were collected, and with the large amount of paper provided by the Paper-Zha Town, a small boat was built that can carry about 30 people."
Qiao Song understood that the paper-zha town had a share of influence in the raw materials for the boat, but it was still wild enough to use the shrine to build the boat, but it was also understandable.
Qiao Song suddenly became curious: "The last time we crossed the river, how big was the boat?"
Li Yuan was silent for a moment, and the little crow's ruby-like eyes stared at Qiao Song seriously, as if in admiration, and as if filled with some other emotions:
"The boat we used for the first river crossing could hold 100 players."
Anne suddenly replied, as if she couldn't stand the crow's sudden awkwardness:
"Because there are fragments of your shrine in that boat, Qiao Qiao. They are the stones ground from the stone box."
Annie glanced at the robot and mouse with pink bubbles in the corner again, and couldn't help but sigh that the useless crow was not as fast as her stupid brother.
"Now that you have a mouth, learn to speak well. If you feel sorry for her, then feel sorry for her. I remember who was the one who got on the boat with a stone box in his arms. He had to talk to the stone when he went to sleep at night, whispering his apologies and asking Qiao Qiao if it hurt. Was it you, Li Yuan?"
The crow stopped talking, and its feathers became visibly fluffy, like balls of red ink that were about to spread, black with a hint of red.
Annie jumped far away in an instant, gesturing with her hands: "Speak properly, don't use words, our city lord is right next to us, and I am her employee now!"
So the crow, which had just shaken up its feathers, became listless again. It turned its head and met a pair of cunning eyes: "Did you carry my statue up there?"
Li Yuan cleared his throat: "Now is not the time to talk about this... The list of people to be on board this time will be decided by you. Who do you want?"
Qiao Song looked at the picture and thought for a while: "I will have to ask them for their opinions when the time comes. After all, I don't know if I can succeed this time."
She looked at the only place that looked like a floating island on the boiling water of the Infinite Highway.
It looks like a shipwreck fused with the earth.
Qiao Song is now considered a member of the Twelve Committees, so he naturally knows that among the twelve positions on the committee, Blind Box Paradise and Happy Cemetery are the two most special places.
Blind Box Paradise is the predecessor of Infinite Highway, and Happy Cemetery is placed together with it on the meeting table, with two empty positions facing each other, one at the beginning and the other at the end.
And there are no administrators in either place.
There can be no administrators either.
It’s special enough, which means it’s important enough.
"If everything goes well and the speculation is correct, then the Happy Cemetery, a map that has always existed but has never been opened, should be the key to leaving this world."
We can only find out by going to the island whether those missing players went here inexplicably like the tattoo artist.
Qiao Song held the book in his hand, which he had been flipping through for several pages, and decided to go back to Zootopia first.
"Wait until I find a place to rest and read this prequel before making a decision."
She waved her hand casually, and a copy-and-paste mass-produced escape door appeared on the wall.
Then, with a very natural movement, he grabbed the defenseless crow next to him and even deliberately touched the crow's smooth black hair.
"Let's go, I'll take you to see the kingdom I have conquered!"
The white light flooded everything. Qiao Song walked through the passage and came to a strange yet familiar city.
It was a mirrored Zootopia, a false world that almost replicated reality. Qiao Song specifically used it as a refuge when floods came.
The mirror world is a portable world similar to a toolbox. It is a waste to use it only as a lie to appease players who have completed the game. It takes a lot of resources to support its operation, and Qiao Song is no longer the poor guy who set out on the road at the beginning.
The residents in the Mirror Zootopia are all in animal form, which helps the players who escape in confused to distinguish between reality and the game.
In addition, the setting that skills and props cannot be used can also save a lot of trouble.
"Well, that's good. The order is well maintained."
The first place Qiao Song entered was the city of Xu Dog. The moment she walked into the street, the image of a furry little King Charles Spaniel appeared on her head.
The crow looked around at the beginning, and later he had secretly looked back at her no less than ten times.
Qiao Song stroked the crow's head quite naturally, and then accurately found an ice cream shop on the street.
There were players sitting in a circle inside, some with dazed and daydreaming expressions, and some with extremely excitement. Some had cat heads, some had dog heads, and a few even turned into dwarfed giraffes and penguins.
And everyone had an ice cream in their hands, and it seemed that they were using sweets to relieve their mood.
The orange-haired girl sitting at the counter had already noticed Qiao Song outside the French window. She smiled brightly and waved her hands vigorously: "Qiao Qiao! Here!"
After this shout, the store instantly became lively and old acquaintances came back to their senses.
However, Qiao Song did not plan to stay long. He quickly took the room key given by Gao Chengcheng, biting an ice cream in his mouth. He rubbed Tang Xiaoxiao and Xiaoni's heads and even took the time to hook the chin of the little cat dozing on the counter with his finger.
After efficiently treating everyone equally, she went upstairs without looking back.
"I have something urgent to do so I need to go upstairs to sleep and read. If you have any questions, please ask the guy I brought back."
After saying that, she snapped her fingers, and the crow that was placed on the counter turned into a pale handsome man in full view of everyone.
Everyone: ...
Who are you?
Li Yuan was suddenly forced to transform: ...
Feeling the laser-like gazes from all around, Li Yuan, who had served as an administrator for multiple dungeons and managed many games, suddenly became a little nervous.
Everyone here is Qiao Song's acquaintance, including old friends and new faces.
It had indeed been a long time since anyone had looked at him with such a complicated gaze. Li Yuan regretted not combing his feathers in advance.
Moreover, it seems that there are even more people who are unhappy with him.
But inexplicably, the worry that Qiao Song was about to recover all his memories seemed to disappear from his mind.
He thought Qiao Song must have done it on purpose.
Restraining his own spiritual power, the little crow with black feathers on his head was very alert and introduced himself: "Hello, I'm Li Yuan."
Tsk.
Some of the players in the ice cream shop were munching on their ice cream and looking at him more critically.
After getting rid of the most troublesome part of explaining, Qiao Song lay down in the comfortable room that Gao Chengcheng had prepared in advance.
Holding the slightly warm book in his hand, Qiao Song had already turned to the two pages he had read last time.
Next, before arriving at the Happy Cemetery, let her see what is written in this book "Prequel to Infinite Highway".
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
