While everyone was still in a daze, a passenger came from behind, passed through the players' bodies, and walked forward. He seemed to be going to the bow. His thin body was wearing a washed-out shirt.
And this person was the first dead person they saw in the dimly glowing blue area on the seabed.
Although he was thin at this moment, his eyes were full of vigor and his expression was very vivid, which formed a sharp contrast with the wide-open eyes full of resentment at the bottom of the sea.
I don’t know if there were other passengers calling him from behind, but the man suddenly stopped and turned around, looking through the player and looking back. I don’t know what he saw or heard, but he suddenly laughed.
The player who was frightened by the other party's pale and empty face at the bottom of the sea, saw the man's smile at this time. It was obviously a gentle smile with a hint of shyness, but he was frightened to the point of his scalp numbing.
"What the hell is going on? Didn't they all die just now?" the player asked in disbelief.
"And the ship has returned to its original state." Another player looked around with a complicated expression.
The players present were all silent. The joy of "seeing the light of day again" disappeared when they saw the intact ship and passengers. A sense of weirdness spread in their hearts, and no one knew what had happened.
One of the players suddenly strode to the side of the boat and stood there touching the outside of the boat with his hand. Everyone else looked at him.
He changed several places, and finally said solemnly: "I still can't get out."
The others also walked towards the side of the ship, but there were still obstructions wherever their palms touched. The ship was covered by an invisible barrier. Although they didn't know what was going on, everyone had the same idea—they were trapped on this ship.
There was still no task posted on the task panel. Everyone gathered together, no longer as casual and relaxed as before, and discussed the situation they were facing.
"Could it be that everything we saw before was an illusion, and nothing actually happened?"
"It's possible. After all, we can't touch those passengers at all. It makes sense if it's all an illusion."
"There is another point of view. Zhou Zhou said before that the people on the ship had died, but they didn't know they were dead, so they kept repeating the last journey before their death."
As soon as these words came out, everyone looked at Zhou Zhou.
Zhou Zhou was squatting there listening to everyone talking, supporting his face with his hands. He noticed that everyone was looking at him, and couldn't help blinking: "What's wrong?"
"Zhou Zhou, what do you think?"
Zhou Zhou continued to support his face, and his gaze shifted from the talking player to a passenger on the deck. It was a man dressed gorgeously, with his chin raised high. He looked at other people with eyes full of dislike and disgust. When passing by other passengers and crew members, he covered his nose with his hand.
Zhou Zhou looked very intently, and the others followed his gaze and looked at the man.
"He will be tripped by the rope and the water in the bucket will splash on him." Zhou Zhou suddenly said this.
Everyone was puzzled and wanted to ask Zhou Zhou how he knew it, but suddenly they found that there was indeed a rope and a bucket not far from the man's feet.
Everything that happened afterwards was just as Zhou Zhou had expected. The man was indeed tripped by the rope. The rope was pressed down by the wooden barrel. The rope was suddenly pulled tight, knocking over the bucket used to scrub the deck, and the water in the bucket poured onto the man. The originally clean, expensive and gorgeous clothes were all soaked by the dirty water that had not been emptied from the bucket in time.
The man stood up angrily. You could see he was saying something, and judging from his expression, he was probably cursing. Then the man sniffed his wrist, looked disgusted, and hurried to the cabin, probably to change his clothes.
The player stared with wide eyes at the dirty water on the deck, then looked at Zhou Zhou who looked calm.
"Is this foresight? Prophecy?" the players asked in shock.
Zhou Zhou sighed, frowned and looked at the others, looking like he had a headache: "This is what I saw yesterday."
Players: “…”
What I saw yesterday happened again today, so Zhou Zhou’s previous guess was correct. The passengers did not realize that they were dead and kept repeating the last day of their lives. Those who entered the ghost ship were also unable to leave and were forced to go through the same process.
"So, we will encounter pirate ships again at night, sink to the bottom of the sea, and then float to the surface and repeat the day?"
Zhou Zhou nodded: "Probably."
"It would be better to be thrown into the sea and eliminated cleanly."
"Hey? By the way, didn't a ghost come up yesterday and try to push us off the boat? If the ghost gets on the boat today and we don't resist and get pushed off directly, then we can probably leave the ship," a player suddenly said.
The others looked at each other and thought that this method was feasible. They could not do anything by staying on the boat all the time, so they might as well leave and look for other ships or islands.
While waiting for the ghost, others also discovered that the passengers' actions were repetitive. Although they were not as detailed as Zhou Zhou's observations, they had been staying on the deck and still had impressions of some of the passengers' actions. Witnessing the various scenes that had been repeated yesterday and today with their own eyes, they became more determined to leave this strange ghost ship.
I just waited for a long time, but the sea was calm and no ghost appeared.
The players were waiting anxiously, but since the ghost didn't come they had no choice but to continue looking for a way to leave everywhere on the ship.
Zhou Zhou stood under the mast, looking up.
He was waiting for the little octopus from yesterday. If what happened on the boat today was a repeat of what happened yesterday, then the little octopus would reappear on the sail.
The players stood by the boat waiting for the ghost, while Zhou Zhou tilted his head back waiting for the little octopus.
The players were looking for an exit everywhere on the ship, and Zhou Zhou looked up and waited for the little octopus.
The players gave up when they couldn't find the octopus and sat on the deck, despairing of themselves. Zhou Zhou was still looking up, waiting for the little octopus.
The time for the little octopus to appear had long passed, but Zhou Zhou waited for nothing.
If the ghosts don't appear because they don't belong to this ship, then the little octopus has been on the ship for a long time, longer than the players, and has even written a thick logbook, so why won't there be any repetition? Because it left yesterday?
Zhou Zhou didn’t understand, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to wait for the little octopus today.
Elvia and the female player seemed very calm. They searched the ship and indeed found no way to leave, but the copy could not have become a complete dead end. There must be some details they had overlooked. Now they just needed to observe and search carefully in the repetitive process.
A group of people sat on the deck and waited until dark. The pirate ship came again, and what happened next was exactly the same as yesterday.
The ship slowly sank to the bottom of the sea, and the players took out various lighting tools to illuminate the entire ship, and even part of the sea outside was illuminated.
Now, almost every player who is doing dungeons in the Nightmare City has a lighting tool. After all, many dungeons are very dark at night, and various ghosts and monsters mostly appear at night.
The boat was stuck among the rocks. When the players were looking for clues with lights everywhere, Zhou Zhou also joined in the search. Keli stuffed a flashlight in his hand. Although he could see without these things, Keli and Shirley didn't know about this. Seeing Zhou Zhou standing there stupidly looking at the dark sea, his pitiful appearance was so heartbreaking that they immediately touched his head and stuffed a flashlight into his hand.
They probably spent a lot of points to buy this flashlight. It is very bright, many times brighter than the small flashlight they used in the Love Academy.
Zhou Zhou took a flashlight and searched carefully among the rocks outside. The rocks here were very tall, and one couldn't even see the bottom. This showed that the height of these rocks was also extraordinary, almost as high as several small hills.
The large ship is stuck here and looks very small from a distance.
Zhou Zhou walked around the ship and found a strange creature near the hull.
The color of its body was exactly the same as that of stone. If it hadn't moved slightly, Zhou Zhou would not have been able to find it at all. The strange creature has no eyes and its entire body is oval in shape. Although it is large in area, it is very flat. The edges of its gray-black body are slightly curled and occasionally shake.
That's why Zhou Zhou saw it.
Holding the flashlight so that the light could shine better on the strange creature, Zhou Zhou carefully identified what kind of fish it was.
Shirley was looking around with the same flashlight as Zhou Zhou, and found that Zhou Zhou was staring at a certain place motionlessly, so she also looked in that direction.
"Zhou Zhou, why are you looking at the stone?"
Zhou Zhou turned around and explained: "There is a strange fish over there."
"Really? Where?"
"Right where the flashlight is."
“…There were only stones there.”
"No, look, look." Zhou Zhou waved the flashlight a few times, and the edge of the strange oval creature undulated slightly, revealing a boundary that was slightly different in color from the stone.
"It does seem like there is something there." Shirley said uncertainly. She seemed to see something moving, but when she looked closely, it seemed to be water plants growing on the rocks. She was not sure.
Zhou Zhou was very interested in things he had never seen before. He stood there and watched, trying to compete with the strange creatures in endurance.
Shirley waited for a while. She was not interested in these moving stones, but when she saw Zhou Zhou was still watching, she went to look for clues elsewhere.
The ship began to rise again. This time everyone looked solemn, remembering the blue area that the ship passed through the last time it rose. They wondered if they would pass through there again this time.
Zhou Zhou waited until the boat started moving, but only saw the strange creature move a few centimeters. When the boat was rising and almost out of sight, Zhou Zhou seemed to see the strange creature suddenly sink a few points.
Before he could take a closer look at where the fish had gone, the boat continued to rise and the rocks completely disappeared from sight.
As they were almost at the blue zone, people huddled together in groups of two or three, like a group of frightened birds. Some even lowered their heads and dared not look anywhere else, for fear of meeting the dead person's eyes again.
Sure enough, the first thin man in the blue area sank down, in the same posture as last time, and glared at the players with the same terrifying look as last time.
Then the second, the third...
Apart from the players who lowered their heads because they were afraid of the corpses, Doreen and Elvia, who were not afraid of them, also lowered their eyes slightly. This is an ancient custom of the Empire, not looking directly at the dead shows respect for the other party.
But because this custom is relatively old, many young people today don’t know about it.
They saw Zhou Zhou running around on the boat, staring closely at the dead. Some of the dead were only one meter away from him, almost touching them, but he did not step back. Everyone thought he was too careless and too bold.
When the ship was finally about to leave the blue zone, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
After leaving the blue area, there is a normal sea area, and you can see light if you go up further.
But after rising for a while, the players stared at the scene in front of them in a daze. One player was stunned for a long time, turned to another player and said, "Slap me, I seem to be hallucinating."
The other party also stared blankly outside the boat, and said in an erratic tone: "It's not an illusion, I saw it too."
They actually passed through a blue sea again. The dark blue sea was emitting a faint light, and the sea water had a very wide range of visibility, allowing one to see far into the distance at a glance.
The thin man sank from above with his eyes closed...then came the second long-haired woman, the third, and the fourth. They once again experienced everything that happened in the blue sea.
Even the blue sea began to repeat. Everyone was nervous and no one spoke. The atmosphere was very stiff for a while.
“I hope we won’t be trapped in this blue sea forever this time.” A player said dryly.
"I don't know. If we can successfully return to the surface of the sea, it means that the number of times the blue sea appears is the same as the number of times we repeat it. If there are more, I guess we will have to stay in the sea and keep looking at these dead people over and over again."
Doreen replied calmly.
Fortunately, this incident never happened again after they left the blue sea, and they returned to the surface.
Looking at the smiling passengers on the boat, the players felt exhausted both physically and mentally.
When the male passenger crossed the middle of the deck again, everyone was prepared this time and quickly avoided him. After all, when thinking of the passengers floating in the blue area, everyone wants to stay as far away from them as possible.
"It's already the fourth day. We won't go through the cycle three more times and then be teleported out of the dungeon due to a timeout."
"Hmm? Not necessarily. Maybe I'll stay here in a cycle for the rest of my life." A player said in a trance.
"Did you find anything different from before, or any other details?"
The players sat cross-legged in the corner of the deck, discussing listlessly.
"I find that my legs go weak when I see these passengers now. I guess I can even dream about them glaring at me."
"Well, this one doesn't count, next one."
Each player was like a frost-bitten eggplant. It was obvious that two cycles had already caused them mental torture.
Elvia and Doreen stood casually aside, both of them had the same upright posture, and their expressions were no different from before. They were quietly listening to the players' discussion. They had not found any clues yet. This copy was really confusing, and until now they could not determine where the exit of the level was.
Zhou Zhou sat among the players. Compared to the other players who looked listless and pale, the energetic Zhou Zhou seemed out of place. He raised his left hand like a child in class: "I found something!"
The players looked at Zhou Zhou silently.
"I found a fish among the rocks."
Players: “…”
"That fish looked very strange, very big and flat, and the same color as the stone."
"...Very good, very good. You pay close attention to the details around you. Keep going, next one." The player said as if he was coaxing a child.
Zhou Zhou raised his hand again: "I haven't finished yet, I have another discovery."
The player who first asked everyone to tell him what problems or details they had found sighed sadly. Young people are full of energy: "What other fish did you find?"
"It's not fish. We passed through the blue water three times, and each time the passengers stared at us."
Isn't this an obvious fact? Everyone saw the passenger looking at the player with frozen eyes, which was not a new discovery at all.
"They stare at different places every time."
When Zhou Zhou said this, many people immediately realized that something was wrong.
"What do you mean by staring at different places?"
Zhou Zhou crossed his legs and explained seriously: "The first time we stood in the same place, the dead were staring at all of us; the second time we gathered in groups of three or two, and the passengers seemed to only stare at a few people inside; the third time our positions changed, and they still only stared at some people inside. The passengers floated in the same place every time, but their eyes were looking at different places every time."
"Did you see that?" A player looked at Zhou Zhou anxiously. He knew that what Zhou Zhou just said was most likely the key point of the cycle. "Who are they targeting?"
Alvia and Doreen also looked at Zhou Zhou. They didn't expect that Zhou Zhou would be the first person to discover the abnormality.
Zhou Zhou stretched out his hand and pointed at the four players in the crowd.
The players who were pointed out were all very surprised, but they all said that they did nothing, and they didn't know why the dead passengers were staring at them.
"Zhou Zhou, you must have seen it wrong." A player who was identified asked anxiously.
"Impossible. I look around the ship every time, and all the passengers only stare at you guys and never look at anyone else." Zhou Zhou was very sure, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the other party's suspicion of him, and snorted a few times.
The time spent together in this dungeon was not short, and everyone had some understanding of Zhou Zhou's personality. At this time, everyone looked at the players and said, "Tell me, what did you do?"
"But we really don't know."
"I really didn't do anything. I also wanted to get out of the loop as soon as possible and successfully pass the level. How could I ask for trouble?"
"Please help me think about it. We are all on the boat together."
"I've been with another player all along. If I did anything, the other player would definitely notice something was wrong."
The four players all anxiously explained themselves, seemingly completely unaware of the matter.
Alvia looked at the four people, her ice-blue eyes fixed on the four people who stood up and explained anxiously, and her gaze suddenly stopped on the finger of one of them.
"Where did you get that thing in your hand?" Elvia asked calmly.
The player who was asked was stunned and looked down at his hand. On his thumb was a large gold ring inlaid with gems.
"This, this was taken from the cabin room." The player seemed to realize something and even lowered his voice.
The other three players seemed to be strangled by the neck. Their excuses suddenly stopped, their faces turned red, and they silently took things out of their pockets.
One pulled out a gun, another a dagger, and another a gold coin. The four of them all lowered their heads. They didn't expect that these things were the reason why they were trapped in the loop.
Player: "So it's because we took these things that we're stuck in a loop?"
Doreen looked at everyone. "It does make sense that we were cursed to stay on the ship forever because we took the treasure on the ship, and continue to cycle with the passengers. And there should have been signs of this a long time ago, but we ignored them all."
The player recalled everything that had happened since boarding the ship: "What's the sign?"
"When we searched the cabin, we found that five of the six rooms had problems. Anyone who entered or touched anything inside would be punished. And anyone who secretly took those things without permission would be regarded as a pirate by the passengers and cursed."
As Doreen spoke, she looked at the four passengers. All of them were so ashamed that they couldn't help but say, "I'm so sorry. We didn't know this would happen. Is it too late to put it back now?"
No one knows if it is too late, we can only try.
The four players quickly ran to the cabin and put everything back in place.
Only this time, the cycle didn't end. The passengers encountered pirates again and their ship sank again.
In the deep-sea rocks, the players turned on the lights and analyzed the reasons again.
"Maybe the previous one was the last cycle. Once the ship returns to the surface of the sea, it will never cycle again."
"It is possible that the treasures are not the main reason, and there are other factors that affect it."
"Or maybe we're on the wrong ship. This is a ghost ship, so isn't it normal for it to keep looping?"
"That seems to be true. So what do you think we should do now?"
"If all else fails, let's just beat each other up and get eliminated together. Instead of wasting time here and looping until the timeout, why not go home and get some more sleep?"
"Ah~ That makes sense. This instance is too torturous."
Zhou Zhou did not join the players' discussion. He ran off to watch the fish again.
The fish was still in the same position, looking lazy, and it took half a day for it to move slightly.
"What are you looking at?" Elvia walked behind Zhou Zhou and asked.
Zhou Zhou immediately pulled his sleeve and asked him to look at the strange fish together.
Alvia stared at the stone Zhou Zhou pointed at, looked at the ugly fish for a long time, and suddenly said: "I found the clue to pass the level."
Zhou Zhou looked at Elvia in surprise, then looked at the fish. Why couldn't he find it?
Looking at Zhou Zhou's curious expression, Alvia explained, "This kind of fish relies on the camouflage color of its body to avoid its natural enemies. They need to come to the surface of the sea to breathe regularly, so they usually live in shallow seas. This fish can survive so deep in the sea, which means there is air somewhere here."
Not long after Elvia finished speaking, the fish suddenly began to sink. On the rock where it had been, there was an underwater cave of a similar size to itself. The fish entered the cave and disappeared.
It is an underwater cave, about the same size as the fish, so it is completely covered by it.
"You mean the exit is hidden in that cave?" Zhou Zhou asked with a frown.
"Not necessarily. But we have been on the seabed longer this time than any other time before, which means the cycle has ended. If the ship has been staying here, then there is a high possibility that the exit is nearby. And the cave that the fish entered may have the air it needs to survive."
Where does the air come from in the deep sea? There must be something wrong with that cave.
Zhou Zhou looked around and found that other players also stood up in confusion. The previous two times they stayed on the seabed had a fixed time, but now the time had long been exceeded and they were still on the seabed.
When they learned from Elvia that an underwater cave very close to them might be the exit for this customs clearance, no one believed it.
Not to mention how great the water pressure was at such a deep seabed, they couldn't even get the boat out. Even if you can get out to the sea, there is radiation. Some people's health points and countdowns are almost reaching the critical value, and they will die after going out for a few minutes.
Besides, if any random cave can be said to be an exit, then the rock group here is so huge, there may be many underwater caves, and those may also be exits?
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