Chapter 93
With the phone on speakerphone, Pei Yuheng's words were clearly heard by everyone.
The reactions of those present varied. Most of the staff at the health quarantine center, including Dr. Li, looked doubtful and bewildered.
They didn't seem to understand what was being said on the other end of the phone.
Or perhaps they understood it, realized something, and then found it unbelievable and terrifying.
Compared to the panicked crowd, Xie Xubai's reaction was much calmer.
At the same time, he heard a faint, unstable electrical sound coming from the communication, as if the call could be interrupted at any moment by some unknown magnetic field. So he quickly asked, "Brother Ma, could you please tell me what day it is today, what time it is there, and what are some notable features near the health quarantine center?"
This senior brother, surnamed Ma, recognized Xie Xubai as Pei Yuheng's close friend who often accompanied him, and paused for a moment.
Perhaps due to his extensive experience, he noticed the oddity in Xie Xubai's tone and the strange situation. His breathing became noticeably heavier, and he quickly walked towards the noisy crowd to ask his fellow disciples about the date and time.
"■Year■Month■Day, 14:13 in the afternoon".
Xie Xubai glanced at the time displayed on his phone: 14:13.
Not long after, 13 jumped to 14.
Normal time, normal flow rate.
Brother Ma: "Across the street from the quarantine center is a Changrun gas station with two rows of red and white fuel dispensers. Behind it is a Fuxing supermarket, and next to it is the gas station's duty room."
Everyone turned to look.
The blue and white signboard of Changrun Gas Station was eye-catching, but the rubber hose was lying on the ground, and the spilled yellow gasoline had solidified into clumps on the ground.
The doors of Fuxing Supermarket were wide open, the glass doors were smashed, the empty shelves lay on the ground, and a few dried dark red bloodstains could be seen at the entrance. In the desolate and bleak scene, there was not a single person in sight.
The staff explained, “The people at the gas station were infected with the mutated virus around the same time and were coughing incessantly. They came to us for help, only to see the patients turn into monsters… and then ran back. Within hours, a fight broke out at the gas station.”
Brother Ma's voice continued: "Behind the gas station is a residential area, with six buildings arranged in a ring. There's a shopping mall next to it..."
The group listened intently to his explanation, comparing the buildings and verifying each one.
In fact, the staff working here know the nearby buildings by heart.
But they longed to hear something different, to confirm that their absurd, chilling speculations were nothing but pure fabrication.
They are destined to be disappointed.
The lights are not conspicuous during the day, but the residential buildings and shopping malls in the distance are too quiet, and there is no sound of people, so it seems dead silent.
Litter was scattered everywhere on the main road, blown by the wind to various places, including grass and flower beds. Several cars were parked on the road, their tires leaving shocking scratches on the ground, clearly indicating sudden braking in an accident.
The front of the car was smashed and crushed, with pieces of flesh squeezing out from the gaps. A bent arm was hanging from the crushed and deformed car door, swaying in the wind.
The faint stench of decay in the air seemed even stronger, the sunlight was blocked by thick clouds, large shadows covered the land, and the temperature seemed to drop by tens of degrees, making it gloomy and cold.
Brother Ma moved closer to the crowd again so they could hear the reporter's live report: "...The patients nearby have been admitted and isolated, and some mild cases are being observed at home. The aid team dispatched by the Alliance has arrived at the scene, but we still haven't seen any relevant officials... No, wait a minute, Director Zhang is coming out!"
Shouts arose, and it seemed that many people rushed towards the so-called Director Zhang.
People bombarded him with questions about the current epidemic situation, only to be met with an unfriendly rebuke from Director Zhang, who was supposedly in charge: "Knowing there's a virus, why are you still rushing forward? Are you all courting death?!"
The staff members nearby were speechless.
How could they not recognize the voice of their superior, Director Zhang? That's precisely what terrified them.
Director Li, a straightforward and impatient man, quickly grabbed Pei Yuheng's hand and shouted urgently into the phone, "Director Zhang! Can you hear me? Where are you now? Aren't you supposed to be investigating pollution sources in a highly polluted area?!"
These uneasy questions seemed to have failed to reach the other end of the phone.
The reporter's tone suddenly became excited, but it lost its sincerity, pausing mechanically: "You mean... the new virus is actually... highly... highly... lethal? This doesn't match—"
The call was abruptly cut off.
Desperate for a response, Director Li's eyes widened in fury: "Director Zhang!!"
"what is going on?"
"Director Zhang and his team are at the health quarantine center, which is the real world. So where are we?"
"I don't know!"
Having participated in the Infinite Game so many times, Player A has seen all sorts of strange things, but the inability to contact the Little Magician is making Player A a little irritable.
He said to Xie Xubai, "It sounds like a dual world setting."
If you enjoy horror movies and games, you'll often see terms like "the real world and the real world."
In a well-known horror film, a remote town is divided into three spaces: the real world, the surface world, and the inner world.
The real world is the world that ordinary people live in, and there are no supernatural phenomena.
The surface world and the inner world are eerie realms, replicas of real-world buildings to scale. The surface world is mostly daytime, desolate and silent, leaving one feeling empty and adrift. The inner world, on the other hand, is nighttime, dark and sinister, teeming with danger and evil.
The terrifying monsters lie low in the surface world, but become active in the underworld, wreaking havoc on all living things.
The two worlds are isolated from reality. Occasionally, normal people will accidentally wander into the spatial rift connecting them, then get lost in the illusion, unable to find their way back to reality, until they go insane, grow old, or unfortunately die in the mouth of monsters.
Depending on the setting, some stories completely remove the real world, leaving only the surface world, with the surface world being the reality.
If this trial is indeed set up in a similar way, then it can explain why the city's prosperity could continue and why not all the citizens perished in the cataclysm, because only a small number of innocent people who mistakenly entered the real world and the outer world were harmed.
The staff at the epidemic prevention center, however, did not have such a positive attitude.
They called the alliance's political authorities for help, called major hospitals to ask experts to conduct research, and called their families to let them know they were safe, but they never thought of calling the epidemic prevention center.
The question is, who will be at home calling their parents who are also staying home?
The harsh reality is now starkly laid out before them. Knowing they might have fallen into an alternate dimension and could never return to reality, they are on the verge of collapse. They frantically try to call the epidemic prevention center, but the signal is always interrupted.
It instantly became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
Player A was indifferent to the dungeon NPCs, but seeing their terrified expressions, he felt a strange sense of sympathy and muttered to Xie Xubai, "They remind me of when we first joined the Infinite Game, everyone had this same feeling of helplessness as if the sky were falling."
“The little magician said this dungeon was very immersive, and I believe him,” Player A said. “In the dungeons I’ve participated in before, ordinary people either couldn’t see the monsters, like they were programmed, numb and mechanical. Or they were already part of the game, or they had become monsters themselves, so it seemed like the players were making a fuss over nothing.”
"Now they're panicking too, like they're looking in a mirror... Tch! That damned system is useless, I'll destroy it sooner or later."
Hearing what he said, a flash of inspiration crossed Xie Xubai's mind, but it was too fast for him to fully grasp, causing him to frown.
The staff members were all mentally strong enough to piece their worldviews back together, even after they had been shattered. However, Dr. Li said with a stern face, "We can't tell anyone else about this for now, or people will get confused."
Even today, people still believe that the alliance's political situation will provide a solution. In fact, the higher authorities did send rescue forces, but they never reached them.
Everyone is struggling to survive on this carrot hanging in front of them. If it is taken away, it will cause widespread panic and then riots, just like the gas station across the street where the accident happened.
Dr. Li turned to Pei Yuheng and earnestly pleaded, "Please stay. If we can successfully extract the pollutants, we might be able to develop a drug to curb the mutation."
Pei Yuheng pursed his lips, turned to Xie Xubai, and sought his opinion.
The situation has changed; the world is no longer the world he knew. With his current combat capabilities, venturing into a highly polluted area to search for people would likely be a hindrance to everyone.
If he stays at the health and epidemic prevention center, with his knowledge and intelligence, he can do what he can to provide strong support for everyone.
Xie Xubai read his thoughts from his eyes and handed him the key to the clinic and the real estate documents: "You stay here for now and wait for me to come back."
The fact that Pei Yuheng was able to obtain the survival supplies needed by disaster victims from wealthy and powerful families suggests that there may be two possibilities.
The first scenario is that Pei Yuheng can return to the real world and transport supplies back and forth, but he cannot take the disaster victims away.
The second possibility is that those aristocratic families also exist in another dimension.
Xie Xubai needed to verify this beforehand, and also find Pei Yuheng's mentor, Zhou Chaosheng, as well as the missing search and rescue team.
Before leaving, he added several more layers of mental protection to Pei Yuheng.
The items given by the player required mental energy to operate. Pei Yuheng had no mental energy, so Xie Xubai patiently used them on him one by one to ensure that he would be unharmed during the time he was away.
He left Player A to look after Pei Yuheng and went to the highly polluted area alone, but he never expected that he would not return for another half a month.
At that time, the health and epidemic prevention center was completely overrun, with pieces of flesh and remains scattered everywhere, and the building was deserted.
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