Chapter 103: Reactions from all parties
June 9th, 6pm, reality.
This is the third day of the college entrance examination. During this period, whether it is the traditional college entrance examination, the 3+2+1, or the 3+3, the college entrance examinations involving small foreign languages have all ended in different cities across the country.
Topics related to the college entrance examination essays are still trending online. If you click on any topic related to the college entrance examination, you can see candidates who have just finished the "college entrance examination" battle complaining about the math paper or the questions in a certain subject being too niche.
The security measures surrounding high schools across the country have ended, but whether online or in real life, the topics discussed by people are more or less related to the college entrance examination.
At the Special Affairs Management Bureau of a border city, several officials accompanied several parents.
"Comrade, when will that instance be finished? Our Ge Huiru just finished the college entrance exam."
"You said, we didn't expect the child to do anything in the first place. We just wanted him to go to college and find a stable job. Now that he's in a dungeon, what are we going to do?"
"I told them to just stay home and sleep for the day after their exams, but these kids insisted on going out to play. That's great, that's great."
Several parents looked dejected. Li Gaoyuan and Ge Huiru disappeared in the morning, and they were completely unaware of it.
It is common for the older child to go out and play for a day and come back in the afternoon and evening. Adolescents don't want to say a word to their parents, and several parents think it is just normal to go out and play.
It was not until noon that direct contact from the Special Affairs Bureau dealt a heavy blow to the parents of both sides.
The Big Data Sky Eye system detected the disappearance of the two people, and as expected, they entered a strange copy.
Several parents have been staying at this Special Affairs Bureau branch since they arrived at noon.
"Parents, you still have to have confidence in your children. Children who have just finished the college entrance examination are at their peak physical and mental strength. Young children are the most clever."
"We just need to be more patient and wait. Generally speaking, the dungeons matched with new players won't be too difficult."
"But, but doesn't the internet say that newcomers have the highest mortality rate? Our children have never been in society and don't know anything. If they just do whatever they're told to do, they might get harmed by bad people!"
"Comrade, please, is there really nothing the country can do? Don't we have an army? Can't we attack that dungeon? Are they outside our planet?"
Listening to the parents' emotional and irrational remarks, the officials could only continue to appease them.
At this moment, in the [Rugui] forum, many players who were waiting for today's guide discovered something was wrong.
"??? Why is no one posting a strategy guide today? Are they all taking the college entrance exam?"
[Original Poster]: No, it's six o'clock. Logically, everyone who's been in the dungeon for the day should be out by now. Even if it's late, they should be home. They can't all be renting a place, right? Or has the dungeon suddenly increased its death rate again? Where are the people? It doesn't seem like the dungeon has suddenly shut down, prohibiting anyone from sharing their experiences and information inside the dungeon, right?
As soon as this post was published, many people responded immediately.
[2nd floor]: Me too, I've been wondering for a while, are the dungeons running longer? Or are they changing the mechanics so there are no more single-day dungeons?
[3rd Floor]: I'm squatting here with you. I'm going to enter the dungeon tomorrow and am waiting for today's relief guide.
[4th Floor]: Urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent! I sent a message to my friend today but he didn't reply. He should have entered the dungeon, but I don't know when it will be. Sigh.
[5th Floor]: Really, it can’t be that Guicheng delayed its return in order not to affect the college entrance examination traffic.
[6th floor]: The above person is so humorous. Speaking of the Gaokao, I can't help but think of how many young people who have just reached adulthood were drafted into this program this year. If someone was drafted into this program during Gaokao, it would be truly unfortunate.
[7th Floor]: Did the raid suddenly shut down, forbidding us from discussing strategy? That doesn't make sense. The forum is still open. Even if the raid content can't be shared, players who have completed the raid can just post a message to let us know they're back.
[8th Floor]: My sister has entered the dungeon, and today is the seventh day, but she hasn't come out yet... I personally still have confidence in her survival, and I have just prepared new props. Alas, the wait is really too painful.
......
In the post, players are constantly discussing.
Browsing the forum is a habit that almost every player will develop after completing a dungeon. Buying and selling items, looking up strategies, asking newbie questions, and dealing with various real-life situations can all be answered in the forum, with a bunch of people offering advice.
Every day at 7am, 5pm, or 8 or 9pm, the refresh frequency of posts on the Rugui Forum will be extra high, because from this period on, a large number of "early shift" and "late shift" players will leave the dungeon.
Some people are impatient and will quickly post a message after coming out to announce that they are back alive. By the way, they will mark the name of the copy and take a place to slowly post their thoughts on the copy.
Later, everyone gradually formed a habit. For those who had part-time jobs on the official side, the first thing they would do after leaving a copy was to report their safety to their family and friends, and then go to the Special Affairs Bureau to report, and then post after the record was completed. This was the peak time of the forum after 8 o'clock in the evening.
Because of the morning rush hour, we can see in the forum that the "early morning" players have already come out, but we still haven't waited for the afternoon rush hour.
[14th Floor]: There shouldn't be any problems. A group of players already left the dungeon this morning, and I even read a few strategy posts at noon.
[15th Floor]: Yes, there are also a few posts in the afternoon.
[16th Floor]: Let’s wait a little longer. Maybe the evening shift will be delayed. Haha, what if there is also a traffic jam due to the college entrance examination in Guicheng?
Among the replies, some were worried, some were joking, some were anxiously waiting for the guide, and some were anxious for their relatives and friends.
Li Ying looked at the post in silence. He did not reply to the post, but he was sure that something had happened in the ghost city, or the strange world!
As players who have become "temporary residents" of Guicheng, he and Cheng Lixue bought seven-day round-trip tickets.
On his mobile phone, in the Rugui APP, the [Seven-day round-trip ticket from Guicheng to Wuyouxiang] has shown a gray interface.
Written in small print: [Until June 16th, the special transportation line between Guicheng and Wuyou Township will not be opened. The current timeframe does not count towards the return period for temporary residents of Guicheng.]
June 16th, seven days later.
If this special transportation line is not opened, not only Li Ying and Cheng Lixue will not be able to go back on time, but the personnel of the official Special Affairs Bureau who go back and forth every day to collect and transmit intelligence will also not be able to go back!
Li Ying tapped his index finger on the table. On his phone, Cheng Lixue sent him a message first.
[Xiaoxue]: Brother Li! Have you seen the forum message?
[Xiaoxue]: Is it convenient for me to call you now?
Looking at her message, you can tell that she must be a little overwhelmed. Li Ying did not reply, but directly made a voice call.
"Hey, Xiaoxue."
"Brother Li." Cheng Lixue's breathing was rapid.
"Well, what exactly happened? I'm back in the dormitory now. In the afternoon, someone from the General Administration in Beijing contacted me and asked if my ticket had fallen off. Later, there was a discussion on the forum. Some classmates in the college had already asked the teachers, and there was also an official contact person. I saw the news on my phone, but didn't say anything. The official also asked me not to say anything for the time being." She rattled off a lot of words.
"I saw it too. Don't be anxious. The authorities have discovered it earlier than us and they will definitely be prepared." Li Ying comforted her.
He also received official contact in the afternoon. It was not from the local liaison officer in Longjiang City, but directly from the General Administration in Beijing, which shows the seriousness of the matter.
"We won't be allowed in or out for seven days, but it won't jeopardize our temporary resident status; that's clearly marked," he said calmly.
"There are so many people in the forum waiting for our compatriots who will be released in the dungeon today. The round-trip passage here is also closed. I hope something really bad will happen." Cheng Lixue was worried.
The problem she mentioned is also Li Ying’s hidden concern.
After Li Ying and Cheng Lixue returned from their safe home in Guicheng, he did not need to go for official training like Cheng Lixue, and could return to Guicheng immediately.
However, Li Ying also had some things to deal with. Before a close friend entered the dungeon, he traded his business card to the other party on the Rugui platform for 1 Gui coin so that his friend could have this "special item". Whether renting a house or entering the dungeon, saving his life was the first priority.
And now, his good friend has entered the dungeon but has not returned yet.
"We are not in the ghost city now, so there is no point in thinking too much. Let's wait and see what the official plans are." Li Ying said.
It would be a lie to say he wasn't anxious, whether for his friends or other compatriots who had entered the dungeon. But at this moment, there was not much point in being anxious without a solution.
"Yeah." After being comforted by him, Cheng Lixue's emotions also cooled down.
"Brother Li, what do you think will happen in Ghost City? We can't go back for seven days, and the people in the dungeon there can't get out either. The dungeon we were in at the hot spring hotel was fine, but if it's a convenience store or a museum, or some dungeons that can only be entered during the day, how can we stay there for seven days?"
Li Ying shook her head across the phone, "Too little information, I'm not sure."
"But I guess it might have something to do with the changes in this weird world."
"Perhaps it's an upgrade to the dungeon system, a technological upgrade. But if it involves this, the dungeon will definitely send a notice to all players."
"The greater possibility is that some unexpected incident occurred in the instance that the natives could not have anticipated. Perhaps it was a programming issue, or perhaps some other problem, which resulted in the current inability to return."
Li Ying's eyes were burning as she was on a voice call while scanning the replies in the post.
"Yes." Cheng Lixue said.
"The authorities will definitely find a way. I'm a new player and I've just entered the academy to study, but the teachers are really professional. They are all part-time players, and some of them are experts in various professional fields, teaching us knowledge in different fields." She began chattering about the courses she learned in the academy today.
Li Ying responded from time to time, and Cheng Lixue could continue talking.
Li Ying was distracted, writing words on the notebook in front of him and then crossing them out.
Judging from the previous changes in the weird world, Ghost City is undoubtedly promoting its connection with reality, encouraging players to enter the weird world to find jobs, rent houses, or even become labor immigrants.
In the past five years, there have not been such large-scale changes in the weird copy. The recent frequent changes may be that the copy has finally accumulated enough things in the past five years, or it may be that some factor has prompted the copy to advance rapidly.
Judging from Li Ying's personal inference, he feels that the dungeon will not suddenly trap a large number of players, nor will it be a case of "holding players hostage to force reality."
After all, with the power of the strange dungeon, it should be no problem to drag all players into the dungeon and trap them.
There are still more than a dozen players who have rented houses in Ghost City and are still in reality.
Xiang Tianyi was also browsing this post.
She had originally planned to report back to reality and then return to Ghost City immediately, but she was delayed for a day. As a result, her train ticket was directly cancelled and she could not go back within seven days.
Xiang Tianyi swiped his phone, she touched her chin and muttered, "No way, I have an appointment to take pictures, and I haven't chosen a tombstone yet."
Everything was fine when I left. Nothing happened in the community and there was no change in Ghost City.
She just came back yesterday and chatted with Murphy in the forum until midnight.
After thinking about it, Xiang Tianyi sent a few more messages to Mo Fei, but the other party never replied and was not online.
"Is this guy not entering a dungeon? The cooldown period shouldn't be that fast."
"Sister Xiao Liu can't be contacted now. It's really troublesome."
She moved her fingers and sent several messages to the official staff, asking if there was any further news.
At this time, official staff in general areas are probably like ants on a hot pan, and have to face a large number of player inquiries that are pouring in like a tide.
The person she contacted was the person from the Special Affairs Bureau headquarters who had called her in the afternoon. If there was any official action or further news, they would definitely have the first-hand information.
At this moment, in the thread discussing why a large number of players have not posted yet, someone has already realized that they need to find players to rent a room with.
[47th Floor]: If the current batch of players haven't come out yet, there should still be players in reality who can enter. Who remembers the IDs of the landlords and floor owners of the rented apartments? Please tag them. There should be people who have rented apartments and returned but haven't entered the ghost city yet.
[49th Floor]: Yes, yes, yes. I remember that in the post they shared, they could buy train tickets and they could also go back to Ghost City.
Because Xiang Tianyi had posted something, especially about "bad" information, and was also the most recent player to share rental housing, he soon appeared in the @ed floor.
"This is troublesome." She touched her chin.
There is no official update yet, and she was asked to keep it confidential when we contacted her before. Now she has been tagged, and it's not just Xiang Tianyi. If no one responds, the onlookers will definitely notice the problem.
Is it that you can’t reply, or that you don’t dare to reply?
She moved her fingers and continued to send messages to the official personnel she contacted in the afternoon, informing them of the situation of being tagged in the post and asking them for a reply.
Posts in the Rugui Forum cannot be screenshotted and uploaded, no matter if you are viewing them on a computer, tablet or mobile phone. Not only can you not take screenshots, but even if you use other camera equipment to take photos of the phone or computer, the photos will directly turn into black waste film.
Not to mention posts, which can only be shared with friends within the forum or in other posts.
The forum posts were flooded with comments like crazy, and all of a sudden, all kinds of speculation and imagination appeared.
[198th Floor]: I have a hypothesis. Ghost City's recent major moves, especially allowing players to rent housing and work, must have a reason behind them. Recently, we've been entering dungeons and discovering more and more information about this world. Could it be that players who entered the dungeon today discovered something, and due to confidentiality requirements, they're not being released yet? After all, we know that dungeons erase the memories of native residents.
[233F]: You guys are dreaming! Haha! I suspect this is all just a trick of the dungeon, and who knows, these people might never come back.
[249th Floor]: The person in 233th floor above, please be more polite. I just contacted the official liaison here. She is also an ordinary grassroots person. She told me that she has not received any notice from the higher-ups yet.
[387th Floor]: I personally think that this may be a temporary operation adjustment of the copy, but perhaps this kind of adjustment will become more and more frequent, and maybe next time it will be you and me who will be trapped for a long time.
[503rd floor]: No, it's not that you can't say nice things. But are you guys overthinking the dungeon? I don't know how many people actually enter it every day, but judging by the daily replies, it's definitely over a thousand. Isn't the purpose of the dungeon to kill us? Taking so many people away all at once and not letting them out might just be a sign of their true intentions. You could be next, or I could be. Shouldn't players be mentally prepared for this from the start?
There was a lot of noise in the post, and Xiang Tianyi felt a headache as he read it.
She just hoped that the players in the dungeon today could come out as soon as possible and that nothing would happen.
If a large number of players were stranded, would they be arranged to live in the residential complex? Or in the dungeon? Or were they in danger? What about Sister Xiao Liu and the others? Questions flashed through Xiang Tianyi's mind.
At this moment, Liu Yanran, whom she was worried about, was in her rented apartment, standing by the window looking downstairs.
Inside the room, except for a few people who went out to work today, all the players who rented houses in Ping'an Home and temporarily lived in Guicheng gathered here.
Sighs were heard one after another in the room.
"Our phones have no internet connection, we can't access anything, we can't chat or send messages, and the ticket purchase interface is completely black."
"But paying should work. The only way to open it is to pay with ghost coins."
Several official players who worked in Guicheng have returned, and Tian Fang, who went to the wholesale market to purchase goods in the morning, also gathered here.
"It seems like the neighbors all have internet, but ours must have been disconnected. Look at them downstairs still using their phones to make calls, so it's obviously working."
"Temporary residents are not human! They don't want us to know what happened in Ghost City."
"Brother Cui and the others were sent away outside Ghost City, but we weren't assigned to the bus. Could it be because we're closer to Ping'an Home?"
As the discussion continued, Liu Yanran pinched her brows.
Everything was going well at her work today. She went to work on time, bought a cup of coffee, and waited for the customers who were coming today. In the middle of the day, because Luo Qing asked her to keep the keys, she found two keys to Building No. 9 separately. At that time, Liu Yanran was still complaining in her heart, who was this person who could actually make her sister rent Building No. 9 on her own initiative.
After Aunt Tian Fang came back from her big purchase, the two of them spent time studying the tools one by one in the store, and they even had lunch together at noon.
This should have been an ordinary day, but everything happened unexpectedly.
Liu Yanran received a message from her sister asking her to leave work early and go home. First, a neighbor in the community took over the store, and later the neighbor came back and locked the door.
The players who returned to the community also noticed the difference in the atmosphere.
Many indigenous residents in the community who were supposed to go to work ran back, but the children did not come back.
Some neighbors went home directly, while others stayed downstairs, standing together and whispering about something. Whenever the players tried to eavesdrop or get closer, they immediately stopped discussing and remained silent.
Regardless of whether it was the messages Liu Yanran received from Li Xiang and the others, or the information observed by this group of players who were working outside and were temporarily kicked out of work, everything pointed to eight words - emergency evacuation and mass transfer.
This is the "other side" of Ghost City that all players have never seen.
At least, in the official database that Liu Yanran knew about, this had never happened before.
But it seems that all the indigenous people are well aware of the "other side" of this mysterious city.
The message Li Xiang sent her said that Sister Luo Qing stayed in Happy Amusement Park.
Therefore, the key to the great changes in the entire Gui City this time may lie there.
As the player closest to Luo Qing, Liu Yanran knew very early on that Luo Qing had "two sides", or more accurately, multiple sides. The gentleness and friendliness that her sister showed to her was only one side of her character.
What happened to the strange person knocking on the door on her first night staying at Ping An Home?
Liu Yanran didn't know, and didn't get the answer from her neighbors, but 501 across the street suddenly became vacant.
The "earthquake" she felt was obviously different from what actually happened. When Luo Qing asked her if it was an earthquake, she pretended to be stupid.
More obvious examples include the Qimiao Museum and Renhe Art Museum.
In the Wonderful Museum, Liu Yanran saw Luo Qing looking at Ning Ruyi being dragged away by the museum security with almost indifference.
In the Renhe Art Museum, Liu Yanran stayed with Luo Qing on the third-floor rooftop, accompanying her to "watch the scenery."
The scenery that Luo Qing mentioned was not the green space of Central Park, but the players struggling and running inside that could be seen through the glass exterior wall on the third floor of the terrace!
At that time, Luo Qing was eating fruit while "looking at the scenery".
From the very first time Liu Yanran met Luo Qing, she knew that she was definitely not a native who had nothing to do with the copy.
The more they get to know each other, the calmer Luo Qing becomes. Liu Yanran behaves more like a stranger who works honestly, is grateful to her boss, and is happy to have a job.
She will never forget her identity as an official player for a moment.
If she had met Luo Qing with her business card at the beginning and successfully rented a house, Liu Yanran would have just considered it her "good luck".
But later, when Luo Qing took her to the museum to make a copy, and she hired her as a part-time worker, and then turned her internship into a full-time job, Liu Yanran did not think that this was her "being close to the water and getting the moon first".
Liu Yanran was indeed the first player to rent a house in Guicheng, but perhaps, from the very beginning, Luo Qing chose her because of Liu Yanran's official identity!
Renting a house, working, and everything related to the recent changes in players are all on Luo Qing's shoulders.
She can enter and exit various dungeons at will, and use her "part-time job" to guide players. A business card has such a big function. It is obvious that she is a high-authority person in this strange world.
Everything related to the ghost city and the copy seemed to be constantly emerging along with Luo Qing, like the tip of the iceberg.
Liu Yanran stood by the window and couldn't help but worry about what decision the authorities would make in reality.
Beijing, headquarters of the Special Affairs Management Bureau.
Xie Xiangbei, the official intelligence player who returned this morning, found that his round-trip ticket to Guicheng Wuyouxiang was grayed out in the [Rugui] APP in the afternoon, and immediately reported it to his superiors.
He discovered it early, and the notice on the ticket at that time only indicated that this special traffic line was temporarily closed, which did not affect his status as a temporary resident of Guicheng.
The emergency response team of the Beijing Special Affairs Bureau headquarters was immediately activated. Xie Xiangbei recalled the situation many times to make sure that he had not found any "abnormal" omissions.
Around three o'clock in the afternoon, Xie Xiangbei, who had been staring at his phone, discovered that new small words appeared on the ticketing interface, indicating a closure period until June 16.
If the players trapped in the dungeon today are also locked up for seven days, who knows if this is just a delaying tactic of the strange world?
Therefore, the official Yu Rugui Forum sent several messages to [Zai Shang Yan Shang] with diplomatic language.
However, from noon to afternoon, the other party did not respond.
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