A night of chaos had finally passed.
Every player who was still alive saw the ink-wash text floating in their field of vision:
【Current Remaining Players: 71】
【Night Two Anomaly: British Brownies】
【Rules: Please be careful to stay away from the prank-loving, bewitching leprechauns.】
【Anomaly settlement completed. Each surviving player receives survival points +20.】
【You are temporarily safe.】
【We wish you a pleasant journey.】
...
The players let out a collective sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, Zhao Weilai and the others had grim expressions as they processed the two pieces of news Weng Yang had shared:
First, the door leading to the fourth carriage had opened, meaning they could finally reach the safe zone.
Second, last night, even after the leprechauns were captured, another player in their carriage had died.
Weng Yang's face was pale.
“They were strangled to death. Not a single sound was heard in the middle of the night... I think... several people must have worked together to cover the victim's mouth so they couldn't make a sound.”
Mu Xiao translated her words.
Everyone who understood began to tremble.
Some had already died during last night's chaos.
But what was even more terrifying was that after going through that chaos, the last shred of trust between people had completely shattered.
Take Kim Myung and Park So-na, for instance.
The two sat far apart, neither speaking to the other.
Zhao Weilai turned to look at Weng Yang, who was also looking back at her.
Both of them knew that the real test had never been those bizarre monsters.
It was the people in this carriage, people just like them.
...
“Let's go,”
Zhao Weilai said with a heavy tone as she stood before the carriage door.
The next second, the moment the carriage door opened, a figure wrapped entirely in white "bandages" like a mummy lunged out—
“Weilai, you're finally here! Weng Yang, you're here too! Great, you're both alive!”
If the "mummy" hadn't spoken in Deng Ziwen's voice, Weng Yang's quick reflexes would have nearly made her shoot him.
Some people were just both extremely unlucky and incredibly fortunate—clearly, Deng Ziwen was one of them.
...
Meanwhile, outside the Instance, Song Mo stared blankly at the news brought back by her two fierce ghosts.
What did they mean by "with the Instance as the center, minor spiritual energy anomalies have appeared in the surrounding area"?
What did they mean by "a pack of fox spirits has appeared near Taiping Cemetery"?
What did they mean by "a water ghost has actually appeared in the artificial lake of Jiangcheng University"?
What did they mean by "in Wenshan Village of An Province, wild cats have actually transformed into spirits and ghosts are gathering"?
What did they mean by "Mud Calabashes have already multiplied and spread everywhere"?
What did they mean by "the authorities have classified these anomalies as a precursor to a 'spiritual energy recovery'"—
In other words, had she really brought about a spiritual energy recovery?
Song Mo, an ordinary screenwriter who usually worked herself to the bone every day, felt a massive headache coming on.
...
Summer in Jiangcheng was always filled with endless drizzle. In Song Mo's opinion, even London might not be as gloomy as Jiangcheng.
“...Whether Deng Ziwen is lucky or unlucky, I'll judge for myself.”
Song Mo mumbled with a toothbrush in her mouth, white foam bubbling as her vacant gaze fixed on the air in front of her.
Everything happening inside the Instance was laid bare before her eyes.
In the dining car, Deng Ziwen had finally met his saving knight, Zhao Weilai.
The three members of the Jiangcheng University team had reunited.
“Pfft—”
Song Mo laughed so hard she almost swallowed her toothpaste. She quickly bent over to spit it into the sink, unable to stop giggling.
She hadn't expected Deng Ziwen to survive either.
The moment this guy entered the carriage, he had run into that gang of white thugs.
His items, peace talisman, and train ticket had all been snatched away, and he had even taken a knife slash to the abdomen.
Watching the Instance's feed at the time, Song Mo had genuinely thought the kid was going to meet his end in the third carriage.
After all, he had no medicine, no gear, and was severely injured. Encountering the first night's anomaly should have been a death sentence.
Yet, who could have guessed? After robbing him, the thugs feared his death in the carriage would bring them trouble. So, while The Invisible Train Conductor was heading toward the fourth carriage, they squeezed him through the gap in the connecting door into the next carriage.
Song Mo's expression at the time had been: “...?”
By some stroke of sheer luck, the fourth carriage was the designated dining car safe zone.
Even luckier, Deng Ziwen still had one item that hadn't been stolen: the 【Endless Toilet Paper】.
This guy had torn the toilet paper into strips and wrapped his abdominal wound tightly, managing to hold out until Zhao Weilai and her group entered the dining car.
Song Mo swore that the exact second Zhao Weilai appeared behind the door, tears must have burst from Deng Ziwen's eyes.
If it weren't for the others being there, he probably would have wailed out loud on the spot.
...
“He's truly so unlucky, yet so hilarious.”
Song Mo watched for a bit longer. Seeing that the Instance was running normally, she stopped monitoring it.
Her time was precious; every single minute and second had to be used productively.
This time, a total of seven veteran players had been pulled into the London Instance, all of whom were members of the Jiangcheng University team.
Aside from Zhao Weilai and Liu Guilan (who was a 【Clay Sculptor】) who already had classes, out of the remaining five, Song Mo actually had high hopes for two:
One was Fu Qinqin. She looked quiet and gentle, but she was actually quite shrewd and knew how to look out for herself.
When the anomaly descended on the first night, she had been the first player to realize the rule that "tickets must be kept on one's person."
The other was Ding Feifan.
He was a rather complex person. In a sense, Zhou Shengsheng's death could be attributed to him.
Yet, when chaos broke out in the Instance, he had also saved several strangers.
As for the remaining three players—she would observe them a bit longer. There were thousands of players, and her attention was precious; she didn't have the energy to spare for everyone.
...
Song Mo tapped her fingers against the sink's tiles, falling into deep thought for a few seconds.
Currently, the progress of Instances within the country was still too slow.
Players awakened classes purely by chance and had to figure out their skills on their own. Their growth rate was clearly failing to keep pace with the breeding speed of the ghosts.
Instances had already begun descending abroad.
The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons in Tokyo, the Jersey Devil in New Jersey, and the weeping woman of Texas... they were all slaughtering people indiscriminately in reality.
Although similar situations hadn't occurred domestically yet, if the players' growth rate remained too slow, it was only a matter of time before things went south.
She needed to give the players a little boost.
Song Mo calculated her remaining Screenwriter Points. They were still enough to open two small Instances or three reality scripts—
With her operations, ten 【Random Class Cards】 were distributed into the currently running Instances: 【Taiping Cemetery】, 【Campus Ghost Stories】, 【The Wishing Livestream Room】, and 【London Death Subway】—
Of the ten Random Class Cards, the highest quality was green and the lowest was gray. Who would obtain a class was entirely up to luck.
Of course, having a class didn't mean a player couldn't die.
Song Mo counted on her fingers, optimistically estimating that once this Instance ended, she should be able to afford two ten-draws for skills.
After deploying the class cards, she turned and walked out of the bathroom.
Crouched on the windowsill was a fluffy, exquisite gray mouse about the size of a kitten.
...
Upon seeing Song Mo approach, the mouse squeaked twice, left behind a crumpled piece of paper, and scurried away.
“A message from a Mouse Servant?”
Song Mo opened the note and, as expected, saw crooked mouse-writing:
“Milord, I, already, start learn human speak, learn human write. Your, center mouse (crossed out) Shubu pays respects—
Cemetery has lively crowd, very big lively crowd, has officials, has people, come look quick...”
Song Mo skimmed through the letter, only managing to grasp the Mouse Servant's meaning through half-guessing.
It was currently learning human writing. There was some excitement at Taiping Cemetery—a lot of excitement, in fact—and even people from the Special Investigation Bureau were there. It was asking if she wanted to go watch.
Song Mo, a lover of drama, took a mere hundredth of a second to make her decision.
...
The VIP apron at Jiangcheng Airport was under exceptionally tight security.
Three cordons had been tightly drawn.
The outermost ring consisted of airport security, the middle ring was armed police, and the innermost ring was made up of medical staff in white coats.
Even the airport ground crew was barred from approaching.
At 4:07 AM, an all-white Gulfstream G700 slowly touched down on the runway.
There were no markings on the fuselage, except for a small red cross printed on the tailfin.
Clearly, this was no ordinary private jet, but a modified airborne ICU.
Inside the cabin, all the luxury seats had been removed and replaced with a full suite of intensive care equipment—ventilators, ECG monitors, hemodialysis machines, and ECMO.
There was even a small emergency pharmacy in the corner, stocked with anti-tumor drugs, analgesics, and emergency medicine.
In short, the entire cabin was a mobile intensive care unit.
The modification costs alone had reached eighty million yuan.
The cost of a single flight to Jiangcheng, factoring in route applications, fuel, crew, and pulling strings... easily ran into the tens of millions.
Inside the cabin, an elderly man wearing a ventilator had his eyes half-closed. Yet, beneath his wrinkled eyelids burned an extreme desire to survive.
“I... I cannot wait... for them to enter... I, I must go first...”
The old man's breathing was rapid, a sharp glint in his eyes, his face filled with the terror of death.
He gripped the sleeve of the person beside him with all his strength, squeezing out his words one by one:
“The... Special Investigation Bureau... I'll give them whatever they want. I... I'm willing to donate my entire fortune, as long as... they let... me enter an Instance...”
This pampered yet disease-ridden businessman seemed to erupt with boundless vitality the moment he mentioned the word "Instance"—
Similar scenarios were playing out elsewhere.
...
At the Special Investigation Bureau, Chen Xi stood outside the training room, looking up at the sky.
Overhead, airplanes were taking off and landing along their flight paths. Unlike usual, it was exceptionally busy, and the near-urgent roars seemed to foretell:
Jiangcheng was about to become the center of the storm.
Rate on N.U.
