Players, Please Board the Train

Xu Huo had just finished inspecting the first office. As he stepped out, he came face to face with the Flower Basket Girl and her companion. Despite their stark contrast in appearance and build, both wore strikingly similar expressions. The Burly Man immediately moved to shield the Flower Basket Girl behind him. ”If you’ve got a problem, deal with me!”

Xu Huo glanced up at him. ”Your Mandarin is quite good.”

The Burly Man and Flower Basket Girl exchanged confused looks, but Xu Huo had already turned and walked away.

This floor covered a substantial area but had a simple layout, essentially forming an irregular ”T” shape. The horizontal section was a corridor that directly faced fifteen elevators. The spot where he had initially appeared in the game was separated from the restroom by just a single wall, with the entrance located on the open office area side.

Beyond the office area were a break room and several individual offices. Aside from some everyday living supplies and office items, these two areas contained absolutely no personal belongings, research materials, or anything similar.

There were no hidden walls, small secret rooms, or concealed safes—not even decorative paintings on the walls. This entire floor had been scrubbed clean.

Xu Huo walked to the window at the end of the corridor and looked up. Sparse leaves of vine plants peeked over the edge of the rooftop.

After standing there for a few seconds, he turned to face the person who had quietly approached from behind.

Zheng Liang, who had been deliberately lightening his footsteps, stopped and glared coldly at him. ”Xu Huo, you just can’t help but show off wherever you go. Let me tell you, when things get dangerous, those people outside will only hold you back.”

Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. ”Aside from being physically stronger than those people outside, in what other aspect do you believe you excel over them?”Zheng Liang forcibly suppressed his anger, turned on his heel, and stalked off, muttering, ”Biting the hand that feeds you!”

Xu Huo stepped towards the open office area.

Gu Yu and her group had already returned and were now huddled together, discussing how to handle the situation going forward.

Since the offices offered no clues, they needed to figure out how to prepare for potential dangers.

”We should probably seal the elevator doors,” suggested the Bespectacled Player. ”Whether it’s mutated plants or mutated animals, there are only two ways they can get in: through the windows or through the elevators.”

”Wei Bin makes a valid point. The elevators are manageable, but how do we seal the floor-to-ceiling windows?” asked the Skull-print Short-sleeved Man. ”The window area is massive, and it’s one single pane. There are no good anchor points. Even if we moved all the desks and chairs here, we couldn’t block it effectively.”

”My item could be of some use,” Zheng Liang chimed in from the side. ”But it doesn’t have much offensive power. I doubt it would hold up against anything serious.”

”What about the elevator doors then?” countered the Mole-faced Player. ”We don’t want to secure the front only to get attacked from behind.”

The other players looked troubled. While they all possessed some defensive items, their protective range was limited.

”This is utterly ridiculous. Why are there so many damn elevators in this cursed place?” grumbled the Bald Player. ”Fifteen elevators on a single floor!”

”It might be related to the game,” Gu Yu reasoned. ”This is the fifteenth floor, and there are fifteen elevators. There might be some special significance.”

The other players also wore puzzled expressions. Compared to the number of desks on the fifteenth floor, fifteen elevators seemed excessively and bizarrely high.

”Could it be that the building was already invaded by mutated plants, and the researchers installed additional elevators?” suggested a Square-faced Player.

Zheng Liang rolled his eyes. ”Who would willingly live alongside such ferocious mutated plants? Researchers are there to conduct studies, not to be lunatics.”

”You can’t be entirely sure about that,” the Square-faced Player retorted, turning to the Bespectacled Player. ”Wei Bin, don’t you agree?”

Wei Bin used his nose to push his glasses up and said slowly, ”Hard to say. Can you really expect people who cultivated such monstrous things to be entirely normal?”

”Let’s set aside the questions we can’t figure out for now and deal with the immediate problem,” Gu Yu said, glancing down at her phone, which showed no signal. ”Let’s seal the windows first.”

At that moment, the Backpack Middle-aged Man, who had been observing from the side, spoke up. ”We found several rolls of tape. Do you think they could be useful?”

Gu Yu looked at the people holding the items. Besides the tape, they had also fashioned makeshift weapons by taping pens or utility knives onto detached chair legs. The office desks and chairs were modular; some parts could be removed and used as clubs.

”What good is tape going to do?” the Mole-faced Player waved his hand impatiently. ”Can it stop a Man-eating Flower or a mutated animal? It can’t even hold back a person.”

”The tape might be worth a try,” Xu Huo said, after testing the tape’s toughness. ”Even if it doesn’t stop the Man-eating Flowers completely, it will create an obstacle for them. As long as you aren’t instantly bitten in the head during an attack, there’s still a chance of survival.”

The individuals holding the tape were visibly encouraged and immediately asked, ”So should we use the tape to seal the elevators?”

”Not the elevators. Seal the windows,” Xu Huo clarified, then glanced back at Gu Yu and the others, deciding to spell it out. ”There are fifteen elevators in total. Normally, each elevator has a capacity of thirteen people. Combined with the nearly two hundred people here, including players, that probably isn’t a coincidence.”

”The elevator doors themselves can block the Man-eating Flowers. We don’t need a secondary line of defense for now.”

”You make it sound so easy. What if the elevator doors suddenly open?” the Mole-faced Player argued. ”If people die because of that, will you take responsibility?”

It was merely a matter of probability.

The elevator doors were made of metal, offering better defense than anything else they could improvise. In other words, if something inside the elevator shaft could shatter metal, then any additional defenses they set up would be useless.

As for whether the elevator doors might open automatically, that was an unforeseeable event. Furthermore, judging by the bloodstains at the elevator entrances, these elevators were likely operational.

Assuming danger came from outside the windows and they couldn’t handle it, the elevators would be the only possible means of escape.

Therefore, whether they sealed the elevators or not carried additional risks, but Xu Huo leaned towards leaving them unsealed.

However, he employed a rather straightforward method of persuasion: ”With ninety hours on the clock, do you really think the game will let you idle around on the fifteenth floor?”

The Mole-faced Player was left speechless.

”I also think it’s better not to seal them,” the Backpack Middle-aged Man added. ”There are fifteen elevators. It’s unlikely every single one leads to mutated plants, right?”

”Even if some do, the elevators naturally separate those threats. Dealing with one is easier than dealing with fifteen.”

Gu Yu and the others considered this and found the logic sound. They agreed not to seal the elevators and to focus on sealing the windows.

”Be careful. Make sure you don’t drop anything down,” she cautioned, then called to her companions for assistance. ”Xiao Ba, Zhang Biao, keep a close eye on things.”

The young man in the skull-print short-sleeve and the Mole-faced Player went to help. The remaining players gathered near the elevators, trying to discern any useful information.

”No good. Knocking doesn’t get any response from inside,” Zheng Liang reported dejectedly after a while. ”It might be just like before—that thing could appear silently right behind the door.”

”Can’t smell anything either,” Wei Bin said, his face pressed against the elevator door crack as he sniffed hard. He turned back and added, ”But I suppose that’s somewhat good news. At least there’s no poisonous gas inside.”