Players, Please Board the Train

Yan Jiayu expressed her regret with great emotion before hanging up the phone.

Xu Huo rested for the night, then set out the next day for the southern border to find Zheng Liang’s friend and meet up with a few people who wanted to leave the country.

Since the start of the gamification, very few people had actually wanted to leave, because compared to other countries, Nation X was still relatively peaceful—especially since the return tickets obtained after each dungeon essentially sent players back to their permanent residence before they entered the game. Unless they had no intention of returning to Zone 014, spending the effort to go to another country wasn’t very useful.

The increase in numbers over the past few days was entirely due to the incident at the Special Defense Department headquarters. Not only ordinary citizens but even players within the country had begun to harbor xenophobic sentiments.

Ordinary people could still be controlled, but players truly couldn’t be restrained. Minor conflicts often escalated into irreversible fights. Of course, players from Nation X living abroad were also having a hard time—at least before the headquarters incident, there hadn’t been such strong hostility toward foreign players within Nation X’s borders.

Under these circumstances, some people wanted to cross the border to leave, and most of them were foreigners.

When Xu Huo arrived with Lichun, the others who were also preparing to leave were a bit surprised but didn’t actively approach them. Instead, they kept their distance.

“Brother Sun is here.” One of them spotted a figure emerging from the woods and immediately waved at him.

This area was close to the border, and patrols would pass by from time to time. They were all hidden in the grass. The man called Brother Sun had arrived five minutes ago, repeatedly checked the surroundings, and only then came out, gesturing for everyone to crouch lower.

Brother Sun crouched down with them and began speaking after using an item. “Everyone’s here. Did you bring the money?”The players immediately took out their White Bills. After verifying their authenticity, Brother Sun handed each of them a white card. On the front of the card was a three-minute clock. “When the time comes, take this card and just walk straight across. But you need to remember two things: first, don’t make any noise yourselves; second, the effect only lasts three minutes.”

“Can this guarantee a one hundred percent pass?” Another, younger player flipped the card over skeptically.

“If you don’t want the deal, you can cancel.” Brother Sun reached out to take the card back, and the young player quickly tucked it away. “I’m just joking.”

“This is my characteristic. It’s called Free Cross-Border.” Brother Sun added, “It allows you to luckily cross over within a certain time frame. As long as you don’t mess up, you’ll succeed. I’ve sent over a dozen people across, and not a single one had an accident.”

“That’s right,” said the player who had first greeted Brother Sun, clearly a Nation X native. He rubbed his bald head in a show of respect. “If the Special Defense Department had really caught on, would this route still exist now?”

Brother Sun snorted. “You’ll definitely get across, but what happens after you cross isn’t my problem. If you get caught by the people on the other side, that’s your own bad luck.”

“You make money so easily.” Lichun took out a hand and typed out a line of text. “Just handing out one card per person. Since that card is so useful, can you give me another one?”

Brother Sun was originally quite unhappy, but after seeing the Painting Woman’s face, his anger subsided a bit. “My characteristic has a range limit. I have to send you all across before I can leave. Do you understand? I can’t leave within those three minutes either. I’m taking a risk too. Our country’s Special Defense Department is pretty damn effective—you gotta change spots after every shot.”

Seeing that he refused, the Painting Woman pouted for a moment and then let it go.

The border was overgrown with weeds, and with the strong wind, it was hard to be spotted while crouched low. But since they only had three minutes to get through, they had to run.

A total of six players lined up and left in order, with Xu Huo and the Painting Woman at the back. Just before they left, Brother Sun secretly slipped the Painting Woman a blue card and made a shushing gesture at her.

The blue card had a four-minute clock. The Painting Woman beamed and blew him a kiss before chasing after Xu Huo into the grass.

Once they had all left, the cards began their countdown from three minutes.

Even with the card’s guarantee, the players still pulled out all the stops—silencing their movements, accelerating, or hiding their forms—to get through as safely as possible.

The fences on the border had been reinforced and raised, with two additional layers added, equipped with special sensor and surveillance systems. This meant that even if they hid perfectly, as long as they were alive, they would be detected by the monitoring from a great distance.

If the alarm was triggered, the poison gas devices on the fences would activate automatically first, and then Special Defense Department players would arrive within ten seconds.

In such a short time, safely and correctly crossing three fences wasn’t guaranteed. And even if they succeeded, the pursuing SDF players could cross the border to enforce the law—the borders between countries weren’t very stable these days, with occasional conflicts. As long as it didn’t blow up into a major incident, everyone would just turn a blind eye.

So even after getting across, SDF players might still catch them and bring them back.

To get through, they had to successfully scale the fences without triggering any alarms. Once they were across, whether the neighboring country would act or not was none of Nation X’s business.

Brother Sun’s card was meant to handle exactly this.

The group approached the first fence. After confirming the alarm hadn’t been triggered, they began to climb over.

The young player directly used an item to dig a large hole under the fence—a process that took less than three seconds. He jumped in, climbed up on the other side, and passed through the fence without attracting any attention.

The six of them went through one by one, crouching in the grass as they moved toward the second fence. During the journey, they paused whenever a searchlight swept past, resuming their movement only after the light passed.

But just as they were about to reach the second fence, Xu Huo detected a moving device sliding toward them from a distance along the top of the fence.

“That’s a mobile electronic eye, controlled by a player. Dig a hole, fast!” the bald player said urgently to the young player. “It’s harder to be spotted underground!”

The young player immediately got to work. Once the hole was dug, all six of them jumped in, pulling the grass over their heads to cover themselves, and waited for the electronic eye to pass.

“Zzzzz…” The device made a faint whirring sound. When they felt the sound stop near them, everyone present couldn’t help but tense up. But a few seconds later, the electronic eye slid away.

“That was close…” The bald player let out a long breath and turned back to the others. “Looks like we’re pretty lucky.”

“Can we go now?” A burly man looked at the card in his hand. “We’re running out of time.”

“Wait a bit more.” The young player peered outward. “We can still be spotted at this distance.”

But his words didn’t carry much weight. After waiting another few seconds, the burly man was the first to climb out, followed closely by another foreign player.

The young player shrugged helplessly. “There’s a saying in Nation X: ‘Haste makes waste.’ What’s another ten seconds or so?”

“Shut up! Move it!”