Players, Please Board the Train

The Painting Woman, wearing the “Joyful Invisibility” coat, had already walked away from Brother Shi’s corpse. She seemed especially curious and didn’t sneak to the side as Xu Huo had told her to before he acted; instead, she walked over to the female player.

After she blended into the environment, even Xu Huo couldn’t see her. He noticed her standing still there, while the female player’s hair on one side was gently brushed aside. He didn’t call her back but said to Fang Penghui and the others, “I killed him. Any objections?”

Objections certainly existed, and they were strong, but Brother Shi, who wasn’t weak in skill, had been killed in a single encounter, and the two players who followed him out hadn’t returned. Fighting to the death was pointless.

“Our goal is just to stop them from setting fires,” Fang Penghui stated his position. “You killed him, so the items naturally go to you.”

“But we can’t let these few off easily,” he pointed at the female player and her group. “They can’t drag everyone down just because of them.”

Hearing that, those players immediately protested. “The statue can bewitch players. Why is burning it bad?”

“Do you have any brains?!” the Square-Faced Man said. “If the house burns down but the statue’s still there, that’s digging a hole for everyone!”

“Since not looking at the statue means nothing’s wrong, even if it gets exposed, it shouldn’t be a big deal,” the other side said matter-of-factly.

Fang Penghui and the others were momentarily furious to the point of laughter. “I seriously can’t figure out how you made it to a D-rank dungeon!”

Before they could finish arguing, the residents who had nearly burned to death without even opening their eyes all woke up at once. Their first reaction wasn’t to flee but to rush into the rooms to rescue the statues!The players were startled and immediately tried to block them with various abilities, but the key wasn’t those outside; it was the ones trapped inside the fire. Just as the players rushed over, someone had already come out carrying a wooden cabinet!

“Holy shit!” someone cursed, and the players immediately scattered to the sides.

Both the person who ran out of the fire and the wooden cabinet were actually engulfed in flames. The bewitched residents seemed completely oblivious to the fire on their bodies; they ran as living torches toward water and shoved the cabinet into it.

Unfortunately, the wood that had been burning for a while fell apart as soon as it hit the water, and then a fist-sized wooden eyeball rolled out, floating on the surface.

No red light appeared. After waiting a while, a bold player walked over to check, only to find that the wooden eyes, whether in the water tank or on the ground, were all cracked from burning. The wooden shell shattered, and several round objects rolled out from inside.

“These are… eyeballs!”

What rolled out of those wooden eyes were all rotting eyeballs. Some were so decomposed that they disintegrated into a fluff-like substance when soaked in water, releasing a stench that filled the air!

“Aren’t these the eyeballs of the missing players?” Wei Xian said in disgust. “The boss of this dungeon is too disgusting, digging out living people’s eyes for worship!”

“A few are fresh!” another player said, crushing a cracked wooden eye underfoot. Several eyeballs rolled out, among them a pair with blue irises.

“I remember one of the players who went missing last night was a half-blood with blue eyes.”

That meant the person disappeared yesterday, and today their eyes were already placed inside the statue.

“I knew those bastards were no good!” a player pointed at the injured residents nearby. “They definitely put those eyes in!”

“They were probably waiting for the right time to drag us down. If they really pulled those wooden eyes out, we couldn’t stop them with just this many people!”

“In my opinion, we should strike first!”

“No!” Yi Pei immediately objected. “Don’t forget, there are still children here. Would you kill children too?”

“No?” the player proposing the massacre said coldly. “It’s either them or us. If you want to play saint, first weigh your own abilities!”

Yi Pei gripped her item, her voice sharp and threatening. “Then come and try!”

At that moment, quite a few players sided with the massacre faction. Killing came at too low a cost, especially in dungeons; they had lost count of how many people they had killed just to survive.

“People need to have some bottom lines,” the Black-Shirted Player said with a frown, standing on Yi Pei’s side. “I don’t approve of killing either.”

Fang Penghui, Tian Kunwen, and the others hesitated before also choosing Yi Pei’s side.

The player who first proposed the massacre saw the numbers on both sides were about even and said, “You all just saw it too. Those people are so influenced by the statue that they don’t even feel death. If they go berserk, who can stop them? Surviving is the only thing that matters in a dungeon!”

“I have a question,” Xu Huo interjected, cutting off the two hostile factions. He asked the hooded-shirt-wearing man, “How can you be sure that killing everyone here will prevent anyone from bringing out the statue?”

The hooded-shirt man was momentarily speechless, then said, “Isn’t that obvious? Without them, players won’t touch the statue either.”

“You forgot something,” Xu Huo said. “How did those corpses disappear?”

He turned to the female player who had been with Brother Shi. “You were guarding that player’s corpse just now. Where is it?”

The female player’s expression was complicated. “It disappeared.”

Earlier, when the town residents went berserk, they had left the yard. By the time they returned, the corpse was gone, but the item placed on it was still lying in the yard.

“The people in town must have moved the corpse!” the hooded-shirt player asserted decisively. “Their goal is to pressure us psychologically.”

“Use a little imagination,” Xu Huo said. “The corpse might have left on its own.”

The players present couldn’t help but find that absurd, but Yi Pei suddenly realized what he meant and blurted out, “Are you saying that those we encountered last night were all corpses!”

“What do you mean? What did you encounter?” Fang Penghui pressed urgently.

Yi Pei’s expression was grave. “Yesterday, we followed the Administrator, but in the woods, it felt like we were being ambushed. They were very different from living people, and I didn’t even think they were human at first.”

Yi Pei had poor eyesight, so during her evolution, she had developed a trait similar to radar that allowed her to judge the size and shape of objects within a certain range. She only vaguely sensed that the “people” who appeared had slightly different feedback information, but she never connected it to corpses.

First of all, corpses moving on their own defied common sense. Even if items were involved, what kind of item could control so many corpses in batches and command them to attack?

Absolutely absurd!

It was more likely that they were humanoid items.

The other players shared Yi Pei’s thoughts. Fang Penghui said, “Living people can move because they’re alive. Even if corpses move, they couldn’t have strong attack power.”

Let alone handle players.

“Fine, let’s say those corpses have no attack power,” Xu Huo conceded, then said something that sent chills down their spines, “Are all the missing players dead?”