Players, Please Board the Train

There were no labels on the syringe, and its color was different from the previous P1 or P0 versions of the potion.

”Click, click, click...” As soon as the syringe was pulled out, the half arm he was holding automatically split apart. After the metal components fell away, a small flashing device was revealed at the wrist. The green light flickered twice, and suddenly the entire hotel turned ethereal!

After a momentary sensation of falling, Xu Huo landed back in the hotel, but no sooner had his feet touched the ground than a gust of wind brushed past his neck. While dodging the attack, he heard a command: ”Disarm!”

Involuntarily, his hands went slack, and the device and syringe both fell toward the ground. As he came to his senses and tried to grab them back, a net-like item suddenly appeared on the floor, cleanly scooping up both things.

Looking up, Old Zheng and Eagle, who shouldn’t have been anywhere near him, were now blocking him from the front and back.

Xu Huo’s eyes turned cold. Just as he was about to make a move, the device snatched by Old Zheng flickered violently twice. The next second, the hotel turned ethereal again, then stabilized two seconds later. As the environment changed, the sound of chaotic fighting came from outside the hotel, making the three facing off realize they were back at Corpse Hotel!

The device in Old Zheng’s hand emitted a puff of white smoke and self-destructed. He immediately crashed through the door next to him and ran toward the window, barking orders at Eagle, ”Kill him!”

”Vacuum sta...” Eagle reached out toward Xu Huo, but before he could finish his words, the man who had been standing in the hallway had already flashed into the room. An air barrier materialized between them, and several items Eagle tried to use afterward failed to take effect. By the time the barrier vanished, Xu Huo had already chased Old Zheng and jumped out the window.

From the hotel’s top floor, it was at least a hundred meters to the ground. After leaping out the window, Old Zheng used a suction cup item to cling to the hotel’s exterior wall. The two suction cups moved like octopus tentacles, crawling downward along the wall. He hadn’t expected Xu Huo to catch up so quickly, and seeing the man jump down without any protection, he punched through the glass of a lower floor and scrambled back inside.

Xu Huo, following close behind, grabbed the piano wire with one hand while stepping on the window frame with one foot. He activated ”Important Call,” and as Old Zheng raised a hand in response, Xu Huo swept his sword across horizontally!”Clang!” The sword energy was blocked by an unassuming metal piece. Old Zheng, already at the door, turned back and shouted at him, ”The Shackles of Morality!”

Xu Huo used an air barrier to deflect it. In the blink of an eye, Old Zheng had vanished from the doorway.

Equipping the Murmuring Sphere, Xu Huo kicked straight through the wall. Without needing to go through the room, he attacked directly from within it. His opponent couldn’t see him, but he could accurately sense Old Zheng’s position. He cut across the entire corridor from room to room, successfully blocking Old Zheng’s path and using ”Like Repels Like” to bounce him back from the stairway into the hallway!

Old Zheng’s expression was no longer as relaxed as before. After a brief pause, his face turned even uglier.

”The train ticket won’t work anymore?” Xu Huo gripped the ”Eye of the Dead,” staring at him with an icy gaze. ”Let me make it clear: unless you die, you are never leaving this dungeon!”

As his words fell, the distance between them had shrunk to mere inches. Old Zheng seemed to have gotten used to his speed; he kicked off the ground and flew backward through the air while tossing out something like a scroll. The unrolled fabric instantly sealed off the entire corridor.

Unfortunately, that item didn’t last two seconds before Xu Huo slashed through it with his sword. Watching Old Zheng flee ahead of him, he raised his hand and activated ”The Strength of Writing.”

In that instant, Old Zheng, with his back turned to him, twisted his head in a bizarre angle—his body was still running forward, but his head was involuntarily turning back. It was stuck, unable to swivel back, and his eyes could only stare fixedly at Xu Huo!

As Xu Huo’s figure blurred into an afterimage, Old Zheng produced a bubble machine item. With a casual wave, countless bubbles surged out, instantly filling the entire corridor and blocking both sides’ line of sight.

After five seconds passed, Old Zheng saw Xu Huo standing alertly in place within the bubbles, having lost his target. He sneered coldly, grabbed a noose, and slipped it over Xu Huo’s head!

The noose tightened automatically, dragging Xu Huo toward him. Old Zheng cautiously kept his distance, only relaxing when he saw Xu Huo’s legs gradually losing strength against the floor. ”I thought you were something special...”

A cold sword blade pierced through his chest, emerging with fresh blood into his field of vision. Old Zheng lowered his head, opened his mouth, and coughed up blood first. He turned his head in disbelief, only to find another Xu Huo standing behind him—he had no idea when!

He seemed to want to say something, but the blood choking his throat stole his final chance.

Xu Huo withdrew his hand, casually pushed the man over, picked up the noose that hadn’t actually caught anything, and added another stab, finishing off Old Zheng.

As his breath ceased, Xu Huo received a game notification. But after searching thoroughly, he realized that the green syringe wasn’t among the loot at all!

His mind quickly ran through the events that had just transpired. Xu Huo leaped onto the windowsill and took a look. Eagle, who was supposed to intercept him, had already fled two streets away. Lin Zhenhuai was with him, and the others were nowhere to be seen.

Turning his back to the hotel, he jumped backward. Falling rapidly from the upper floors, he grabbed the ”Chair That Lands Upright” just before hitting the ground. After landing safely, he didn’t even glance back at the now-empty hotel and headed straight toward the Museum City gate.

He had miscalculated. Old Zheng and Eagle had split up just now—one distracting him while the other played bait, having already transferred the syringe. These people claimed to be after high-grade items on the surface, and maybe they were after both, but they were almost certainly aware of the S-version Potion, otherwise they wouldn’t have passed it off so quickly.

The two minutes it took to kill Old Zheng were more than enough for these people to scatter and escape.

Xu Huo couldn’t be sure whether the syringe taken from the puppet’s arm was the S-version Potion, but he was not about to let something he’d gotten his hands on be stolen just like that.

Now, regardless of whether these people had tickets or not, they had to leave through the main gate.

He sped across the shop rooftops, but before he could take two steps, his foot suddenly seemed to step on some kind of mechanism. Looking down, the ground was still empty, but his right foot was clamped from front and back by sawtooth-like grips, just like an animal trap, making it impossible to move.

”Hehe! Another fat sheep!” Two oddly dressed players jumped out from under a shop, sneering as they approached him.

He tapped the ”Universal Lubricant,” and the invisible item on his foot was removed. He grabbed the long knife swinging at him with one hand, then turned his head to look at the player. The moment their eyes met, for some unknown reason, the player froze in place, standing still as Xu Huo cleanly lopped off his head.

As one body fell, Xu Huo turned his gaze to the other person.