Sui Xifan stood in front of his wife.
He signaled Zhan Chen to be on guard, and walked slowly to the door that appeared out of nowhere, and listened to the sounds inside through the door.
Zhan Chen looked up and gestured.
Sui Xifan shook his head, made a gesture of attack, stretched out his hand to hold the door, and with the other hand raised three fingers and bent them down one by one.
As he bent his last finger, he opened the door and rolled behind it neatly.
Zhan Chen protected Yu Tang with one hand, and three bullets shot out from his palm with a strong wind and disappeared into the darkness inside the door.
It was still quiet inside the door.
Sui Xifan took the pistol thrown by Zhan Chen, used the door as a cover, and aimed the gun inside.
… There was no one inside the door, nor were there any monsters that would suddenly jump out and bite the player like in normal games.
There was only one ridiculously narrow staircase inside.
There were two metal badges placed at the door. They were obviously very old. No matter how shiny the surface was, it even showed obvious rust.
Sui Xifan reached out and picked up the two badges at the door.
When viewed up close, the rust on the badge is more obvious. Through the rust, one can only vaguely make out the numbers on it, one is "4" and the other is "9".
Looking inside the door, all I could see was a staircase with a visible end, leading into pitch-black darkness where I couldn't see my hand in front of me.
"I saw other situations."
Sui Xifan put away his gun, stood up and walked back: "According to the game rules just announced, our current identities are children in an orphanage and we need to take an exam."
Sui Xinfan: "The players are scattered in different places in the orphanage. From this perspective, this door may be for the convenience of players to reach the examination room."
Zhan Chen spread out his palms, let the three warheads float back into his palms, and nodded.
He seemed to be still thinking about something, his eyes fixed on the door.
"I'll go take a look first." Sui Xifan said, "You guys stay here—"
Zhan Chen: “That’s right.”
Sui Fan was stunned for a moment: "Is there a problem?"
"I've seen this door before," Zhan Chen said, "but it's the other way around."
When Yu Tang took the assessment for the first time, he hadn't yet remembered who he was. As an employee of the Supervisory Department, he had no choice but to take over the role of Zhong San.
After Feng Qing was abandoned by his adoptive parents, he took Feng Qing home and taught Feng Qing how to use the modeling software on the computer.
The prospective employees who came for the assessment had neither interest nor talent for these things, and could only model a cat that walked with its nose and a rabbit that ate grass with its ears. In the end, they were disappointed and dropped the mouse and went back to eating bubble gum.
Feng Qing is just like Electronic Storm who came for the assessment. He likes modeling very much and will sneak to touch the computer as soon as he wakes up.
In that script, Feng Qing once modeled a door using his computer.
"The carvings on the door are the opposite of what I remember." Zhan Chen said, "We are outside the door, and our side is 'inside the door'."
Sui Fan frowned: "What do you mean?"
Zhan Chen opened his mouth, and a mocking voice with a sneer suddenly came from the corner of the hall: "It means that you idiots are so lucky that you happened to sit in front of the door and are actually studying some crappy carvings here."
Sui Xifan and Zhan Chen looked at each other, then reached out to stop his wife and met the gaze of those men.
Zhan Chen took the gun that Sui Xifan threw back from behind.
"It's the three people in the basement."
The air beside Zhan Chen was turbulent for a moment, and Sui Yufan's voice came: "This house is waking up. I can't merge with the villa. I can only detect that they are all A-level mutants, and two of them have already opened their domains."
Zhan Chen held the gun in his palm. He was still leaning on the sofa, holding the sleeping Yu Tang in his arms, and with one hand he pressed the bullets he had searched from the director of the Secret Service Bureau into the magazine one by one.
Standing in the front was a thin man.
His limbs were exceptionally thin and skinny, and for some reason, his face was strangely pale, and his body seemed a little hunched.
He looked at the Sui team doctor: "Are you the A-level healer?"
The man narrowed his eyes and grinned: "Your ability should be matched with an A-level attack-type physical system. If you kick your man, follow us..."
His voice stopped abruptly, and a hand suddenly covered his chest.
His palm was pierced by the bullet, but no blood flowed out. A strange vortex like turbulence was instantly formed, and the bullet was swallowed up with a "gulp".
The man looked at Zhan Chen with a disdainful expression, and spread out his palm. A turbid current swirled in the hole in his palm that was burned by the bullet.
In the blink of an eye, the wound was repaired, and there was no sign of abnormality.
Sui Fan blocked his sinister gaze and said in a cold voice, "Who are you?"
"You never look at the rankings, do you?"
The man looked at Sui Xifan and said, "I know you. In the first round, the bets on you were even higher than mine."
"We are professional players, a hunting team that specializes in accepting customized missions and earning bounties from those big companies."
…
In the sea of consciousness, the system suddenly spoke: "Mr. Zhan, we have collected their information!"
When he first entered the game, Yu Tang created a large number of unowned small accounts in the message area, posted phishing messages everywhere, and obtained a lot of information.
Yu Tang didn't have time to deal with it for the time being, so he handed it all over to the system, which recorded them all together.
The one marked in red is this hunting team.
"A large portion of viewers who come to watch the Battle Royale live broadcast come for the thrill and excitement, but a considerable portion also come to buy cards."
The system said: "A few people enjoy the feeling of hunting and will personally hunt cards as VIP players. But there are also many people who think this method is too cruel..."
These people are more or less aware of the nature of this behavior and know what the cards mean.
While watching the live broadcast, they would encounter the superpowers they wanted to obtain, but the owners of these superpowers died in time and turned into cards for them to buy.
These people want to buy cards, but they don't want to do it themselves, which brings sin upon themselves.
“Some companies have taken advantage of this opportunity and developed customized features.”
System: "Players only need to customize the cards. We will never ask where these cards came from."
"These companies will package themselves as high-end technology companies and claim that these are proxy cards that they use to simulate real superpowers."
"Although this is said, in fact, almost everyone knows that these cards are also obtained through hunting, but the hunters have changed..."
This hunting team is the most famous team hired by these companies.
The team leader is Duan You, an A-level mutant with the power of "vortex".
He is currently ranked first on the list of surviving players, and according to the evaluation, he is also the one with the greatest chance of successfully evolving into an S-level psychic.
The two people following him were also A-level, one had only one eye, the other was holding a cigarette, and half of his body was covered with intricate tattoos.
These three people were originally desperadoes who committed crimes and were exiled to a small marginal star belt. They mainly underwent transformation with superpowers, survived from the first game to the present, and are currently the top three in the battle rankings.
They had hunted down countless people with special abilities and had made a fortune. They had originally wanted to make a fortune once more and then retire, but they had not expected to be drawn into this strange world.
"How did you pick the players for the final battle of this round? It's fine if they brought in two self-righteous, pretentious idiots... but they even sent in a few rookies who were just sitting here chatting."
Duan You glanced at the door and licked his lips: "Are the rules of the game clear enough? Ten people take the exam, and only three can get out - if we kill the other seven, we will be those three people."
"Didn't you find this villa strange?" Team Doctor Sui said, "If there are ten people, it will pull new people in. There is no point in killing people like this."
"Of course I found out." Duan You said, "Is that how that nerd created the haunted illusion and killed twenty-three people?"
Duan You: "I cooperated with him and sent 23 people to him to kill, so why did my people get involved?"
Team doctor Sui's eyes darkened and he couldn't help frowning.
… Indeed, under the premise of attracting players without any rules, this completely crazy method has become the only way.
If the player who rotates in is the one you are looking for, then clear him out and make room for another spot.
If it still is, clean it up again.
If we keep cleaning like this, sooner or later we will be able to rotate in the people we are looking for.
…But this is too cruel.
Duan You is also a player, and also a mutant who is played by the game. However, this kind of indiscriminate hunting at any time has completely changed his mentality.
In Duan You's view, other players are nothing more than cards that are temporarily alive.
Duan You didn't care what she was thinking at all. He sneered and scratched his ear: "You also feel that the rules of this field have changed, right?"
…
Not long after entering the villa, Duan You discovered something strange about this orphanage.
It is not a clichéd wall with no windows and weird graffiti everywhere, but it is also a ghost wall that looks like a prank.
This orphanage is looking for someone.
It always controls the number of people at ten, that is, the maximum number of people it can pull in is ten, so only after a player dies can it pull in another one.
"It's looking for a hospital."
Duan You said: "Why did they drag this into this?"
Duan You walked over, picked up the portrait and hung it on a nail on the wall.
There was a somewhat strange mark there, as if something had been hung there for a long time and then taken down, leaving a patch of white that was different from the color of the rest of the wall.
After the portrait was hung, the traces were seamlessly covered up.
"Ding Dong." Duan You grinned, "Dean, come in, and the exam can begin."
"The exam is very strict. You are not allowed to enter or leave the exam room at will, and you are not allowed to go to the toilet."
Duan You: "From now on, no matter how many players die, there will be more people coming in."
Team doctor Sui frowned: "How can you be sure?"
"I'm still able to. This is my guess." Duan You licked his lips again and glanced at the people in the room. "So, I decided to confirm it."
"You guys are weird."
"One is an A-level healing ability, and the other is also A-level, but it's just a 'mimicry' that's not useful at all. In a fight, it's not even as good as a B-level offensive ability."
"What's going on with those two over there?" Duan You looked at Zhan Chen. "Are you also players? Whose quota did you take?"
Zhan Chen: "We are here to visit a friend."
Duan You laughed exaggeratedly as if he had heard some unbelievable joke.
Before the smile faded from his face, his expression suddenly turned cold. He opened his hands, and his knuckles made a teeth-grinding crackling sound.
Countless whirlpools suddenly appeared in the hall.
Sui Xifan made a slight movement, and a turbulent chaotic vortex rushed in front of him and stopped him in his tracks.
"It's best to be a bit chaotic." Duan You said, "In this game, the most popular superpower is the devouring superpower, and among the devouring superpowers, the safest one is the 'vortex'."
He also saw the power of the orphanage director, who was holding a card with a deprivation effect and was depriving the powers of people with special abilities everywhere. In the end, all his card slots were stolen and he was backfired by his own cards.
But the "vortex" is the same.
The vortex can digest what it swallows, and it can restore all energy into spiritual energy with special properties. In the chaotic world defined by the vortex, there is only energy, energy that is so dense that it can almost be materialized.
Anything that came into contact with the vortex would be restored and absorbed by it, including the neutralized bullets that the weird newcomer used to attack him.
"I saw you kill that dean."
Duan You: "Based on experience, the more ordinary and inconspicuous something looks, the better it is to strike first and find a way to deal with it."
Duan You looked at Zhan Chen: "Does your ability make people hallucinate?"
For a superpower like No. 45, creating an illusion still requires a script to support it, but it is effective in producing hallucinations.
Hallucinations are born in the mind, fed by consciousness, have countless possibilities, and are not restricted by any conditions.
Duan You didn't believe that the dead could come back and talk. He only believed in his own eyes. He saw with his own eyes that Zhan Chen was safe and sound after being hit by bullets, and he also saw with his own eyes that the bullets penetrated Zhan Chen's body.
The most reasonable explanation is that Zhan Chen can cause hallucinations in everyone who sees him.
Zhan Chen paused for a moment, thought about it carefully, and nodded: "Okay."
His tone and answer made Duan You's eyes jump: "What do you mean?"
"I can be." Zhan Chen said, "I will let you see what you want to see."
Duan You's eyes darkened little by little.
He had escaped from life and death countless times, and had developed an exceptionally keen intuition. However, this newcomer who spoke incoherently had a strange aura that made him wary.
… What was even more frightening than this was the sleepy boy in his arms.
From an observer's perspective, the boy is now extremely weak and exhausted. He must have overdrawn his energy and is relying on sleep to recover.
If it was the custom task that Duan You and his team usually did, these two players were undoubtedly lucky novices, and they could be killed almost effortlessly and used as extra cards.
…
But for some reason, a student who looked ordinary, even a little thin and frail, actually made Duan You feel suffocated and fearful.
Duan You's pupils shrank slightly.
"Kill those two newcomers and feed them to the vortex."
Duan You didn't want to waste any more time. He decided to solve the most dangerous part first: "I'll go open that door."
Only the top three students in the exam could be sent out for "sponsorship to study". All of them were barely literate, so the easiest way to get the top three was to kill the other seven.
There are four people in the hall, and if there are no accidents, this is half the battle.
They hope to get these three survival spots as soon as possible, escape from this ghost game, and then retire from the underworld, enjoying a peaceful death with the huge wealth they have earned.
Duan You turned around and hurried towards the door.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that the A-level healing expert was the first to be swallowed by the vortex. Her husband roared, and rushed forward despite the countless large and small vortexes blocking his way, but he was still a step too late.
Their bodies were devoured by the vortex and were riddled with holes. Like all the psychics he had killed before, there was no blood on their wounds, but their bodies gradually turned pale and shriveled.
They held each other with their last breaths and were slowly sucked dry by the vortex.
The newcomer was taking care of his weak and sleepy companion and could not move around at will. The gun in his hand still had some invalid bullets, which broke up a few whirlpools, but the tattoo hidden in the shadows found an opening.
The black arrow was sharp and hit the two people from behind, directly piercing through them.
The unconscious man didn't even have the chance to wake up, and died silently in his sleep.
The young man who was holding him tightly protected him. He was pierced in the chest by the black arrow. He bent his shoulders and used his body to block the slowly approaching vortex for the corpse of the other party.
…
Duan You sneered and laughed.
He had seen too many scenes of people dying, some reluctant to leave, some begging for mercy in fear, but no matter how tragic the situation was, he never felt a bit.
These scenes were originally created by him, and he had replayed them in his mind countless times before they happened.
Duan You walked into the door and climbed the stairs.
From the outside, it seemed like the height of the stairs went all the way to the end, but when I actually stepped on the stairs, I found that I had not walked very far, and there was a bedroom at the end.
There were three corpses in the room. They seemed to have died of suicide. They were all lying on the bed and had been dead for a long time.
Duan You counted them carefully several times and couldn't help but get ecstatic.
…they are the last players standing!
This was the strangest round of the game he had ever participated in. Now that all the other players in the villa were dead, they were the only three left who could safely exit the game and survive.
Given their real strength, the game owners have no way of capturing them and forcing them to continue participating. After they quit, they just quit. The money they earn is enough for them to squander for several lifetimes.
Duan You turned around, walked down the stairs quickly, and called the other two people: "Come on—"
He suddenly froze.
… They had been partners for a long time and were already familiar with each other's abilities and methods. But this time, he saw shock and fear in the eyes of the other two.
He knew something terrible was going to happen, so he stretched out his hand towards the door, but suddenly stopped the next second.
…
His hands melted.
He hastily raised his hand to touch his face, but he was very clear that he had really done this. He wanted to speak, but the sound he made seemed to be stirred into a turbulent vortex, and became completely chaotic.
What shocked him even more was that everything in front of him had become completely different from before.
The one-eyed man and the tattooed man were knocked unconscious by Sui Fan and his wife and tied up tightly with ink thread. The two strange new players on the sofa were also safe and sound. The bloodstains, wounds, corpses, and all the familiar scenes disappeared.
The hall was clean and there was no trace of any vortex.
He wanted to go back to the door, but was held back by an invisible force.
In the reflection of the metal edging pattern on the door, Duan You saw his current appearance.
… a vortex.
The vortex that disappeared in the hall all fell on him.
He was now a mass with only the vaguest human shape left, a vortex composed of countless chaotic turbulences.
…
"Are you satisfied with what you see?" Zhan Chen asked.
Duan You was already filled with fear. He shook his head with his hands and asked in a hoarse voice: "What did you do to me? What exactly is your power?!"
"My ability is to do what I promised."
Zhan Chen said: "I promised that I would let you see the scenes you want to see."
Duan You couldn't understand how such a power could exist. He tried desperately to get out of the door, but he couldn't get rid of the strange suction at all: "Let me out! What on earth did you do to me? What's going on in here—"
"You are inside the door, outside the door."
Zhan Chen stood up: "Our side is the inside of the door."
Feng Qing had never read a single day in the orphanage. The orphanage didn't even have a laboratory, let alone a regular examination room.
The blank marks on the wall are a hint. The portrait of the dean is hung in the hall, which just proves that the hall is the real examination room and the place where all players need to gather.
They are at the finish line from the beginning, and only when their judgment is correct can other candidates come in.
If the door is opened in the wrong direction, it will not lead to the examination room, but to another space.
Zhan Chen closed the door.
…
Yu Tang was awakened briefly by the action.
He moved his body and stuck his head out to see what was happening, but Zhan Chen covered his eyes and gently stopped him.
Yu Tang couldn't help but frown.
He blinked into Zhan Chen's palm and whispered, "Something is coming from the eye of the storm... Someone opened the door."
"Its target is us, and it has found us."
Zhan Chen touched Yu Tang's forehead and asked, "Are you cold?"
Yu Tang shook his head.
"I had a dream and woke up in shock." Yu Tang said, "I dreamed that I was taking an exam..."
Zhan Chen: "I have bad news. We are indeed taking an exam."
Yu Tang: “???”
Zhan Chen couldn't help laughing, he pulled Yu Tang closer to him, then bent his head and kissed Yu Tang's forehead.
"There is also good news." Zhan Chen said, "You are the invigilator."
Zhan Chen: "Teacher Xiao Guangtuan, let's change our identities and go to sleep."
He pulled the door open again.
This time, the inside really turned into a staircase inside the villa. Some players stood on the stairs, looking down cautiously.
Realizing that the "examination room" where they needed to gather was below, some players had already walked down carefully one after another.
Zhan Chen asked Sui Fan: "Coach Sui, do you have a pen that can write?"
Sui Xifan hadn't recovered from the strangeness of the door yet. He was stunned for a moment, then took out two red and black pens and handed them over: "What are you doing?"
Zhan Chen returned to the portrait.
It was the first time he did such a thing, so he asked the system to find some reference pictures. He painted two huge dark circles under the portrait and put two prominent red crosses on it.