Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!

From the initial dozen or so, within minutes, they crowded around Xu Huo and the girl in the painting like jellyfish. Those ghost face masks seemed endless; as soon as one was chopped off, more appeared immediately, as if they would never stop.

After leaving the theater, Xu Huo and the girl in the painting actually hadn’t gone far. They were still on a street a few hundred meters away. Noticing there was no one nearby, Xu Huo stopped wasting time, signaled the girl in the painting to retreat, and then rubbed out two space bombs using "Explosive Maniac".

With a loud explosion, countless mask fragments and building debris enveloped Xu Huo and the girl in the painting, launching them nearly a thousand meters before they landed on a building. Looking back at the explosion site, the jellyfish-like mass of masks was gone, but the surrounding buildings weren’t flattened as Xu Huo had expected. Only half the street was destroyed, leaving a large pit and several buildings sliced down considerably.

The power of "Explosive Maniac" is far greater than this, seemingly suppressed by the instance, unable to exert its full effect.

But this wasn’t surprising; if carrying bombs could flatten the instance, it wouldn’t be called a Rank-A Instance.

"More hats are flying over." The girl in the painting warned.

Xu Huo nodded, "Let’s check somewhere else first."

On the way, of course, they encountered attacks from ghost face masks, but the giant ones from before didn’t appear again. This time, the two didn’t face them directly but chose to dodge. Although the masks kept chasing them, their number didn’t increase dramatically.

Maintaining this state, Xu Huo and the girl in the painting reached a commercial street several kilometers away.

Upon arriving, the space was blocked.

An invisible spatial barrier obstructed the path. Though they could see the street and buildings on the opposite side, an unseen wall blocked it thoroughly. Xu Huo walked along the wall for a while before giving up; the ground and sky were sealed, and bombs and props couldn’t penetrate this barrier. Yet, the strange thing was, the spatial power here wasn’t concentrated.

Typically, the more solid the spatial barrier, the greater the spatial power accumulated there. But this wall defied the norm, as if they had reached the end of space, with it naturally divided here.

Then, the two roughly explored the wall’s edge, observing that it seemed to carve out a section of the city. Without a map, it was hard to determine where this section was located, but it was certain that there wasn’t a single person nearby.

Having swallowed so many people, besides the girl in the painting, who Xu Huo carried, the law enforcement players who entered from Yangming Building were also missing... It seemed the entire city had only him.

After some knocking and tapping along the space wall, Xu Huo decided to head back to the theater and take a look.

The collapsed theater remained a ruin; no new people appeared around. Xu Huo deployed the shuttle, controlling it to knock away masks constantly trying to cover him, and then found a spot to sit, releasing several small flying devices to inspect and record the surroundings.

This was quite at odds with the situation in the dungeon restricted area described on the Collection of Information Terminal from District 001.

It wasn’t dark yet in the dungeon restricted area, so the absence of night tour teams wasn’t strange. But it was odd that besides the corpses in the theater, not a single person was seen elsewhere.

Could it be that the dungeon restricted area had more than one folded space?

No people or corpses elsewhere, only in the theater. Perhaps this was a fixed teleportation point in the dungeon restricted area, uncertain if anyone else would enter here later.

"Could that old guy already be dead?" the girl in the painting raised the communicator.

"It depends on his luck." Xu Huo kept watching the image from the flying devices, and finally, at a place ten kilometers away, he found another spot with corpses. He quickly took the girl in the painting there, encountering two players fleeing from a mall building, their expressions horrified. They had just exited the mall, only to be dragged back by silvery threads.

One of them slashed at the silvery thread with his backhand but accidentally sliced off his arm. As blood splattered, the threads that had been dragging him upward turned into blades, directly carving the player into pieces, spraying blood and organs onto the face of the other player who was a step behind.

Seeing the second person about to meet the same fate, Xu Huo pressed down with his hand, gravity crushing the player and the silvery threads behind him onto the ground.

This time, he didn’t flatten the mall as well, but the silvery threads hanging them retreated quickly into the mall. Even though Xu Huo moved into the mall, their trace was gone, and there were no giant masks, only a few ghost face masks flying erratically.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!" The shuttle, hovering in the air, collided with each ghost face mask, quickly flying back to Xu Huo’s side.

"Thank you so much." The surviving player quickly stood up and thanked him, wiping the blood from his face, "Those threads are really strange. Once they pierce your body, even removing props can’t get rid of them. If they’re forcibly cut or pulled out, they turn into blades. If not for you today, I’d be dead!"

Xu Huo nodded, asking him where he had entered the dungeon restricted area.

The space inside the restricted area was entirely different from Xia City outside, even the architectural styles varied significantly. It seemed to be an abandoned city in another space, meaning players entering from different instance cities would all likely enter this space.

"Lanshui Town." The player replied truthfully. He had originally been extra staff for the law enforcement team. After the Rank-A Instance spread, he was instructed to stay and evacuate citizens. During the evacuation process, he was drawn into the dungeon restricted area. As for the player who died earlier, he was not a colleague but an Outer Zone player from another instance city, Coral City. Both were Rank-C players, and falling into a Rank-A instance restricted area was nearly certain death.

Xu Huo then asked in detail about his entry time, the situation in Lanshui Town, and rescue arrangements.

Comparing the times, Xu Huo noticed a discrepancy between the restricted area and District 001 outside; he had only been inside for over ten minutes, yet two hours had passed outside. There was a time difference between the restricted area and outside. Was the "seven days" of the instance calculated based on which time?

The restricted area scope in Lanshui Town had expanded slightly, but it was manageable for the entire city. Based on the features of the religious-themed night tour, the law enforcement team had successfully evacuated ordinary citizens around the restricted area. Some susceptible and easily influenced teenagers were grouped together and guarded by dedicated players, keeping them isolated from the outside world to prevent emotional outbreaks.

Just as Xu Huo had previously speculated, only a few of the missing persons in Lanshui Town were elderly.

"The rescue team... I’m afraid their fate is grim."