Escape from the Killing Zone

On his fifty-second Save-Load, Xu Kai returned to the moment after the Cremation Workshop task had been issued. He frowned slightly, lost in thought.

His last death had not gone quite as he had expected. He had originally intended to test the situation in the Cremation Workshop, using the corpse to enter it with Wang Hua, then looking for a chance to leave and avoid the Killing Zone.

But the moment he touched the coffin, Xu Kai suddenly remembered what had happened before. Carrying the coffin through the Crematorium's front gate had prompted Stone Statue Weird to go on a killing spree. He immediately realized there was a trap with the coffin!

So Xu Kai hadn't done it himself. He had asked Wang Hua, who called herself a divine maiden but was actually a crazy woman, to test the waters.

The waters around the coffin had indeed run deep. Wang Hua was young and couldn't handle them, so she had drowned. Stone Statue Weird had brought her story to an end, turning the divine maiden into spring mud to nourish the flowers.

Although Xu Kai had been on guard beforehand and started running out of the Funeral Hall early, he had still fallen one move short. In the end, he hadn't escaped the Killing Zone and had been dragged back by Stone Statue Weird.

He had been so close. Half his hand had already reached through the opening, but in an instant, the damaged opening had healed and the entire barrier had become whole. Stone Statue Weird's Weird Energy had thrown him back, leaving him only able to close his eyes and wait for death.

Fortunately, Xu Kai had gleaned quite a bit of information from it, which had nearly led him to the heart of Stone Statue Weird's secret.

Stone Statue Weird opened an instance to attract players, then slaughtered them to earn game rewards and increase his strength. But the game placed severe restrictions on him. He could only operate within fixed and temporary Killing Zones, or release illusions in certain places.

To strengthen his control over the instance, he had purchased cheap "Evil" from the Weird Duke of "City" and issued mandatory tasks to the "Evil" to lead players to their deaths.

But "Evil" was also a variable. The game determined the rewards for mandatory tasks issued to "Evil," leaving too many variables. In particular, an "Evil" who completed multiple tasks might even become a Weird and contend with Stone Statue Weird for the instance. So Stone Statue Weird had decided to go all the way and kill both the players and the "Evil" who completed the tasks.

By now, Xu Kai had also guessed the players' task: it had to have something to do with the ashes left after cremation. Wang Hua, meanwhile, was only one final step away from completing her own task. As the boss, Stone Statue Weird was naturally going all out, even issuing a task that sent the "Evil" he had paid for to his death.

The crisis was urgent. If Xu Kai didn't enter the Cremation Workshop with a player within one day, he would die.

But Xu Kai did not despair at his situation. Instead, his gaze grew more determined.

Xu Kai knew that Stone Statue Weird was afraid. He feared that the "Evil" under him would become a Weird and take revenge on him.

And as it happened, Xu Kai had already obtained one portion of Source Weird Qi in "City." As long as he completed the task Stone Statue Weird had issued this time, Xu Kai was one hundred percent certain he could obtain a second portion.

Xu Kai stared at the coffin and thought for a while. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had overlooked something.

Touching and lifting the coffin lid was a mistake, so how could he send the corpse for cremation?

For players, the game would not issue a task that meant certain death. Although this was far removed from the farewell ceremony in the game's storyline, the situation had not yet become one of certain death.

If it truly had become a situation of certain death, this place would have turned into a temporary Killing Zone, and Stone Statue Weird would have appeared here openly.

There had to be something he had overlooked.

Xu Kai stared at the coffin, wondering how to get the corpse to the cremation room. Suddenly, he wondered whether they were supposed to burn it together with the coffin.

At that thought, he looked underneath the coffin and abruptly discovered four pyramidal blocks nailed to its underside, holding it firmly in place.

If he found wheels of the right size, he could even push the coffin along!

Most importantly, Xu Kai turned and located the door to the Cremation Workshop. To his surprise, it was about the same size as the coffin.

The game had deliberately set it up this way: they were supposed to push the coffin into the Cremation Workshop, not open it!

When Xu Kai saw that, he could only think, Good grief!

Perhaps customs were different. On Blue Star, he certainly wouldn't push a coffin in for cremation along with the body.

Besides, coffins had been used a very, very long time ago, before burial in the ground was changed. Later on, conserving land had been encouraged.

"Miss Wang, carrying the deceased on our backs would be far too disrespectful. Could we just push the coffin in and burn it?"

"Why are you so long-winded for an NPC... Wait, you said you could push the coffin in and burn it? That's impressive! This coffin's so heavy. Wow, a real strong man! I like it!"

Xu Kai didn't say much. He knew how freely this opportunistic player would offer praise once she decided something would benefit her.

He put the player's words out of his mind and bent down to feel around beneath the thick coffin. Suddenly, he pulled out four small wheels that fit perfectly onto the nailed-on blocks, allowing the coffin to roll easily.

"Huh? Huh? Huh? Was that stuff under there?"

Wang Hua was dumbfounded when she saw the four wheels. She couldn't figure out where under the coffin Xu Kai had pulled them from.

Only Xu Kai knew that he had formed his Weird Energy into blades and cut the wheels out himself. If he hadn't needed to hide anything unusual from the player, he had even wanted to fly on the coffin.

With four wheels, the coffin was easy to push. Xu Kai pushed at it with trembling hands, pretending to exert himself. He panted heavily with apparent difficulty, then finally roared, "Hah! Move!"

The coffin, however, didn't budge.

Wang Hua had been watching expectantly, but when she saw this, she rolled her eyes. The impatience in her heart surfaced, and her earlier sweet words vanished in an instant. "Useless NPC! You showed off such great driving skills before, but now you can't even push this coffin with wheels on it?"

She rolled up her sleeves and marched over aggressively. Standing beside Xu Kai, she gave the coffin a hard shove and got it moving.

"That's not even hard! A little girl like me can push it. You're so tall and have such a good build. Are you made of tofu?"

Wang Hua complained, never once considering that Xu Kai was acting. She had long since decided that her "divine skill" had scared him.

"Y-you're a divine maiden. Of course I can't compare to you when you have that kind of strength."

Xu Kai had even worked up a sweat pushing and was panting heavily. Seeing him like that, Wang Hua felt even more disdain for him.

"Hmph, an NPC is just an NPC. How could you have a player's stats? Move! If I'd known about this method, why would I have needed you?"

Wang Hua pushed the coffin toward the Cremation Workshop by herself. Xu Kai stood beside her, but he did not leave. Instead, he followed closely behind the player.

This time, he wanted to see if he could exploit a loophole in the wording of the game task: follow Wang Hua into the Cremation Workshop, but only hold the doorway, then go back out and close the door.

As he was thinking about it, Wang Hua reached the Cremation Workshop door. It was tall and wide, just enough to accommodate the coffin, and it wasn't locked.

Xu Kai narrowed his eyes and followed Wang Hua. The moment she went in, he quickly came back out and shut the door.

"Huh? Master Xu! What's the meaning of this?"

Wang Hua's demand came from behind the door, but it wasn't the sound Xu Kai wanted to hear. He frowned deeply.

Immediately afterward, a chilling wave of Weird Energy came through the door, and Wang Hua's questioning turned to terror:

"Master Xu! You knew there was a Weird in here, didn't you? You're trying to get me killed! Just you wait. Once I log out and reload, you're finished! I'll kill you! The log-out button, why isn't the log-out button working? Help! Master Xu, open the door! Open the door!"

Though only a single door separated them, Wang Hua's screams sounded like a grand performance to Xu Kai, from her initial questioning to her paper-tiger threats and finally her despair. The inside was indeed Stone Statue Weird's Killing Zone, and Wang Hua had already been turned into spring mud to nourish the flowers.

But Xu Kai still frowned deeply. He had not heard the sound announcing the task's completion. Instead, he heard:

[Player has died. After following the player inside, you did not close the door. Task failed.]

What? How could this be? Before Xu Kai was erased, he stared fixedly at the cremation room door and saw that the gap had indeed not closed. Several wisps of Weird Energy were gently propping it open, keeping it in a state between open and closed. Just before his whole body turned to ash, Stone Statue Weird even mocked him:

"Material, you're still a little green to be playing games with a Weird."