Alice's Hell (1) - Gathering

[The following is a list of information about the simulation Yugi]

The deduction prompts kept refreshing on the panel, in a familiar deep red color, and the font was thicker than the previous Alice's Park, more like semi-congealed blood.

[Medium-scale simulation: Alice's Park]

[Level: Struggling]

[Type: Comprehensive Deduction Yugi]

[Confrontation accounts for 40%, role-playing accounts for 40%, and reflection accounts for 20%]

This simulation Yugi is for eight Yugi.

[Analysis: This deduction refers to "Alice's Park 2". In the previous game, Alice's Park opened the newly built park to six visitors, some guilty and some innocent. However, due to inadequate park planning at the time, it failed to provide visitors with the most perfect experience. Learning from this experience, Alice, the park manager, has redesigned the Yugi. This time, she is confident that visitors will have a great time!]

[To encourage visitors to show their true selves, Alice prepared masks for them, saying, "That's how humans are; when their identities are hidden, they can do evil without restraint!"]

As the prompts appeared one by one, the scenery before Yu Xing's eyes changed. He felt the air around him become scorching hot, and the torrential rain evaporated quietly in the heat wave, rising up in wisps of white mist and making a hissing sound.

In the hazy white mist, the world he saw quietly changed. A great fire broke out from the sky, and countless unextinguished sparks, carrying ash and debris, drifted down from the sky, covering the ruins and broken tiles.

Blood-red clouds, gray rain.

A burnt smell filled the air, a bit pungent.

Yu Xing coughed a few times, her dark pupils reflecting the sudden, apocalyptic scene, and unconsciously murmured, "So beautiful..."

It wasn't that the dark side of his heart had been stirred up; it was simply that the scene was too awe-inspiring. Against this backdrop, which resembled a divine miracle, even humans would feel as insignificant as dust.

Everything touched by the sparks burned like the paper money burned for deceased relatives during the Qingming Festival, scorching silently, curling and withering between the flickering light and shadows, until it was all burned to ashes.

Fortunately, the terrifying heat and the raging sparks did not directly reach him; rather, they seemed to be separated by an invisible wall of air, allowing him to see them but not touch them.

Of course, this is not reality, because from the moment Yu Xing triggered the ruby, reality and absurdity were separated. The current scene belongs to the Absurd World, while time in reality has stopped.

Han Xinyi and Yu Jiaming disappeared, leaving behind a reddish-gray landscape that bore a striking resemblance to the scene Yu Xing witnessed at the last moment after exiting the Alice's Park simulation, but possessed a more desolate and barren beauty.

Alice has distributed amusement park admission tickets to Persona Mask. Please materialize the Persona and wear it for ticket inspection.

Yu Xing stretched out his hand, and his Persona Mask template condensed into a transparent mask shadow. The surrounding ash gathered together, piece by piece, solidifying the mask into a gray, slightly exaggerated smiling face mask.

The mask has two inverted crescent-shaped eyes that do not obstruct vision, and below the eyes are black tear patterns. The lips are bright red, and its appearance alone is comparable to the horror of some ghosts.

Yu Xing didn't mind at all; he found any style interesting and put it on directly.

Not only his face, but in a daze, he was dressed entirely in black. The top was a hoodie with the words "[Alice's Hell Tour Group]" printed on the chest, the pants were slightly tight, and below that were a pair of black sneakers.

It's alright. Although the body shape and hairstyle haven't changed, this outfit is more convenient for movement and also helps to conceal and hide one's identity.

[Alice's Reminder: You can remove your mask at any time after entering the park, but you may encounter unknown events~ By the way, sometimes you will also encounter unknown events if you don't remove your mask~]

"So, it just means deciding whether to remove the mask or not based on the event..." Yu Xing muttered to herself.

The next second, a gust of wind swept by, and the ashes piled on the ground were lightly lifted up, obscuring the view. After the dust dissolved and disappeared in the air, the ruins had been transformed into an ancient castle.

The black castle is Gothic in style, with interconnected walls and a strange and sharp beauty in its unevenness. The entire castle is enormous, and although it is not particularly tall, it is impossible to tell how many floors it has at a glance.

The castle is surrounded by a beautifully crafted medieval iron railing, covered with blood-red roses and dark green vines. Inside the railing, there is luxury and splendor, but outside, where Yu Xing is now standing, there is only an endless expanse of yellowish-brown ground, a desolate wasteland.

The sky suddenly turned pitch black, with no moon or stars, but a small area above the castle was surrounded by layers of burning red clouds, forming a precious and distorted light, which was also the only source of light at that moment.

The crimson clouds emitted fiery light, illuminating the ancient castle and the ring of sky surrounding it. The fleeting white and eternal black merged without any buffer, and in the very center of the burning crimson clouds, an eyeball larger than the ancient castle was embedded in the sky, looking down on the ground with an oppressive aura.

Yu Xing sighed again. This was truly the most magnificent transition he had ever seen. As expected of a Differentiation Tier deduction, the scale was impressive. If he hadn't lost everything he owned, he would have liked to take out his phone and take a picture to use as wallpaper.

And... it's been a while since I've seen Alice sense seems to have improved quite a bit. Although a castle doesn't really look like an amusement park, at least those bizarre Alice doll heads are no longer everywhere. That's something to celebrate.

Just then, a piece of unfamiliar information flooded into his mind. This time, it was no longer the system providing information in the form of text descriptions, but a more intuitive memory transmission.

Yu Xing sorted through the extra information in her mind and gained an understanding of her "identity".

He and seven others formed a temporary tour group; without exception, they were all "lucky ones" who had won the free tour in a lottery.

The prize description stated that they could enjoy two days and two nights of free time at the castle-themed amusement park, including meals and accommodation, and a guide from the park would meet them at the park entrance.

It's said that there will be various activities and attractive mystery rewards during the trip, which tourists are very much looking forward to.

So, filled with trepidation and excitement, the eight lucky tourists arrived near the park in their own ways, and the deduction began from there.

Afterwards, Yu Xing regained his mobility. He adjusted his mask, pulled up the wide hood of his hoodie, and looked around.

The ashes have completely disappeared, and the sky has returned to calm, with no more sparks falling. This place has completely broken free from the framework of reality and belongs to an independent simulation scenario.

He was outside the castle, some distance from the iron railings. In different directions at the edge of his line of sight, several figures, all wearing the same amusement park tour group hoodies, stood separately. To his right was a woman about 1.7 meters tall with a ponytail. When Yu Xing looked over, she seemed to have seen him too, and waved to him leisurely, displaying a very lively personality.

Yu Xing looked at the eight people involved in this deduction in the log. The Throat Cutter was undoubtedly Han Xinyi. If he guessed correctly, the Nightmare Ghost was probably Han Xinyi's uncle, Han Zhiyong.

Aside from these two, the rest were all unfamiliar names. He didn't know the ratio of the Righteous Path, the Mutation Path, and the Fallen Path. In short, in this simulation, he would be playing the role of a Struggle Level newbie who had just advanced to the Mutation Path, tasked with dealing with Han Zhiyong and Han Xinyi, two seasoned Struggle Level newbies.

That's right, both of them are at the Struggle Level, but Han Xinyi is probably a bit stronger than Han Zhiyong, the kind of person who could be promoted to the mourning level at any time - this is Qu Xuanqing's judgment.

Qu Xuanqing herself is a powerful figure who can be promoted to the Despair level at any time, and Yu Xing still trusts her judgment of other people's abilities.

Of course, Qu Xuanqing did not come this time, because the difficulty of the simulation was calculated based on the participants' abilities using an algorithm that was not made public.

In general, the system will randomly match players of similar skill levels into the same simulation, and teams will also be matched with players of similar skill levels. However, if a very strong player joins the team, the overall difficulty of the Yugi will increase significantly, which is equivalent to a multiplied increase in the death rate for weaker players.

Therefore, anyone with a modicum of sense wouldn't team up with someone significantly stronger than themselves; otherwise, they might end up dragging themselves down instead of securing a strong teammate.

To avoid this situation, Yu Xing did not plan to team Yugi with Qu Xuanqing too early. He needed to hide his invincibility right now. If the difficulty suddenly increased, he, who had not yet recovered his strength and had not accumulated many trump cards in the Absurd World, would easily be defeated.

Moreover, even if he doesn't die, at least there's some guarantee. But if Qu Xuanqing's arrival causes other well-intentioned divination users to suffer unexpected difficulties, leading to an increase in the mortality rate, that's something Yu Xing doesn't want to see.

Having anticipated today's situation, Qu Xuanqing, whose time was already up several days ago, had already conducted a deduction, intentionally avoiding the summoning conditions of Alice's Hell.

Hmm... he's going to take on two Single Prism members one-on-one, just thinking about it...

That's wonderful!

So far, the system has not provided any further hints, which is similar to previous simulations; the task is always triggered only when a certain condition is met.

Yu Xing didn't know if the Differentiation Tier deduction was the same, so he lifted his leg and walked towards the castle's railing gate, deciding to take it one step at a time.

The others were also gathering together, seemingly intending to meet up before heading to the gate to meet the tour guide.

Yu Xing walked relatively slowly. After realizing the others' plans, he followed suit and headed towards the crowd. Soon, the deducers gathered about 100 meters from the amusement park entrance.

Judging from their figures, these eight people, including himself, consisted of six men and two women. Apart from the woman with the ponytail from earlier, the one with the smallest figure was undoubtedly Han Xinyi.

Han Xinyi stood next to a muscular man, and even though the man was wearing a mask and hood, Yu Xing could tell that it was Han Zhiyong.

The others seemed unfamiliar with each other and stood rather far apart. Yu Xing knew he couldn't pretend in front of Han Xinyi, since he was the tallest among them. There was someone of similar height, but that person didn't pull up their hood, and their short black hair was exposed, with slightly curled ends, making them clearly different from Yu Xing.

Of the other three men, two are around 1.75 meters tall and don't show any particular features, while the other is around 1.8 meters tall and has well-defined muscles.

Just then, the 1.7-meter-tall woman exclaimed "Huh?" and looked at the chest of the only man whose hood wasn't pulled up.

Over the hoodie, the person with curly hair wore a highly recognizable mithril pendant. The pendant had an indescribable, strange shape and looked like it was in the style of K-pop. In several openwork sections of the pendant, a small green snake carved from jade was coiled.

"Wow, it's Huai!" The 1.7-meter-tall woman's voice sounded lively, and she seemed quite young. She was relaxed, even ignoring the other woman's slightly aloof demeanor as she leaned closer. "Huai in person! I've only seen you in the case study video section before. Hey, I really like your deduction style! Hello, I'm Huang Bai, nice to meet you, sir!"

"Huai?"

Upon hearing this name, everyone else reacted in some way, even Han Xinyi shifted her gaze away from Yu Xing for a moment and tilted her head.

Yu Xing secretly raised an eyebrow. Judging from their reactions, "Huai" seemed to be a very famous predictor, perhaps... even one of the celebrity predictors?

Moreover, this was the first time he had ever seen someone's identity revealed before the formal deduction had even begun, with everyone wearing masks, and no one else seemed to find anything wrong with it, nor was Huai himself angry.

Just by observing the other party's undisguised behavior, Yu Xing could sense their arrogance. Among those who had already advanced to the Differentiation Tier, such an attitude often indicated confidence in their abilities.

However, Huai simply nodded to Huang Bai, showing neither enthusiasm nor dislike. After looking around, he touched the mithril pendant with his fingers and said calmly to the 1.8-meter-tall man, "This gathering is quite interesting. They even brought a gambler. I certainly didn't expect that Zeng Lai, the gambler from the Research Institute, would be so close to me in reality."

Huang Bai followed his gaze, his hands in his pockets, looking innocent. "Oh, gambler Zeng Lai is here too? Then this simulation won't be easy."

"What's going on, little brother? How did you recognize me?" Unexpectedly, the gambler spoke with a thick Northeastern accent, which was surprisingly friendly.

Yu Xing let out a soft chuckle.

"..."

While some were revealing their identities to each other, others were naturally feeling bitter.

This summons was mandatory, not to mention Huang Bai's comment that "the difficulty won't be low," which brought a touch of sadness to those who were weaker.

At that moment, a man interrupted their conversation, his tone tinged with frustration. "Alright, you two big shots, thank you for your outstanding contributions to the Yugi's difficulty... I'm Ye, and I was wondering if we could go inside, start the deduction mission, and then catch up?"