The Giant Face in the Sea

There were no personal conflicts among the divination participants present, at least not on the surface. Therefore, the existence of the Hourglass Guild implicitly gave them a leader among themselves.

The leader of Mysterious Eye didn't come this time; only the vice leader Fei Jing, was present. So even though Mysterious Eye is ranked one place higher than Hourglass, with Hourglass's leader there, the two guilds will definitely have more say when cooperating. Not to mention that Hourglass occupies four spots, while Mysterious Eye only has three.

So the "person in charge" has a clear idea: she wants to gather twenty people together, at least for the initial period of the simulation, so that they can explore together without any external force forcing them apart.

Since the ghost notices are located around their starting point, grouping up to search together can effectively prevent someone from secretly sabotaging them by throwing away or destroying other people's notebooks.

The guide quickly ran to the other side as Sha had instructed, intending to call the other nine people over. The others rested where they were. The men took off their wet clothes, wrung them out by hand, and emptied as much water as possible from their shoes, so that they would be much more comfortable at the beginning of the operation.

Qu Xuanqing and Sha were the only women here. Sha acted as if she didn't see the situation and sat down to rest. Finally, after Xu Huan reminded her, she and Qu Xuanqing walked to a more distant open space, turning their backs to the men and giving them a more comfortable environment.

"Sha's physical strength is very poor, so he's used to staying next to Xu Huan. In the simulations, the two of them are basically inseparable." Zeng Lai took off his outer and inner clothes, revealing his well-trained muscles on his healthy body. He explained to Yu Xing, who was sitting still and only occasionally glancing at Qu Xuanqing, then asked, "Why aren't you taking your clothes off?"

Only the men remained. They had no reservations among themselves; several of them took off their trousers, wrung them out, and wore only their underwear, which also allowed them to check the injuries under their clothes.

Driven by a cautious nature, Zhao Yijiu only took off his shirt, and quickly put it back on after wringing it half-dry. But even this brief exposure was enough for others to see his excellent physique. Carlos even whistled like a hooligan, expressing his appreciation for his "stranger" companion, which earned him a cold look in return from Zhao Yijiu.

Yu Xing, however, seemed like an outsider, completely unconcerned about what others were doing. His white long-sleeved shirt clung tightly to his body because it was damp, but he didn't seem to care about taking it off, as if he didn't mind the sticky feeling on his body.

"... Oh." Yu Xing seemed to just realize what was happening. He slowly unbuttoned his shirt with one hand, then laboriously used his injured left hand to take it off. His skin was excessively pale. Although it wasn't to the point where it looked like an artist had forgotten to add color, leaving only black lines and white fillers, there was still a noticeable difference in color between him and the people around him. Even Sha, who had albinism, seemed to pale in comparison to Yu Xing. "My arm isn't very convenient, I don't want to move."

Zhao Yijiu heard this, gave a cold sneer with an ambiguous meaning, took the clothes from Yu Xing's hand, and wrung them out for him.

Specifically mentioning that her arm is inconvenient—isn't that just a way of ordering people around?

He silently pondered, then glanced at Yu Xing's trousers after handing the shirt back, giving Yu Xing a questioning look—should he wring out his trousers?

Yu Xing: "... That's not necessary."

While they were adjusting themselves, the two girls were also twisting their skirts in the distance. Qu Xuanqing and Sha were not talkative people, and they were not familiar with each other. Their relationship seemed to be separated by a wall.

"I feel like a salted fish with too much salt." Carlos raised an eyebrow; after all, they had come ashore from the sea, and the salt from the ocean had mixed with the seawater. "I really want to take a bath."

His words resonated with several people, including Zeng Lai.

The Dead Silent Island instance is not a wilderness survival game. Before coming, everyone guessed that the island should have complete facilities, but they didn't know if there was water to take a bath. Now they know nothing about the island, only that there is a hospital, a school, and a subway.

Carlos longed for a hotel with running water, or a bathhouse. Yu Xing felt that human joys and sorrows were not shared, so he didn't care much about physical comfort.

After everyone had finished getting ready and put their clothes back on, the two girls returned. Zhou Xing, the fourth member of the hourglass, glanced to the side and saw the large group of ten people. He wasn't surprised. "They're back."

The extraditor brought the person back.

Zhao Yijiu immediately looked over there, and upon seeing Zhao Mou, who seemed to be mostly unharmed and whose glasses were miraculously still on his face, his expression visibly softened.

Yu Xing waved to Zhao Mou and then saw Huai and Huang Bai. The two seemed much more familiar with each other than when they first met at Alice's Park. They walked together and talked about something. The curly-haired guy, Wen Qinghuai, had a calm expression, but he seemed very serious when listening to Huang Bai speak.

Soon, the two groups of people met up.

"Xing, it's been a long time!" Huang Bai bounced over, Yu Xing was very envious that she had shoes and could do whatever she wanted.

Wen Qinghuai glanced at him and nodded. "Hello."

After not seeing him for a while, the curly-haired guy seemed a bit reserved.

But the vocabulary they used was exactly the same as the one Carlos used when he pretended to be a stranger. Carlos secretly observed these people who knew Yu Xing, seemingly considering whether they could cooperate with him, or... whether they had any value to him.

Familiar members quickly found their teammates or friends. Fei Jing, the vice president of the Mysterious Eye, was a woman in her early thirties with a quiet and scholarly air, and short hair.

Upon arrival, she first focused her attention on Qu Xuanqing, carefully observing the legendary strongest deducer below the Despair level. Her gaze was somewhat sharp and not endearing.

Only when Qu Xuanqing looked back at her with a hint of impatience did she shift her gaze to Sha, forcing a smile, "President Sha, how have you been?"

Sha gazed at her silently, without saying a word.

She was such a quiet person that sometimes people even thought she was just spacing out.

Xu Huan stood beside Sha and responded to Fei Jing's greeting without much emotion, "We meet again, Vice President Fei Jing. You seem to be a little late."

"Since the person from the hourglass came to summon me, I have to assess whether your decision was correct." Fei Jing's tone was actually quite calm, but it still gave off an air of arrogance and overbearing attitude. She smiled slightly, her words carrying a hidden meaning, "Who told you to send just an ordinary member with no reputation, even if you did send someone?"

The extradition officer's expression changed.

Fei Jing is probably one of the rarer types among those in the Mourning level. She never gives face to others unless they are of lower status than her or she fails to see their strengths, regardless of whose predictor they are.

After all, they still need to cooperate. If it were anyone else here, even the guild leader of the Mysterious Eye, they wouldn't point at the highly ranked ferryman in the Hourglass Guild and say that he was "an ordinary member with no reputation."

Yu Xing also glanced at her, recalling the evaluation of Fei Jing in the information Zhao Mou gave her: intelligent, tactically versatile, contributed a lot of information, responsible for most of the newcomer training and reserve selection for Mysterious Eye, the mainstay of the operation of Mysterious Eye Guild, sharp, mean, arrogant, and with low emotional intelligence.

He chuckled softly.

These negative comments were very similar to his previous impressions of the researchers in white coats in the laboratory.

Therefore, he did not have a good impression of Fei Jing.

Zhao Mou pushed up his glasses. His clothes seemed to have been completely destroyed when he came ashore. His shirt was basically just a few wide strips of cloth, and his pants were torn in many large holes. Fortunately, most of them were around the knees, so he didn't look too bad.

His skin had abrasions and bruises, just like everyone else's.

In contrast, the glasses seemed to have been blessed by heaven, remaining completely undamaged.

He heard Yu Xing's laughter, tilted his head slightly, and stared at Yu Xing's expression with an ambiguous look before asking an unrelated question, "You look a bit miserable. What happened?"

"There's nothing there," Yu Xing replied.

"Really?" Zhao Mou showed some interest.

He spotted Yu Xing immediately as he walked over from a distance. Although everyone's injuries were similar and their expressions were quite natural, he just felt that Yu Xing looked much more miserable than the others. "She looked so pitiful." He didn't know what sense was interfering with his judgment.

Xu Huan and Fei Jing engaged in another round of verbal sparring. Although the two guilds were in a cooperative relationship—in fact, not only this time, but they had always cooperated—it did not mean that they would voluntarily relinquish command of the operation.

Yes, even now they instinctively believe that they can have command over these twenty simulators.

After all, under these circumstances, it's unlikely that anyone would choose to leave the main group with their own small team; that would be too dangerous.

Not only do they have to face the threat of ghosts on the Dead Silent Island, but they also have to be wary of being outnumbered by the experience testers.

In this situation, command means control over the rhythm of subsequent offense and defense, as well as the comfort of tactical adaptation. The more aware one is of this, the more one will fight for it.

They might indeed be able to fight for command of 15 people, or perhaps 14, or 12.

Apart from Carlos, who was enthusiastically watching the drama unfold, the other four members of the Broken Mirror Squad tacitly retreated to the outer circle and began whispering among themselves while everyone else's attention was elsewhere.

"It really is terrible." Yu Xing continued the conversation he had just had with Zhao Mou. He pointed to his left arm and showed it to his teammates, "See this small abrasion? My arm is ruined."

She then pointed to the bruises visible on the outside of her clothes. "Everyone has bruises like that, see? I'm in so much pain."

"How could this be?" Qu Xuanqing was somewhat surprised. "I thought you just lied to the gambler that your legs hurt because you didn't want to walk."

"How could I be this kind of person?" Yu Xing's heart was broken. "This is a negative state, a patient's negative state. I'm sick!"

"It sounds like you've become a glass doll, easily shattered." Zhao Mou said with great sympathy, a loving smile spreading across his face. "Haha, I'm so happy."

Zhao Yijiu: "..."

He couldn't understand why his brother hadn't been beaten to death all these years.

However, the patient?

Is it a disguised identity?

Even when chatting with them, I have to pretend. Is this another case of deceiving myself before deceiving others, or... is someone ostensibly doing something else while actually eavesdropping on their conversation?

Zhao Yijiu has learned a lot in the past few months, including how to cooperate in lying.

So even though he noticed the problem, he didn't expose it. Instead, he acted as if he knew nothing, not even glancing to the side, and casually remarked sarcastically, "I knew you were sickly."

"Stop yelling, stop yelling." Yu Xing pouted unhappily. "Can't you guys be a little considerate of other people's feelings? If I get upset, my condition will worsen."

"Nobody would believe you. 'My condition is worsening'? Do you think you're playing a dramatic role?" Qu Xuanqing retorted, her actions betraying her words. She pulled Yu Xing's arm to examine his wound, then paused for two seconds. "It's just a simple abrasion. So, is it just amplified pain?"

"You're so clever, little Ququ," Yu Xing praised.

"Besides having amplified pain, I'm also very weak. Fortunately, patients have a better sense of warning about the arrival of ghosts. If we're going to enter the island from this side later, I wonder if anyone will be willing to carry me if I get tired on the way..."

"I'm very delicate, please try to find someone else to scheme against." Before Yu Xing could finish speaking, Zhao Mou saw through his thoughts and interrupted him, "Also, making a lady carry you is absurd."

He cut off Yu Xing's two escape routes in one fell swoop.

Carlos was still pretending not to know them when Zhao Yijiu, suddenly realizing she was their last resort, closed her eyes with a bitter expression. "Every time you two team up to trick me, I don't know who deserves a beating more."

Zhao Mou revealed a sly smile, "A Jiu, how could your brother betray you? It's all Yu Xing for corrupting me."

"And look at your figure, A Jiu, those muscles, even I'm envious." As he spoke, Zhao Mou reached out and pinched Zhao Yijiu's not-so-big but very firm biceps. Just as he was about to reach for her abs, Zhao Yijiu, who couldn't stand it anymore, dodged him.

Moving Iceberg: "..." I really want to take action, it feels like I'm sacrificing family for the greater good.

This time, Yu Xing completely ceded the stage for being annoying to Zhao Mou, pretending to be so weak that he didn't even want to say anything witty. After Zhao Mou finished his grand-sounding smear campaign against him and his younger brother, Yu Xing sighed pitifully, "See? It's obvious who corrupted whom."

Zhao Yijiu: "Hehe."

At the other end of the crowd, Sha, who was the furthest away from them, blinked and boredly shifted his attention away from the group following Yu Xing.

"They're a very energetic team," she thought.

But so far there seems to be nothing noteworthy; the mysterious Yu Xing is just a "patient" who doesn't need to hide his identity.

Before regaining his abilities and the sacrifices, the weakness was practically the biggest death curse, but that warning... seemed pretty good.

Sha didn't believe that a deducer couldn't have any abilities from the start, and her hearing proved that she could accept the small perks that came with the identity she chose.

Xu Huan and Fei Jing's bickering had ended. One of them exuded a sinister aura that made people feel uneasy, while the other spoke sharply, making people frown. The result of their mutual mockery was... that neither of them felt comfortable.

Therefore, they quickly and tacitly ended this fruitless struggle for command.

Perhaps even if they didn't want to stop, Dead Silent Island wouldn't allow these outsiders to be so carefree.

The waves crashed against the shore, and amidst the splashing water, some other sounds suddenly appeared. Yu Xing noticed something amiss.

There seemed to be strange sounds coming from the seawater, different from the frequency of the waves, as if something huge was moving near the shore.

The next moment, strands of black hair emerged from the seawater and silently crawled across the muddy ground. Even though they had lost their abilities, the recommenders were still extremely perceptive. They immediately noticed this and cautiously moved in the opposite direction.

"What is this?" Dai Yuefu, who was traveling with Bai Junrui and the others, asked in surprise, because there was just so much black hair, dense and thick like seaweed in the deep ocean, continuing their trajectory as if it were alive, chasing after them all the way.

At first glance, it looks like a black sea stretching into the middle of the muddy coastline.

He was asking Bai Xiaobing, Bai Xiaobing eye twitched. "What's the use of asking me? My special visual ability isn't here right now."

Then, the black-haired owner answered their questions himself.

A gigantic, completely pale face slowly emerged from the seawater.