The moment Yin Lexin went flying, the impact jolted every organ in his body.
He thought he was going to die.
He skidded to a stop on his face, got a mouthful of dirt, and spat it out before turning to glare at the culprit.
They had successfully escaped the Hanging Corpse Forest. Zheng Xun was the last one out, strolling over at his leisure.
Yin Lexin lay on the ground. Even after taking that hit, he still spoke in an angry tone.
"That kick of yours nearly killed me!"
Zheng Xun wasn't one to take that lying down. He immediately squatted.
"Young man, someone saves you, and you don't even know how to repay their kindness? Why are you so annoying? Huh? Huh, huh, huh?"
He poked Yin Lexin in the back with his index finger, again and again, making him yelp and holler.
Only when Yin Lexin fell completely silent and stopped resisting did Zheng Xun let go and stand up.
While they were making a racket, Xu Guan and Meng Yijia had already scouted the path ahead.
"It's the center of the park. There are several large amusement rides," Xu Guan said, pointing behind him with his scepter. "There's no sign of monsters for now, but we need to be extra careful going through."
Hearing that Xu Guan was getting ready to set off, Yin Lexin scrambled to his feet.
"Captain, wait for me!"
Seeing how nimble he was, Zheng Xun gestured toward him for the audience.
"Did you see that, folks? A medical miracle."
Yin Lexin took a moment to look back and give him a friendly gesture.
Ahead was the heart of the park, where the rides grew more closely packed. But everything was dilapidated, giving off a stale, desolate air.
"What happened here..."
Seeing the bleak scene before her, Wang Shutong couldn't help murmuring in puzzlement.
A newspaper blew up on the wind. She stood on tiptoe, caught it, and began to read.
It was the City Evening News. It reported that a horrifying incident had taken place at the city's largest amusement park: a man in his thirties had burst in with a knife, causing chaos and injuring several people in succession.
One of them, a girl only ten years old, had sadly died despite efforts to save her.
Ever since that horrific incident, strange things had kept happening at the park. Gradually, visitors stopped buying tickets, and without any income, the park fell into ruin.
"So is the boss the middle-aged man or the girl who was killed?" Luo Mingxuan leaned over to look at the paper too.
Wang Shutong's fingers brushed over the photograph in the center of the paper. It had blurred with age, leaving only faint shapes visible.
"It's hard to say. Based on past experience, either of them could have mutated into the boss."
She spoke.
Perhaps because they had ventured deeper into the park, everyone felt cold.
"Let's keep moving," Xu Guan said, pointing ahead. "There's an operations room over there with its lights on. Let's take a look."
The little illuminated building stood out among all the gray and white rides, as though it were a hint.
They had no choice but to go.
Luo Mingxuan took extra care. As they set off, he glanced at Zheng Xun.
Like everyone else, Zheng Xun had fallen quiet after reaching the center of the park.
He was observing.
But Luo Mingxuan noticed that, unlike the others, Zheng Xun glanced at the brightly lit operations room, then looked elsewhere.
"Aren't you curious?"
Luo Mingxuan deliberately dropped a few steps behind and came up beside Zheng Xun.
"Curious about what?" Zheng Xun looked away. "Is there something fishy about that operations room?"
Luo Mingxuan nodded.
"There's nothing worth looking at. Right now, that operations room is like a huge, gleaming light bulb. It stands out too much."
At this, Zheng Xun lowered his voice.
"Do you know what's most frightening at a time like this?"
Luo Mingxuan began to understand.
"You mean... something around us might change?"
It was simple: when a light suddenly came on in the middle of the darkness, people's eyes were drawn to it without their realizing, and they would let their guard down.
At a time like that, what lurked in the darkness was the real threat.
"Wait and see," Zheng Xun said. "The boss won't be happy to see us all together. Someone will go missing soon."
Zheng Erchui truly lived up to his reputation for jinxing things. The whole team had barely gone ten meters when one of them disappeared.
Wang Shutong was the one who noticed.
"C-Captain Xu..." The young woman's voice trembled slightly. "The vice captain seems to be... h-he's gone."
Wang Shutong walked in the middle of the group. She was attentive and had been keeping an eye on the people ahead and behind.
Meng Yijia had just been talking to Yin Lexin, but he had only gotten halfway through a sentence.
Wang Shutong thought it was strange when she heard that and glanced back.
Only Yin Lexin was there, staring tensely ahead, still replying to Meng Yijia. "You're right, Vice Captain. I think there's something wrong with that operations room too. Huh? Wang Shutong, what's wrong?"
He had been looking ahead the whole time and hadn't paid any attention to Meng Yijia.
When Wang Shutong said the vice captain was gone, he whipped his head around.
The person who had been walking beside him just moments ago had really disappeared!
: Holy shit! Where's Meng Yijia?!
: Who knows?! It's so foggy here, and visibility's so bad. I didn't notice a thing!
: The General Association's stream is from Zheng Xun's perspective. Is anyone watching Meng Yijia's?
The comments in the Azure Mist Guild's livestream room were in an uproar too.
: Fuck, where did the vice captain go? He was right there!
: Anyone watching the vice captain's perspective, say something!
: I'm watching his perspective. It lagged just now, and there was a faint crackling sound, like some kind of interference.
: What about now?!
: Say something, man! Did something happen to you too?!
: It's still me. The vice president's feed is completely black now, and there's no sound either. The raven camera might not have kept up, and his wristband might be damaged too.
: How could this happen? That's terrifying.
: I hope he's all right.
Back in the center of the park, a person had vanished into thin air, and they had a decision to make.
"Captain, what do we do...?" Wang Shutong asked. "Should we go look for the vice captain?"
When someone went missing from a team in a dungeon, the others generally couldn't go looking for them without careful thought. Doing so would split the team's fighting strength and wear it down.
It was a cruel approach, but to save more lives, they had no choice.
Even so, it was extremely difficult for the captain to make that decision.
Xu Guan's brows were tightly furrowed as the team members waited for his decision.
In the General Association's livestream room:
: Are they really going to abandon Meng Yijia?
: What else can they do? This park is huge, and he disappeared into thin air. Without a map or any idea which way to go, how are they supposed to find him?
: The guy above is right. This is the first team, and every member is precious. They can't waste them like this.
: But making the captain say he's giving up on a teammate's life is too cruel...
: Didn't you see how worried Xu Guan looks? Nobody wants to be put on the spot like that.
: You think all a captain has to do is throw his weight around? At a critical moment, he has to take the blame.
: Sigh, what a shame. Xu Guan is a very responsible captain too. No matter how you look at it, this decision is too hard on him.
: If the vice captain dies, no matter what the reason, the guild's upper management will punish the captain. Xu Guan might not even be able to keep his position.
The comments were right in their analysis. Xu Guan's decision was extremely difficult. Whether he chose to search or not, he was bound to bear the consequences as captain.
If they went looking and something happened to another team member, he would be blamed, held responsible, and punished.
If they didn't go looking and something happened to Meng Yijia, he would still be blamed, held responsible, and punished.
He was caught in a dilemma.
Wang Shutong and Yin Lexin were younger members of the team and might not have considered some things.
But Luo Mingxuan understood.
"Captain Xu," he said, addressing him as captain rather than by name to show his resolve, "I'll go look for him. If anything happens, I'll take responsibility myself. I can sign a statement right now."
Writing a statement on paper inside a dungeon, declaring that one's life or death had nothing to do with anyone else, was a fairly good way to relieve others of responsibility.
What Luo Mingxuan proposed was already a sound solution.
But Xu Guan didn't want to throw away another friend's life.
He shook his head. Before he could say "no," a sudden sound rang out from the ground.
Everyone, including the commenters, was drawn by the sound and looked toward its source.
"What are you looking at?"
Zheng Xun rose briskly and brushed the dirt from his hands. In front of him was a door lying flat against the ground.
The "Portable Door" was one of the rewards he had obtained in the previous dungeon.
The door creaked open into the ground. Two or three steps were visible inside the dark doorway; there was no telling how many more lay below.
Zheng Xun took another item out of Cloud Space-the Teacher's Pointer.
With a flick of his wrist, the pointer grew to over a meter long. He used it as a walking stick, feeling for the steps ahead so he wouldn't fall.
Only after making these preparations did Zheng Xun turn to speak to the others.
"I'm going to give Vice Captain Meng an exclusive interview. None of you try to stop me. I'm off."