"What do you want?!"
The bartender, a support staff member of the flight crew, was unable to break free and looked terrified.
Melos was startled. "Captain, what's going on?"
Han Xiao pointed to his glass of wine, "Someone put something in it, probably poison."
"Impossible! I brought the alcohol, and I drank it without any problems... Could I have been poisoned too?"
Melos was shocked and hurriedly touched his tongue and throat, but he did not feel the numbness of poisoning.
"The wine is fine, the problem is with the glass." The contents of the bottle are normal; only my glass has been spiked. It's only possible that someone put something in the glass beforehand, and the bartender who brought out the glass is the most suspicious.
What was supposed to be a simple routine escort mission turned into something much more complicated for Han Xiao. He was extremely curious: who wanted him dead?
At this moment, the players and merchant workers present gathered around, and Daike and the others also rushed over upon hearing the news, looking puzzled.
What happened?
Han Xiao explained it briefly, and everyone looked surprised.
"Could there be a mistake?" Daike asked.
Shaking his head, Han Xiao created a new task and threw it at the players present.
[You have triggered the quest [Test for Toxins]]
[Mission Introduction: Your guild leader has been suspected of being poisoned and assassinated. Would you be willing to help him test the effects of the poison?]
[Task requirement: Drink [a spiked spirit]]
[Reward: Black Star - Han Xiao's Favorability +8, 150,000 Experience]
[Note: There is a possibility of death]
The mercenary players received the notifications on the interface and their eyes lit up. This was the first time they had encountered a mission that made it so easy to increase Han Xiao's favorability and gain experience. Dying once was no big deal.
Just as everyone was about to rush forward to grab the wine glass, a figure flashed by. Meat Bun moved like a rabbit, extremely fast, grabbed the wine glass, and downed it in one gulp without saying a word.
"How can you run so fast?!" Tai Erzi exclaimed in surprise. "Even I, an agile martial artist, can't keep up with your Si Bi De! How did you train?"
Meat Bun glanced smugly at everyone, but before he could speak, his face suddenly changed. The veins under his skin bulged and turned bluish-black, covering his entire face. He opened his mouth wide but couldn't make a sound. Seeing this, the other players quickly retreated, leaving Meat Bun completely alone within three meters.
The Meat Bun froze on the spot for a few seconds, then blood gushed from all five senses, and it collapsed and died instantly.
"What a man, as swift as the wind, even his death was so lightning fast." Frenzied Saber clicked his tongue in amazement.
"He... he just died like that?!"
The mercenaries and crew were stunned. A mercenary was dead before their eyes, and his companions seemed unfazed. What kind of mercenary group was this? So cold-blooded! So terrifying!
Moreover, these mercenaries are too loyal to Black Star. Before Black Star even spoke, they rushed to drink the poisoned wine and test it on themselves. This is not like mercenaries at all; it's more like a fanatical cult!
However, the next moment, Meat Bun's corpse turned into white light and disappeared. Immediately afterwards, the sound of running could be heard outside the door, and Meat Bun came running from the respawn point.
Daike exclaimed in surprise, "You... you guys..."
Han Xiao glanced at him. "We've cooperated so many times, and you don't even know we have a nickname: 'The Undying Mercenary Group'?"
"I see. I wasn't aware of the rumors circulating in the mercenary world." Daike smiled wryly. No wonder these mercenaries were so calm; they were all undead.
Black Star's name is widely known, but his specific abilities are mainly recognized within the industry, and other industries are not very familiar with him.
"What are the effects of the poison?" Han Xiao turned and asked.
Meat Bun checked the panel prompt from before.
[You have ingested a toxin and are currently undergoing an endurance assessment... Your endurance is below 280, and you have no related immunity skills. You have entered a [Poisoned] state.]
[High-concentration putrefied blood toxin: This is a toxin produced by some kind of supernatural ability. It requires an injection of a blood toxicity antidote. Currently, the toxicity level is 135/135, causing a loss of 750 health points per second for 8 seconds.]
[Warning! Your health is too low. Please take an antidote as soon as possible!]
[Your health is below 0!]
[You're dead!]
Meat Bun repeated the story truthfully, Han Xiao nodded.
"Losing 6000 HP in 8 seconds is fatal to a player, but it didn't kill me, proving that the poisoner knew little about me. However, the fact that the murderer was able to scheme against me on this journey means they knew my whereabouts, at least knowing that this ship was transporting supplies for Dragon Calm, and that I would definitely be here. This ship is only so big, the murderer must be hiding among these people. Moreover, the name of the 'Undying Mercenary Group' didn't scare the murderer away. There are only two possibilities: either they know I'm not immortal, or... it's a revenge killing?"
Han Xiao frowned, many guesses surfacing in his mind, even the possibility of the player being a suspect could not be ruled out!
This possibility must be guarded against. He enhances himself by helping players, but he has never completely trusted them. After all, he knows players' nature all too well. He just hopes he is wrong and that the players did not secretly accept the mission to Assassination him.
After verifying that Han Xiao's words were true, pairs of hostile gazes were fixed on the bartender who had fallen to the side. The bartender, seeing the poison taking effect, turned pale and trembled all over.
"It wasn't me. I didn't know anything about it. I just took an empty wine glass from the cabinet..."
Han Xiao opened the bar cabinet, which contained many empty glasses. He took them all out, filled them with water, and everything seemed normal except for his own glass, which was poisoned. He frowned and said, "Of all these glasses, only the one you gave me is poisoned. How do you explain that?"
"I... I don't know! That cup was just on the outside, I really just grabbed it without thinking!"
The bartender was terrified.
Melos suddenly broke out in a cold sweat, still shaken. "What if the bartender had given me the wrong glass? I'd be done for!!"
"You're so healthy, the poison won't kill you."
Han Xiao casually replied, staring at the trembling bartender, and said, "If it wasn't you, then someone else tampered with the drink. Captain! Is the captain here?"
The spaceship captain rushed over, stepping out from the crowd with a somber expression. "I am the captain of the Colored Conch. I am deeply sorry that this happened on my ship. I will fully cooperate with you to find the culprit."
"I need to access the spaceship's surveillance footage from the past few days, as well as the _book's_ footage, to see who has approached this location."
As you wish.
Apart from the bedrooms, most areas of the spaceship are under surveillance, including the kitchen; the murderer can be identified immediately through video recordings.
The bartender exclaimed in surprise, "So I'm alright now?"
"Are you dreaming?" Han Xiao said irritably, "Tie him up and take him with you."
The captain led everyone to the control room and was about to pull up the surveillance footage when he was shocked to find that the recordings had been wiped clean, with the earliest recordings being less than a day old.
"The surveillance footage has all been deleted!" the captain exclaimed in shock. "Only I can perform this level of operation. Has the spaceship system been hacked? And how could the attacker bypass the alarm system?!"
He hurriedly opened the backend, used his fingerprint and iris scan to gain captain privileges, and started a system self-check, but found no intrusion vulnerabilities.
"Why can't we detect the intrusion? Could it be that the spaceship has been completely taken over by the enemy?!"
Sweating profusely, the captain had no choice but to check the spaceship's operation logs and Tu Shu, hoping to find the source of the operation ID that deleted the video. This small travel spaceship belonged to an interstellar travel group, and the captain was an employee with the second-highest authority. The highest system authority belonged to the group, and the captain could not change the logs. Therefore, even if the murderer took control of the spaceship, he could not modify the logs unless the other party's technology was so advanced that they could bypass the group's headquarters' quantum network defenses and seize the highest authority.
However, there was no trace of other accounts logging in in the logs, but the group quickly discovered the record of the deleted video.
[Operation Log #00784315]
[22 hours ago -- Cleaning up all surveillance footage, authorization granted, confirm/return → confirm → deleting... cleanup complete]
[Operator: Captain's Account]