dognovel Chapter 934, the dungeon—"The Return Journey"
Chapter 934, the dungeon—"The Return Journey"
Those were five people wearing purple uniforms.
The leader of the players was a tall, thin man.
He had messy black and white hair and was probably around thirty-four or thirty-five years old. His eyes were unusual, with the pupils of his eyes being completely narrow and slit-like. What was even more chilling was that there seemed to be some tiny white light constantly swirling deep within his small black pupils.
After looking at it for a while, I even had the illusion that my soul was being sucked out.
Yu Shijiu stared into his eyes for a while, then her gaze fell on his hair.
The man's hair color doesn't look like it's dyed; it looks more like a "disease" that causes premature graying at a young age.
Premature graying hair?
When Yu Shijiu thought of the illness, she couldn't help but glance at the man several more times.
A prematurely gray-haired man approached the five people with a faint, unsettling smile on his lips.
"Alive?"
The young man with prematurely gray hair spoke, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper, yet it reached everyone's ears clearly.
"I am Lin Hai, the captain of 'Echo,' and I look forward to exchanging ideas with you all in the guild competition dungeon..."
The prematurely gray-haired man named Lin Hai's gaze swept over the five people one by one, finally settling on Yu Shijiu.
At that moment, Yu Shijiu felt a sudden, intense stinging pain in his left arm, as if countless fine needles were piercing his skin at the same time.
"We don't seem to be enemies yet."
Anjie took a step forward, blocking Yu Shijiu's path, her voice cold and hard, "President Lin's greeting seems a bit unfriendly."
Lin Hai smiled upon hearing this, said nothing more, and turned to lead his team onto the opposite teleportation platform.
"That's Lin Hai?"
Xu Han lowered his voice, his face pale, and whispered:
"Goodness, I'd only ever heard about him before, but seeing him in person... his eyes... why do they make me feel so uncomfortable?"
“Typical characteristics of talents that involve mental pollution.”
He Lingling explained in a low voice, "Different colored pupils, a voice with a special frequency, and a habit of speaking in a soft tone to lower others' guard... these are all common external manifestations of mental talents and skills."
"Really? I remember Zhou Yuanyang's eye color was also strange, and his tone seemed quite gentle?"
Yu Shijiu moved his left arm. The inexplicable stinging sensation from before had subsided, but the discomfort of being watched remained.
He could sense that Lin Hai's glance just now seemed to be intentionally trying to "leave" some kind of mark on his left arm—but An Jie stopped him in time.
"..." He Lingling shook her head. "As far as I know, Zhou Yuanyang's talent skill is not mental pollution type. It seems to be an attack type talent skill."
"Then why does he speak like Lin Hai?"
Yu asked out of curiosity.
He Lingling: "..."
She paused for a few seconds before hesitating, then said, "Maybe...it's just to show off?"
The other four: "..."
Yu Shijiu remained curious: "What is 'pretending'?"
Chen Yi coughed lightly and said politely, "Shi Jiu... this isn't very polite, so let's not imitate it."
"..."
Upon hearing this, Anjie joined the discussion, saying, "Zhou Yuanyang's eyes are injured."
The four of them paused simultaneously, and He Lingling asked in surprise, "Sister An, how did you know?"
“…” Anjie pursed her lips, “It was a coincidence.”
Xu Han immediately clapped and cheered: "Sister An, your ability to use idioms has reached a new level!"
Anjie: "...Get lost."
As the group chatted and laughed in hushed tones, the game system's voice once again echoed throughout the live stream plaza.
[Teleportation will begin in ten seconds. All participating guild players, please prepare accordingly.]
"10"
"9"
"8"
"..."
As the countdown drew ever closer, the lights on the teleportation platforms beneath the feet of all guild players began to flicker slowly.
Yu Shijiu took a deep breath and clenched his right fist.
Beneath the strip of cloth on his left arm, the tips of the beast's claws gently pressed against his palm, bringing a familiar stinging sensation.
"3"
"2"
"1"
On the teleportation platform, all players' vision went black at the same time. A familiar dizziness spread from the depths of their brains to their limbs and bones, and they instantly lost consciousness.
At the same time, the players competing on stage also completely disappeared.
------
When his vision cleared again, Yu Shijiu found himself sitting on a bus heading towards an unknown destination.
Yu Shijiu rubbed his swollen and aching eyes and turned his head to look around.
The bus was dimly lit, as if the lamps were covered with a thick layer of ash, while outside the windows, the dense, impenetrable night stretched rapidly by.
Rain kept pounding against the grayish-white, semi-transparent car window. The winding water streaks cut the sparse, distorted light of the streetlights rushing past outside into fragmented pieces. The air was filled with a damp, musty smell, the smell of cheap leather, and... a faint, fishy odor.
"..."
Yu Shijiu covered her nose, sat up, and quickly looked around.
An Jie, Chen Yi, He Lingling, and Xu Han were all in the same row or in front of him, and they looked like they had just woken up and were now cautiously looking around.
Noticing Yu Shijiu's actions, An Jie turned around and made a "shh" gesture towards him.
Yu Shijiu: "..."
He blinked, then raised his hand and gently made a zipper-like motion over his mouth.
Anjie raised the corners of her mouth slightly and nodded with satisfaction.
Shi Jiu finally understood the importance of safety.
Great.
After making the zipper gesture, Yu Shijiu began to examine the environment inside the car and... the NPC characters.
The bus was neither too big nor too small, and there were quite a few other passengers, about a dozen people. Most of them had their heads down and were leaning against the back of their seats, their faces obscured, their postures stiff. In the dim light inside the bus, they looked like similar, stiff wax figures.
Yu Shijiu glanced at them quickly, then looked down at her left arm.
The strips of cloth were still tightly wrapped around the body, but in the dim light, the furry outlines beneath them seemed to be... more prominent than they had been in the rest area?
Yu Shijiu frowned.
He touched his left arm and could feel the hair under the fabric moving slightly, and there was always a kind of suppressed, low buzzing in his ears, a feeling of unease about his surroundings.
For a moment, Yu Shijiu felt like he was a little... "scared"?
He paused for a moment, then quickly shook off the unfamiliar feeling of fear and looked down thoughtfully at his left arm.
That emotion just now couldn't have been his own... so it could only have been his own "arm".
Do hairs actually have self-awareness?
"Are they all awake?"
After confirming that there was no immediate danger, Anjie's deliberately lowered voice came from the front seat.
She turned her head to the side, and her blue ponytail tied behind her head almost turned black in the dim light.
"First, check your own condition, stay alert, and don't move around recklessly for the time being."
Anjie said in a low voice.
At the same time, the belated notification sound for the dungeon appeared suddenly.
【Ding--】
A cold, mechanical female voice echoed in everyone's mind:
Welcome to the second round of the Guild Tournament dungeon – the current Guild Tournament dungeon is "The Journey Home"!
[Mode: Team Survival Battle (Random Scenario)]
[Guild Showdown: Echoes vs. Alive]
[The current main quest in the game is: Please do your best to survive to the bus's final stop and find "things that shouldn't be on the bus".]
[Background: This is the last train of the night, carrying weary travelers towards their destination. However, tonight, something seems different in the carriage. Some passengers say they've seen things they shouldn't have, others say they've heard sounds they shouldn't have heard… Shh, don't wake them, and don't… become one of them.]
[Special Note: Resistance to mental pollution has additional value in this instance.]
[Current surviving players in the dungeon "The Way Home" - "Alive" 5/5, "Echo" 5/5]
"The journey home..."
He Lingling rubbed her aching temples, her huge black pupils appearing even more profound in the dim light.
"Survival struggle, finding 'things that shouldn't exist'... It sounds like a typical supernatural mystery, but if you combine it with the characteristics of 'echo'..."
"Mental pollution is likely to be everywhere."
Chen Yi spoke, his voice steady, but his grip on the armrest of the seat tightened slightly.
Xu Han happened to be sitting next to Chen Yi. Upon hearing this, his face turned pale, and he subconsciously shrank closer to Chen Yi, whispering:
"My God, I guess I really am most afraid of these kinds of ghost stories... not to mention we're still in the car now, there's nowhere to run if we really wanted to..."
As he spoke, Xu Han wiped the goosebumps off his arm and swallowed.
...No, this dungeon background hint sounds like it's full of ghosts... He really felt himself starting to tremble.
Yu Shijiu didn't speak. After confirming that the "fear" he had just felt wasn't his own, his gaze slowly fell on the car window next to him.
Large raindrops outside the window kept washing over the dirty car glass. Through these dense water streaks and reflections, Yu Shijiu, who had only been casually glancing at the scene, suddenly focused his gaze.
Through his reflection in the glass, he suddenly saw that there was a "person" sitting in the empty seat next to him.
It was a woman wearing an old-fashioned floral dress. She had her head down, and her long, wet, jet-black hair was draped over her shoulders, so thick that it almost covered her entire face, making her look eerily frightening.
"..." Yu Shijiu's breathing paused for a few seconds.
He silently turned his head, his gaze slowly falling on the "woman" beside him.
The long-haired woman, wearing an old-fashioned floral dress, placed her hands on her knees. Her fingers were pale, and there seemed to be some barely visible dark red dirt under her fingernails.
But just seconds before, the woman in the floral dress hadn't appeared at all.
Yu Shijiu was certain that the seat next to him was empty when he opened his eyes.
This woman—
Yu Shijiu felt a sharp, stabbing pain suddenly shoot through his left arm, as if a cold needle were piercing deep into his bone marrow.
At the same time, an extremely faint, damp, and resentful thought, like slippery seaweed, tried to crawl into his brain along the stinging pain.
—So cold…so wet…I want to go home…
Yu Shijiu suppressed a muffled groan and pressed his right hand hard against the strip of cloth wrapped around his left arm.
He quickly focused his mind, repeatedly recalling the combat methods Anjie had taught him during training, and forcibly "pushed" away the cold, foreign intent.
"Shi Jiu?"
Ange, who was in the front seat, noticed the unusual situation on his side almost immediately.
"……fine."
Yu Shijiu took a deep breath, shook his head, but his gaze remained fixed on the woman in the floral dress beside him who was still looking down and didn't seem to pose any threat at the moment.
He turned his head and met Anjie's gaze, who was turning her head in the front seat. He opened his mouth silently—"There's an extra 'passenger' next to me."
Upon hearing this, Anjie felt a chill run down her spine and immediately looked at the empty seats beside or in front of her.
He Lingling's pupils contracted slightly. In her view, after An Jie asked "Shi Jiu" just now, a thin layer of gray-black "fog" suddenly filled the carriage, which had been normal.
Even the passengers who were just sitting with their heads down in their seats were more or less shrouded in this inexplicably spreading gray-black "mist".
He Lingling's breathing stopped instantly.
The prophetic talent skill "Ghost Eye" carries a certain amount of "yin energy," so the "fear" she feels at this moment is actually heavier than that of Ange and the others.
He Lingling suppressed her fear and turned her head to look at the seat where Yu Shijiu was.
Beside Yu Shijiu, the woman in the floral dress sat quietly without moving.
The fog around her was exceptionally thick, much heavier than that of the other dozen or so passengers, almost condensing into a substantial, viscous black fog. At this moment, wisps of that black fog were trying to drift toward Yu Shijiu, especially toward his left arm.
"...They seem to react to organisms that carry their own contamination."
He Lingling lowered her voice, trying to blend it into the sounds of the bus moving forward and the rain.
She reminded her, "Shi Jiu, your arms are attracting them."
As if to confirm her words, at the front of the carriage, a middle-aged man wearing worn-out yellow-green overalls, who had been keeping his head down, suddenly and very stiffly raised his head.
The middle-aged man's yellowish-black face was expressionless, his skin shrouded in an eerie, deathly gray, his eyes were sunken, and his pupils were cloudy and bloodshot. He turned his head, his neck making a "crackling" sound, and his gaze was fixed on Yu Shijiu's direction.
Then, under everyone's gaze, the middle-aged man opened his mouth, and a hoarse, slurred sound came from his throat:
"You...have...something...on...your body..."
"The same...taste...as...us..."
"...Come...come...sit...with me..."
As the middle-aged man spoke, the other passengers in the carriage, who had been looking down, began to slowly, like rusty machines, try to raise their heads and turn towards Yu Shijiu.
"Oops."
Chen Yi gave a low shout, leaning forward slightly, his innate skill ready to be activated at any moment.
This is the first time such a "strange" scene has appeared right after entering a game instance.
According to the usual practice of game instances... they should all be safe on the first day.