Chapter 85
Xiao Tangqiu only felt the world spinning as if he was being thrown about in the drum of a washing machine. Just when he thought his internal organs were about to be shattered, a ray of light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes.
He immediately rejoiced. Did he finally manage to escape?
Wait a minute! This was not the transfer module in the City of the Abyss!
…Did he fail to escape again?
Xiao Tangqiu couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Suddenly, he realized that something was wrong… Although this was not the transfer module of the City of the Abyss, it was obviously also not the dark tunnel.
There wasn’t any light in the tunnel, after all.
He focused his eyes and saw that there was a vast desert in front of him.
A desert?
Xiao Tangqiu was dumbfounded. Was there such a place in the Abyss City?
He floated in mid-air for a long time, but it was still a desert below him. There was a world of yellow sand around him, extending out endlessly to the horizon.
After drifting aimlessly for a long time, the end finally appeared before him. But the end of the desert was not an oasis like he had imagined but a huge mountain of garbage.
It wasn’t just a huge mountain of garbage, but one mountain of garbage after another. Xiao Tangqiu floated over in shock. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that all kinds of garbage in the garbage mountain broke through the limits of his acceptance. Other than some normal household garbage, there were actually a lot of large metal sc.r.a.ps that seemed to be remnants of s.p.a.ceships. In addition, there were many more metallic sc.r.a.ps that he couldn’t recognize at all. All of them seemed futuristic and like sci-fi.
As he was lost in thoughts, there was suddenly an unusual movement nearby.
There was someone ahead!
Xiao Tangqiu became excited and quickly floated forward. Soon, he saw two small aircraft that were zooming around shooting at each other. He had never seen such aircraft before. They were much smaller than fighter jets and had very unique shapes. They looked like things that only appeared in sci-fi movies.
He floated mid-air watching the battle with gusto until one of the aircraft was shot down and exploded and turned into wreckage. Then he chased after the other aircraft, leaving the area.
Xiao Tangqiu’s speed was naturally inferior to that of an aircraft. Fortunately, the aircraft’s destination was not far away. He had just lost sight of the aircraft before he saw a huge metal fortress floating in the air ahead.
The metal fortress was too large and Xiao Tangqiu was shocked for a while before discovering that this metal fortress was actually an enlarged version of the aircraft that had won the battle. It seemed that this was the aircraft’s home.
Even if he hadn’t realized before, looking at this futuristic and high-tech metal fortress, Xiao Tangqiu realized that this place should also be an instance. He had seen something about this on the Abyss City Forum before. In addition to the difficulty level of an instance, there were also differences in types. The person who posted the instance listing divided instances into several categories according to the type: disaster movies, horror movies, fairy tales, science fiction movies, war films, etc. It seemed that this instance should be an instance of the science fiction movie category.
Xiao Tangqiu was a little confused. He had wanted to follow Bai Yushan’s group back to the City of the Abyss. How did he come here?
Xiao Tangqiu only remembered that he rushed towards the Soul Gathering Bead in Bai Yushan’s hand. The next moment, he lost consciousness and then he appeared here… Could it be that he was successfully sucked in by the Soul Gathering Bead back then, but then he was thrown out again immediately? Could it be that Bai Yushan’s group had not returned to the City of the Abyss yet at the time so he was abandoned in the “neutral zone” between the instances and the city? Then the system judged that he couldn’t stay there, so it threw him into the nearest instance?
Xiao Tangqiu, “…”
Dammit!
Xiao Tangqiu thought about it over and over, but couldn’t come to a conclusion. What was more annoying was that he couldn’t summon a GM to ask what was going on. After sulking alone for a while, he simply floated towards the metal fortress.
Forget it, since he couldn’t go back, he might as well go see what’s going on!
As Xiao Tangqiu expected, this was indeed a sci-fi instance, or maybe a combination of the sci-fi movie and war movie types. The righteous camp the player would join needed to constantly resist the enemy’s invasion. It was very similar to a tower defense game. But the difference was that once there was a strategic error, the player would actually die.
Additionally, this type of instance was even more deadly than usual. Although most of the deaths were NPC minions commanded by the player, it would still cause a lot of psychological trauma to the player.
In the beginning, Xiao Tangqiu watched with relish, just like watching a movie from an omniscient perspective. But as the players died one by one, his mood gradually sank. He gained a deeper understanding of how veteran players like Xue Junli carried apathy and calmness and were numb to the deaths of newbies.
When the player’s camp ultimately won the final victory, only the last player was still alive. He stood before the corpses of his teammates without a trace of excitement and joy, only a cold and deep numbness on his expressionless face.
Xiao Tangqiu suddenly thought of Shen Yuan again. Had Shen Yuan ever showed such an expression? Witnessing the deaths of all his teammates and watching the comrades who had fought side by side with him fall one by one; from the initial grief and anger to helplessness, and then finally to being numb. Xiao Tangqiu could not fully empathize with the psychological changes and had no way to know… He only knew that the boy who used to be his childhood sweetheart was extremely gentle, but when they met again, he became a strong but apathetic man.
For Meng Xinghe to become Shen Yuan, from a gentle boy to an apathetic man, he had no way of knowing how much pain was involved in this growth.
Xiao Tangqiu sighed deeply. Suddenly, he realized that the player not far from him had disappeared and everything around him began to collapse into ruins. It seemed that the instance was over.
Was he going to be trapped in an instance again?
Just when he was lost in despair, he suddenly felt a huge repulsive force hit him and his vision went black.
In the next second, Xiao Tangqiu opened his eyes again and he found himself in a dark forest.
From desert to forest, the process of reforestation seemed to be good.
While he was thinking deeply about environmental issues, there was a hysterical scream not far away, scaring countless birds in the forest.
He looked up and saw a player screaming and running towards him, a huge monster chasing behind the player. The monster was jet black with a huge hard sh.e.l.l on its back and several sets of terrifying feelers!
Wait, wasn’t this a beetle?!
Why did the beetle grow so big?
Next, he saw huge hawk moths, huge spiders, huge centipedes… This was clearly a huge bug kingdom!
He watched as the player managed to escape from the giant beetle’s mouth only to fall into a giant spider’s webs in a blink of an eye. He was stuck on the giant spider web and couldn’t move. In the next moment, the poor player was swallowed by a giant spider that appeared out of nowhere.
Xiao Tangqiu silently lit a candle for the poor player in his heart.
At this moment, he realized that he had run into another instance again. Although he didn’t know why, it was better to be able to change to another instance from time to time than to be trapped in one instance forever. He soon discovered the greatest benefit of his current state. That was, that he was in a state of untouchable invincibility. He had only experienced four instances so far, a rookie who had barely pa.s.sed the novice stage. If he could experience more instances from the perspective of a bystander, it was equivalent to gaining experience for free. How wonderful was that?
So when this instance ended, Xiao Tangqiu immediately looked forward to the next one. Sure enough, when all players were sent away, he was thrown out of the instance again by a huge repulsive force.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in front of an exquisite and beautiful house. He took a closer look and saw that this beautiful house was actually piled up with candy, biscuits, and chocolate, full of fairy tale style. It was just like a candy house from a fairy tale.
Candy house?
Was it an instance of the fairy tale type this time?
Xiao Tangqiu was very surprised. This was the first time he saw a fairy tale instance. If the whole instance was as warm and harmonious as a fairy tale, wouldn’t it be easy?
However, it turned out that he was too naive.
The batch of players who entered this instance was wiped out in the end.
Entirely obliterated.
This was the first instance with a party wipe that Xiao Tangqiu had seen with his own eyes. Although most of these players were newcomers and they were a bit easygoing when they saw the fairy-tale environment, facts proved the difficulty of the instance. The death rate showed that danger was everywhere.
The obvious dangers were not terrible, the terrible things were the dangers hidden behind beautiful peace.
Next, Xiao Tangqiu was thrown into a horror movie type instance.
After the horror movie type instance ended, it was a war movie type instance.
He kept being tossed from instance to instance, going from one instance to another. They ranged from two to three days to as many as seven to eight days. The experience along the way was full of twists and turns.
Finally, Xiao Tangqiu reached the ninety-ninth day, and there was only one day left before his resurrection.
He was so excited that he couldn’t stop fantasizing about what he was going to do after he was resurrected. First, he had to sleep, he hadn’t closed his eyes for three months! No! He must have a meal first! He hadn’t eaten for three months!
Just as he eagerly wrung his hands, counting the last few hours left until resurrection, he was caught off guard and was thrown out of his current instance.
When Xiao Tangqiu opened his eyes again, he was shocked to see that he appeared above a vast body of water.
A boundless, magnificent ocean.
Xiao Tangqiu, “…”
f.u.c.k! If he was resurrected in this ocean, wouldn’t he just fall into the water and drown?
They’re playing with him!