Chapter 130: Wooden Horse

Safe for now.

Li Cheng stopped walking, alertly turning to look back at the sky.

Moments ago, volley after volley of arrows had torn across the long sky in arcing trajectories, like mortar shells, clinging like a bone-deep ulcer as they chased the scattered, fleeing players, only stopping just now.

"I should currently be in the 【Dream Garden】 area, northeast of the park."

While running, Li Cheng hadn't forgotten to constantly track his own position based on the map in his Memory Palace. After a brief thought, he flipped his palm over and took out the electronic pet egg.

On the pet egg's screen, Hui Yu was lying on her side on a small bed, left hand propping her chin, right hand eating chips, occasionally flipping through a comic book, right foot casually resting on her left foot — quite content.

But probably because her brain capacity was only 256GB (only 128GB left after deducting system files), Hui Yu's original plan was to use her right thumb and index finger to pick up chips, and her pinky to flip through the comic book, so as not to make a mess,

But as she watched, she forgot, and used her chip-dust-covered thumb and index finger to flip the comic book, then vigorously licked her clean pinky.

Li Cheng sighed, pressed the button on the pet egg, and summoned Hui Yu out,

"Hey hey hey, I haven't finished reading yet."

Hui Yu, who had appeared out of thin air, was still lying on the ground in her side-lying posture. She first glanced at the pet egg with reluctance, then did a kip-up leap and jumped up. "Where is this?"

"An amusement park." Li Cheng briefly explained the current situation, including those twelve visitor rules. Hui Yu wasn't human, and she didn't carry a visitor card on her either — perhaps that meant she'd be subject to fewer restrictions.

"Understood." Hui Yu wisely nodded. "So now we need to head back to the starting point and regroup with the others?"

"No." Li Cheng walked toward the carousel in the Dream Garden area, casually explaining: "There's only an hour and a half until sunset, there's not enough time. Besides, that flower float earlier was suspicious through and through."

"Huh?"

"Visitor Rule Six: If more than ten mascot characters appear in the flower float, you must immediately flee that area. If you see a princess character appear in the flower float, please stand still."

Li Cheng walked through the metal turnstile where visitors queued, saying: "On that flower float just now, there were a full eleven mascots, and at the same time there was a Disney princess. According to the rules, you both have to flee and stand still.

That in itself is self-contradictory — no matter what you do, it's wrong.

At the same time, according to Visitor Rule Twelve, if a visitor violates any one of the above rules, they must enter the staff break room, change into any one mascot costume, and go to the security office the next day.

But the system also requires players to escape this place before sunset — there are too many contradictions.

Finally, and most critically, among the eleven mascots on the flower float, nine had no holes in their eyes, and two mascots had holes in their eyes.

If I'm not mistaken, they're actually living people — visitors who violated the rules and couldn't escape the park."

Passing through the metal turnstile, he arrived beneath the round canopy of the carousel.

The park's equipment was all powered. Beside the empty operator's console stood a sign that read: one ride lasts one and a half minutes.

Li Cheng had Hui Yu stand in front of the operator's console, ready to pull the emergency brake on the turnstile at any moment. He himself mounted a white carousel horse.

The moment he sat down, the entire ride started up on its own, blaring cheerful music.

"Neigh—"

The plastic white horse beneath him suddenly became a living creature, breaking free of the steel-pipe restraints below, letting out long whinnies. The other horses under the canopy did the same.

"Little Horse Pearl!" Hui Yu, standing in front of the operator's console, was utterly shocked and blurted out, "Little Horse Pearl was from Litang County, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province. At home she had an extremely doting owner named Ding Zhen. According to family, Pearl went missing on September 15, 2021, and has not returned since. Pearl — color white, sometimes appearing gray, distinguishing feature: front legs slightly splayed outward."

?

Li Cheng, riding on the bucking horse's back, nearly choked — wow, wow, wow, scrolling Douyin and Weibo every day, using up all that brain capacity on this kind of abstract nonsense instead of studying, huh? Homework at home is getting super-doubled. Beneath the canopy, the changes were still continuing.

All the horses tacitly galloped clockwise, including the white horse beneath Li Cheng, all sprinting toward a green dashed line that had appeared out of thin air and was rapidly spinning around the canopy.

'This carousel ride — does it not mean I have to keep riding for one minute and thirty seconds, but rather that I have to ride this horse and break through the green dashed line within one minute and thirty seconds?'

Li Cheng's mind raced. Under the already-not-very-spacious canopy, thirty-eight horses were crammed together, looking more crowded than a Spring Festival train station, a Jay Chou concert, the Guangzhou Metro Line 3, or a TFBOYS Ten-Year Promise concert.

And the white horse he was riding wasn't the fastest one either, so he gradually fell behind.

This made sense — after all, Li Cheng's muscle density far exceeded that of an ordinary person; his actual weight was much heavier than he looked.

A minute and a half would pass in a flash; if things continued like this, he definitely wouldn't complete the ride. If this round failed, then the horses that had already run one round next time might have even less energy to complete the finish-line objective.

Li Cheng immediately drew his bat-gun, aimed at the canopy and fired the grappling claw, his whole body swinging violently forward, landing precisely on the back of the frontmost horse. The distance to the green dashed line abruptly shortened by a large margin.

The ride hadn't stopped — in other words, switching horses mid-ride didn't count as a foul.

The newly mounted horse buried its head and galloped at full sprint, but the distance to the green dashed line still couldn't be shortened.

"Twenty seconds left!" Hui Yu shouted a reminder. "We're not going to make it!"

"We'll make it." Li Cheng slapped the horse's back, his whole body leaping off, and in midair a pitch-black carapace grew over him, switching into his insect-form.

He extended both arms to wrap around the horse's belly, forcefully hoisted the entire horse off the ground, his own feet stomping down heavily as he leaped forward, shouldering the horse and beginning to sprint.

Outside the arena, Hui Yu watched dumbfounded. Inside, those charging horses were also startled by the muffled footfalls and raised their heads, watching the silhouette of Li Cheng charging forward while shouldering a horse.

Countdown six, five, four, three

With three seconds left before the minute and a half was up, Li Cheng burst through the green dashed line carrying the horse. The music abruptly stopped, and all the newly resurrected horses once again solidified, stiffened, and turned back into plastic horses.

He deactivated his insect form, and from his coat pocket took out that visitor card. On its front, within the nine-grid pattern, a stamp design automatically appeared.

"Uh, the ride is complete?" Hui Yu said hesitantly. "Carrying the horse doesn't actually count as a foul."

"Let's say I've probed out a few things. This ride, and indeed the entire amusement park, is in an unsupervised state, running according to a few certain rules. As long as you don't violate the rules, it's fine."

Li Cheng thought for a moment, took out paper and pen from the White Bone Corridor, wrote and drew a bit, then taped it onto the operator's console.

On the paper were written the carousel ride's rules, the way to clear it, and the three characters 【Master Pi Fu left this】, and finally a tube of unknown potion was taped on with tape.

"What's this?" Hui Yu asked, not understanding.

"Veterinary stimulant. Probably a mix of flunixin, dexamethasone, caffeine, that sort of thing." Li Cheng said casually: "After me, if any players or ordinary people try to clear this ride, if they really can't do it, they can give the horse a shot, or give themselves a shot."

"You carry this stuff around with you? Wait, can veterinary medicine be used on people?"

"Humans, as mammals, actually aren't all that sophisticated." Li Cheng pursed his lips. In order to cope with all kinds of complex situations, he carried far more than just stimulants — he also had muscle relaxants like succinylcholine and tubocurarine. Anesthetics like xylazine and acepromazine. Poisons like cyanide and ricin.

Forget ordinary humans — even tigers and elephants could be taken down in minutes.

However, because the holographic White Bone Corridor's space was limited (after all, it wasn't a dedicated spatial storage tool), these potions sometimes had to be stored together with food and medicine. When Li Cheng took them out or put them away, he had to be extra careful, lest one day he mistake a white powdery cyanide for soy milk powder and brew himself a cup.