Chapter 285: Fate

Having said that, the GOC representative snapped his fingers, and several hundred locust-like bionic flyers shot out from beneath the table.

Each flyer carried a capsule, which it precisely delivered into the hands of the players present.

Li Cheng glanced down — the capsule was a single-use spatial storage device, containing a full set of props inside.

Including an anti-interference long-range walkie-talkie;

A sports camera and multi-function drone that could be bound to the player;

A spirit-energy contract that restricted players from attacking one another;

A single-use protective barrier carried in the form of a ring;

A premium item high-power hand cannon that fired high-damage demon-breaking lead rounds;

A multi-terrain armored transport vehicle;

Besides these, there was also a full set of individual protective equipment, ranging in quality from rare to premium item.

'They're really willing to spend.'

Li Cheng was slightly surprised — all the things packed into the spatial capsule, taken together, would easily come to over ten thousand game coins.

Over two hundred players meant over two million.

Pouring that much money in before the mission had even officially begun — GOC really did have deep pockets.

What needed to be said had more or less been said, and the players one after another withdrew from the kill arena, returning to the real world to make preparations.

"Sister Bai,"

An assistant walked over and asked cautiously, "Will anyone actually be taking part in this mission?"

No matter how GOC had given its speech and handed out equipment to show goodwill,

Players were each and every one pragmatic — surely some would realize that risk and opportunity coexisted, and simply refuse the mission outright.

Out of two hundred and fifty people, it would be considered good if two hundred players actually carried out the mission.

As for taking the initiative, actively investigating the secrets behind the other world, and searching for and rescuing their Earth compatriots — in the end, it would still have to fall to GOC and the people from the other few official agencies.

"I don't know."

Bai Qi gazed at the empty hall and sighed softly, "All we can do is do our best."

'And leave the rest to fate.'

In his apartment's living room, Li Cheng glanced at his old phone's photo album — a photo from very, very long ago, of himself in kindergarten with his younger cousin and cousin sister, the three of them together — and silently set the phone down.

Click, click, click.

The hands of the clock turned, and the instant the second hand returned to zero, the fully geared Li Cheng, wearing a yellow reflective hazmat suit, vanished from the living room as the scene before his eyes changed abruptly.

This is

He looked around — he had already arrived at a city ruin.

The cement road surface was covered in cracks from earthquakes, the construction debris from collapsed buildings clogged the streets and buried those rust-mottled abandoned vehicles.

Li Cheng took out the electronic pet egg and released Hui Yu, who was wearing the same style of hazmat suit.

"Where the hell did you drop me off — is this still in the country?"

Hui Yu looked around and said, puzzled, "Weren't we supposed to be in another world? Why does this look like a post-nuclear-war ruin?"

"It probably isn't a nuclear war."

Li Cheng squinted as he looked into the distance — some of the tall buildings that hadn't collapsed stood like withered trees, their surfaces pitted and scarred, still bearing some deep, narrow beast claw marks, clearly not the kind of effect a nuclear blast wave or artillery bombardment could produce.

Visibility in the sky was very low; a grayish dust storm kept blowing, keeping horizontal visibility under one kilometer.

Moreover,

Li Cheng glanced down at the road beneath his feet — judging by the degree of rust on the vehicles by the roadside, the "disaster" that caused all this had happened at least over a year ago.

By all rights, without any human intervention, a year would be enough for weeds to grow thick in the ruins and for the wild ecology to partially recover.

Yet there was nothing at all — no weeds, no insect chirps or bird calls — terrifyingly quiet.

After thinking for a moment, Li Cheng took out the drone GOC had given him and sent it into the air.

An official agency's drone was indeed a cut above the mass-produced ones on the market — it flew fast, had a stable connection, and was fully featured, with its built-in various sensors quickly transmitting all kinds of data back to the remote controller in Li Cheng's hand.

It detected that there was no radiation in the surrounding environment, that the air's composition was consistent with Earth's atmosphere, and that it was safe to breathe.

The only point to note was that the gray dust storm shrouding the city ruins seemed to have a signal-weakening function — if the drone flew more than one kilometer out, it would lose signal.

Unless fiber-optic guidance was used to extend the range.

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow. "The dust storm's composition is mainly inorganic fine particles, primarily calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. Similar to the composition of cremation ashes."

"Cremation ashes?"

Hui Yu said, stunned, "How many people would you have to burn to get that?"

"Not necessarily people — animal cremation ashes have the same composition of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate."

Li Cheng was especially familiar with cremation ashes — back in high school, in a politics class lesson on investment and financing, the teacher had the students write their own business plans and do simulated investment and financial management.

Li Cheng decisively chose to invest in a crematorium and rolled out many pioneering services.

For example, the cremation-ash blind box — letting customers randomly pick one to take home;

Second furnace half price — letting customers find someone to share an order;

Ten-pull guaranteed SSR — secretly slipping a glass marble in before cremation, guaranteeing a relic as a stable drop.

One hundred percent genuine bone china — partnering with a ceramics factory to use the cremated ashes to make bone china, so customers could become cups and bowls and stay by their loved ones' side, accompanying them at every meal — extra heartwarming.

That business plan was incomparably detailed and thorough, yet somehow didn't win an excellence award — truly a pity.

"Regardless, let's first look for traces of living things."

This 【Anchor Link】 mission was a kill-type mission — every unit killed yielded corresponding experience and game coins, which meant there would absolutely be no shortage of monsters.

Li Cheng controlled the drone back down to the ground, plugged in a thin, lightweight guidance fiber-optic cable, then sent the drone back into the air, flying it into the dust storm to scout the surrounding environment, scan, and build a three-dimensional map.

While Li Cheng was busy piloting the drone, Hui Yu wandered around the area and, inside an abandoned car, discovered four human skeletons, and immediately exclaimed in surprise, "Hey, come look at this — what is this?"

"What's wrong?"

Li Cheng split his attention, took the remote, and walked down into the ruins.

Inside the abandoned pickup truck lay four human skeletons of varying sizes, each with a bullet wound to the head, dead for at least a year.

Judging by the bone structure, they were an adult man and woman, and two young children.

Among the bones of the adult male in the driver's seat, a revolver had also fallen.

"Looks like a father, in utter despair, killed his wife and children, then killed himself. Some *Mist* plotline."

Li Cheng pried open the car door with one hand, searched for a while, and found four newspapers in the glove compartment of the passenger seat.

The newspapers were dated throughout 2001, from January to December, and the reports, in chronological order, read as follows:

January: Dr. Noah, three-time Nobel laureate in physics, invented the superluminal space-jump engine.

February: The Soviet Union and the United States announced a joint effort to build humanity's first spaceship equipped with a space-jump engine.

September: The spaceship was completed, and under the gaze of the world, instantaneously teleported to the orbit of Neptune, stayed for a few hours, then teleported back to Earth's orbit.

It meant humanity could finally leave the cradle of the solar system and formally step into the sea of stars.

December: Earthquakes and tsunamis struck frequently around the world; the Earth's magnetic poles were suspected to have reversed.

So the scenario GOC had imagined — that other world pouring out the strength of its entire civilization to erode Earth — never came to pass.

On the contrary, that other world itself was a wasteland after disaster.

As for how the disaster happened, it likely falls on the Dr. Noah mentioned in the newspapers — the three-time Nobel laureate who invented the superluminal jump engine.

Buzz!

The remote in his hand beeped; the drone had detected a heat signature about a kilometer away, and from the outline, it was unmistakably a humanoid figure.