Chapter 388: Agent Orange

Originally weighing nearly a ton, Grey Rain, under the effect of the 【Hover Engine】, easily counteracted gravity and hung lightly in the air.

Li Cheng gripped Grey Rain's ankles, and the two drifted toward the ground like dandelion seeds, slowly.

Fu Ding Hua Long hastily drew a parachute from the scroll, slipped it on, and landed on the ground. The Crimson Rider, meanwhile, sat atop a Dodrio's back and also touched down.

As for Bai Ma Mu Bei, she first hurled the stone coffin down from the 24th floor, then leapt down herself; with a "thud," she smashed a huge crater into the middle of the road.

Smoke billowed. She casually dusted off her armor, stepped out of the crater, and turned to glance at the building's first floor.

The body of that abstract-cause-of-death Toronto, Canada lawyer, Gary Hoye, lay on the cement floor, the glass floor-to-ceiling window beneath him.

The glass had shattered into shards, but the metal window frame remained intact.

Gary Hoye lay dead with unclosed eyes in the middle of the window frame, blood streaming from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, his face pierced through by glass shards. After roughly ten seconds, the corpse, along with the broken glass, gradually phased out and vanished.

The ground was clean, as if nothing had happened.

Li Cheng raised his hand, signaling the other three not to speak. He himself took a large clock from the warehouse, wound the mainspring, and began timing.

The second and minute hands kept turning, and Gary Hoye once again fell from the 24th floor and slammed into the ground.

"The cycle time for each loop is—"

Li Cheng squinted slightly, stopped the timer. "Four minutes and fifty seconds."

"What's going on? It can't be another time-loop type secret realm, can it?!"

The Crimson Rider immediately tensed up. He had genuinely died a full fifty times during the battery escort mission, and now just hearing "time loop" made his whole body go numb.

"It's not a time loop. It's the death image replaying over and over."

The highest-level Bai Ma Mu Bei also saw something. She shook her head, slapped the stone coffin beside her, and pushed the coffin to the ground in front of the high-rise.

Bang!

Gary Hoye once again fell from above, phased through the coffin, and slammed into the ground.

Fu Ding Hua Long took out reconnaissance equipment, scanned carefully, and gave a definitive answer: "He has no physical body, no soul fluctuation. He's indeed just a pre-death image."

His tone paused. The confusion on Fu Ding Hua Long's face did not fade; if anything, it deepened: "Strange. Gary Hoye was just an ordinary person in the real world—at most remembered by a small handful of people for his bizarre death. He himself was insignificant.

What purpose did the entity that built this city have, spending the effort to recreate his pre-death image?

After all, even the carpet patterns and computer models of the Toronto-Dominion Centre office building have been replicated exactly as they were. It absolutely cannot be a coincidence."

"Who knows. The Killing Ground is vast, and there's nothing it can't contain. Anything is possible."

Li Cheng shrugged. "Once I accidentally tossed a ton of sodium into a river, and a Gold River God and a Silver River God floated up."

??

The river gods got blown up by the combustion reaction, right?

How is that any different from electrofishing in a city stadium swimming pool?

Fu Ding Hua Long held his expression in check. He represented the face of the Special Affairs Bureau; he couldn't just blurt out whatever complaints came to mind. He exerted all his effort to control his aching-balls frustration,

and did not press further on why the clock in Li Cheng's hands was a battle-scarred, desert-style, girls'-self-use, ninety-nine-new, with the hands even running in reverse.

"It's not safe here. Let's first head in the direction the radar points us. The closer we get to the treasure's location, the more likely we'll run into other players."

So saying, Fu Ding Hua Long once again took out his scroll, plucked a flock of birds from the paper, and released them into the "blizzard" of black flocculent matter to conduct reconnaissance in place of drones.

The black drifting snow drastically reduced visibility. The group hugged together as they advanced along the street.

"These buildings… so strange."

The Crimson Rider's brow furrowed deeper and deeper. Along the street were skyscrapers from Tokyo and Seoul, stilted thatched huts from Southeast Asia, dome-shaped residences from the Middle East, churches, schools, fire stations.

The buildings on a shabby street are likewise a hodgepodge of styles, but there's order within the chaos. Every building must be approved by the neighborhood committee before construction, so the final result is messy but not disorderly, with its own unique charm.

Yet the building cluster beneath their feet looked as if buildings from different times and different spaces had been cut out and forcibly stitched together. There was no aesthetic appeal whatsoever.

Creak—

The door of a Southeast Asian stilted thatched hut was blown open by the wind, and in the gloom, a pair of eyes reflected the light.

It was a Southeast Asian woman in her forties, hair disheveled, gaunt and haggard. Behind her on the wall hung a portrait of Ho Chi Minh; at her feet sat a bowl of dark brown poison.

In her arms she held a male infant with a severely deformed skull, long since dead.

There was no need for verbal reminders; from the style of the house and its furnishings alone, one could deduce the era and setting.

Location: Vietnam. Time: the Vietnam War. Subjects: civilians poisoned by the U. S. military's lethal herbicide 【Agent Orange】.

Like Gary Hoye, this Vietnamese woman was also replaying her pre-death image—drinking the poison, taking her own life—on a cycle of three and a half minutes.

Wait, something's off!

Bai Ma Mu Bei's gaze sharpened. Gary Hoye cycled every four minutes and fifty seconds; the person, the window, the window frame all reset to zero.

But when this Vietnamese woman cycled, the thatched hut's door did not reset and close; it was still slowly opening.

In other words, the two behavioral patterns differed.

Figuring out the key almost instantly, Bai Ma Mu Bei instantly released a skill, conjuring an earthen wall out of thin air and sealing it in front of the stilted thatched hut's door.

Unfortunately, she was still a step too late.

The wooden door swung fully open. The Vietnamese woman, who had originally kept her head lowered, her entire face hidden beneath her tangled hair, suddenly jerked her head up, revealing a twisted visage. With a shriek, she flung the dead infant from her arms and charged at the players on all fours.

With every step she took, her fingernails grew an inch longer, emitting a sharp sound of tearing through the air.

Boom!

The one-meter-thick rammed-earth wall was smashed straight through. The Vietnamese woman—or rather, the evil ghost—burst past the obstacle and barreled toward the Crimson Rider like a dump truck.

【Looks like I'm being looked down on, huh.】

The Crimson Rider felt a flicker of anger. His physical body's strength was indeed the lowest among the four players present, making him the easiest to break through—but he was a Summoner, damn it.

"Banette, use Shadow Punch!"

Following the Crimson Rider's command, Banette (a monkey-shaped Pokémon with a spherical body and gray fur) threw several punches through the air. The shadow fist imprints ignored distance and struck the evil ghost directly.

As the final evolution of Mankey, Banette possesses both Fighting and Ghost typing, dealing physical damage and spiritual damage simultaneously.

The evil ghost's shoulder, neck, ribs, and leg bones shattered, emitting a dense sound like popping beans; both legs fractured at once,

But it was still sprinting forward at a completely unreasonable full speed.

(End of this chapter)