Chapter 417: Heavy Truck

The players dragged the still-dazed Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao out of the theater, walked all the way to the corridor's corner, confirmed the Horsehead Man hadn't followed, then exhaled in relief.

Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao's eyes were vacant, his expression dazed, likely still lost in the earlier memories.

Red Spider called out a few times without response, turned to Binary Tree, and hesitated: "Brother Tree, you deleted so many memories—no problems?"

Personality is formed by memories; deleting memories inevitably alters personality. If Binary Tree deleted too much, he might turn from a meticulous, rational programmer into a rebellious greaser youth—that would be bad.

"It's fine. I made a backup."

Binary Tree downed a miniature life potion, reconnecting the severed neurons in his brain, then pulled out a USB drive and inserted it into his VR goggles.

The USB drive contained the memories he had deleted.

Although the immersive sensation from re-experiencing them through the VR goggles couldn't match the original memories, it was still better than total amnesia, and helped reduce the impact on his personality.

"Phew—"

Binary Tree exhaled a breath of stale air, regaining clarity, then suddenly remembered something, removed his action camera, and manually deleted the segment where Li Cheng evaluated India.

He then awkwardly said to Li Cheng: "Uh, Brother Pi Fu, there are still quite a few Indian players in the Killing Ground."

The Killing Ground selection doesn't consider race, nationality, or region—it's mostly random, with personal comprehensive quality as secondary.

This meant countries with larger populations had a greater advantage in producing players.

As the world's most populous nation, whether India had one hundred million people or one billion livestock, whether it used cow dung and urine as medicine or food,

the sheer number of people meant it produced far more players than any European country.

And another hellish fact: because India's local power structures were massive, Brahmin and Kshatriya players had long united to hunt, capture, and enslave Vaishya, Shudra, and Dalit caste players,

stripping them of their qualifications and selling them abroad or transferring them to their own children and relatives.

For the rare few "untouchable" players who fought their way up, they were given "flag-raising"—a caste upgrade—and arranged marriages.

All this meant Indian players now outnumbered their former colonial master, Britain, by a huge margin.

These "High-Indians" shouted patriotism but refused to join India's official institutions; instead, they scattered across guilds, using their expert PowerPoint skills to dazzle superiors and firmly occupy mid-level guild positions.

And every Indian who joined brought in a whole circle of relatives and friends—like cockroaches, multiplying endlessly.

The only good news: as player levels rose, Killing Ground missions grew harder. Levels 10, 20, and 30 acted like filters, effectively screening out, or outright killing, most Indian players.

There wasn't a single Indian in the top tier of Level 40.

"Doesn't matter."

Li Cheng shrugged. "Lies don't hurt people—truth is the sharp blade. Can they ban me like they banned Watson?"

The Watson Li Cheng mentioned was James Dewey Watson, who won the Nobel Prize in 1953 with Crick for discovering DNA's double helix structure and was hailed as the "father of DNA."

In his later years, he claimed "Black people are unevolved, intellectually inferior," and was blacklisted and stripped of all honors by the academic community.

He just didn't catch a good time—no scientist dared defy political correctness to test IQ and racial genetics; the academic world could only ban him on grounds of racial discrimination.

If this had happened in the Evil Science Alliance, they'd have ignored scientific ethics entirely, cloned thousands or tens of thousands of infants of all races, raised them under identical conditions, and conducted long-term tests.

"Oh, by the way."

Li Cheng remembered something and asked Binary Tree: "Brother Tree, can your database search for 'Red Star Orphanage'?" "Red Star Orphanage?"

Binary Tree paused, then shook his head. "I'm disconnected from the surface network; my local database is limited. I couldn't find it. Why are you asking suddenly?"

"When the Horsehead Man scanned my memories, I saw a snippet of his."

Li Cheng tapped his Information Synthesis Glasses. "That name flashed by in the footage."

"This—"

Binary Tree frowned, utterly baffled. "Could that Horsehead Man S have originally been a human from Earth? Did he accidentally fall into a secret realm and become an extraordinary being?"

"No, if he were from Earth, he wouldn't have waited—he'd have seized the player qualification and returned immediately."

This question had no answer for now; they could only set it aside for the time being.

Meanwhile, Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao had regained his senses, patted his head as if shaking off puppet-like stiffness, and awkwardly cleared his throat: "Uh, that phone really belonged to my friend—not mine."

"Mm-hmm."

"We believe you."

"Yeah, yeah."

Li Cheng and the others nodded insincerely. Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao's memories ended at the moment the black-clad woman took control—he remembered nothing else.

After a brief discussion, he estimated the corridor's height, signaled everyone to step back, then pulled out a war medal and slashed the air.

Space tore open. Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao summoned from the rift a heavily armored truck painted with a lion motif, waving for everyone to climb aboard—the underground corridor was wide and straight; driving was faster than walking.

"Pretty cool."

Li Cheng patted the vehicle's shell. The armored truck was covered in machine gun turrets, riveted armor, and iron spikes—like a post-apocalyptic war machine.

"Of course. I spent at least eighty thousand game coins on this thing."

Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao was visibly proud. He looked fierce, but his personality was surprisingly easygoing.

The 【Mech War Lei Ting】 Guild was famous for manufacturing and repairing mechs, its members mostly mech enthusiasts.

This armored truck clearly could transform into a mech form, like Transformers, at critical moments.

"What's with all these stickers?"

Grey Rain noticed dozens of stickers beneath the lion motif—planes, tanks, various monsters, and at the front row, several oddly horizontal human-shaped stickers.

"My kill records."

Since his memories had already been exposed, Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao no longer cared about hiding his true identity. He stepped on the gas and casually remarked: "Back then, I was lucky—

I was driving a heavy truck along the border when I accidentally ran over a group of terrorists smuggling player qualifications across the border. Not only did I escape punishment, I also gained their player qualifications and a flag and bonus from the Special Affairs Bureau."

So that's why all the planes and tanks were upright, but the human stickers were horizontal—these people went to the 2D world, huh?

Li Cheng and the others stared with strange expressions, clinging to the vehicle as it sped down the corridor.

(End of Chapter)