doitstory A key clue appears in Chapter 87.
A key clue appears in Chapter 87.
Then, his teammate tried to save him but he died.
After he put down his chopsticks and remarked with a touch of admiration, "The cake is delicious,"—
The little boy went mad.
While screaming and wailing, "You ate it! You ate it! You actually ate it!", he flipped the table over amidst the stunned silence of his teammates and the bewildered gazes of "Didn't you just make me eat this?"
After a muffled thud, the white cream collapsed and flowed onto the ground like an avalanche, mixing with the dust on the ground, like snow that had been trampled on.
Before the teammates could even offer a helping hand, the cake was wasted. Then, the woman of the house, who had been seemingly invisible in the house, suddenly appeared—
Obviously, making someone else's child cry in their home is extremely impolite. So the woman of the house, in a show of defiance, raised the kitchen knife in her hand.
A thrilling chase then unfolded inside the tenement building.
Fortunately, because his teammates had saved him and he had been in the game for a long time, even though this game had lasted for 5 days, he was already very familiar with the layout of the apartment building, so his escape was... quite smooth and successful.
This also caused the number of viewers in the live stream where the teammate saved the day to rise rapidly.
As he ran, his teammate realized something was wrong – why did he feel that the temperature inside the tenement building was getting higher and higher?
Then he knew why the temperature had risen—
Because the entire tenement building caught fire.
The one that is on fire.
Especially since the corridors of the tenement building were filled with a lot of clutter, the time it took for his teammates to discover the fire and for him to be trapped in the flames with no way to escape was less than the time it took him to run down one floor of stairs.
So when a teammate tried to save the game after failing to complete it, the screen remained black for a long time before the voice came back on.
"That really scared me to death..."
His voice still trembled, "I really thought I was going to be burned alive. The facial features in the game were just too realistic..."
"but!"
After his teammate rescued him, he probably looked at the comments for a while. The silly comments from netizens helped him get out of his previous terrifying gaming experience, and his tone finally became a little more lively: "Although it was a bit of a pity this time, we also obtained important clues."
"Our previous analysis was correct. You can't eat the food in the game, or rather, you can't eat too much of it. If you eat too much, you will be 'mutated' and lose control of your actions, leaving you completely at the mercy of the game."
"If no abnormalities are detected at the beginning, the longer it goes on, the deeper you get into trouble, and eventually you won't be able to get out."
"And our previous guess that Yi's birthday was a key plot point was correct. However, my previous thought that as long as you survive the birthday party, you can complete the game was wrong. The game 'Reunion' actually has a minimum deadline for completing the mission, which is Yi's birthday. It is actually the final deadline for completing the game."
"If a way to get through the challenge before the birthday party isn't found, the entire tenement building will soon be engulfed in flames. Even if you manage to get through the birthday party without making any mistakes, you'll still be burned to death inside the tenement building."
"Therefore, 'reunion' is really difficult—players must discover the anomalies in the game within 5 days, and also find the truth and a way to escape."
Ugh……
Jiang Yi sighed softly as she watched the streamer earnestly analyzing the plot in the live broadcast room.
My teammate's advice to save me... while all of it is correct, but—
Still no crucial clues have been found.
Ugh……
Jiang Yi slowly turned over on the sofa.
When will these StarCraft players finally discover the biggest "surprise" in this dungeon?
She was really looking forward to seeing how these players would react when they found out the truth...
Fortunately, these players were quite cooperative and didn't keep Jiang Yi waiting for too long.
However, the person who discovered this crucial clue was not the technical streamer Jiangyi thought, but a streamer known for creating entertaining content—
The streamer who discovered the key clue was just an unknown streamer—after all, big streamers don't really need to rely on antics to attract viewers anymore.
This small streamer initially started by playing a similar "punishment" roulette game with his viewers, and then he drew a task written by a viewer: "Wander around the corridor of a tenement building at night."
This small-time streamer was quite devastated because he wasn't very brave. He only participated in the "Reunion" challenge to ride the wave of popularity and see if he could gain some followers. He ended up drawing a task that seemed ordinary to other streamers, but was incredibly difficult for him.
However, because of this, when this young streamer left the house at night to wander around in the corridor, he was not as carefree as other streamers. Instead, the dog sneaked around without noticing anything and could not move more than a meter in a long time.
That's how it happened. While the young streamer was pacing around in circles, hesitant to take a step, he unexpectedly saw Aunt Wang come out of her house.
Aunt Wang appeared in the dark corridor at night, dressed no differently than she did during the day, but her expressionless face, devoid of her warm smile, made her seem like a completely different person.
This unprecedented plot twist momentarily surprised the viewers who had initially come just to watch the streamer make a fool of himself. Then, realizing what was happening, they immediately started calling their friends to watch the new development in the live stream.
The number of viewers in the live stream skyrocketed instantly, and the junior streamer knew perfectly well why these viewers had come. So even though he was scared and didn't want to do anything, in order to capitalize on this surge in viewership, the junior streamer gritted his teeth and secretly joined in.
After leaving the room, Aunt Wang had a very clear goal—she went straight to the security room.
Aunt Wang must be very familiar with the layout of the corridors in the tenement building. At least she could walk through the corridors, which were full of clutter and had little light, without any problems.
Even though the young streamer following behind her followed Aunt Wang's route, she still bumped into things from time to time. As a result, the young streamer walked with great anxiety, afraid that if she made even a slightly loud noise, Aunt Wang would find out.
Aunt Wang entered the security room, and the big dog inside was startled awake by her footsteps. However, it only glanced at Aunt Wang before lying back down. The young anchor didn't dare to get too close, afraid that the big dog would bark at the unfamiliar scent. She just watched from afar as Aunt Wang took out the keys and came out.
He quickly and carefully followed.
Aunt Wang quickly stopped in her tracks.
The young anchor was initially startled, thinking that her footsteps were too loud and Aunt Wang had discovered her. However, she found that Aunt Wang had simply stopped in front of a door and started looking for keys on her keychain.
The young anchor peeked out cautiously.
The room Aunt Wang stayed in was the one she mentioned when entering the game, which was "locked because no one had lived there for a long time." However, judging from the fact that she deliberately stayed up in the middle of the night to look for her key to open the door, the reality is clearly not as simple as she said.
The young streamer watched as Aunt Wang opened the door and unlocked it. Although the chat kept urging him to follow and see what was inside, the young streamer... simply didn't dare. After all, the rooms in the tenement building weren't very big, and if Aunt Wang turned around and he didn't hide in time, he would surely die.
So, faced with a barrage of comments like "Hurry up and follow!" and "Hurry up and see what's in the house!", the young streamer could only make a face and use "Aunt Wang might find out" as an excuse to avoid the situation.
It has to be said, that little streamer's luck... was really good. Just as the viewers were threatening to unfollow her if she didn't go over there, and she was starting to hesitate about whether to risk everything and go, Aunt Wang came out of the house—
She dragged a person out of the house.
It should be...one person...
The young livestreamer trembled uncontrollably as he looked at the things being dragged out.
His skin clung tightly to his bony frame, a faded, papery yellow, like a thin, fragile sheet of rice paper pasted onto withered branches. His cheekbones protruded high, his eye sockets like dark, gaping holes, his eyelids drooping limply, holding two cloudy, lifeless pupils. His lips were completely bloodless, cracked and peeling, covered with dark red scabs.
He seemed to have been locked up in the house for many days; his stubble was unkempt and stuck in his sunken cheeks. His hands were withered and thin, his wrists so thin they looked as if they would break at any moment, with bulging veins on the back of his hands and white fingernails.
He was like a skin that had been drained of flesh and blood, barely held together by a few bony bones, casting a thin, precarious shadow.
—If it weren't for the occasional movement of his eyes, the young anchor would have really thought it was a corpse with its eyes wide open in death.
The person being dragged out didn't struggle, or rather, he was too weak to struggle. He was like a huge, light garbage bag, being dragged along the ground by Aunt Wang.
Until... light appeared before their eyes.
Wait, light?!
The young anchor stared in disbelief at the source of the light.
The light was coming from a room at the end of the corridor, the one closest to the communal kitchen. The door was ajar, and bright light streamed out, standing out starkly in the dark corridor.
Aunt Wang dragged the person along without stopping until they reached the room with the lights on.
The door was pushed open, and the young anchor saw several people gathered inside. They were all neighbors he had seen in the tenement building before; however, none of them had the kind smiles they had when he saw them during the day. They all stared blankly at Aunt Wang as she entered.
"what?"
The blogger expressed slight doubt.
These NPCs are dressed... so strangely...
They were all wearing long, black leather aprons that almost reached their knees, stained with suspicious grime and looking disgusting; their trouser legs, barely visible from the front, were tucked into tall, black, waterproof leather boots, the boot surfaces splattered with various spots, and a few dark red spots visible along the edges of the soles.
Plus, with the long plastic gloves on her hands, the overall look was...very waterproof.
Then the layout of the room... also seems to be quite different from the interiors of the other rooms.
Through the door that Aunt Wang pushed open, the young anchor saw that there was no common furniture in the room, but instead a row of stoves placed against the wall.
...Another kitchen?
But wait... isn't the communal kitchen right next to this room?
As far as he knew, there weren't many tenants in this tenement building who cooked for themselves. It was mostly Aunt Wang or other NPCs who would cook and then distribute the food to the others, like a communal pot. There was simply no need for so many stoves and cutting boards...
But at this late hour, the stoves in the house were filled with large pots of boiling water. Next to the stoves, on the cutting board, lay many gleaming, sharp kitchen knives.
In the central open space, there were many empty steel basins and plastic buckets. In the corner, there were also several bulging black plastic bags, the contents of which were unknown.
"You're here..."
An NPC carrying a kitchen knife walked up, glanced at the person in Aunt Wang's arms, and suddenly frowned, "Why is this one so thin today?"
"Because this kid was disobedient before..." Aunt Wang gestured to the NPC to lend a hand.
With someone else taking over the work, Aunt Wang was finally able to straighten her back. She gently patted her back with her fist as she explained, "Since he likes to cause trouble, I deliberately starved him for two more days."
The NPC who took the item sounded disapproving: "He's so hungry he barely has any meat on his bones..."
"The meat will probably be tough this time, and it won't fetch much money."
"So what if they're tough... we can eat them ourselves." Aunt Wang's tone sounded very nonchalant: "Those kids we fed meat before were all so fat... it's good to get some leaner ones to cleanse our system."
"Who would want to eat such tough meat..." the NPC said with a look of disgust.
Aunt Wang said, "If you don't eat it, feed it to Big Yellow and Big Black at the door. Those puppies aren't picky eaters."
"Besides, after a few days of fasting, the body will be cleaner, making it much easier to handle."
"Fine, fine..." The NPC clearly couldn't argue with Aunt Wang, and reluctantly dragged her towards the cutting board covered with kitchen knives, muttering complaints under his breath: "The stock has been getting lower and lower lately... If this continues, we'll run out of stock sooner or later."
"It's probably because the Lunar New Year is coming soon..."
Other NPCs also came to lend a hand and joined the discussion: "Everyone's busy going home for the New Year, and hardly anyone reads the flyers we handed out. Apart from that kid who just came in yesterday, we haven't had any new stock lately."
"That kid Xiao Qi, hasn't he been working hard lately? I haven't seen him bring anyone in..."
"Everyone's probably busy going home for the New Year, so fewer people are passing through here. Xiao Qi isn't finding anyone, so of course he can't bring them in..."
"Alright, enough talk, let's get this done quickly, it'll be dawn soon... and we still need to deliver it to that new kid later..."
The little streamer, who was secretly hiding by the door, was completely stunned.
The new kid... could it be him?
And what I'm going to give him... could it be... what he thinks it is?