"Zhao Zijing" grimaced as the Driver made a final move—previous player tests had shown that anything crossing over the top of the tall grass would disappear.
At that time, to avoid mission failure, nobody had tested it with the battery,
Now, as the Driver detonated the explosives and sent the battery flying, if the battery disappeared because it crossed over the tall grass, it would be a reprisal against Zhao Zijing, making everyone suffer.
If the battery didn’t disappear and successfully crossed the tall grass, it could also serve as a warning to potential threats like the Ant.
"Zhao Zijing" stood still, used telekinesis to catch the falling Task Battery.
Fortunately, the battery itself was undamaged, with only 40% of power remaining.
Others, including Cliff, could appear at any time; she took the battery, and with telekinesis, repeatedly crushed the Driver’s corpse and the Spirit Ball before quickly retreating.
Soon, the tall grass was parted again; Li Cheng and Gray Rain looked at the scattered remains of the Driver, speechless.
Despite being acquaintances from past missions, Li Cheng wasn’t in the mood to crack any Hell jokes but began to seriously examine the surroundings.
Gray Rain questioned, "Could it be that Khrush-whatever did this?"
"It was Cliff." Li Cheng responded without looking up, "The Khrushchev you’re talking about was a former leader of the Soviet Union."
Gray Rain, puzzled, asked, "Isn’t Khrushchev Yobi Daxiong’s friend?"
"Isn’t [Suneo] a character from ’Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber’?"
"Isn’t Ji Xiaofu that steel-teethed minister?"
"Isn’t Xiaolan Shinichi’s girlfriend?"
While they conversed, footsteps approached; the bandaged man arrived and, seeing the fragmented corpse in the explosion crater, trembled as he said, "This, this is the Driver?"
"Yeah, it was when I got here. The Task Battery appears to have been taken, too."
Li Cheng carefully examined the Red Driver’s sports camera he carried, finding it smashed thoroughly, irreparable.
The bandaged man couldn’t hold it together anymore, flopped down on the ground, his hands cradling his head as he rocked back and forth.
Cliff, a Level 20 Transcendent, was hard for players to defeat. Now, with Midnight Howl and Red Driver dead, the situation was extremely unfavorable.
"I need to go home," the bandaged man seemed to recall more memories, painfully said, "My wife is still sick, my daughter is in a special education center, I need to go home..."
Typically, the killing field system tends to select ordinary people with distinct traits and high potential to become players.
As the saying goes, ’To whom God assigns a great task, he must first suffer their heart, work their muscles and bones.’ Among player groups, many lives are tragic.
And the bandaged man seemed to be one of the most tragic.
His parents died young, his wife was seriously ill, his daughter had congenital defects needing care, and he himself, a firefighter, had been severely burned in a fire, now dragged into this killing field.
Shortly afterward, attracted by the flying Task Battery, Zhao Zijing and Catherine also arrived at the edge of the explosion crater; all the survivors regrouped.
"There are only the Driver’s footprints in this area,"
Zhao Zijing observed briefly, frowning, "In the Navy Six Styles, there’s a move called Moon Step, which allows one to momentarily stay in the air by treading on it. Could it have been him?"
"Hard to say, the Driver, as a Summoner, has limited own strength. If it were an ambush by Cliff, I speculate he would be instantly killed, unable to make a sound."
Li Cheng shook his head, then suddenly as if realizing something, sniffed the air.
His eyes lit up, and he immediately took out an industrial-grade olfactory analyzer (Electronic Nose) from the 3D warehouse, using the special effect of Assembly Puppet, installed it on his nose.
The olfactory analyzer, comprising a gas-sensitive sensor array, signal pre-processing, and pattern recognition, is widely used in fields such as chemical engineering, food and beverage, environmental odor assessments, and medical examinations.
Once installed on the nose, the extremely subtle fragrance in the air immediately became clear and pointed directly in the three o’clock direction.
Li Cheng took the lead, sprinting in that direction while explaining, "In the world of Pocket Monster, Stench Blossom also has male and female.
The pistils of the female Stench Blossom release pollen that emits a very strong foul smell, which can spread over two kilometers. The male Stench Blossoms’ smell is much lighter.
After being diluted by the air, it turned into a faint fragrance.
The Driver’s Stench Blossom is male. Before he died, he must have gotten the pollen or nectar on the battery (or possibly the person who killed him) to guide us."
If the Driver were still alive at this moment, he would weakly shout, "This is my last ripple, Ant!"
Catherine followed breathlessly behind, gasping, "No, isn’t this a trap?"
Li Cheng couldn’t be bothered to answer that question. Gray Rain glanced at Catherine and commented scornfully, "Auntie, do you even have a choice?"
What auntie, I haven’t even graduated from college yet!
Catherine’s expression twisted, but the nickname was actually not off — after all, strictly speaking, Gray Rain was only seven or eight months old. She could rightly call anyone aunt or uncle.
Everyone followed the fragrance in the air, and before they even pushed through the bushes, they heard a familiar female voice from ahead wailing, "Impossible!"
Breaking through the tall grass, they saw another Zhao Zijing kneeling in a mud pit.
Her expression was bewildered and despairing, as if she had received a huge shock, and in front of her was a dried-up male corpse wearing camouflage.
The corpse emitted strained breaths, seeming to be in a bizarre state between life and death.
A Task Battery was inserted into his chest, and the battery was already depleted. Nearby the body, there lay dozens, nearly a hundred, empty batteries of the same kind. Updates are released by novel·fire·net
Upon suddenly seeing another version of herself, the Zhao Zijing standing next to Li Cheng was also extremely shocked.
She was about to say something when she saw that Zhao Zijing raise her palm, manipulating a Telekinesis Short Arrow, and pierce her own head, dying instantly, beyond any chance of rescue.
Once again, it was a scene right out of the prophecy painting.
All this happened within a few seconds. The still living Zhao Zijing quickly stepped forward, pulled up her deceased self from the mud pit, and carefully examined.
No disguise, no human skin mask; the mole-speckled, identical teeth—it was really Zhao Zijing herself.
"The bushes are caught in a time loop, another set of ourselves existing at the same time..."
Zhao Zijing’s thoughts raced, and she also considered the second Catherine she had seen earlier, arriving at the same conclusion as the Driver.
Li Cheng’s focus, however, was on those depleted batteries.
The batteries lay chaotically stacked together, numbering nearly a hundred. If these batteries were all part of the loop, it indicated that this cycle had repeated at least nearly a hundred times.
Where had those previous Li Chengs gone?
Li Cheng pondered calmly, stepping forward to look down at the desiccated male corpse, using a skull restoration Skill in his mind to recover the original face of the body.
Caucasian male, in his thirties, with a square face.
This image pointed to the chairman of the Mercury Alloy Guild, that Lv30 Transcendent, Mithril.
Li Cheng raised his eyebrows, looking at this neither dead nor alive body, "So you’re not completely dead?"
The dry corpse weakly spoke, his voice rough and hoarse like a broken gong, "You must be the suicidal woman’s teammates, right? Bad luck for you, trapped here just like with Mercury Alloy.
Judging from all these empty batteries, this must be our ninety-eighth repeat of this conversation."
"What exactly is going on, what did you just tell the second me, causing her to commit suicide?"
Zhao Zijing dropped the body, her gaze icily fixating on Mithril.
Under her [Point Array Detection] Skill, the original Lv30 Mithril now had his Life Energy reduced to about the level of Lv10-Lv12.
"I just told her the truth about these bushes."
Mithril spoke softly, "Killing everyone is the only way to break the cycle. Otherwise, you’ll end up permanently trapped like me and Cliff."