Li Li's face flushed red.
Damn it! What does she mean? He was a doctor, after all! How could she ask a child to explain things to him?
How utterly condescending!
Pan Xiaoxin also looked embarrassed, a little sheepish.
Tan Xiao, never one to miss out on the fun, patted his shoulder and said, "Xiaoxin! Teach this bookworm a lesson!"
"Hey! Don't you guys go too far!" Li Li abruptly stood up, his face dark. "I'm just thinking about safety! After all, no one knows what kind of game this is!"
"Alright…" Yan Qingwen patted his shoulder. "Sit down. The possibility of a competitive format is unlikely. This kind of reward-based game instance is usually tackled by a team working together. It's different from the previous games."
The previous games, the Tortoise and Hare race and the Lucky Quiz, were battles between players.
Li Li sat down, his face still flushed with anger, but he didn't say anything more.
Yan Qingwen looked at everyone and said, "To show my sincerity, I'll go first. You all know my name, I'm Yan Qingwen, 30 years old. I used to be a special forces soldier. I was injured during a mission and later retired. Now I run a private security business."
He glanced at Li Li and continued, "About half a month ago, I took on a job from the Li family. Their only son, Li Li, is an SCO researcher. He got separated from his team during the evacuation and was suspected to be trapped in the mist. They wanted us to do our best to rescue him."
Shen Mo asked, "You're still doing business in this situation?"
Yan Qingwen smiled. "Old Master Li helped me once. I owe him a favor."
The hardest debt to repay is a debt of gratitude.
Shen Mo nodded slightly and said, "I've introduced myself before. I'm with the National Security Agency, Director of Special Operations Coordination, though the title is meaningless now. All my team members have been killed, and the agency practically no longer exists. If I can escort Li Li to Shanghai with you, I hope to see the progress of the research, to understand what these games, these mazes, actually are."
"Were your team members killed because of the game?" Yan Qingwen asked.
"Most likely," Shen Mo said, his brow furrowing slightly, his expression grim. "On the way to find the SCO research team, they turned into dolls."
"Probably the same as what happened to us last time…" Li Li said. "During the Lucky Quiz, we were all in the game, only Su Man was left outside."
Shen Mo nodded. "The doll game does seem to have a requirement for the number of participants. After the incident, I tried to contact my superiors, but my phone wouldn't connect, and the network was down. I suspect something might have happened there. Later, I met Weiwei, and while leaving the city, I met Tan Xiao and Teacher Cheng. We all escaped death in the same game, so we've been traveling together since then."
"Actually, your situation is quite similar to ours," Yan Qingwen said, glancing at Lü Ang beside him.
Lü Ang nodded and introduced himself, "Yan Qingwen and I were teammates, but he retired due to injury. I… uh, I made a mistake and was discharged. After that, I had no work, so I partnered with him in the security business."
He paused, then added stiffly, "I'm 35 years old. That's all."
Next was Li Li. His expression was a little conflicted. After a moment of hesitation, he said, "What I'm about to say was originally classified… but now that there aren't many people left in the world, it doesn't matter if I tell you."
Everyone looked at him curiously.
Li Li said, "Our original research institute focused on high-energy physics, also known as elementary particle physics. In May of this year, that incident happened… the news about dolls suddenly appearing on the streets. Shortly after that, we received a notice requiring us to merge with two other research institutes to form a new organization called SCO, specifically to study the abnormal doll phenomenon… and we actually discovered something."