Forces of Temptation

Before entering the copy, the player will have a period of nothingness.

Humans are floating in the endless darkness like a substantial tide, as if they are placed in a biological cabin full of viscous nutrient solution.

In this process, the player does not have any autonomy at all, and can only passively receive copy information.

But this time, what rang in Nan Zhou's ears was not the mechanical narration introduction before the dungeon of "Xiao Ming's Daily" started.

It's pure sound with no picture.

The sound of high-speed running footsteps and the sound of gasping for fear are intertwined.

"Huh...huh..."

The sound of frantic and rhythmless breathing makes people feel the burning pain in the throat during intense exercise and the astringent smell of blood rising from the lungs just by listening to it.

The man was running wildly all the way, suddenly he tripped over something and fell to the ground.

The moment the person's body slammed into the ground, Nan Zhou heard a soft sound.

"sand--"

He couldn't tell what that sound was.

Is it the friction sound of the clothing material and the ground after falling?

Or is it the sound of electromagnetic interference?

Because it is too short, there is no way to judge.

But what can be judged is that the person who made the sound is running for his life.

Running from death, running from a terrible thing.

Because Nan Zhou heard a clear sound of teeth cracking when he fell.

But the people in the recording didn't even have time to groan.

He turned over and continued to run forward desperately.

He fled into the stairwell in embarrassment.

——Because the footsteps echoed louder than before.

After going down two floors, he broke into the elevator room.

— because of the uninterrupted sound of pressing keys and restless pacing back and forth.

--Ding.

The elevator has arrived.

After the sound of pressing a button to select a layer was heard, followed by the sound of the mechanical operation of the steel box slowly closing.

Nan Zhou was wondering why the man locked himself in a steel cage that he couldn't escape, when he heard the sound of tiptoe walking.

...The man used the elevator to mislead the pursuers.

He summoned the elevator and only pressed the floor number, but no one entered.

If the thing chasing him also comes to the elevator room on this floor, and sees the elevator in operation, it is likely to chase him directly.

He'll be dodged.

He left the elevator room with a soft tiptoe, came to a certain room on this floor, and quietly turned the doorknob.

It was extremely quiet.

Therefore, the normal and weak friction sound of the door spring is like scratching against the nerve of a person's teeth.

Extra sharp.

Squeak——

This is the closing sound of the tin cabinet again.

The man finally hid himself in a safe place.

After hiding, he finally began to speak.

It was a young male voice, his voice was chaotic, suppressed and short.

"Save me, save me, save me, save me..."

"We shouldn't be there, that place doesn't exist, so neither can we—"

"Hu Li is dead, he is dead, I remember, why don't you remember—"

The irrational murmurs seemed half-crazed and about to collapse.

Was he talking to someone on the phone, or was he talking nervously to himself?

Suddenly, everything was quiet.

Even the nervous panting was choked by the man in his throat.

Because the door he closed carefully with all his might, opened it from the outside without warning.

"sand--"

"sand--"

"sand--"

It sounded like some kind of creature crawling on the ground.

Soso... rustle...

The sound came from far to near, all the way to the iron cabinet.

Nan Zhou heard the trembling of the legs of the person in the cabinet.

His trembling legs kept hitting the bottom of the cabinet, and even the whole cabinet trembled with fear.

There's no point in hiding anymore.

... The tide is gone.

squeak-

The door opened.

Next, there was a long silence.

There were no screams, no howls, no desperate screams and sobs before dying.

All sounds are pulled out.Only pure tranquility remained.

It seemed that the thrilling pursuit just now was just a dream.

Nan Zhou pricked up his ears, trying to get some residual information from the dead silence.

Suddenly, a male voice sounded in his ear.

Just now, this voice was still whispering manically and quietly.

Now, he was standing next to Nan Zhou in this boundless darkness, talking to him close to Nan Zhou's ear.

The sound is not too loud, but enough to make people creepy.

"—I went."

"Nan Zhou, when are you coming?"

[The game officially starts after 30 seconds. 】

[The game time is 120 hours. 】

[Before the game time is over, don't go crazy and survive. 】

...is this a time-limited survival game?

Without giving Nanzhou a chance to think about it, a large area of ​​dense rustling sound came surging, like the muffled sound of electromagnetic interference.

Also like a swarm of rats swarming over his feet and head.

His feet hit solid ground again.

When the surrounding ambient light gradually brightened, Nan Zhou first heard the screams pouring into the eardrums and the whistle of the referee.

Then he smelled the smell of basketball rubber and a little sweat.

With Nan Zhou's eyes closed, he could see the traces of light red blood vessels reflected by the sun on his eyelids.

After making sure that his eyes would not be burned by the sudden light, he slowly opened them.

"Set sail after the dream, dare to be the last wave!"

"Play wonderfully, play victoriously, and play brightly!"

The goal was first two bright red slogans, followed by two teams in a stalemate in one field, and the score board showing the score of 70:71 between the Department of Architecture and the Department of Mathematics, and a large-screen timer with only 23 seconds left.

...he was watching a basketball game.

Li Yinhang and Jiang Fang who entered the dungeon together with him were no longer by his side.

Nan Zhou was not in a hurry to find them.

He sat on the spot, turned his wrist over, confirmed the butterfly tattoo on his wrist, looked down at the shape of his ankle bones, and then raised his hand to touch the outline of his ears.

Well, the face is still this face.

It's just that he changed his clothes, into a white shirt, a dark red sweater jacket, and a casual tie, which is a typical preppy style.

Surrounded by the blue sky and white sun, there was a lot of people's voices, and it didn't seem to have any factors that could make people hang up and go crazy.

While Nanzhou was consolidating information, the basketball competition over there had come to an end.

The construction team in orange autumn clothes scored a goal.

The 70 on the scoreboard jumped to 72, and there were 4 seconds left in the countdown to zero.

The overall situation has been decided, and the limit is overtaken.

The grandstand where Nanzhou was located suddenly set off a mountain roar and a tsunami.

According to the reaction of the surrounding audience, Nan Zhou quickly made a judgment.

I'm from the Department of Architecture, opposite to the Department of Mathematics.

The Department of Architecture had probably been beaten by the Department of Mathematics from the beginning of the game, and finally succeeded in overtaking with only a few seconds left before the end of the game.

A short student next to Nan Zhou came up and pinched Nan Zhou's shoulders, jumped and cursed, screaming heartily: "Awesome! Senior, we are awesome!"

Nanzhou was shaken back and forth by him, but he didn't resist.

Although he used his own face, it is clear that the NPCs in the copy have successfully modified their memories, completely treating them as the person they knew before.

As soon as he figured this out, Nan Zhou saw his junior put out a fist, the fist was inward, and it stretched straight in front of his eyes.

The boy looked at Senior Nan Zhou expectantly, wanting to punch him up and down, to vent his pent-up depression.

Nan Zhou was a little surprised.

But he still stretched out his hand to hold his wrist, and adjusted the direction of his force and his fisting posture.

Junior: "?"

Nan Zhou nodded affirmatively, and told him with his eyes: This way beating people will hurt more.

After patiently educating his junior, Nan Zhou stood up, ready to go find his teammates.

Without warning, there was a faint sound in his ear.

"sand……"

Nan Zhou stopped and looked back.

He saw nothing.

He rubbed his ears.

I don't know if it was his illusion, but the rustling sound seemed to come from the depths of his ear canal.

……

This teleportation is indeed random.

After listening to a weird recording, Jiang Fang appeared in a descending elevator.

Beside him are two foreign students who speak Russian.

While listening to their conversation, Jiang Fang opened the bag in his hand with the words [International Student Department of School of Management, Jinjing University] printed on it.

He quickly flipped through several textbooks one by one, raised his head, and confirmed that his face had not changed on the slightly reflective elevator car wall.

When he walked out of the foreign student apartment, Jiang Fang looked around, thinking about where to find Nanzhou, when he heard a temporary interlude from the public speaker next to the apartment building, which was originally playing Schubert's piano music:

"Everyone, Nan Zhou from the Department of Architecture is lost. If anyone knows Nan Zhou from the Department of Architecture, please come to the broadcasting room to pick him up."

……

Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang almost arrived at the broadcasting room.

Nan Zhou sat alone on the wooden bench in the broadcasting room, with his back straight, holding the lock of the receipt box that he had brought over from the last copy in his hand.

But the lock that had been firmly locked had already popped out.

Jiang Fang knocked on the glass.

Hearing the sound, Nan Zhou raised his head, stood up, poked his head out of the radio room, and announced straight to the point——

"I have stolen level 1."

After being successfully claimed by his teammates, Nanzhou exchanged information with them.

The audio content they heard was much the same.

A person is being chased - trying to lure him away with an elevator - hiding in a metal cabinet in the room - found.

The only difference is that the subject of the man's last whisper is different.

The basic sentence pattern is, "XX, when are you coming?"

When he heard this sentence, Li Yinhang's San value immediately dropped by 2 points, and he has not recovered until now.

She could only listen to Nan Zhou and Jiang Fang, two big men who seemed to have no nerves of fear, to express their opinions on the current information.

Jiang Fang said: "That person can call each of us by name, which means he knows us."

Nan Zhou hummed: "We can start with this. According to the setting, we went to a certain place together and provoked something."

Chances are it's the kind that makes a rustling noise.

Nanzhou said again: "A man named Hu Li died. We can start from Hu Li."

Jiang Fang mentioned another matter at this time: "Are you okay?"

Nan Zhou raised his eyebrows.

What should I be wrong?

"The task time is 120 hours, and the risk factor is relatively high." Jiang Fang said, "Even if you don't die, it may affect your spirit."

With that said, Jiang Fang looked at Nan Zhou: "I'm a little worried..." You.

But that word hung on the tip of his tongue, hesitant to speak, unable to speak.

Nan Zhou felt that Jiang Fang's question was indeed worthy of attention.

It will definitely be too late to wait until the san value returns to zero.

How can we judge whether there is a problem with the mental state of teammates in time?

So, after a short thought, he suggested: "Let's agree on a safe word."

Li Yinhang: "...??" Is this how the word is used?

Nanzhou noticed Li Yinhang's complicated expression, and nodded knowingly: "Yinhang probably doesn't know what the word safe means."

Li Yinhang: "..."

Nan Zhou: "It's just..."

Li Yinhang hastily prevented him from uttering more bullshit words with this indifferent face: "I know, I know, I know."

Jiang Fang raised his hand and interjected with a smile: "But I don't know what it means, I want to hear an explanation."

Li Yinhang: "..." Jiang Fang, did you mean it on purpose?

As expected, Nan Zhou explained honestly: "For example, my safe word is..."

Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he saw an English sentence under the warning sign of "Please do not make noise" posted in the corridor.

Nan Zhou continued: "And your safe word is..."

Jiang Fang took the initiative to pick it up: "'Sir'."

Nanzhou nodded: "My safe word is 'please', and your safe word is 'sir'. When I find that your spirit has been seriously shaken, I will call you please, as long as you can answer If I say 'sir', it proves that you still have reason. This is the safe word."

Li Yinhang: "..." This is a safe word for a hammer.

Isn't this the secret code of "the king of heaven covers the tiger, the pagoda suppresses the river demon".

But Jiang Fang didn't correct him, but started playing with him instead: "Then let's try."

Nanzhou: "please."

Jiang Fang was full of smiles: "Sir."

Li Yinhang: "..." Jiang Fang, you did it on purpose, right?

But Nanzhou didn't have any idea about this, and after successfully connecting the code with Jiang Fang, he came to ask her again: "Yinhang, what do you want to use..."

Before he finished speaking, he stopped suddenly.

In order to facilitate the conversation, before they knew it, they had already reached the clean and unoccupied stairwell, and walked down while talking.

Nan Zhou sensed something discordant, stopped Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang, put his index finger to his lips, and let out a small hiss.

The movement above suddenly disappeared, and the people waiting below really couldn't hold back.

The three figures left the shadow of the stairs below, walked up the stairs slowly, and crossed the way the three of them left.

The leading man is muscular, and he looks like a regular gym visitor.

Xiao Shen, the fitness trainer they met in the first dungeon, might like him very much.

The other two are not bad either, they are comparable in stature to the two iron-blooded tough guys in Contra who charged into battle with guns in hand.

The leading man said with a half-smile, "We heard your broadcast too. It's too strange that some students get lost in the school."

He came to a conclusion: "You are also dungeon players."

Nan Zhou was not surprised by this result.

He dared to use the radio station, and he had planned to gather other players together.

So he answered frankly: "Yes. We are all three."

The other party grinned: "That's good."

This time it was a 7-player dungeon, and they should have had 4 teammates.

But seeing their malicious expressions, even Li Yinhang realized that what they encountered this time was not the "Shunfeng" led by Shen Jie, and it was not Yu Tuisi who wanted to seize the right to speak and command at the beginning "Nanshan" is moderate and conservative, and wins with stability.

Whether it is "Shunfeng" or "Nanshan", at least they want to seek cooperation and pass the test together.

There were three strong men in front of him, but he couldn't see any intention of "cooperating" with them.

Nan Zhou looked at the three people approaching step by step without moving, and asked, "What do you want to do?"

Without the bonus of the long windbreaker, Nan Zhou's mysterious temperament that is not easy to mess with has been reduced by three points.

His appearance is elegant and artistic, his skin is translucent white, facing the light from the staircase window, he pokes there coldly, making this person with malicious intentions want to frivolously "tsk " he said.

"We didn't want to do anything, we just wanted to teach newcomers a lesson.... You don't think there is no risk in the PVE mode, do you?"

The man sneered, showing a mouthful of shark-like teeth, aiming the shiny Swiss knife at Nan Zhou, imitating the movement of picking his chin, and shaking his lower abdomen up and down twice in the air: "What props are there on your body? , hand it over."

The author has something to say:

Teacher Nan: Are you teaching me a class?