Global Collapse-Chapter 495 - 465: World Tour of Collapse_1

Although eager to reach the end as soon

as possible, Gu Mian slowed down, considering Fatty's ass was taking a beating.

The Spirit Car's high beams illuminated the front, and the staircase underfoot extended into the darkness. However, it wasn't long before the two of them smelled a strange odor. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The smell was like the stench produced by feces that had been carefully fermented for three years.

This stench penetrated the Spirit Car, filling Fatty's nostrils. He felt as if he were lying on a toilet half-filled with feces, his nose right above the pungent excrement.

He felt like he was about to throw up some excrement himself.

Fatty now regretted it, deeply regretted hitching a ride when Gu Mian drove into this place.

Gu Mian carefully sniffed the smell in the dark. "The further down we go, the stronger the smell gets. We must be getting close to our destination."

He had a feeling that this underground area was hiding a tremendous secret, possibly related to the core of the game, but they were unlikely to approach the core without any obstacles.

Just then, Gu Mian suddenly noticed a vibration in the staircase below.

The tremor was so strong that even Fatty could feel it. He covered his mouth and widened his eyes to look out the window but could only see a short distance in front of the Spirit Car.

At that moment, Fatty noticed a change up ahead. Instead of stairs leading down, there were... cages?

Dense cages almost filled their vision. These cages resembled those for large dogs. Most were rusted and covered in thick dust. They were packed together haphazardly but left a path in the middle for them to continue forward, as if this path led somewhere important.

By now, Gu Mian was driving the Spirit Car along this path.

Fatty finally understood where that awful smell was coming from.

The car's headlights illuminated the surroundings. Inside these rusty, moldy cages were, without exception, rotting corpses. They had been dead for who knew how long, their final poses twisted in struggle, as if they had desperately wanted to escape.

Fatty followed the beam of light, noticing signs hanging on the outside of these cages. Despite the dense layer of dust covering these signs, if one looked carefully, they could make something out.

The signs displayed different long strings of digits.

Are these serial numbers? Fatty pondered, his hand covering his mouth.

Gu Mian continued to race down this path at full speed.

They felt the vibration again, this time strong enough to shake some dust off the dog cages.

"This place is going to collapse," Gu Mian said, glancing at the messy cages around them. His words sent a chill down Fatty's spine.

But they were almost there—Gu Mian had this sense. Just a bit further and they would discover the secret hidden underground.

The vibrations around them were now far more noticeable, even causing the Spirit Car to sway slightly.

Fatty finally held back his nausea and shouted, "Doctor, if we get crushed here, can you dig a hole up to the surface?"

"I'm not a mole," Gu Mian said, gripping the steering wheel. "But perhaps that mole item you first acquired could do it."

"Ah," Fatty looked at the shaking cages outside. "Dying in a Spirit Car, buried underground... it even saves Brother Chu the trouble of digging a grave. I'll tell him in a dream to burn us some more paper money. It's pretty cold underground; we don't want to be unable to buy new clothes and freeze, Doctor..."

He looked like he was about to burst into tears.

Gu Mian pressed the accelerator to the floor. "Could you please shut your mouth? We're almost there."

Fatty, who was feigning wiping away tears, lifted his head to look ahead. He saw that the cages nearby were gradually thinning, and the dog cages beside them could now be counted on one hand.

They could now see a massive cage, different from the rest, about a hundred meters ahead. It stood in the middle of the road, as if it had been waiting for someone.

The strangest thing was that there were no corpses in this cage.

Most of it was rusted over. At the bottom of the cage, almost obscured by dust, lay a file bag.

This is it! Gu Mian floored the gas pedal and charged ahead.

The tremors around them intensified so much that even the surface of the ground was clearly shaking.

「」

Mingyue was standing at the entrance of her exam room.

Not long ago, she had seen Gu Mian driving into the underground. Then, she saw Xiao Qiao and Liu Ruyan and overheard their conversation, but she was discovered almost immediately.

Panic-stricken, Mingyue hurried back to her own examination room. In her mind, the examination room was the safest place, since the invigilators wouldn't enter.

She had heard Chu Changge's words too. Fortunately, although she had worked on problems with others, she had worked on her own questions, so only Li Xueqi died.

Having learned this, Mingyue had originally wanted to stay a little longer in this activity. She didn't expect to run into Xiao Qiao.

As she walked into the examination room, she thought, I'd better hand in my paper and leave. I really don't want to run into them again...

Inside her examination room were two players who had just finished their papers and were about to leave.

Mingyue swiftly walked up to the lectern, placed her paper on it, and pressed it down with the teaching pointer. Then she turned and began to walk out. But at that moment, they all felt the ground shaking.

"What's going on? Is there an earthquake?" A nearby player widened their eyes and looked up to see the chandelier shaking more and more violently.

Mingyue, too, was shocked as she watched the chandelier swaying above her. Immediately, she thought of Gu Mian rushing underground. Could it be him...

Luckily, the violent shaking lasted only a few seconds before stopping. The three people in the examination room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"I think the shaking just now had to do with the car we saw rushing underground."

"Wasn't the one who rushed in an NPC? Maybe it's an NPC with a special mission..."

Mingyue heard the two players behind her murmuring as they walked outside.

At that moment, she remembered when she was killed in the 'Death Hall' instance. She had been eavesdropping on Gu Mian's conversation with the ghost but was killed by Xiao Qiao, who suddenly appeared behind her at a critical moment.

Xiao Qiao killed her because she didn't want her to hear Gu Mian's secret... Although she had no chance of revenge, Gu Mian's identity...

Thinking of this, she suddenly turned around with a vengeful thought. "It wasn't an NPC. That person is a player."

"A player? How is that possible?"

"He is indeed a player. I've entered the same instance with him. Even though his nickname was obscured, I still recognized his true identity. You would never guess who he is." Mingyue saw the strange expressions on the faces of the two people in front of her. She smiled, leaned in closer, and whispered, "He is..."

SHLICK—That was the sound of a sharp object piercing flesh.

Mingyue opened her mouth wide and looked down. A long, blood-stained wooden plank had skewered through her throat and was then quickly pulled out.

The puzzled expressions on the faces of the two people in front of Mingyue turned into horror as they stiffly turned their heads to look behind her, seeing a familiar face.

It was a beautiful face that often appeared on TV screens.

The ground suddenly started shaking again; the entire building began to sway massively. Twenty seconds, thirty seconds, a whole minute passed, and the shaking hadn't stopped, as if it were determined to collapse the entire school.

The two players stared rigidly at the falling Mingyue, who was desperately trying to cover her bleeding throat. The person standing before them wiped the teaching pointer on her clothes. Her face, devoid of expression and now spattered with blood, was utterly terrifying.

"The world never judges success or failure based on character." —They saw this face look down at the corpse on the ground.

CRACK.

The ground started to crack. The shaking became more and more intense, and the nearby school building was swaying as if it were about to collapse at any moment.

「」

"He still hasn't come out." Liu Ruyan stood not far from the statue, looking at the hole leading to the underground.

Chu Changge was ten meters behind her.

RUMBLE.

A sudden collapse of the ground nearby frightened a fleeing examinee. He stared at the collapsing ground that vanished into a bottomless abyss. "What the hell is below this! Why is it hollow!"

As soon as the ground began to shake, the examinees desperately ran towards the school gate. All the surviving examinees rushed out from the buildings, but only a few were left.

The ground kept collapsing. Some areas merely caved in significantly, while others fell directly underground, disappearing from sight.

Just a few minutes later, almost half of the school grounds had collapsed.

The statue at the entrance also collapsed, toppling onto the dark entrance and smashing a small section of the ground.

Another minute passed. The collapse of the ground had reached the entrance, and the surrounding ground sank completely. Dust flew everywhere, nearly obscuring the surroundings.

"He's probably not going to make it," Liu Ruyan looked at the completely collapsed entrance. "In that case..."

But at that moment, the roar of a car suddenly drowned out her voice.

Following that, she saw two bright lights shooting from the flying dust. Soon after, the roaring sound grew closer and closer. Three seconds later, the front of a dilapidated car came into her view. Through the shattered windshield, she could see the Doctor sitting in the driver's seat.

"Where did all this dust come from!" Gu Mian coughed heavily as he steered; the Spirit Car was still moving at full speed. They had used the vehicle to forcefully break through the obstacles at the entrance to get out.

Fatty sneezed in the back seat while holding the file bag. "Indeed, expensive things are good. The quality of this Spirit Car, worth 998, is truly excellent. It seems like next time we die, we'll have to ask Brother Chu to dig graves for us…"

"Hey, Doctor!" Gu Mian heard Fatty's voice from the back seat. "Look! Brother Chu and that... uh... someone are just up ahead!"

Gu Mian immediately looked.

The ground had almost completely collapsed by now, but these two people stood still, like wooden pegs, seemingly waiting for death.

Gu Mian quickly turned the steering wheel. "The ground is about to collapse! There's no time to stop! Open the door and pull them in!"

Fatty quickly opened the back door.

When Chu Changge was pulled in, his head hit the car roof, bounced off, and then struck the car seat.

Fatty, having used too much force, looked guiltily at Chu Changge, who was slowly getting up. "Ah, my apologies…"

Chu Changge adjusted his broken glasses. "It's okay."