Global Collapse-Chapter 685 - 650: Definitely......Still Reading Novels the Night before Qixi_1
In the dim photo studio.
For a while, Gu Mian stared at the stack of photos in his hand, then put them into the pocket containing the severed finger. I'm not sure if these things can be taken out. If they can, I'll have Mr. Green look through them to see if there's anyone he recognizes.
Gu Mian remembered that his goal was to find his four lost companions.
He didn't linger there for long.
Gu Mian went to the entrance, untied the hair from the doorknob, and continued his journey, dragging the ghost woman along.
As he proceeded, he analyzed, The paper bag containing these photos doesn't have a name, just a number. 46—that's the number in the name field. What does that mean? Fourth grade, class six? But the people in the photos look like they're past elementary school age; they're at least adults. Or could it be... the forty-sixth batch?
Gu Mian thought of Chu Changge, who was born as an "experimental subject."
So, are these people who look so much like me also some kind of 'experimental subjects'? If '46' means the forty-sixth batch of experimental subjects, that would make sense. Could I have been born as an experimental subject too? What a baffling world. Gu Mian desperately wanted to encounter more high-level NPCs to extract some information from them.
But now was not the time to be thinking about high-level NPCs.
Gu Mian quickened his pace, hoping to find the four who had come here sooner.
He tightened his grip on the ghost woman's hair. If that shadow just now was really him... then we're in big trouble.
The kiddie ride on the other side had already started playing its fourth nursery rhyme.
Chu Changge and the others still hadn't seen any sign of Gu Mian.
Instead, quite a few ghosts were attracted to this high-end kiddie ride. They reached out their hands eagerly, seeming to want to hop on for a spin, but were all dissuaded by the Wildlife Protection Law.
It's worth mentioning that as they rode, they passed Song Tang, who was hiding in the darkness. Huddled in a corner, Song Tang didn't even dare to poke his head out when he heard the eerie nursery rhyme.
In this context, even a warm and comforting nursery rhyme sounded incredibly creepy.
Why is there this kind of music in an instance full of ghosts? So creepy! Listening to the nursery rhyme, Song Tang hid himself even more thoroughly, still pinning his hopes on the instance. He hoped it would discover a BUG sooner and, preferably, send him out immediately after finding it.
Chu Changge, the wealthiest of the four, focused on inserting Game Coins into the kiddie ride.
The Fortune-teller and Xiao Qiao concentrated on the footboard beneath their feet, paying no attention to their surroundings.
007, who hadn't slept for many days, was yawning in her seat and consequently didn't notice Song Tang cowering in a nearby corner.
The group on the kiddie ride gradually receded into the distance.
But then, 007 saw an unexpected figure.
The sudden apparition jolted most of her sleepiness away. 007 quickly propped her head up to look where the figure had appeared.
The spot was now empty, as if what she had seen was merely a hallucination.
"Stop for a moment," 007 said immediately.
Chu Changge stopped feeding Game Coins into the machine.
The cheerful kiddie ride came to a halt on the uneven path.
"What's wrong?" As the kiddie ride stopped, the Fortune-teller also jumped off the footboard and stretched her limbs; the repetitive motion had made her legs somewhat numb. "Did you see Gu Mian?"
"No," 007 said, shaking her head, her face pale. She looked at the others with a strange expression. "I just saw a very familiar figure."
Hearing this, the Fortune-teller was taken aback. "Who? A friend from your real world?"
"Sort of," 007 nodded hesitantly.
The Fortune-teller frowned. "Is your friend dead?"
"No, not dead... should not be dead," 007 said, closing her eyes, her expression conflicted. Her voice lacked confidence by the end.
"Could he have died without you knowing?" the Fortune-teller asked, hesitating for a few seconds before a thought struck her. "With that expression, don't tell me you saw Gu Mian's ghost!"
"Impossible," 007 replied, somewhat impressed by the Fortune-teller's wild imagination.
"Ah," the Fortune-teller said, somewhat confused. "Chu Changge found items belonging to his deceased acquaintances here, and you, 007, saw a familiar figure. This basically confirms that this world has a connection with reality, right?"
"We also speculated earlier that people who died in the real world might become ghosts in this world. It now seems that this speculation is very likely correct," the Fortune-teller stated her deduction.
But 007 looked uneasy. She glanced at the Fortune-teller, who was lost in her deductions, and then at Chu Changge, sitting on the kiddie ride.
I hope I was mistaken...
She took a few more steps towards the area where the figure had flashed past and suddenly noticed something on the ground.
She bent down and picked it up.
It was a finger.
A bloodstained, slightly decaying finger.
007 didn't examine it immediately. Instead, she scanned the empty space in front of her again, making sure there was nothing else, before returning to the kiddie ride.
"Did you find anything?" the Fortune-teller asked 007 curiously.
007 shook her head slightly. "Let's get on the ride first. We'll talk after we leave this place."
The figure from before had given her a very bad feeling, and she didn't want to linger there.
So, they all climbed back onto the kiddie ride and departed.
Only after they were moving did 007 show the others what she had found.
The Fortune-teller looked at the somewhat rotten finger. "This... it looks like a living person's finger, doesn't it? It must have been on someone not too long ago."
There were many abrasions on the finger, and the severed end was uneven, as if cut with a dull blade.
"It does look like a living person's finger," 007 agreed with a nod. "It looks like it was severed about ten days ago. Could there have been living people here ten days ago?"
"No," Xiao Qiao, who was on the footboard, stated flatly. "No living people. Impossible."
"Could it be a ghost's finger then?" The Fortune-teller stared at the finger intently for a moment. "No, that's not right. The ghost hands I've seen before were all hideous. This finger, though a bit rotten, still looks quite... well-formed. Not like a ghost's hand."
At this, she looked at 007. "It couldn't be the finger of that familiar figure you saw, could it?"
007 seemed dazed for a moment, lost in thought.
Perhaps because it was carrying four people, the kiddie ride consumed a vast number of Game Coins.
By now, Chu Changge had exhausted his funds.
Xiao Qiao and the Fortune-teller also contributed their Game Coins.
But their combined Game Coins were far less than what Chu Changge had possessed. Half an hour later, under the weight of four people, the kiddie ride finally conked out.
Seeing the kiddie ride stalled in the middle of the road, 007 looked a little embarrassed. "It never used up Game Coins this fast when I rode it alone."
"We'll have to walk from here," Chu Changge said, his gaze shifting from the kiddie ride.
"Speaking of which, we've been on this ride for several hours now, haven't we?" the Fortune-teller remarked, looking at the oppressive, dark buildings around them. She carried a timing device, but for some reason, it had stopped working after they entered this world, so she could only rely on intuition to gauge the time. "We haven't run into Gu Mian for so long; isn't that a bit odd? Don't tell me he was transported to the other side of the world?"
"This town is bigger than we imagined," Chu Changge said, gazing ahead. "Finding someone isn't easy."
They had actually passed many crossroads, each time relying on the Fortune-teller's divination to decide which way to go.
Now, the Fortune-teller tossed her small stick onto the ground again.
The stick still pointed straight ahead.
The Fortune-teller looked at the pitch-black road ahead. "The Wildlife Protection Law has been active for so long; I'm really worried it's going to fail any second now... Speaking of which, Gu Mian has been in here for a good part of the day too, and he still hasn't found us. Don't tell me he's been chasing us from behind all this time?"
If he's behind us, and we're moving forward on the ride, wouldn't we just get farther and farther apart? the Fortune-teller mused, her imagination running wild.
"You have to trust your divination," 007 said, looking at the wooden stick that pointed straight ahead. "The divination indicates Gu Mian is in that direction."
"I hope I'm not mistaken," the Fortune-teller said, lacking confidence.
Just then, she noticed the tattered hem of Chu Changge's clothing.
The Fortune-teller stared at the hem of his jacket, which looked as if it had been gnawed by a dog, and was momentarily stunned. "Were your clothes torn by a ghost?"
"I left markers on the road," Chu Changge replied, shaking his head slightly. "If Gu Mian is really behind us, he'll see the strips of cloth I left."
"That's a great idea," the Fortune-teller said, glancing at her own substantial black coat. "Your clothes alone might not be enough. Cut mine."
As she spoke, she extended her hand toward Chu Changge. "Lend me the scissors."
Chu Changge looked at the Fortune-teller's outstretched hand and silently passed her a rusty fruit knife.
The Fortune-teller stared at the rusty fruit knife Chu Changge handed her, finally understanding why his clothes looked as if they had been gnawed by a dog.
Nearby, 007's expression grew even more troubled.
She frowned, her thoughts drifting elsewhere.
The Fortune-teller struggled to cut off a strip of cloth. To ensure it wouldn't be blown away by the wind, she went to a nearby bush, intending to tie the strip to it.
But just as she reached out, a ghostly hand suddenly shot out from the bush and grabbed her wrist.
Then, the Fortune-teller saw a face hidden in the bushes.
Due to the effect of the Wildlife Protection Law, the ghost's hand immediately withdrew after merely touching her, and the face in the bush shrieked and fled.
Clutching the strip of cloth, the Fortune-teller stumbled back several steps and finally blurted out a curse.
"Look!" she exclaimed, staring in shock in the direction the ghostly figure had fled, barely able to react. "Wasn't that Si Huanian?"
