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Chapter 456 The Mastermind: Qiao Mouchu
It's also possible that the teammates all died in the last event.

Although Gu Mian and the others couldn't sense it, the mortality rate of dragon boat racing was still very high.

The school bus was quite long, so when Gu Mian and the others spoke quietly at the back of the bus, they wouldn't be heard by the people in front.

After a brief pause, the school bus started moving again, and the view outside the window became blurry.

“But Doctor, I suddenly remembered something,” the fat man said slowly, glancing out of the car. “I remember we came here because the book ‘Second World’ mentioned Xile Town, but we completely forgot about it after we got here and only cared about the dragon boat activities.”

Gu Mian patted the fat man on the shoulder: "You may have forgotten about this, but I haven't."

As he spoke, he pulled out the book "Second World" from under his buttocks: "I have carefully studied the description of Xile Town in the book and the Xile Town we went to not long ago. Some buildings can be matched, including the places Yan Chuan and Hou Ming mentioned earlier. I have also observed them and they can be matched with some of the descriptions in the book."

However, simply discovering these facts is not very useful; it only proves that the author of this book may have traveled to these three cities to gather material.

What a wicked trip to gather materials!

Gu Mian strongly suspected that the original "Second World" was one of the dungeons, but the one he had was a partially plagiarized version, and he didn't know where the original was.

"According to what you doctors said about the copies coming from several different worlds, since one of these worlds might be the original version of the second world, then other worlds might also exist in reality in some form. As long as we find these worlds, we'll be invincible!" The fat man was expressing his thoughts, looking as if he were dreaming.

Gu Mian opened the book in her hand: "First of all, if you can't even find the original version of this book, don't even dream about other worlds."

"To be honest," the fat man sincerely suggested, "maybe the NPCs in the dungeon would know something. Of course, those random NPCs who are obviously cannon fodder wouldn't know anything, but if it's someone like Mr. Green..."

Speaking of which, Gu Mian hasn't seen Mr. Green for a long time. The last time they met was during the lantern riddle guessing activity. After Mr. Green entrusted Xiao Hong to Gu Mian, he disappeared without a trace.

...It can't really be considered a trust.

As Gu Mian pondered this, she glanced at Xiao Hong, who was sitting quietly beside her, and then looked past Xiao Hong at Xiao Qiao, who was sitting upright next to her.

As a celebrity who could be recognized at any time, Xiao Qiao was also carefully disguised. The two girls, who were covered up completely, were sitting together. It was only at this time that Gu Mian would confuse Xiao Hong with Xiao Qiao.

"Speaking of which, didn't you meet Mr. Green before?" Gu Mian temporarily set aside how Xiao Qiao knew Mr. Green, "When was the last time I saw him?"

Xiao Qiao made a thoughtful expression, and after two seconds spoke: "On Qingming Festival, in a car repair shop instance, we players play as mechanics who need to use parts to repair cars and then drive the repaired cars away from there; however, some ghosts have turned into parts. If you unfortunately select a part that a ghost has turned into while repairing the car, they will crawl out from various places and kill you when you escape..."

“I bet if the doctor were in that instance, he’d take all the parts in one go,” the fat man suddenly interjected.

"Get to the point." Gu Mian twitched her eyebrows.

"When I met Mr. Green, I was choosing parts. At that time, he had just brought out a newly repaired bus, the No. 444 bus, from the repair shop."

When Xiao Qiao mentioned this, Gu Mian suddenly had a strange sense of déjà vu, as if she had seen this No. 444 bus somewhere before.

Two seconds later, he remembered: "I think I was in a few traffic accidents when I was driving a hearse before..."

“Yeah,” the fat man leaned in at the opportune moment, “you even crashed into a special instance, the instance was called Bus Route 444.”

Gu Mian remembered that she encountered that instance during the joyous Chinese New Year, but it wasn't fixed until the Qingming Festival when she went to visit the graves. The level of instance repair in this game is really not flattering.

But do we need to send the item to another instance to repair it?
Xiao Qiao's voice continued: "That's where I met Mr. Green. He told me that if I meet Gu Mian again, I should take him to the Death Image instance."

Gu Mian did indeed make some discoveries in the Death Image copy.

He encountered a ghost that claimed to have seen him at the crematorium and saw colorful mosaics in the ghost's eyes.

Although some discoveries were made, they didn't lead to any clear conclusions.

Gu Mian then asked, "Did he say anything else?"

Xiao Qiao paused for a moment, then spoke after half a second: "He wants you to fix your brakes."

Should we tell him to stop crashing into the dungeon?
Just as they were speaking quietly, the third group of passengers boarded the bus.

Throughout the process, the taciturn second-place finisher remained silent, seemingly someone who wasn't good at communicating. Now, the third-place finisher from the dragon boat event boarded the bus, making a total of three players. These three players glanced at the man at the front and Gu Mian and her group at the back, and finally chose a seat slightly towards the front of the middle.

Because he wasn't within three meters of Gu Mian, he couldn't see the nicknames of the three players.

“There aren’t many NPCs in the dragon boat event, but there should be quite a few in the college entrance examination event,” the fat man said, turning his gaze away from the three people and pondering, “There will be invigilators, security guards, inspectors, and proctors, etc.”

As he spoke, he looked at Gu Mian and said, "Doctor, this is a good opportunity for you to use torture. Don't miss this chance."

Gu Mian touched the fat man's forehead and said sadly, "What on earth made you so heartless and insane?"

Fatty: "...Doctor, are you really going to answer the questions seriously?"

Gu Mian fell silent.

In those few seconds of silence, the fat man had already imagined Gu Mian beating up their proctor in front of all the examinees.

Time flies, and after chatting for a while, it was already past 1 a.m.

At 1:25, the school bus stopped again.

Gu Mian immediately felt that the scene outside the window looked somewhat familiar.

The players who boarded the vehicle next also looked very familiar.

The first person to board the bus was a man in a cloak. Gu Mian swore he had seen this cloak not long ago; it belonged to a man with a very pleasant voice who liked to cover himself up completely.

Behind the cloaked man was 007, whom Gu Mian had briefly borrowed during the dragon boat event.

That's right, this is 007's hometown. Gu Mian just sent her back here two months ago.

Chu Changge paused for a moment when she saw the cloaked man get into the car, then slowly uttered two words: "Fourth."

This group of people came in fourth place in the dragon boat race.

007 was followed by three other people, two men and one woman.

007, who had just boarded the bus, immediately noticed Gu Mian sitting in the last row. She stopped and looked at her teammate, saying, "Sit in the front."

The cloaked man seemed to glance at the back row, then smiled and said, "Okay."

Gu Mian has seen this cloaked man three times so far.

The first time was during a lantern riddle guessing activity. His nickname was the red 'Anonymous,' but he claimed that his real name was Xie Bian.

The second time was at a dragon boat event not long ago, where he and 007 were teammates in the same boat.

The third time is now.

Gu Mian noticed that Xie Bi'an was always hanging around the events. Since the start of the game, there have only been three events, and he had encountered this person three times.

At that moment, he suddenly noticed that Xiao Qiao next to him was a little restless.

Xiao Qiao stared intently at Xie Bi'an, who was sitting in the second row. Gu Mian could read deep confusion in those always empty eyes. To be honest, if she had this kind of acting skills when filming TV dramas, she wouldn't have been criticized so harshly.

This was the first time Xie Bi'an and Xiao Qiao had met. When Gu Mian met Xie Bi'an at the last dragon boat event, Xiao Qiao hadn't even arrived on the boat yet.

Xiao Qiao stared at the back of Xie Bi'an's head for a long time with her big, bright eyes. Just when Gu Mian thought she was about to rush up, Xiao Qiao suddenly turned her neck and headed towards Chu Changge.

Immediately afterwards, Gu Mian heard Xiao Qiao say something very puzzling to Chu Changge: "He's not dead?"

Gu Mian turned to look at the two of them, puzzled: "You two conspired to murder someone?"

(End of this chapter)