Global Collapse

Chapter 522 Urban Legends: Gu Bengbeng

"Gu Mian took this car himself. Our place wasn't far from the company, so we could have walked there." Xia Jianren took a few deep breaths as he spoke, probably because his intense facial expressions had aggravated his pain.

“Yes,” Cang Yue nodded, looking at the empty road with streetlights casting a dim glow on both sides and several moths circling around them. “He had already prepared the car when we escaped.”

They had just escaped from the dangerous staff dormitory and, without thinking, immediately got into a taxi.

At that moment, an unbelievable thought suddenly popped into Wang Chuan's head: "Could he have known the driver was a ghost when he hailed the taxi?!"

"That's very possible." Cang Yue let out a long sigh, feeling utterly exhausted.

Of the eight missing persons, the driver has been confirmed dead, and the remaining seven are likely also in grave danger. This makes it very difficult to find a way to save them.

But if all eight people are dead, why haven't their bodies been found?
At this moment, Coco, who was supporting Zhao Shuang, asked, "Should we continue walking towards the company?"

Cang Yue snapped out of her daze and turned to look at Zhao Shuang. This NPC must have fallen quite hard when he got off the car and couldn't walk on his own yet. At least his head wasn't broken and he seemed quite lucid, though his face was full of fear.

"We should go. It should be close to the company from here. Let's walk there." Cang Yue said, pressing down on her pocket, which contained a fruit knife. Fortunately, the fruit knife hadn't moved when she jumped out of the car, otherwise she would have been stabbed herself.

Wang Chuan and Xia Jianren were already limping forward. Wang Chuan turned back to them and said, "Then let's hurry up. We're in such bad shape now, it's dangerous if we stay here for even a second longer."

He meant "here" in the copy.

Normally, even healthy, lively players have a very low chance of survival in dungeons, let alone a group of them with leg injuries who can't run fast at all.

Cang Yue tried to ignore the pain in her feet and walked quickly to the two of them, distancing herself from Zhao Shuang, who was being supported by Ke Ke.

She glanced at Zhao Shuang, who was struggling to move forward behind them, and whispered to the two of them, "Now that we are both unable to move easily, it is impossible for us to passively pass the dungeon. If we encounter ghosts, we simply cannot outrun them in this state."

Wang Chuan nodded: "So you mean..."

“We can’t run away. Staying in this dangerous environment for even a second longer could mean certain death. What we need to do most now is to make this instance no longer dangerous.” Cang Yue’s voice was very soft, almost inaudible if you didn’t listen carefully.

She glanced at Zhao Shuang behind her again: "In other words, we need to find a way out as soon as possible. My guess may not be entirely accurate, but it is certain that the way out in this instance is related to Zhao Shuang's lost memories. As long as we can make her remember what happened on October 1st, we can deduce the way out from it."

The reason why the bus overturned and fell into the mountain, and what its connection was with Zhao Shuang, will be solved once she remembers.

They had already investigated the staff dormitory and obtained some clues.

Xia Jianren's phone chat logs indicate that Zhao Shuang had a dispute with him before she lost her memory, but judging from Zhao Shuang's current attitude, it seems that she has forgotten about it.

Cang Yue limped forward: "Anyway, let's go to the company first and do our best to search for clues that can stimulate her memory..."

Wang Chuan nodded in agreement.

Xia Jianren looked at the dark road and thought of that taxi again: "I wonder how that Gu Mian is doing now."

"Oh, right," Xia Jianren remembered something else when he thought of the taxi. He turned to look at Cang Yue, "Why did you ask 'Crazy Guessing Words' in the taxi? Did you also enter that instance?"

Upon hearing this, Cang Yue frowned: "No, I didn't know it was a dungeon before. I heard the name from Gu Mian. Do you remember when we first escaped from the neighborhood, Gu Mian was making a phone call in a phone booth?"

They both nodded.

"When I arrived, I overheard him asking the person on the phone if they knew about Sweet Manor, and then asking if they had watched the variety shows Crazy Guessing Words and Sweet Lovers."

Xia Jianren's mouth dropped open: "There are only five of us players in the instance, so he must be calling an NPC. In other words, he's asking the NPC in this instance if they know about another instance?"

Incredible.

Cang Yue continued, "I don't know what answer he got, but I think there's no smoke without fire. Perhaps there really is some connection between these game instances?"

Compared to Cang Yue and Xia Jianren, Wang Chuan was more concerned about the matter at hand: "Now is not the time to discuss this kind of issue. If you really want to know the answer, you can ask Gu Mian next time you see him."

Xia Jianren pursed his lips, seemingly having given up hope of seeing Gu Mian again: "I might not see her again. He left with the ghost driver, and I'm afraid he's in grave danger... Wait a minute, what's that up ahead?"

Upon hearing this, everyone followed Xia Jianren's gaze and looked ahead. They saw two beams of light appear in front of the previously empty road, clearly car headlights.

A car was slowly approaching from the front with its headlights on. The thing was, the car looked very familiar. They had just jumped off it not long ago!

"That ghost is back!" Xia Jianren almost jumped up when he saw the familiar front of the car.

Cang Yue reacted quickly; the moment she saw the front of the car again, she turned and ran, shouting to the others, "Split up and run!"

With one ghost and five people, splitting up to run is indeed the best way to delay the time and the safest option.

The group scattered instantly, taking off running as fast as they could. However, the road was straight, with no forks in the road, so they had no choice but to run in the same direction for the time being.

But how could a person with limited mobility outrun a four-wheeled vehicle? The first to be overtaken was Xia Jianren, who was lagging behind and almost out of breath.

He was overtaken in just a few seconds, and the car was moving parallel to him.

Xia Jianren dared not and had no strength to turn his head to look at the car driving alongside him. He could only drag his aching legs and run forward desperately, trying to escape the car's reach.

He thought he might die, die in this terrifying and cold dungeon, and after he died, he would lie across the road, not knowing if his body could return to the real world.

Gu Mian stepped on the gas pedal and slowly rolled down the car window to look at Xia Jianren outside. From here, she could see his profile.

Xia Jianren's face turned blue from holding his breath, his eyes and nose were red, and he was almost in tears.

Gu Mian estimated that if he ran for a few more minutes, he would die on the spot.

"Are you having a race?" Xia Jianren, who was running for his life, suddenly heard this from the side.

The voice didn't sound like a ghost; in fact, it sounded quite familiar.

He subconsciously slowed his pace and looked at the car next to him. He saw that the car window had been rolled down at some point, revealing Gu Mian's face inside.

Upon seeing that familiar face, Xia Jianren's foot twisted, and he sat down on the ground with a thud. Now, his other foot, which had been fine before, was also twisted.

Then, a loud wail erupted in Gu Mian's ears.

The man, his eyes red-rimmed, finally couldn't hold back his tears and burst into sobs after sitting down on the ground.

Gu Mian looked at Xia Jianren sitting on the ground through the car window, not quite understanding why he was crying.

The crying also reached the ears of the people who were fleeing ahead. Cang Yue originally thought she would hear a few screams, which would be the last sound a person made before dying, but she did not expect to hear crying, and continuous crying. The ghost in the car seemed to be very patient, as if waiting for people to finish crying before making a move.

She glanced back curiously, only to see the car had stopped, the door open, and the driver's seat empty. Moving her gaze further to the side, she saw Gu Mian crouching beside Xia Jianren, who was wailing and handing him tissues.

Xia Jianren snatched the tissue and blew his nose hard. Gu Mian, who was squatting to the side, took out another tissue and handed it to him.

Cang Yue also stopped walking.

The others also realized that things were not as they had imagined, and they all stopped to watch Gu Mian hand Xia Jianren a tissue.

The scene was heartwarming, yet somewhat strange.

"So it wasn't the ghost driver who brought the car back, it was you, Gu Mian, who drove back to pick us up?" The people who had calmed down quickly gathered together and got into the car. Cang Yue was asking Gu Mian about what had just happened.

Only Xia Jianren in the passenger seat was still sobbing and hadn't recovered.

“That’s true,” Gu Mian said, turning the steering wheel. “Who knew that when we came back we would see you guys racing.”

Whether it's a race or not is unimportant. Cang Yue twitched her eyebrows and asked, "Isn't the driver a ghost? How did you get back safely? And with someone else's car in tow."

Who would have thought that the car that belonged to a ghost one second would become Gu Mian's the next?

“I saw that you had all fallen, so I told the driver that someone had fallen and asked him to come back and pick you up.”

"You're really something!" Xia Jianren said, rubbing his nose hard.

Gu Mian continued her description: "But he didn't say anything and ignored me. I thought to myself that this driver really had no professional ethics. I had encountered drivers like this before, but in the end I managed to persuade him with reason and emotion."

“I told the driver that what he was doing was immoral and that I should give you all a ride back. At first, he ignored me, but later I talked to him a lot and moved him. He cried and said that it was all his fault, that he was so ashamed that he couldn’t face you. So he gave me the car and told me to come back and find you.”

"What the hell?"—After hearing Gu Mian's description, Cang Yue made this four-word assessment in her mind.

Judging from the expressions of the others, they were clearly thinking similar things to Cang Yue, but they all tacitly refrained from speaking their minds and simply nodded awkwardly in agreement.

They increasingly felt that this person was abnormal, and they were too afraid to refute his words, for fear that Gu Mian would go crazy.

Just as the group was wondering how the car ended up in Gu Mian's hands, Xia Jianren, who was in the passenger seat, suddenly spoke up: "Look to the right."

Everyone in the car looked out the right window and saw something curled up on the road to their right, motionless. It looked like it had been beaten to death and dragged to the side of the road. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that it was a person wearing clothes. Most importantly, the clothes looked very familiar!
It's the ghost driver's clothes!
Gu Mian was driving very fast, and in the blink of an eye, she had passed the thing and could no longer see it.

The moment Coco saw that thing by the roadside, she seemed to hear the teeth chattering in the car.

Look, this is a diligent pigeon!
咕咕咕咕咕咕咕咕咕
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(End of this chapter)