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Chapter 699 Peeking Secretly
I wonder if these ghosts have bought any kind of labor protection contract. Last time, he was kicked out of the instance just for touching a ghost's neck, because the ghost in that instance had bought a "Instance Ghost Labor Protection Contract."

The ghosts in this instance probably haven't bought that guarantee contract yet.

With such high hopes, Gu Mian grabbed the three right arms with one hand and pulled them outwards with all her might, pulling out three pale faces from the phone like pulling up radishes.

There were three familiar faces. Gu Mian immediately spotted his love interest. His love interest, Zhao Tiankuo, had a hideous scar on his left cheek, making his face look extremely fierce.

At this moment, a hint of confusion appeared on his ferocious face, as if he hadn't yet realized what had happened.

Before they could react, Gu Mian quickly pulled them out again.

Now most of the three ghosts' bodies were pulled out of the phone.

The three ghosts that had just been pulled out finally realized what was happening.

They turned their deathly pale faces to look around.

Coco was standing very close to Gu Mian. When Xia Yutong turned her head, she immediately saw Coco not far away.

Although she didn't know what was happening for a moment, when she saw a living person standing next to her, a strange smile appeared on her pale face.

Normally, upon seeing this eerie smile, a person's first reaction would be to turn and run. No, the instant one sees a ghost, one should turn and run away.

But the woman in front of her didn't run away. Instead, she stood there with her lips pursed and an inscrutable expression, her eyes involuntarily glancing to her side and behind her.

Xia Yutong turned her head to look diagonally behind her, following the woman's gaze.

Then I saw a large face coming from above.

Her smile began to fade.

Gu Mian was very perceptive; he immediately noticed that Xia Yutong's mood was gradually worsening. When the female ghost first appeared, she had a bright and sunny face, and even gave Coco a kind and friendly smile.

But now the smile on her face was disappearing at a visible speed, and her already pale face became even paler.

Gu Mian reached out her hand, wanting to soothe the female ghost's emotions.

Unexpectedly, the other person lunged out as if they had seen something dirty, jumped out of the phone, and then ran away in a panic, disappearing in an instant.

The speed was so fast that even Gu Mian didn't have time to react.

"Your girlfriend ran away," Gu Mian said to Chu Changge.

"Your boyfriend is running away too." Chu Changge pushed up her glasses.

Gu Mian then noticed that Zhao Tiankuo was furtively crawling out of his phone.

Realizing his actions had been discovered, Zhao Tiankuo stopped acting furtively and suddenly straightened up and ran desperately into the distance. Gu Mian reached out to grab him but missed, only managing to touch a corner of Zhao Tiankuo's clothes.

What Coco was hoping for didn't happen in the end.

Zhao Tiankuo has violent tendencies. She even imagined Gu Mian being knocked to the ground by Zhao Tiankuo, hugging a saw and crying.

Gu Mian didn't chase after the two ghosts. There was still one ghost here, and Coco and Chu Changge were both here. He couldn't just abandon the two people and one ghost to chase after the two that had run away.

After Xia Yutong and Zhao Tiankuo fled one after the other, Gu Mian quickly grabbed the remaining one.

There are only three in total, we can't let this one get away too.

The person who was unfortunately pinned down was Coco's boyfriend, Ai Zitao, whose character was a rigid office worker who didn't like to talk to people and seemed like an honest person.

He was clearly the most honest of the three ghosts.

The other two ghosts had already realized something was wrong and had disappeared without a trace, but Ai Zitao only then noticed Gu Mian standing behind him.

Realizing the situation, Ai Zitao's expression also changed, and he turned to run away.

But Gu Mian was prepared and had already pinned him down, preventing the ghost from running freely.

Judging from the current situation, these ghosts probably didn't know who they were talking to before they came out.

Gu Mian noticed that Xia Yutong had only glanced back at her before her expression changed drastically and she hurriedly ran away.

This scene is somewhat like a failed online dating meeting in person.

The three online dating partners were so frightened by Gu Mian's ugly appearance that they ran away. Gu Mian begged and pleaded until she managed to keep one of them.

Gu Mian held her boyfriend tightly in her hands.

Ai Zitao's already pale face turned even paler. Realizing he couldn't escape, he simply closed his eyes, as if unwilling to accept this cruel reality.

Looking at his self-sacrificing appearance, Gu Mian couldn't help but touch her own face with some doubt.

Am I really that ugly?

Luckily, no one passed by in the hallway, otherwise they would have really thought Gu Mian was a pervert and was going to do something to the pitiful bespectacled man in her hands.

"Don't you remember me?" Gu Mian looked at Ai Zitao, who was pretending to be dead with his eyes closed, in her hand. "I'm your love interest."

To be precise, Coco was Ai Zitao's love interest, but Gu Mian had already stolen Coco's phone and started an online romance with him herself.

Ai Zitao kept his eyes closed and motionless, as if he couldn't hear Gu Mian's words.

Gu Mian smiled kindly at him and said, "I sent you a message but you haven't replied. You haven't been talking to me. Do you not like me?"

Gu Mian sent this message to Ai Zitao, but Ai Zitao never replied.

Now that they've finally met in person, Gu Mian can ask him in person.

The ghost held in their hand didn't utter a sound; it was indeed introverted.

Gu Mian didn't come to this instance for the real purpose of online dating. Seeing that Ai Zitao didn't mention dating, he didn't continue to ask, but changed the subject.

“Speaking of which, this should be a world of exile.” Gu Mian said, holding Ai Zitao in her hand while looking up at the direction of the staircase entrance.

They were in the school cafeteria, and it was lunchtime, with people coming and going up and down the stairs. Fortunately, this staircase was in a relatively remote spot and no one used it.

“It should be,” Chu Changge pushed up his glasses and glanced in the direction of the stairwell. “This world seems normal.”

The secondary worlds and exile periods in the seven worlds are similar to Earth, relatively normal. Chu Changge could sense that this wasn't the secondary world, so it was most likely the exile world. "When we returned to Earth from the seventh world, the train conductor gave us a historical record of the seven worlds." Gu Mian reached out and touched her guitar case, pulling out a simple booklet from the outer bag. It was the historical record that the train conductor had hastily written under Gu Mian's tyranny.

"The train conductor said that there is a key figure in each world, and finding these key figures will allow us to learn more about this game." Gu Mian said as she flipped through the booklet in her hand with her free hand.

However, it wasn't mentioned in the booklet that the train conductor didn't know who the key figure in the world of exile was.

In that case, you'll have to find out for yourself.

The Seventh World is basically collapsing now, barely holding on by luck. It's estimated that the curse on Earth will spread to other worlds soon, and when the lower-dimensional worlds collapse, Chu Changge and Xiao Qiao will all be gone.

Gu Mian's plan is to find those key figures and discuss with them how to save the world.

But at this moment, he didn't know who the key figure in the exiled world was; he didn't even have a name. Asking these ghosts at the very bottom of society probably wouldn't yield any results, Gu Mian thought to himself as he looked down at Ai Zitao in his hand.

"Do you know any other NPCs?" Gu Mian still tried asking.

Such a big ghost, even if it doesn't know any high-level NPCs, it should at least know a few ordinary NPCs, right?

But Ai Zitao kept his eyes tightly closed and didn't say a word.

It seems the tense and exciting interrogation phase is about to begin.

Gu Mian reached into the guitar case with practiced ease, and Ai Zitao, as if he knew what was about to happen, flinched and opened his eyes.

He finally broke his silence and quickly pointed to one of the phones on the ground before Gu Mian could open the guitar case: "...It...recognizes..."

When Gu Mian was exorcising the ghost, she casually threw three cell phones, which were now just empty shells, onto the ground.

At this moment, Ai Zitao was pointing to one of them.

Coco picked up the phone he was pointing to, looked at it, and then handed it to Gu Mian: "It's Zhao Tiankuo's."

Gu Mian took the phone and waved it in front of Ai Zitao: "You mean Zhao Tiankuo knows other NPCs?"

Ai Zitao looked somewhat reluctant at this moment. He nodded with difficulty, as if he was silently mourning for Zhao Tiankuo in advance.

It seems I still need to go find Zhao Tiankuo.

Gu Mian tried to coerce and entice Ai Zitao for a while, but when she couldn't extract any useful information, she told him to go back to his phone and stay there by himself.

Upon hearing this, Ai Zitao quickly scrambled into his phone as if fleeing for his life, afraid that if he was a step too slow, Gu Mian would open her guitar case and play a tune for him.

Gu Mian was fiddling with her phone, lost in thought: "This phone can hold ghosts; I wonder if I can bring them out of the dungeon."

You can put Little Red inside.

Xiao Hong might be able to communicate with them by typing inside, instead of having to speak one word at a time like she usually does.

As Gu Mian pondered this, she put the other two phones into her pocket, keeping only the one containing Ai Zitao in her hand.

We need to find Zhao Tiankuo, who ran away, so we can find the other NPCs through him. But Zhao Tiankuo has disappeared, so finding him is quite troublesome.

Gu Mian opened the pink dating app and sent a message to Ai Zitao: "Do you know where Zhao Tiankuo is?"

Perhaps feeling more confident after hiding his phone, Ai Zitao didn't hesitate to speak like before and replied quickly. Gu Mian received Ai Zitao's reply on her phone less than two seconds after sending the message.

Ai Zitao: I don't know

This ghost knows nothing when asked, and seems useless.

Coco whispered, "It's a pity that when we entered the dungeon, I only borrowed the Ghost Census Form from Miss Qiao, not the Big Data Search Form. If we had borrowed the Big Data Search Form, it might have helped us find out where Zhao Tiankuo is."

“It’s no use for you to borrow it. This thing can only be used once every seven days. Fatty used it yesterday.” Gu Mian put Ai Zitao in her pocket. “Yesterday, my freshly washed shirt disappeared. Fatty borrowed it from Xiao Qiao and used big data search to find out that Xiao Hong had hidden it under the bed.”

Coco fell silent.

She didn't know how to start the conversation.

Putting aside the fact that such a useful and special item was used to find a shirt, the way the shirt disappeared was also strange. It was hidden under the bed by Xiaohong. Speaking of which, she saw Xiaohong squatting suspiciously next to the clothesline in the yard a few days ago...

"So how do we find Zhao Tiankuo next?" Coco stopped worrying about the fat man using big data to search for clothes and brought her thoughts back to the present.

Finding two hiding ghosts in the dungeon is like finding a needle in a haystack. Coco suspects that even after the dungeon ends in three days, they won't find a single hair on the ghosts' heads.

Gu Mian was also seriously considering this issue.

If Zhao Tiankuo and Xia Yutong are determined to hide, then they will indeed be quite difficult to find.

As he pondered this, he set his sights on the romantic partners of the other two players.

Ai Zitao, Zhao Tiankuo, and Xia Yutong are the three of them, but there are two other players in this instance.

Gu Mian remembered that the two players were called Feng Chui Pipi Liang and Yue Luo Wu Ti, and their love interests were college student Song Meng and high school student Feng Cheng, respectively.

These two players probably don't know yet that the ghost they're dating is hiding in their phones.

Thinking of this, Gu Mian took out her phone again and sent a message to Ai Zitao: Can you contact Song Meng and Feng Cheng?

Since Zhao Tiankuo and Xia Yutong are nowhere to be found for the time being, capturing Song Meng and Feng Cheng would be a good option; perhaps we could get some information out of them.

Chu Changge, standing next to him, looked at the phone screen: "The ghosts inside the phone should be able to communicate with each other through messaging apps."

Sure enough, Ai Zitao sent a single word from his phone—"Yes."

Gu Mian continued typing, asking: Where are they now?
It took Ai Zitao quite a while to send a message: Yifa Shopping Mall

Gu Mian guessed that during the time he hadn't replied to the message, he had gone to find the two ghosts to ask. Song Meng and Feng Cheng didn't know that Ai Zitao had already fallen into their hands and had now turned to the light. The two ghosts, caught off guard, revealed their location.

Chu Changge, who was standing nearby, suddenly spoke up: "Yifa Shopping Mall is not far from here."

Coco looked at him strangely: "Do you know where that shopping mall is?"

Chu Changge nodded: "When I went to the internet cafe to check the map before, I noticed the buildings in this area. Yifa Shopping Mall is located to the west of this school. Just go out the gate and turn west and walk one intersection."

Gugu peeked out secretly; hopefully she won't get caught and ganged up on, waa ...

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(End of this chapter)