Global Collapse

With her life hanging in the balance, Anzhi Tinglan would certainly no longer maintain any image of being weak and vulnerable.

Because Anzhi Tinglan was the first to react, she took the lead and ran ahead.

Ren Leshan followed closely behind, wanting to speed up and overtake the people in front—even though there was a mouse behind him who liked to eat the cat as a backup, the more backups the better.

However, he soon discovered that he couldn't keep up with the speed of the girl in front of him.

Suddenly, he realized that the sound of mice eating cats was gone from behind him. He listened carefully and found only the sound of himself and Anzhi Tinglan running in the dark passageway, as well as the rustling sound getting closer and closer behind him.

The mouse loved to eat the cat and died? But I clearly didn't hear the sound of it being killed. No matter how quickly it died, it should have made some sound before it died, but I didn't hear anything.

Thinking about it carefully, the rats seemed to have fallen silent shortly after they started to flee, while the creatures chasing them never stopped.

Otherwise, the thing behind them was too terrifying to kill a person silently without stopping, or the rat escaped into a side path that went in a different direction, and the ghost chose to chase them instead of the rat.

Both possibilities are absurd.

If it's the former, then this ghost is far too terrifying. In previous dungeons, while the ghosts were terrifying, they still offered players a glimmer of hope. How could there be a situation where a ghost kills someone in the blink of an eye and then relentlessly pursues others? This completely leaves players with no chance of survival.

If it's the latter, why didn't the ghost chase the rats, which were obviously slower, but instead kept biting them?
Countless questions formed in Ren Leshan's mind, but he had no time to deal with them.

Now he's become the one being dragged down, he has to catch up with An Zhi Ting Lan ahead of him with all his might! Otherwise, the ghost will kill him first!
But he found that no matter how hard he tried, Anzhi Tinglan was always running ahead of him, and she was breathing evenly and showed no signs of exhaustion.

The ghost's voice was getting closer and closer behind him; at that speed, it wouldn't be long before it caught up.

At this point, Ren Leshan realized that An Zhitinglan was probably not as simple as she seemed, and that her previous ignorant actions were all an act.

Realizing this, Ren Leshan made a quick decision and turned to run into a side road.

“If I continue to stay with Anzhi Tinglan, I will definitely be the first to be caught, and I will surely die; but if we split up, although there is a high probability that the ghost will catch me, it is also possible that we will chase after Anzhi Tinglan ahead, so there is still a glimmer of hope.”

Thinking of Ren Leshan, he gritted his teeth and ran deeper into the side road.

Hearing the footsteps that suddenly turned around behind her, An Zhitinglan's tense heart relaxed a little.

She had already noticed that the footsteps of the fleeing figure were only herself and Ren Leshan, while the ghost was closely following behind Ren Leshan.

Although there's one less person at the very end, at least there's someone slower than me behind me. If the ghost catches up, it's the other person who will die, while I can use the time it takes for the ghost to kill Renle Mountain to escape a bit further, or even shake off the ghost altogether.

However, Ren Leshan was cunning, and An Zhitinglan worried that he might have some kind of binding special item to stop her, leaving her to be killed by a ghost behind—she had done such a thing before, so she couldn't help but bring herself into the situation when inferring other people's feelings.

Anzhi Tinglan was on tenterhooks for a while until Renleshan ran off onto the side road, at which point she finally felt at ease.

It seems he doesn't have such a special item, Anzhi Tinglan thought to herself. Renle Mountain is far behind her, and the ghost is far behind Renle Mountain. The distance between the ghost and herself is already quite respectable. The ghost probably won't go to such lengths to chase after her.

Just as she was thinking this, she heard a rustling sound coming straight at her from behind, without turning.

Anzhi Tinglan opened her eyes wide in the darkness. How could this be! Why would a ghost abandon Renle Mountain to chase after her?

She couldn't turn back to question the ghost about this, so she could only try to speed up her pace. But a human's speed was no match for a ghost's.

When the global game first started, Anzhi Tinglan discovered that clearing dungeons could increase attribute points. She even predicted that in the later stages of the game, people with maxed-out attribute points would be more terrifying than ghosts. At that time, the threat to life would not be the ghosts in the dungeons, but those people with powerful attributes.

If attribute points can be added without restraint, it's not impossible to fly and teleport in the later stages of the game.

But this expectation was ultimately not realized.

For some unknown reason, attribute points were no longer awarded as rewards after a few rounds of dungeons. This meant that humans ultimately couldn't become more terrifying than ghosts, and they couldn't keep up with ghosts in terms of speed either.

Originally, there was a large gap between her and the ghost, but after this chase, a person's stamina would be depleted and their speed would decrease, while the ghost would not, and it would maintain its previous speed.

Thus, the gap between the human and the ghost gradually narrowed. After running for an unknown amount of time, Anzhi Tinglan had lost track of where she was. She no longer had the energy to observe her surroundings; only the instinct for survival drove her to keep moving.

Even instincts can run out of steam.

One step, two steps… her strength slowly drained away, and she felt as if she were shrinking, as if all her years of life were gradually slipping away. Her mind went blank, and her voice and limbs seemed to no longer belong to her. In the end, she used up all the strength she had left in her life, leaving her as barren as a newborn, crying out like an infant upon entering the world.

But just then, a hand reached out from a nook or cranny she hadn't noticed and pulled her back from the brink of falling.

Anzhi Tinglan had no strength left. She was about to fall because she was exhausted. The grab was only for a moment and did not pull her away. It only moved her a little further and shifted the position where she would fall.

"thump"

Anzhi Tinglan knelt down, her hands too weak to support her weight, and she collapsed to the ground.

She fell for a full ten seconds, but did not meet the expected death.

When she fell, the ghost was almost right behind her; there was no reason why it hadn't caught up in ten seconds.

With her strength returning and the dizziness caused by oxygen deprivation gradually subsiding, Anzhi Tinglan looked up to see her surroundings, only to be unexpectedly confronted with a semi-transparent game panel—

Congratulations! You have entered the visual illusion zone.

[Visual Error Zone: It seems like all the mirrors in the mall are piled up here. How many fake versions of yourself can be reflected by these layers of mirrors? When the claw moves to this area, it will be misled by the false reflections in the mirrors, greatly reducing its efficiency in winning the claw machine.]

[Please note: Although the claws can be misled by false reflections, you'll gain experience with them over time. The longer you stay in this area, the higher the chance of the claws catching you.]

Behind the semi-transparent panel, Anzhi Tinglan saw herself lying on the ground.

Strands of hair clung mischievously to her face, which was deathly pale from running for so long. She turned her head to look around, and countless other pale faces followed her gaze.

The mirrors here stand one after another, creating countless replicas of those who enter, like a mirror maze in an amusement park.

"A visual defect area?" Anzhi Tinglan immediately wondered what this place was, why such a strange area would appear in a shopping mall, and what its connection was to claw machines.

She quickly associated this place with a name in her mind—obstacle.

The player sets the number of obstacles on each floor of the instance, which, judging from the name, seem to be facilities to prevent claw machines from grabbing plush toys.

But she had seen several claw machines along the way that didn't have any "obstacles," while such obstacle areas appeared directly in the mall.

This kind of thing should be in claw machines...

Upon realizing this, An Zhitinglan understood completely.

So that's how it is. The "obstacles" did indeed appear in the claw machine, because the entire mall is like a claw machine in a game, and the ghosts are the "claws" and the players are the "dolls". The number of obstacles on each floor should be the number of obstacle areas on each floor of the mall. If I'm not mistaken, this mall has four floors.

This instance isn't about players playing claw machines; it's about ghosts grabbing players! They're the toys in this giant claw machine!

After realizing this, Anzhi Tinglan couldn't help but think of that fool who set the grappling hook to ten and the number of three layers of obstacles to zero.

Alright, now everyone has something to do on the third floor.

At this point, she regained some strength and continued to look up.

She saw ghosts, countless ghosts.

The mirror, in a fair manner, reflected countless images of the ghost, covering her entire body.

Looking at the ghostly image in the mirror, An Zhitinglan's eyes widened: "This is..." (End of Chapter)