The copy has 0 error tolerance, and the last words on the ground are all wrong for me.

Chapter 265 Doomsday Prophecy
When the runes began to rotate, Wu Chang understood everything.

The disordered video on the screen is not caused by the video recorder accidentally pressing the record button, nor is it that the recorder deliberately wanted to achieve this effect.

The confusion in the video is because the scenes in it are not videos, but scenes that Colonel Johnson and his four companions actually saw, scenes that the four people saw at the same time!
The perspective switches with every frame of the picture. The constant switching of perspectives and the different understanding and cognition of the protagonist around him make the viewer feel as if he is suffering from mental pollution.

The runes given by the omniscient crystal separated the four perspectives through a special rotation, sorted out the order, and the truth unfolded in front of Wu Chang.

Colonel Johnson and his three companions were trapped in a nightmare.

The four of them were in a huge ruin, fleeing in panic as if they were escaping from something.

It’s like a game of tag. When a person is caught by the ghost, the game is over.

The four men who played the human roles were Colonel Johnson, while the thirty-eight fish-headed men played the ghost roles.

Johnson and his three companions acted separately. They avoided the fish-headed man while searching for the exit of the ruins.

The fish-headed people move very slowly, and they will not actively attack as long as you don't step within three meters of them.

It seems very easy to avoid them, but no matter how the four people flee, no matter which direction they start in, they will gather in the same place after ten minutes.

That place is the square stone platform that appears at the end of the video.

The white conch placed on the stone platform seemed to announce their failure in this round of the game.

The four people in the video focused their eyes on the white conch at the same time, allowing the image to stabilize in the last few seconds. When Wu Chang truly understood the perspectives of the four people, at the end of the TV screen, he saw not only the white conch, but also thirty-eight fish-headed people standing behind the white conch.

The fish-headed people held hands and sang in unison with strange voices,

The sound made by the fish head was not a human voice, nor a roar, but the sound of the sea breeze and waves, as if they put the white conch to their ears and listened to the waves in the conch.

Under the sound of the waves, the four people showed expressions of pain. They wanted to beg, but they couldn't open their mouths; they wanted to escape, but they couldn't even control their gaze.

They were not even allowed to admit defeat.

Only when they are on the verge of mental collapse will they faintly hear a voice in the waves, "You are the chosen ones."

Then return to the original place and start the next round of the ghost tag game.

It goes on and on, with no end.

Most of Johnson and others' consciousness is trapped in the television, with only a very small, almost instinctive consciousness left outside.

In order to obtain information from these four people, you must first wake them up from their nightmares.

Wu Chang told Jian Xing and others about his discovery and asked them if they had any way to wake the four people up.

Jian Xing and the others looked at each other, all showing embarrassment.

The four major organizations don't have any surplus food at home, let alone Director Gao and Lei Huo. Even Jian Xing, who is highly expected by the Management Bureau, spends every penny of resources on the cutting edge and has no spare money to purchase auxiliary skills that are rarely used.

As for auxiliary props, there are none.

As one of the four major organizations, the Administration is itself a huge platform. All the extra props obtained from the copies will be posted on the internal trading channels as soon as possible. The prices will be assessed by the official certified appraisers of the Administration and put on sale.

That is to say, Wu Chang would carry a large number of high-level props on him because they might be useful. If other players got high-level props that were not very compatible with themselves, they would sell them as soon as possible.

Part of the reason is that resources are tight, and players must make full use of every resource produced.

Another reason lies in the overall score when matching the dungeon. In most cases, the difficulty of the dungeon matched by the Abyss game will not differ much from the player's current overall score.

The player's overall score includes the inherent attributes on the attribute panel, as well as the level of the learned skills and the level of the items held.

An uncommonly used high-level item will significantly raise your match score, making it more likely that you will be placed in a difficult dungeon.

But Wu Chang doesn't have to worry about this, because he has preferential treatment from the game administrator. Even if he brings nothing and matches the dungeon naked, the administrator will directly match him with the highest difficulty.

Seeing that no one answered his question, Wu Chang sighed and thought that he had to do it himself.

The world dungeon is coming soon, and it’s time to get more attention.

He took out the "Loud Horn" and said to everyone, "Forcibly waking them up may have side effects. If anyone becomes emotionally unstable after waking up, subdue them immediately."

Seeing that everyone was ready, he blew the horn hard. As the horn sounded, the TV screen in the lounge flickered violently, and then suddenly shut down.

"Item Skill: Inspiring Voice"

"Skill Description: Blow the horn to make the selected target break free from the mental control state, forcibly wake up, and enter an excited state. The effect of the awakening depends on the inspiration of the user."

"Note: If the target is under mental control of level B or higher, there is a chance that the target will fall into a state of confusion after being forcibly awakened, and will attack regardless of friend or foe. Please use with caution."

As an A-level copy on the verge of being out of control, the Shivering Icefield copy has a high level of mental control over Johnson and others. The price of forcing the four people to wake up is that the scholars and Naaru wizards will go crazy.

Fortunately, the two men were not combatants, so it was not difficult to subdue them.

Colonel Johnson and research station manager Bae Tae-hyung, perhaps because their jobs are relatively safe and their inspiration levels are lower, were conscious after being awakened.

After they woke up, they did not show any intention to attack. Instead, they covered their heads and groaned in their seats. After two or three minutes, they gradually recovered. They looked at Wu Chang and others and asked:
"Who are you? Are you new members of the expedition team?"

Wu Chang gave Lei Huo a look. Lei Huo, who knew the situation in the copy best, walked out and explained to the two what happened in the Night Island Exploration Station.

Lei Huo's intelligence was very detailed. His family influence made him speak in an official tone when things were serious. One could tell he came from an official background just by listening to him.

This made the two of them trust Lei Huo after a simple communication.

For Johnson and Bae Tae-hyung, it was as if they had woken up from a long dream. For them, the nightmare of their spiritual existence and the reality of their physical existence were all their dreams, and they could only vaguely remember some fragments.

With Lei Huo's intelligence, the two's vague memories gradually became clear, and corresponded to the details mentioned by Lei Huo, making the two believe in the identities of the crowd and let down their guard.

Seeing the two gradually coming back to their senses, Wu Chang asked:
"Colonel Johnson, do you remember what happened at the research station?"

When Johnson mentioned the day of the accident, he couldn't help but shudder. Bae Taehyung beside him looked away. They didn't want to recall the past.

As a veteran, Johnson was more resolute. He adjusted himself for a moment and talked about what happened at the Night Island Research Station.

Although Johnson was the last group to arrive on the island, his military rank was the highest in the research station and he was also the head of the military in the station.

The team he led was exactly the team Wu Chang saw in his resentment.

When he led the team to the island, the research station had basically understood the rules of Night Island, and the investigation of the underwater ruins had entered the final stage.

That is why he allowed Wells, who was in the back and lacked the ability to move, to join the team.

To put it nicely, this is the final sprint stage of underwater ruins archaeology.

To put it bluntly, it is just to gild the lily and pick peaches.

But the gold was not plated and he almost lost his life.

Two members of the Gilded Team led by Johnson disappeared on the way before entering the research station. After entering the research station, strange things happened more frequently.

An inexplicable black shadow began to sway outside the research station, and from time to time, members of the research team were caught and pulled into the darkness by the black shadow.

Hiding in the research station may not be safe. The team members living here began to have hallucinations, with strange characters often appearing in front of their eyes, and they began to have nightmares at night.

In the dream, they turned into monsters with fish heads and human bodies, wandering among the ruins, waiting for something in the deep sea to wake up.

They could hear some vague whispers in their dreams, but they had forgotten them completely after waking up. Although they could not see the characters that appeared in the hallucinations, and could not hear the whispers they heard in their dreams, both of them greatly enhanced the inspiration of the team, allowing them to decipher the lost texts and murals in the ruins at a much faster speed.

With the help of the local Naaru people, they quickly learned the background of the ruins.

The underwater ruins are a temple built by the ancestors of the Naaru. What is enshrined in the temple is not a god, but a concept called death.

The ancestors of the Naaru people had a fanatical worship of death. They believed that after death, the soul could be forever at peace, merge with the world and become a part of it.

Every deceased person in the tribe will come to the Island of Night when they are about to die. They believe that in the state of near-death, the soul will merge with the will of the world. With the help of a short period of fusion, they can borrow the perspective of the will of the world, see through the future, and leave prophecies for the tribe.

But after a certain prophecy was made, the Naaru's Temple of Death was submerged by the sea.

The progress in the interpretation gave the expedition team members a boost. Not only did they no longer reject hallucinations and nightmares, some of them even began to actively pursue that feeling, trying to understand and listen to them.

As we entered the second week of the sprint period, some people gradually became unable to distinguish between reality and nightmares. The first to show changes were the theologians and archaeologists in the team.

They seemed to have really become fish-headed people, eating only raw, unprocessed fish and shellfish, and refusing vegetables and meat.

They also begin to sleepwalk while awake during the day, attempting to cause harm to other members or themselves, but as long as they are allowed to interpret the information about the ruins, they will return to normal and exert 200% concentration.

In order to prevent them from actually hurting others, the expedition team will control these possessed members and lock them up in a specific room.

When there was progress again during the sprint period, more than half of the members of the expedition team had been locked up in isolation rooms.

Based on further exploration and interpretation of the ruins, they learned the secret of why the Temple of Death sank to the bottom of the sea.

The trigger for the incident was the death of the high priest of the Naaru tribe.

According to historical records, during the Temple of Death period, the average life expectancy of the Naaru was less than thirty years old, but the Naaru high priest lived to be 150 years old.

Longevity is a very sad thing for the Naaru who worship death. He has witnessed the glorious deaths of more than five generations of his tribe, but has yet to get his own glory.

Until that day, the high priest felt his solidified life force begin to flow, and he called his seventh successor to witness his death and prophecy, and recorded them on the stone tablet he had prepared.

The high priest has lived for so long, but the world will has been reluctant to accept him. It is obviously not because they despise him, but because they want him to continue to settle down and then grow bigger.

When an ordinary Naaru dies, those with short-sightedness can see something that will happen five or ten years later, while those with long-term vision can see twenty or thirty years later.

The high priest had a vision before his death, but he didn't know how many years had passed. The time span was so long that the high priest could not understand it.

In the vision, he saw something huge and evil awakening, raising huge waves and causing all land to sink.

It was a future filled with despair and destruction.

The high priest saw a ray of light in the desperate future, and asked his successor to record the prophecy on the stone tablet and seal it up.

It is required to open the secret room and take out the stone tablet before the end of the world really comes.

The key to the secret room is kept by the high priests of all generations. It is the white conch that appeared in the nightmares of Johnson and others.

Shortly thereafter, the Palace of Death sank beneath the surface of the sea.

The high priest at that time also died in the palace, and the tradition of foreseeing death was cut off.

The team was even more excited about discovering the secrets of that year. They frantically searched for the remains of the last high priest and the white conch in the ruins.

When they finally found the white conch in a secret room, something strange happened at the research station.

Here Colonel Johnson paused.

Wu Chang urged: "And then?"

Colonel Johnson said helplessly, "No more."

Jian Xing asked, "What happened during the mutation? You don't remember anything at all?"

Colonel Johnson shook his head and said, "I only remember that night when I took the white conch out of the remains and prepared to study it further, I had a strong hallucination. When I woke up again, that was when I saw you."

Jian Xing narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly, "He is telling the truth."

Wu Chang hesitated for a moment and said, "I saw an unknown rune in the pool of water when I entered the underground ruins. It was after seeing that rune that I could see the truth of what was being played on the TV screen."

"In your nightmares, I saw something different."

"Hiroyuki Fujita, do you have any impression of him?"

Since Jian Xing was nearby, he deliberately cut the question into three parts.

The first two paragraphs are related, so Director Gao, Jianxing and others naturally believe that the name Fujita Hiroyuki was also the one he saw in his nightmare.

Colonel Johnson nodded and said, "Of course I remember. Hiroyuki Fujita is a legendary explorer, an all-round scholar, and a core figure in our team."

"When I led the team into Night Island, there was a small accident. Due to the strong wind and waves on the sea, our ship was delayed. We arrived at Night Island one and a half hours later than the scheduled time."

"I was in a hurry to get on with my journey and didn't notice that Wells, the ancient writing expert in the team, had fallen behind. When I turned back to look for him, he had disappeared. The subsequent interpretation of the ancient writing in the ruins was led by Fujita Hiroyuki. He was also the one who found the white conch."

Wu Chang nodded calmly. He knew that Fujita Hiroyuki was definitely going to cause trouble.

He continued, "We have already mentioned that, except for the four present here, the other members of the expedition team have been transformed into fish-headed human monsters in the incident and are hanging upside down in the underground space."

"We didn't mean to desecrate the dead. We just wanted to find out the truth of the past and try to find some clues from them. But the problem is that all the items on them were taken away. We couldn't even find a piece of paper, including the white conch you mentioned."

"Do you two have any idea about the whereabouts of the white conch and the key to the door to the underwater ruins?"

Colonel Johnson did not hesitate and said immediately:

"The white conch must be on that monster! The monster hiding in the darkness of the island!"

Wu Chang asked curiously, "Why are you sure?"

Johnson said: "During the final stage of the ruins exploration, every time a member fell into severe hallucinations or sleepwalked and wanted to leave the research station, we could see the outline of that thing in the dark!"

"Besides us, it's the only thing that can move on that island. It must be there!"

Johnson paused for a moment and looked at Bae Taehyung who had been silent for a long time.

“You need to ask him about the key to the door to the underwater ruins.”

The existence of nationality suppression made Bae Tae-hyung instinctively straighten his body when Johnson called on him, and he was almost shouting "Here!"

Before, when the two came back to their senses, they had a brief conversation.

While the four people's consciousness were immersed in nightmares, they had different divisions of labor in reality.

For example, Johnson will fetch deep-sea murloc oil for players who enter the research station; the scholar who is in a state of confusion is an archaeologist, who will draw some murals or ancient texts in the ruins according to the player's request and instinctively;
The Naaru wizard wearing animal skins will pray for the players according to their instinct, giving them a short-term buff to reduce the malicious influence of the darkness. They can also ask him some questions about the Naaru.

As the administrator of the expedition station, Bae Tae-hyung is in charge of the operation of the entire expedition station and has the most frequent contact with players.

Facing the gazes of Wu Chang and others, Pei Taiheng said:
"The key to the underwater ruins is still in my hand. To enter underwater, you need not only the key but also a special diving suit. During the time when I was in the nightmare, seven or eight, or even more than a dozen follow-up expedition teams entered here, trying to enter the underwater ruins."

"The last attempter seemed to have discovered something after landing. He rushed out of the research station without taking off his diving suit and died at the door."

"I didn't get the key from him afterwards. I dumped his body in a temporary morgue. Maybe you can find some clues from him."

(End of this chapter)