The poisonous gas cloud hadn't yet dissipated when the street beneath Xu Huo's feet transformed into a spiraling white staircase leading downward. He stood at the top, while the Player-Eater who had abandoned his companions remained below.
After realizing he couldn't move, the Player-Eater wasn't panicked. He spread his ten fingers and scattered seeds that looked like peas. These seeds sprouted rapidly upon landing, shooting up to half a person's height in the blink of an eye. The pods they produced burst open in succession, and the ejected seeds took root and grew on their own, quickly covering the ground with a large patch of bean plants.
But with just a little observation, one would notice that these bean sprouts only grew where the Mental World covered—meaning the edge of the bean patch marked the boundary of Xu Huo's Mental World.
Xu Huo reached out and caught a bean seed. The thing grew wildly in his hand, doubling in size compared to the plants on the ground in an instant.
Plants affected by mental power—he quickly made this judgment in his mind. Clearly, this kind of plant could display the strength of mental power, but that was about all it could do. He waved his hand to open a door, and the Player-Eater, who had just crawled out of the grass, tumbled headfirst into the newly appeared doorway.
Mental power stacked once more. All the bean plants that had been used to determine the boundary vanished, and the space returned to darkness. The Player-Eater looked stunned, then scattered another handful of beans.
Unfortunately, this batch of beans vanished without a trace. At the same time, several doorways appeared around him, closing in until they stopped half a meter away.
"Click! Click, click, click!" All the doors opened simultaneously!
"Light that illuminates the world!" The Player-Eater raised a glowing item high and was just peeking into the door when a hand suddenly reached out from inside and grabbed his head!
The Player-Eater immediately screamed in agony, as all the hands pulled him back toward the doors!
"I'm going to snap, snap, snap!" His arms, stretched and twisted, made a "crack" sound. Deep indentations appeared at the joints, and cracks formed on the surface of his skin.
"Spare... spare me... please spare me!!!"
The screams cut off abruptly. Xu Huo dropped the corpse with the broken neck onto the ground, toyed with the bean seeds for a moment, then withdrew his Mental World.
In the game, there were indeed such marvelous plants that could sense mental power. But mere sensing didn't play a decisive role. If something couldn't resist mental interference on its own, no matter how good it was, it was useless.
Casually storing the seeds in his luggage compartment, he looked toward the other side.
Of the three Player-Eaters, one was dead and one injured. The surviving fat man was pinned under Xiao Ling's foot. "Who were you calling a little lady just now?"
"The ones who get pinned to the ground whimpering like bitches are the real ladies!"
A fat, burly man lying on the ground with broken limbs had absolutely nothing to do with "whimpering," but Xiao Ling seemed to grow more excited the more she fought. Not satisfied with grinding his head into the dirt with her foot, she pulled out a thin blade and started slicing into his back.
The Player-Eater screamed in pain, but she pressed his face and voice into the ground. "What are you yelling for? You're a Player-Eater. When you devour people, you should have known the day would come when you'd be devoured."
Beside her, Xie Ling and the others cast uncertain glances at the black number exposed through the tear in her clothes.
"Psycho!" Liu Chengyi's expression soured.
But Xiao Ling shook the blood off her hands and threw a flirtatious glance at Xu Huo. "You're pretty tough, huh? Player-Eaters have such hard mouths, yet he was begging for mercy on his knees."
In truth, because of the poison gas bomb, their group hadn't clearly seen what happened to Xu Huo, but they'd all heard the terrified pleas for mercy. They were curious, but only to a certain extent.
The scene was bloody. Xu Huo glanced at it then looked away. When he saw Xiao Ling raise her hand to her mouth, he spoke up. "I suggest you not lick your hands. Players might have contagious diseases too."
This made Xiao Ling, who worshipped violence, freeze for a moment. Then the veins on her forehead bulged. "Who the hell was going to lick their hands!"
"Oh, really?" Xu Huo sounded slightly disappointed. "I thought you'd use that to show off your cruelty."
If a second ago Xiao Ling's ferocity had inspired genuine dread, now her actions made her seem like an idiot.
"Pfft!" Xie Ling couldn't help but laugh. Beside her, Long Aotian joined in, saying to Xiao Ling, "Your method wastes too much energy. To someone about to die, eating a bit of themselves means nothing. In my opinion, the best way to deal with Player-Eaters is to starve them for seven or eight days, then lock them together and let them eat each other."
"That way, they experience the fear of being eaten, and you get the satisfaction of revenge. Killing two birds with one stone."
Xiao Ling didn't want to continue this topic. "Where to next?"
"We've killed a few people. It's time to meet the players who arrived later," Xu Huo said. "To avoid fights breaking out when the situation is unclear."
In fact, as early as three minutes ago, several players had already arrived near the Mannequin Building.
Xu Huo reached out and waved toward a certain shop. A moment later, the player hiding inside came out. He had a crew cut and a dragon tattoo on his forehead. He responded from a distance, "We don't care whether Player-Eaters live or die. How about we keep out of each other's way?"
"No problem." Xu Huo agreed and even invited them to complete the dungeon task together.
But his reply was met with a cold sneer. The few observing players left one after another.
"What a pity," Xu Huo sighed. He looked at the sun, which was gradually setting in the west. "Let's head to Needle Mountain Therapy before sunset and take a look."
Xiao Ling and the other two hadn't experienced being locked in before, but Xie Ling and her group were very worried that this still-unvisited venue might close at night, just like the Wax Figure Hall.
"Let's go in and take a look first. If something's wrong, we'll come back out," Liu Chengyi said. "Better not spend the night in the venue. Who knows what's in there."
No one objected, so they quickened their pace and headed for Needle Mountain Therapy.
Needle Mountain Therapy had basically nothing to do with therapy. The first thing they saw upon entering was a suspended mannequin, its chest, abdomen, and limbs pierced by metal skewers three meters long, posed in a cross shape facing the entrance.
On either side of the door were several glass display cases, inside which rusted surgical tools were arranged in sequence.