Chapter 120

That fear, upon hearing the [Fight Your Way Out] notification, plummeted from its peak to rock bottom like a roller coaster—

"Ding~ Congratulations to players Lin Tu, Guan Suixing, Luo Yongzhi, Yi Ying, Dong Huadan, and Liu Sheng from Zone A1 for being the first in the entire game to clear the first stage and complete all tasks. Their task-dropped four-star supply box has been upgraded to six-star! The rest of you, keep up the good work! Starting from highway section fifty-nine, you will gain even more powerful abilities!"

"Ding~ Congratulations to players Lin Tu, Guan Suixing... from Zone A1 for perfectly cracking the Salt Crust Road puzzle! Reward: six-star supply box ×1. The vengeful spirits guarding Salt Crust Road have departed, and all Salt Crust Road tasks have been deleted! Total tasks estimated reduced by 7–10~ Players, keep it up!"

The notification had barely ended when Chen Rui saw the octopus maze before him begin to crumble and collapse.

With a loud crash, the car that had just been skewered fell from midair and landed behind the group. Looking up, they saw those terrifying octopuses, anglerfish... and the difficulty-reduction notification that had just appeared in midair—all of it turned into shadows and gradually faded away.

So the stretch of road they were on was Salt Crust Road? Because Lin Tu and the others had cleared it perfectly, this section was being deleted?

Then the man who had just died... had sacrificed himself in vain? If he had hesitated just a little more—waited a few more seconds—maybe he could have survived. This twist of fate made Chen Rui silently mourn for him for a few seconds.

But when he turned to see Lan Yanzhen's face, black as the bottom of a pot, Chen Rui felt a satisfaction he had never experienced before.

That beast! If she had the ability, she should have perfectly cracked Salt Crust Road like Lin Tu and her team did! But she didn't! All she did was seize others' survival resources and use people as stepping stones for her own survival!

"Detected that you are on the Salt Crust Road phase. Your tasks have now been automatically cancelled! For the next eight highway sections, you will not encounter any tasks!"

"Damn it!" Lan Yanzhen slammed the steering wheel in fury, producing a loud honk. Li Haohao hurried over to soothe her. About five minutes later, Lan Yanzhen finally calmed down and called for everyone to continue on.

The group had mixed expressions, but they all followed Lan Yanzhen and kept driving forward.

Sure enough, no more tasks appeared ahead. When they reached the exit, Lan Yanzhen stopped the car. Proud as she was, she was just about to deliver the explanation she had been rehearsing the whole way to get everyone to keep following her, when a car suddenly overtook her—

"Sister Lan, something suddenly came up at home. I'll be going now!"

"Sister Lan, me too!"

"Me too!"

A few more cars followed behind her, and then more and more joined in. Those in the back didn't even say a word, unwilling to keep up even the pretense. In the end, only Lan Yanzhen, Li Haohao, and five or six veteran players who had always followed her remained.

Chen Rui was one of those who had fled. He no longer wanted to ask for back all the various things he had handed over. Just run! That was the only thought in his mind.

Even after turning onto this road, Chen Rui didn't relax. He didn't even dare pick up the boxes; he floored the accelerator and charged ahead. Finally, by evening, he had far overtaken the others, and only then did he let out a long sigh of relief, setting up camp by the roadside.

He was going to expose that beast Lan Yanzhen's behavior. Thinking this, he opened his light screen.

Then he noticed that during his hasty rush, the regional channel had already exploded with chatter.

Back to a while earlier—Lin Tu and her group had driven through dozens of identical highways in a row. If not for the warning messages on each road sign being different, and the monsters growing stronger one by one, Lin Tu and the others would have thought they were hallucinating.

Finally reaching the lowest highway, everyone could clearly feel that the roadside was no longer a chasm but surging, rolling water. The sign now read: "You have finally arrived at the starting point. On this day in 1974, a highway was built over the salt lake, and on this same day, people discovered the water monster beneath the salt lake. According to records, it may have lived for over ten thousand years, and it might become the source of humanity's immortal genes! A laboratory rose from the salt lake, and humans brought it under control. But when they discovered that what was extracted from its genes could only turn living creatures into deep-sea animals, everything was already too late."

The players continued forward and finally saw the prototypes of the octopus and anglerfish in the desert—

Inside a laboratory that shimmered like a phantom above the water, there were two living people. One of them injected a tube of liquid that glowed with brilliant light into the other's neck. Immediately after, the person began to tremble violently. His body couldn't withstand the genes; just as he was about to collapse, the other person finally placed an octopus tentacle on his festering skin.

The players sensed something was wrong and tried to intervene, but the objects they threw passed directly through the two bodies. They could only passively continue watching.

The appearance of the octopus tentacle finally gave the nameless force in his body an outlet. His skin quickly fused with the tentacle, his head rapidly swelled, and his limbs gradually transformed into the thickest, longest octopus tentacles. Time flew by, and the other person conducted several more experiments on him, ultimately reaching a conclusion—

"Aside from his passion for playing chess in life, he is now completely a monster."

"The experiment failed, but we cannot obliterate it, because the Lighthouse gene within its body is too powerful!!"

The words "Lighthouse" made the players finally understand. It wasn't some building, as everyone had subconsciously assumed, but a gene from the salt lake monster.

The octopus crawled out of the laboratory and appeared on the road. The players braced themselves and fought it for a full hour before barely winning. It made a crackling sound, and after shattering, its corpse coalesced into a key fragment.

The players continued forward, and then encountered an anglerfish that had failed its gene injection, a sea turtle that had simply rotted away, a ferocious sea snake... After successively facing six monsters, they collected six key fragments and finally assembled a key, spending a whole day in total.

After resting for a night, the players drove to the end of the road and saw a laboratory building. Using the key to open the front door, they finally discovered this level's final boss—the scientist.

With no one left to experiment on, he had injected the genes into himself. His obsession was to continue the genetic line, but as a man, the only way to reproduce was to become a seahorse. And so, he transformed himself into a seahorse, constantly giving birth.

Unfortunately, what he wanted to propagate was the salt lake monster's genes, but what he produced were all vicious seahorses. These seahorses continued to reproduce, filling the entire laboratory with his offspring.

Lin Tu and the others spent another whole day, rested for a night, and then finally managed to take it down on the second day, albeit with great difficulty.

After it was defeated, they found that the seahorse, the laboratory, the salt lake... all of it vanished. They were back on the highway, and the only things left were the two six-star supply boxes the system had just issued.

"Did you all notice?" Lin Tu spoke up at this moment. "The genes he injected into others and himself look a lot like..."

"Evolution Points?" The players exchanged glances. In fact, they had all felt the same way, especially since they had just seen it in the previous calamity [Place of Exile]—the Human Evolution Liquid made from Evolution Points.

"It seems we're getting closer to the deeper cause of this world's disaster," Dong Huadan, who knew more than the younger players, said. "Evolution Points are only found at the root. If we can discover the outsiders who brought Evolution Points into this world, we might be able to make some extra cash."

The extra cash she meant was selling information and materials to the Black Factory.

Yi Ying, a Black Factory employee, was more familiar with this: "If there's information, we sell it and split the money equally."

But for now, it was still too early to talk about that. The players were more focused on the immediate matter—the two six-star supply boxes they had just earned.

In the past two days of intense fighting, Lin Tu had undoubtedly used the most effort and items. Since the highway was underground and always dark, Lin Tu basically started eating [Night Blueberries] the moment she got into a fight, and the players couldn't even count how many she'd consumed. As for other things, like her handgun, the bullet consumption was also immense.

So Lin Tu got to choose first. If ranked by contribution, the next was Guan Suixing, then Dong Huadan, then Luo Yongzhi, followed by Yi Ying and Liu Sheng.

"Let's open these two supply boxes first," Lin Tu asked. "Who among us has the best luck?"

The group exchanged glances and fell silent, each practically taking a step back.

Lin Tu: "..." So everyone was unlucky?!

"Then I'll open them." Lin Tu directly tore open both supply boxes.

"Electronic components ×2000, metal ×1000, wood ×1000, plastic ×1000, rubber ×1000, auto-refreshing meal box ×2 (100 uses), a hat that can block one fatal attack (Yellow/B-rank) ×1, a weapon spirit that automatically assists in counterattacking during critical moments (Yellow/B-rank) ×1, super replication skill (Gold/A-rank) ×1, Lighthouse skill (Gold/A-rank) ×1"

The golden, gleaming items dropped out. Upon seeing their descriptions, everyone's eyes lit up, and they all looked at Lin Tu.

"Let's discuss what everyone wants."

Guan Suixing immediately said, "I want the hat. I want to give it to my sister."

Liu Sheng pointed at the weapon spirit: "I'm too weak. This can help me. If you all want to choose it... I can compensate you."

Dong Huadan, on the other hand, pointed at the replication skill—[Super Replication (A-rank): Can replicate one item per day. Success rate is 60% for items below B-rank; 30% for B-rank to A-rank; 0.3% for above A-rank. Replicas are only 80% as effective as the original and can usually only be used once.]

"I'm a merchant and come into contact with many items. If I have this skill, I can double my earnings," Dong Huadan said. "If I get this skill, everyone can come to me in the future to replicate items or buy replicas at 20% off."

Yi Ying and Luo Yongzhi had no special needs. By contribution ranking, they'd take whatever was left when their turn came. Liu Sheng could swap around with them if he wanted other things.

No one else's needs conflicted. It all came down to Lin Tu now. Lin Tu wasn't particularly interested in the earlier items. If she got the hat, she'd probably give it away like Guan Suixing; the auto-counterattacking weapon spirit was too gimmicky—Lin Tu even worried her weapon might suddenly go haywire; the super replication skill wasn't of much use to Lin Tu, who mainly relied on farming for items. Her only real interest was the Lighthouse skill—

[Lighthouse (A-rank): A relatively perfected genetic modification result. Upon use, you will gain a series of special abilities, such as inverted hanging, wall climbing, diving... and the unique flexibility of marine organisms. Now, as long as there's a crack, you can squeeze through it.]

"I'll choose this [Lighthouse]. It's a pretty big boost for me," Lin Tu said.

The others had no objections. Next, Guan Suixing chose the hat, Dong Huadan chose Super Replication, Luo Yongzhi and Yi Ying each chose an auto-refreshing meal box, and Liu Sheng compensated the two with some extras before happily taking the weapon spirit.

"We opened A-rank items from a B-rank world. This Lighthouse—could there be a problem?" Seeing Lin Tu about to drink this tube of unknown liquid, Yi Ying asked Dong Huadan with some concern.

"No, I already checked its attributes," Dong Huadan said. "This world is B-rank, but don't underestimate this game. This item has appeared in an A-rank world before."

With that, Yi Ying felt reassured.

After Lin Tu drank the Lighthouse and tried unsuccessfully to squeeze herself into a plastic bottle, she realized that her flexibility skill only lasted for a second or two—enough to fit through wall cracks at best, but not enough to stay as flexible as a marine creature forever.

Still, that was more than sufficient. She performed the wall-crack squeeze twice without getting tired, then tried hanging upside down once. Lin Tu felt unusually agile now. Satisfied, she returned to the ground, and everyone began distributing the basic materials.

In total, six thousand units of materials were divided evenly into six shares, with each person getting one thousand units, and each type of material around one to two hundred units.

With a full haul, everyone continued on their way.

Lin Tu, meanwhile, took the thousand units of materials she'd just received to the trading platform. She didn't need materials to upgrade her cart, so the remaining materials were naturally used to trade for items. Of course, not all of them—only those that didn't require deep processing to be useful.

She kept things like wood, which could be used for building houses, scaffolds, and lighting fires, while materials like electronic components, plastic, and rubber—things that needed further processing—Lin Tu basically traded away.

After browsing the trading platform for a while, she exchanged the materials for three white-rank items: "Defense +1: Vehicle-specific" ×2, and "Waterproof Coat." Satisfied, Lin Tu closed her light screen.

The next eight highway sections would be trouble-free, so she could quietly continue processing materials, earning money, and then trading for more items!

Meanwhile, on the regional channel, this news of perfectly clearing and deleting the Salt Crust Road tasks was like a potent stimulant for the increasingly despairing players!

"So does that mean we're lucky? If we hit Salt Crust Road when we reach section fifty-nine, we can just drive through safely without having to clear any tasks?"

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing!" Some newcomer was confused. "Aren't more tasks supposed to be better? Why is having no tasks a good thing now?"

"Because in the mid-to-late stages, many tasks are basically certain death! [Fight Your Way Out] never intended for us to survive to the end—it wants us to kill each other! That's why it makes us do tasks, because the more we do, the more chances we have to survive them."

The newcomer suddenly understood: "So that's how it is. Then if we all work together to perfectly clear them, couldn't we completely end this calamity?"

The veteran player fell silent: "You're thinking too much. I've cleared four highway games, and this is the first time I've seen a notification like this."

"I've done five. First time."

"I've done six, and it's still my first time!"

"Does that mean the players in our world are really strong!" the newcomer said happily.

"Maybe. At least if I hit Salt Crust Road, I'd thank them," the veteran player also held such hope. "Maybe what we need is just this kind of opportunity—to unite everyone. Perhaps we can change this game."

"Thanks to Sister Lin Tu's team. Let us encourage each other!"

"Thank you. Let's all encourage each other!"

After a long string of messages, everyone started discussing how to perfectly clear a highway task. It was also at this moment that Chen Rui's accusation was posted to the regional channel, and even the world channel.

He wrote about three thousand characters in total, describing in full how, as a new player, he had obtained a fuel engine item and joined a team, how the item was taken away, how he had stayed out of momentary greed, and then how he was used as a pathfinder tool by the veteran players...

"Oh my god! So this is why there's never been a perfect clear before—it's because of people like this! Using living lives to pave their own path to godhood!"

"How is this different from kneeling to those monsters? For the sake of survival, they're throwing away their humanity!"

The veteran players sighed: "Lan Yanzhen has always been well-known. It's just that she really can survive with this method. Even if someone publicly condemns her, she won't care, because all she has to do is wait for the calamity to kill off most of her opponents—then not many will be left."

"So we're the ones she's waiting to die? People like Brother Chen Rui?"

"I bet Lan Yanzhen is waiting for us all to die right now."

"Damn it, I'm not dying that easily! I'm going to live, I'm going to remember this story, and I'm going to keep resisting people like Lan Yanzhen!"

A veteran player privately messaged Chen Rui, sending him a [One-Time Night Driving Card: Tonight, you can drive at night!]

"Run fast. Lan Yanzhen holds grudges. When she sees what you did, she'll definitely try to kill you. You shouldn't have posted it. It's for your own good."

Chen Rui accepted the night driving card. He did want to get away faster right now. Grateful but unconvinced, he said, "No matter what, I have to post it. It's not just for revenge—she clears stages with this method, so I have to cut off this path for her, so she can't keep harming people!"

The veteran player didn't reply. Chen Rui used the night driving card and began speeding along frantically.

His message feed kept popping up with private messages—concern from strangers, threats from Lan Yanzhen, and from those sharing similar fates, or people asking about his situation.

Chen Rui drove while replying to messages. Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes, his gaze locking onto a message. It was from a stranger who had found him through the world channel, but its content was all too familiar to Chen Rui—

"Hello, Mr. Chen Rui. I'm Secretary Zhang Luohua from Hulu City, Nanling Province, Zhonghua Country. Is your friend Lin Zhao a police officer at the Hulu City Police Station?"

The secretary of Chen Rui's city was indeed Zhang Luohua, and his friend Lin Zhao had indeed joined the police force. Everything checked out. Chen Rui quickly stopped the car and replied to this message.

"Mr. Chen Rui, allow me to be brief. Our Zhonghua Country government has also established an organization called Houyi. Because our leader is in Zone A3, our organization is mostly active in Zone A3. Only today did we learn that a player in your zone had perfectly cleared a highway task."

"I'll cut to the chase. Clearing highway tasks can save countless lives. We're eager to know how they did it, and we hope to try it ourselves! Fortunately, just then, you posted your accusation, and our Comrade Lin Zhao recognized you."

"We're willing to offer you help, hoping to use you to establish contact with Ms. Lin Tu. If there's a chance, we hope to expand Houyi into your zone."

Houyi! Their own country's organization! Chen Rui's heart, which had been hanging up and down, finally settled back into place. Nothing could be more reassuring than their own country's organization.

Chen Rui immediately agreed and opened his light screen to contact Lin Tu.

The next morning, Lin Tu also saw the message. She screenshotted it and sent it to the group: "This world's national organization wants to pay us for our method of perfectly clearing stages."

"Just give it to them for free," Yi Ying replied. They had already planned to post the process of the perfect clear on the regional channel for everyone's reference. However, that process involved too many personal secrets of the players—items, strategies, and so on—so as the editor, Yi Ying hadn't finished writing it even after a whole day. To be precise, she hadn't finished fabricating it.

"Houyi?" Lin Tu pondered the name thoughtfully, roughly understanding its meaning. Wanting to shoot down the sun? Lin Tu smiled and replied, "It'll be posted on the regional channel soon. Feel free to take it."

"Thank you!" Chen Rui said gratefully.

Sure enough, around noon, the edited version of the perfect clear process was posted by Yi Ying. Combined with the earlier process of Lan Yanzhen's clear that Chen Rui had posted, players everywhere were discussing how exactly one could achieve a perfect clear.

Lan Yanzhen, being repeatedly dragged through the mud online, sneered and fumed as she continued driving forward. Having her rhythm interrupted twice in a row by Lin Tu, she had now thoroughly hated Lin Tu to the bone. She swore she would get everything back on track.

Then, another game system notification sounded—

"Ding~ Congratulations to players Zhang Lanxing, Liang Jianguo... from Zone A3 for perfectly cracking the Hill Road puzzle! Reward: six-star supply box ×1. The vengeful spirits guarding Hill Road have departed, and all Hill Road tasks have been deleted! Total tasks estimated reduced by 7–10~ Players, keep it up!"