Chapter 143

"My body can open the nightmare too!"

Lin Tu hadn't expected that. She raised her gun in fury, ready to shoot him, but his body began to flicker like a failing old television screen, gradually dissolving into a mess of garbled code.

"Huh?" The monster stopped eating and looked at himself. "What's... happening?"

He tried to pass his hand through his own body, only to find he couldn't touch it at all. Vague memories began to surface in his mind—of once being a player, and of how he'd gone from player to this...

"So I was already dead!" he roared, wailing. "I was deceived! I was used! I was the tool that demon used to open the nightmare!"

Lin Tu silently lowered her gun. So this was just a clown...

"Who used you? How do I find them?" Lin Tu asked.

"Ace of Diamonds! It was her! Avenge me!" The former player fell to his knees, his form gradually glitching out. "Find the fattest one, the richest one... and... I'm sorry... I betrayed the players..."

"It's okay..." Lin Tu heard Lu Haima mutter beside her.

"What's wrong?" Lin Tu turned.

"Nothing," Lu Haima said. "I just instinctively felt he was kind of pitiful."

Yi Ying let out a cold laugh. "Don't sympathize with scum like this. We players watch out for each other precisely so that one day we can end this disaster game and go back to being ordinary people. If our predecessors succeed, maybe I'd have parents now, I could go to school, travel! But it's people like this—animals like Yu Zhonglin! They talk a good game about the rise of players, but really it's just for their own power. They betrayed everyone. Look at this world; they've contributed plenty."

"Damn it! How can such scum exist!" Yi Ying's voice dripped with hatred.

Lin Tu had heard Dong Huadan tell that story before, but she didn't know the details, so she kept her opinions to herself.

She walked over to check on the employee the monster had brought. Fortunately, the employee was merely dazed—not so far gone that he was eyeing Lin Tu like a steak.

It seemed the nightmare had been opened, but not deeply. There was still a chance to save him.

"Keep an eye on the employees tonight. No more cannibalism," Lin Tu said.

The tense night passed.

Early the next morning, the players were all feeling listless.

But when four massive hotpot pots rose up in the middle of the eighth-floor hall, and the pungent, rich, nose-tingling aroma of hotpot wafted from every direction, their spirits instantly revived.

The food festival began right on schedule.

In an instant, a mountain of meat appeared in the center of the hall, and an inexplicable hallucination arose, making one want to crawl over and take a bite.

But the scent of hotpot drifting from all four directions held back that restless illusion. The players didn't even need to stop anyone—not a single employee was lured into eating human flesh.

"We're going up!" Lin Tu had several players carry steaming hotpots with her, surrounding the employees in the middle—one leading the way, one at the rear—and headed upstairs.

Ninth floor, tenth floor...

At first, the employees' expressions were blank, but soon, as the hallucination faded, memories buried deep in their minds surfaced.

They remembered: the company never cared whether they lived or died. Even during a fire, they were ordered to stay at their posts. They thought their diligence would be rewarded, but in the end, they were squeezed dry and became rations for those leaders—consumed from head to toe, body and soul devoured.

Eleventh floor, twelfth floor...

Perhaps sensing trouble, a group of leaders who hadn't yet "fattened up" filed out of the fourteenth floor and rushed downstairs, trying to stop their advance.

When enemies meet, their eyes burn red.

Before Lin Tu even gave the order, the employees charged forward, laying into the leaders with fists and feet.

Players: "..."

Lin Tu took a quick look at the battle. The leaders had special abilities, but the employees vastly outnumbered them, so it would probably be a draw for a while.

"Let's keep going up!"

Without the leaders blocking them and without the hallucination interfering, the players reached the fourteenth floor without trouble.

Forewarned, the players stuffed their mouths full of hotpot noodles, and stuffed some into the mouths of the four carrying the hotpots too. So when they stepped onto the fourteenth floor, they saw no illusion—only a colossal mountain of meat, rising and falling in a steady rhythm, as if it were breathing.

Somewhat horrified, the players looked at the money printer atop the meat mountain. Without fresh flesh being fed in, the printer sat motionless.

"Should I take another couple bites..." Luo Yongzhi's mouth moved faster than his brain, and he accidentally swallowed what was in it. He hurriedly reached for the hotpot, only to realize he wasn't hallucinating. "Huh? The illusion isn't that strong here after all..."

Lin Tu, who had been here before, felt the same. She guessed, "Maybe this cycle doesn't have as much messed-up stuff."

Next, according to plan, Lin Tu was supposed to throw the remaining "company delicacies" onto the meat mountain, letting the steps carry everyone to the money printer on the eighteenth floor. But... Lin Tu suddenly didn't want to do that.

Throw meat at it? It was dreaming. Some grand path paved with blood? She wanted no part of it.

A nameless fury rose in Lin Tu's chest. She raised the pot full of red broth and dumped it all over the meat mountain.

A sharp, piercing scream rang out. The near-boiling hotpot—close to a hundred degrees—scalded the tender pink flesh of the mountain a mottled brown. She'd cooked it.

One pot wasn't enough. Lin Tu took the pots from the other players and continued dousing the mountain.

After four consecutive pots of hotpot, the entire meat mountain seemed to wilt. The pots had only contained some hotpot noodles as breakfast, and now those noodles hung pathetically from the scalded tendrils of the meat mountain.

The whole mountain gave off a strange, nauseating smell of cooked flesh. At the same time, the players all felt the hallucination in their heads weaken further.

Meanwhile, the leaders controlled by the meat mountain became pathetically easy to defeat.

Kou Lin, watching through [Camera Intrusion], exclaimed, "The employees won! They're charging up!"

Not long after she spoke, the fourteenth-floor door collapsed with a crash. Countless employees swarmed the meat mountain, grabbing handfuls of its flesh and devouring it.

But their expressions weren't ones of enjoyment or pleasure. They were filled with hatred, pain, and the sorrow of vengeance finally served.

In a daze, Lin Tu spotted familiar faces—characters from product promotional images she'd once reviewed. More precisely, they were former employees of Happiness, Joy & Beauty Co.

The young man who'd hanged himself under pressure, the girl who'd been raped on a business trip and never dared to speak of it before jumping to her death... Their souls were mixed among the employees, bite by bite consuming the very mountain that had once exploited them, as if doing so could somehow bring their bodies back.

The scene descended into utter chaos. Yi Ying asked, "Sister Lin, what do we do?"

"We're going to the eighteenth floor."

It was a large open space, enormous in scale. Lin Tu roughly measured the empty area nearby and asked Guan Suixing, "Does your three-eight line have enough length to separate these two sides?"

Guan Suixing nodded. "About that much."

The players quickly cleared the area. Only after the three-eight line was laid did Guan Suixing have a chance to ask Lin Tu, "Sister Lin, what's this for?"

"To get to the eighteenth floor." Lin Tu had already made the settings on her phone. She pulled the players away from the empty space, then anchored a spot ahead with her finger, muttering in a voice barely audible to the others, "Switch form."

In the next instant, a helicopter appeared in the very center of the open space.

"Holy crap!" Luo Yongzhi shouted in shock and excitement. The other players, though from different worlds, all came from the same continent, and the words that tumbled out of their mouths were the same two characters—just drowned out by Luo Yongzhi's booming voice.

"Sister Lin, last disaster, when we turned around to look for the lighthouse and you said there'd be a small plane, I thought you were just comforting us. So you actually had one!" Guan Suixing was utterly incredulous.

"Using this to get to the eighteenth floor is seriously hardcore..." Luo Yongzhi ran up happily, stroking the outer membrane of the small aircraft. The players tacitly refrained from asking where the helicopter came from. It was Lin Tu's secret; she'd tell them if she wanted to.

Lin Tu nodded silently. "Let's go."

There were a few too many players, but the helicopter Lin Tu had manifested via form-shifting could handle the weight, so they squeezed in anyway.

Lin Tu didn't know how to fly, but she had the Butler. Settling into the pilot's seat, she handed full control over to the Butler and became a passenger.

With a rumbling roar of the engine, the rotors began to spin rapidly, kicking up dust. Soon, everyone felt the weight leave their feet, and when they looked down, the employees were already below them.

As employees climbing the mountain drew level with them, Lin Tu suddenly spotted Lu Meiliang among them, desperately clawing his way toward the money printer.

The employees had finally banded together to overcome the hallucination, overthrown the leaders, and turned the bloodsuckers into blood bags. It looked like a beautiful fairy tale. But once the players left the disaster, everything would likely repeat itself.

Without Li Yujing, Tang Yingyuan, or Lu Meiliang... as long as temptation existed, there would never be a shortage of people willing to die for it.

"Sister Lin, we're ready to fire the signal flare!" The plane was loud, and the players in the back called out.

"Wait!" Lin Tu suddenly unbuckled her seatbelt. She glanced down below, then produced a thick coil of rope, tying one end to the handrail above her head.

Yi Ying shrieked, "Sister Lin! What are you doing!"

"I'm stealing the money printer!" Lin Tu grabbed the rope and leaped. A wild rush of freefall swept over her, and she'd never felt so exhilarated.

Just as she was about to crash onto the meat mountain, Lin Tu yanked the rope tight and swayed her body gently. The Butler, quick-witted, shifted the plane toward the money printer.

Soon, Lin Tu's hand found the handle at the top of the printer.

"Mine now!" With a hard tug, the plane gave a slight lurch before steadying and rising at an even pace.

The entire money printer, like a tooth being pulled, slowly came free of the meat mountain.

As if realizing it was about to be separated from its "food," the energy stone at its core suddenly began to flicker, rapidly absorbing the flesh of the mountain beneath it. Then, bill after bill of cash flew at Lin Tu like a swarm of mosquitoes.

Lin Tu nearly laughed out loud. She clamped the rope between her legs, used the [Lighthouse] inversion technique to hang upside down, and began grabbing handfuls of cash to stuff into her bag with her free hand.

—This money was points, wasn't it!

The side quest had told her to make money. She'd made money! She'd taken the whole company's money printer!

In a corner invisible to Lin Tu, the cash dissolved into nothing, while the points in her account surged and climbed at a frantic pace.

At first, the meat mountain seemed to try to "win back" the printer, its tendrils reaching up to contest control. But when it realized its own body was being absorbed, it decisively gave up the fight.

"Pretty smart..." Lin Tu thought.

She stopped grabbing cash and shoved the entire printer into her backpack, letting it slowly convert the flesh it had just absorbed into money.

Then, taking her time, Lin Tu pulled out the bullet she'd prepared earlier, coated with [Warden's Blood]. "Now that I think about it, the smart one was you, the fattest one was you, and the richest... isn't fat the same as rich? So that was you too. I didn't want to waste my S-grade item, but since he said you're Ace of Diamonds, I think wasting it doesn't matter. I hate you card people the most."

Lin Tu was very close to the meat mountain. Though her voice was soft, she was certain it could hear her.

The moment she finished speaking, she sensed the mountain shifting—which only confirmed to her this wasn't a mountain at all. It was a person. It was Ace of Diamonds.

Bang!

Lin Tu aimed at the very top of the meat mountain and fired, the bullet piercing straight through the entire mass.

A miserable, agonized scream rose from below.

"Later!" She waved at it, then used [Ultra-High-Difficulty Escape Technique], letting another rope drop from the other side. She grabbed it and, a second later, was back in her seat.

In that instant, the world around them began to collapse rapidly, like tumbling building blocks.

Lin Tu heard a woman wailing in heart-wrenching agony: "Lulu! My daughter! Why did you have to do it!"

The entire world began to mourn. Then, after everything crumbled, the fog dispersed, sunlight reappeared in the sky, and all returned to calm.

"Um..." Luo Yongzhi held the signal flare, looking awkward. "Do we still need to use this?"

[Congratulations! You have successfully cleared Nightmare Doomsday—A-Class Disaster: Extreme Company.]

[The disaster ended early. During the second cycle, the nightmare disaster anchored on Hu Lulu was resolved. As of this time node, your status is ALIVE! Main mission complete, clear conditions met! (Unlocked A-class random reward)]

[Player Performance Rating: SSS]

[World Whisper (Hu Lulu): Infinite cycles—it wasn't that I wouldn't let them go, it was that they never let me go. Thank you for appearing. I can finally have peace again...]

[Congratulations! Side quest complete: Make money, the more the better! Total points ×13,293 + (unknown); (Unlocked SS-class random rewards ×2)]

[Congratulations! Special achievements unlocked: Company Leader, Outstanding Employee, Enemy of Hunger, Nightmare Bane.]

Lin Tu opened her eyes. For the first time ever, she left a disaster feeling overly stuffed.

To fight off the hallucinations, she'd spent most of her time eating.

It was already late at night, but everything that had just happened was too stimulating. Lin Tu crawled out of bed, intending to boil some hot water to rinse her mouth and steady her still-pounding heart.

The other players were probably getting ready for bed too. Tonight should pass peacefully.

Just as she was thinking that, her phone buzzed.

She opened it and noticed something unusual in the group chat—for instance—

Lin Tu asked: "Why is Lu Haima's avatar gray?"

And the other players were equally shocked, because besides Lu Haima, Zhang Xingxing, and several other Art Department players also had gray avatars.

In Doomsday Town, a gray avatar meant only one thing: death.

Like Han Yu, who still sat in Lin Tu's friends list. [Infinite Calamity] had one good thing going—it never deleted accounts. After people died, if their friends and family couldn't bear to remove them, they'd stay as gray avatars, never moving again but forever lingering in the contact list.

Lin Tu tapped on Lu Haima's avatar, trying to view his info, but it had been so long.

His last Moments post read: "Nightmare space, let's go! We'll definitely bring him back!"

There were many likes and comments below. What was even more horrifying was that everyone who'd liked or commented had gray avatars too—meaning everyone who'd interacted with him was dead...

Yi Ying: "F*ck! It's late and I either need my eyes checked or I'm seeing ghosts!"

Liu Sheng: "I want to throw my phone away."

Dong Huadan: "Did you guys meet new people? How did they all die in one disaster?"

Guan Suixing: "No! They're alive! We just spoke to them, then left the disaster together!"

Guan Suiyue, who had been lurking silently in the chat for a long time, saw Guan Suixing speak and realized she'd safely escaped [Extreme Company], so she popped up: "Does this disaster have a reset feature?"

Kou Lin: "Sister Yue, yes, it does."

Guan Suiyue: "Some disasters are like that. If a disaster keeps resetting, players who died in it before can reappear. From what you're saying, I'm guessing this disaster also had hallucinations. Only when both factors stack do you and they both fail to notice anything wrong."

Yi Ying sounded upset: "But... we all added each other as friends. Doesn't that mean they're not dead?"

Guan Suiyue: "No one knows whether they're dead or not. Don't trust [Infinite Calamity] too much. This game's god has stopped showing its face, and many disasters can invade it easily. If you meet players you don't recognize, stay far away! @Guan Suixing"

Guan Suixing snapped: "Mind your own business! Lu Haima and Zhang Xingxing are good people!"

Guan Suiyue had provoked her sister, but seemed in an even better mood: "I didn't say they're all bad. Some dead players, even trapped in hallucinations and suffering through disasters, still help their fellow players. But some... don't grieve for them, Xingxing. Existing as phantoms in a disaster world? I think they'd rather be thoroughly dead."

In the end, did Lu Haima and the others ever realize they were dead? Perhaps, as Guan Suiyue said, they found peace.

Lin Tu put down her phone and looked out the window. Sometimes she felt that the people in disasters came and went in a rush, like duckweed beneath a storm. When would the disasters ever truly end...

Her phone buzzed again—private messages from Guan Suiyue and Dong Huadan.

Guan Suiyue: "He's about to enter a disaster soon. You're lucky—it's an A-class one about to become S-class, a hundred-player disaster. You can blend in easily. To repay you, I'll come with you. Let's talk in person tomorrow."

Lin Tu perked up instantly, sweeping away her gloomy mood. After confirming, she looked at Dong Huadan's message—

Dong Huadan: "It's been hard to dig up info on Lin Haizhi, but I found a little. There's something you definitely won't believe... I'll take you tomorrow. Oh, and that thing you asked about—can you predict what disasters will happen in this world? That kind of item doesn't exist. Good news though: there's another similar item. Honestly, it's a bit useless; I couldn't find anyone to trade it, so you'll have to buy it from the system mall. It costs 1,500 points."

Dong Huadan sent the info, and Lin Tu immediately confirmed: "I want it!"

She opened the mall, bought it on the spot, and screenshot the info to Zhou Yi. The reply came fast: "How do I pick it up?"

Lin Tu didn't want to expose her identity yet, so she said: "I'll drop it in a temporary locker at the local gym. I'll text you when it's done."

Why put it off? Her emotions had been on a rollercoaster anyway, and she couldn't sleep. Lin Tu pulled out her motorcycle and zipped over to the gym.

She knew the area well and easily avoided the surveillance cameras.

The old Lin Tu had been a model citizen. The current Lin Tu slipped through the gym's bathroom window with practiced ease, found a locker in the corner, and tossed in the ticket she'd just bought, still warm in her hands.

After snapping a photo and grabbing some barbecue from the place next door, she returned the way she came, then sent the picture to Zhou Yi.

By now she was tired. She ate a few bites of grilled vegetables, threw the rest into her time-frozen cabinet, and went to sleep.

Lin Tu had assumed Zhou Yi—or rather, the state—wouldn't move that fast, and would pick up the item the next day at the earliest.

But unbeknownst to her, that very night, a large contingent of armed police burst into the gym and carefully retrieved the item—

[World Map (Disaster Version): This map marks areas where a disaster will occur within 24 hours. Disaster severity is indicated by four colors: pale white, pale yellow, deep yellow, and red. Note: Red indicates a super-large-scale disaster. Humans in red zones absolutely cannot survive.]

At that moment, on the world map, a patch of blood-red was beginning to appear.