Chapter 8 Carjacking

It was still three in the afternoon at the parking lot outside the community shopping center.

It was the peak shopping period, with many cars in the parking lot and many people entering and leaving the shopping center.

Among the crowd, there was a "child" about 1.7 meters tall with a resolute face, seemingly looking for something...

"Strange... where is he?" Long Ge arrived at the meeting point on time, but he looked around and didn't see Qi Sha. "Could it be because he's too short... that I missed him?"

He muttered to himself as he wandered around the parking lot, looking left and right.

Suddenly...

"Hey! We're over here!" someone shouted to Long Aomin, suppressing their voice.

"Huh?" Long Ge recognized his teammate's voice, but when he turned his head, he didn't see the person speaking.

"Over here!" the voice repeated urgently.

Long Ge then realized that the voice was coming from under a car.

So, Long Aomin came to the car, squatted down, and looked inside: "I say... are you two playing hide-and-seek?"

"In a way..." Qi Sha replied with a squint. "That's right..."

Tan Lang, who was lying next to him, also said, "Of course... if we were really playing hide-and-seek, with your current physique, you'd definitely be 'it' every time."

"Although you guys are lying there very sincerely, chatting nonsense with me, I have absolutely no interest in coming down and joining you," Long Ge replied, his lips twitching. "So... can you explain the current situation?"

"Isn't the situation obvious..." Tan Lang was about to start narrating when...

[Side Quest Progress Updated] A system prompt sounded.

The next second, all three instinctively opened the game menu, glanced at the taskbar, and found that the [Find a way to meet up with your teammates] task had been crossed out, and a follow-up task appeared below: [Enter Dracula's Castle].

"Well..." Two seconds later, Tan Lang recited, "Even though our captain is dead, Hell Frontline also used up the Blood Corpse God, this super strong summoned creature; furthermore... the difficulty of this side quest has also decreased with the reduction in the number of people, it's not a loss..."

"I don't even know what you're talking about..." Long Ge looked at him and said, "Can you come out from under the car and start from the beginning?"

In the next five minutes, Tan Lang, Qi Sha, and Long Aomin squatted next to the car, exchanging information furtively.

Tan Lang recounted his previous encounter with Po Jun, after which... Qi Sha followed the sound of the explosion to the basketball court and met Tan Lang, who had escaped death.

"In summary..." Tan Lang said after a long speech, "We can know... that even summoning and mechanical abilities are affected in this script. Those summoned creatures seem to have not been weakened, but their duration has been shortened by at least half; in addition... the effects of our weapons, equipment, items, etc., will also be discounted..."

"Hmm... I understand the summoned creatures part..." Long Ge heard this and interjected thoughtfully, "If it weren't for the greatly shortened lifespan of the Blood Corpse God, you should have already died..." He paused. "However, mechanical abilities and item effects are weakened... how did you figure that out?"

"Before encountering the Blood Corpse God, I drank a bottle of a large dose of survival value supplement. At that time, my health was restored to full as usual, so I didn't care," Tan Lang explained almost without thinking. "However, when Po Jun threw the [Singularity Grenade], I felt something was wrong... The grenade's radius of effect was obviously smaller than usual. But... the situation at the time didn't allow me to think about it carefully." He pointed to the knapsack slung across his body. "And after the battle, when I used special items to restore spiritual energy, I confirmed it... Even the effects of items were affected by the script settings."

"Oh... I see." Long Aomin nodded, remained silent for a moment, reorganized and digested the known information.

Just then...

"Hey, kids, what are you doing next to my car?" a man's voice sounded. "Trying to play a prank?"

The three turned their heads at the sound and saw a man in his mid-thirties, dressed in a suit and leather shoes, holding shopping bags.

"Get out of here, little bastards." As the man in the suit put the shopping bags into the back seat of the car, he was already using foul language to drive away the three of Blades.

"Sir, this seems to be a parking space reserved for the disabled," Tan Lang said, looking up at the other person, tentatively.

"So what?" The man in the suit took two steps forward, using a disdainful look and a gesture like shooing flies to yell at them, "Mind your own business, I'll just park here, what can you do?"

Before he finished speaking, Long Aomin... stood up.

Although the man in the suit was also over 1.7 meters tall, taller than Long Ge at the moment, the deterrent force of Long Ge's face was enough to make up for the height difference of about fifteen centimeters.

"What do you want? Kid, I advise you not to cause trouble for yourself!" The man in the suit was still bluffing, glaring and threatening the three "children" in front of him.

"Cause trouble for myself?" Long Aomin repeated these four words in a meaningful tone, then let out a cold laugh, "Hmph... I'm sorry, I'm a police officer."

Fifteen minutes later...

On a certain highway leading to Dark Creek Road.

A Volvo with more than a decade of loans still to be paid off was driving on this road.

Tan Lang and Qi Sha were sitting in the back seat of the car, comfortably enjoying the air conditioning and eating snacks that had been on the shelves of the shopping center not long ago.

And Long Aomin was sitting in the passenger seat, arms crossed, staring seriously ahead.

"I warn you, my aunt is a lawyer..." The man in the suit in the driver's seat was still trying to control the situation with words as he drove. "If you get out of the car now, I can pretend nothing happened, otherwise..."

"Listen, you scumbag." Long Aomin slapped him in the face without turning his head, interrupting him, "I also warn you... what my brothers and I hate the most are scum like you who ruin the social atmosphere. If you don't shut up, I'll make sure you can use disabled parking spaces for the rest of your life, justified."

…………

Four o'clock in the afternoon, somewhere in the community.

"Ha! Finally found you guys!" Xiao Tan, who was walking down the street with four little boys, happened to meet Xiao Ling and Ruo Yu.

The four children were all members of the "Monster Club". In addition to Sean and Horace, the other two were also children in their teens.

"Whoa~ Whoa~ Whoa~" Before the two players could reply, Sean and the others all turned their heads and gave Xiao Tan three consecutive interjections. "Buddy... are you sure you're not mistaken? Are you going to play with the girls?"

"Uh..." Xiao Tan was an honest person, and he didn't think there was anything wrong with it, so he replied, "Yeah, we often play together."

"What?" The boys were immediately shocked.

"Okay, it seems there's a huge misunderstanding here..."

"Wang, I'm very sorry, I think you have to leave our club."

"We don't associate with girls, nor do we play with kids who associate with girls."

"Haven't you noticed the words 'no_girLs' written at the entrance of the tree house?"

They said one after another, and backed away from Xiao Tan.

"Huh?" Xiao Tan still didn't react when he saw this. After a few seconds of愣, he said again, "Huh?"

"Stop 'ha-ha-ing', even I know... most boys are very unfriendly to girls before middle school." At this time, Xiao Ling had walked next to Xiao Tan and muttered, shaking her head.

"Is there such a thing?" Xiao Tan asked blankly.

"You really don't know?" Xiao Ling asked suspiciously.

"Hmm..." Xiao Tan responded, "Actually... I didn't have very good relationships with boys or girls when I was a kid... The only one I got along with well was..."

"You made friends badly, your childhood is ruined, please accept our condolences." Ruo Yu, who was standing on the other side, didn't even need to wait for him to finish speaking before she gave an irrefutable conclusion.

"Wang, it seems you have a lot to talk about with the girls, so we won't keep you company." Sean, who had retreated a few meters away, said.

"When you clear your relationship with the girls, maybe you can join our club." Horace continued.

The few of them mumbled and left the three players, minding their own business.

After they walked away, Xiao Ling asked, "Okay... back to the point. What have you achieved in the past six hours?"

"Yes." Xiao Tan replied immediately, "I found someone to translate Van Helsing's diary..." As he said that, he took out a piece of paper from his knapsack. "I also copied down the 'incantation' part, with phonetic symbols." His expression seemed quite proud. "Next, we just need to find a virgin to complete the ritual in the opening CG." Speaking of this, he seemed to have thought of something. "Eh? By the way, do you count now?" He touched his chin and muttered, "Logically speaking, you were like that before you met me... but not after... but if you shrink it down to ten years old..."

Bang—

A gunshot rang out, and white light rose.

Xiao Ling drew her gun, aimed, and fired... The whole process was done in one go. In a second, the pistol bullet penetrated Xiao Tan's temple very neatly, a headshot.

"Ah~ Ah~ Got the incantation..." Xiao Ling drew away the paper from the corpse's hand with a dark expression. "And I cleared a fool for the world, it's really pleasant."

This scene put all the viewers watching the match into a state of brain short-circuit.

Without a doubt, this was the first incident of intentional murder of a teammate since the start of the Peak Conquest S2 competition...

Although there had been cases of accidental injury or even accidental death before (mostly caused by indiscriminate skills), this kind of intentional act... not to mention the motive of the perpetrator... even if someone else wanted to do it, they couldn't.

Technically speaking, Xiao Ling shouldn't be able to launch an intentional attack on her teammates, but... she really did it at this moment.

So... according to the established facts, there are only two possible assumptions: First, the person who fired the gun was not Xiao Ling, but someone else impersonating her; Second, Xiao Ling broke through to the [Transcendent Realm] in some way, thus achieving this kill...

…………

At the same time, in the Monster Club's tree house.

"That damned little bastard, when I get this chip out, I'll definitely make you suffer..." The hobo Hill was hammering at the entrance of the tree house with his elbow, while cursing at Jue Ge.

Of course, as he said this, he didn't dare to neglect the matter in front of him at all, because before he left the old house on Dark Creek Road, Feng Bujue had said more than a dozen "delayed trigger words" to him.

What are "delayed trigger words"? Jue Ge's explanation was—you won't have any reaction when you hear them, but they'll trigger the chip's effect after a specific period of time.

At first, Hill didn't believe there would be such a ridiculous "high-tech", but Feng Bujue immediately said: "Actually, I already said a delayed trigger word to you twenty minutes ago, counting the time... it should be taking effect soon."

As a result, as soon as he finished speaking, Hill was electrocuted and fell to the ground in pain...

After getting up from the ground, Hill had no choice but to believe it...

Later, Feng Bujue gave Hill some specific clues, letting him go to find the whereabouts of Van Helsing's diary, and told him: "If you don't return within four hours, these delayed trigger words will torture you to the point of shock." After saying that, he said "butt" a dozen times in a row, then said, "If you bring back the diary successfully, I'll immediately help you remove the chip."

Thus... we see this scene now.

"Damn it! Damn it!" Hill elbowed the wooden planks at the entrance of the tree house fiercely, as if that board was Feng Bujue's face.

When his arm started to go numb, the lock on the entrance was finally broken.

"Tch... little kids' tree house... locked so tightly..." Hill shook his arm and complained, then leaned his head and climbed into the tree house.

His luck was very good, right now, Van Helsing's diary was here.

Because the book itself was relatively large and heavy, and the German text on it was also something the children couldn't understand directly, they didn't carry it with them, but placed it in the tree house.

According to the description given by Jue Ge, Hill quickly found the diary on a low table in the corner of the tree house.

"What the hell is this?" Out of curiosity, Hill opened it and looked at it.

Unfortunately... he was even worse than a child, he couldn't even tell which country the text in the diary was from... all he could understand were some illustrations.

"Messy..." Hill quickly lost his patience. He muttered softly and prepared to leave the tree house.

However, just as he turned around, a "cunning" thought flashed through his mind, giving him an idea...