Awesome, Just Awesome

Yang Zhanbai quickly pushed the door open and spread his right hand out toward the long-faced Doppelganger.

"Hunter," he said with full confidence. "I have some business and need to go down."

He had been paralyzed on the ground for so long just now, and this Doppelganger hadn't made a move, which meant the Boss's words still carried weight.

The Doppelganger lifted its eyelids impatiently. Its eyeballs rolled around before fixing on Zhu Yan outside the window, coming to a dead stop.

Zhu Yan was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking like he couldn't care less.

Yang Zhanbai had watched the Boss leave with his own eyes, and the Doppelganger knew that the Boss had never returned.

Once the Doppelganger agreed to their request, he would use this as an excuse to let Yang Zhanbai return to the candy store first to warn those rookie survivors.

The Doppelganger swallowed hard.

"The Boss has left," it said in a weird, mocking tone.

"Didn't you see? What business do you have?"

Yang Zhanbai remembered the scene of the Boss swaggering out to find food, and his heart skipped a beat.

Damn it.

He had been so focused on sorting out the Hunter situation that he had completely forgotten about this.

"Left? Hasn't he come back yet?"

"Nope," the Doppelganger gloated sarcastically. "It's obvious the Hunter did a poor job harvesting, so the Boss went out to get a meal himself."

Yang Zhanbai's eyebrows twitched.

He had forgotten to warn the people in the candy store!

Where would the Boss go?

"I brought food. It's him."

Yang Zhanbai lifted his chin, gesturing toward Zhu Yan.

Since things had come to this, he could only resolve the situation here as quickly as possible.

"Let us go down. This is the Boss's order."

Yang Zhanbai looked at the Doppelganger's somewhat reluctant face. "If anything happens to the food, the Boss will hold you responsible."

This threat worked perfectly. The corners of the Doppelganger's mouth instantly dropped, and it deflated.

"Fine," it muttered a curse. "Food, food, there's so much to eat, can't he share a little with me?"

Yang Zhanbai pushed the door open to let Zhu Yan in, and Zhu Yan immediately asked a question to which he already knew the answer.

"What did the Boss say?"

"The Boss isn't here." Yang Zhanbai stepped aside, watching Zhu Yan step into the warm light. "The Boss left. I was in such a bad mood just now that I forgot about it."

"Huh?" Zhu Yan feigned surprise, turning his head to look at him and lowering his voice. "Left? Did he come back? Is it empty down there then?"

"Yes," Yang Zhanbai whispered urgently. "The Boss never came back."

Zhu Yan turned his head and cast a nervous glance at the Doppelganger.

The Doppelganger was sliding under the flower stand to grab the keys, mumbling fragmented complaints, completely ignoring the two of them.

It seemed this Doppelganger was honest enough to spill everything, saving Zhu Yan some trouble.

He decided to give it a quick and painless death!

"It's empty down there, so I can go down alone."

Zhu Yan observed Yang Zhanbai's expression and quickly voiced his thoughts.

"With the Boss outside, Qi Yinming and the others are in more danger."

Seeing the worry on Yang Zhanbai's face, he knew he had made the right suggestion.

"It'll be more convenient if we split up."

"You go warn them. See if you can take them to the block ahead before it gets dark and find a place to hide."

"I'll come up as soon as possible and regroup with you."

Zhu Yan still remembered the rules.

The rules stated that during the day, players needed to find shops run by humans and obtain permission to enter.

But based on experience, the rules of Carnival Paradise were rarely that rigid. Take the human shops, for example—the rules never explicitly stated they couldn't be searched at night.

Nighttime was merely dangerous; it didn't mean players were completely unable to act!

Yang Zhanbai immediately understood what Zhu Yan meant.

"How will you get back up?" he asked in a low voice.

Behind them, the cash register cracked open with a clack, and a golden cage creaked as it rose.

"I have my ways," Zhu Yan whispered. "The boss shouldn't be back that quickly."

"Hurry up and go. There's still a signal here. If I snap a picture of a clue, I'll send it to the group chat."

Yang Zhanbai looked at him as if looking at a martyr.

Even if the boss wasn't down there, Zhu Yan's chances of survival going down alone were grim.

The risk of not being able to come back up was massive!

However, splitting up—one going down for clues while the other operated on the surface—was indeed the most efficient and time-saving method.

Yang Zhanbai took a deep breath, calming the pessimistic scenarios playing out in his head.

"We need a golden key to unlock the third stage," he said softly, his eyes turning red. "Go down and take a look around. If you can't find it, forget it and come back up immediately!"

"Brother, staying alive is what matters. I can always go down during the day; there's no need to rush this."

Zhu Yan grinned without a care in the world. "Don't worry."

Stay alive? Please. Underground, he was the boss.

The real boss's corpse wasn't even cold yet; he probably wasn't going to jump up and kill him.

Zhu Yan stepped decisively into the cage and waved his left hand, signaling Yang Zhanbai to head back quickly.

The golden cage slowly descended once more, and the surroundings plunged into darkness.

Zhu Yan let out a long sigh, leaned against the cage with a clang, and unlocked his phone.

With no one around and no impending danger, he could finally relax his mind a little.

The time displayed was two o'clock in the afternoon.

There were still 19 full hours left before this 24-hour day came to an end.

The cage door popped open, and air carrying a faint, sickly-sweet stench drifted into his nose.

Zhu Yan swaggered toward the back of the bar, opened the Xishan University Freshmen Group, and sent a friend request to Yang Zhanbai.

Surprisingly, the signal down here was no worse than outside.

After just a few hours of not checking, the messages in the freshmen group had blown up again.

"What's going on with you guys? Is there really a dungeon instance?"

"Holy crap, people are dead! The news can't suppress it anymore!!"

"Someone at the scene even caught it on camera. Hundreds of people inside the train station suddenly vanished in two seconds!"

"Why isn't anyone saying anything? Are those of you who entered the instance doing okay?"

In such a short amount of time, the group chat had accumulated thousands of messages.

Zhu Yan quickly scrolled through them. Most were expressions of shock and panic, coming from the batch of students who, for various reasons, had not participated in this instance.

For now, they were still alive.

On the contrary, the people who actually entered the instance were barely speaking.

During the very beginning of the instance, a few photos of the street scenery and videos of police officers distributing food had been shared. But about 30 minutes later, the people posting those photos went completely silent.

It wasn't until Yang Zhanbai appeared, sporting his Xuexitong profile picture, that the group chat exploded again!

"A reminder to all students participating in the instance: the police officers inside are not real police officers. If you can see this message, please do not eat any of the food they distribute."

"Repeating..."

After this message was sent, there were no serious replies. It only drew some confused curses and gasps of shock from people in the real world.

Zhu Yan decisively sent the friend request.

Then, he walked around behind the bar, inserted the stolen golden key back into the keyhole, and snapped a blurry photo.

Yang Zhanbai accepted his friend request almost instantly.

"Safe?" A message popped up. "I ran back to the candy store, and now I've decided to proceed normally. I'll pull you into our small group chat."

Before Zhu Yan even had time to reply, two new messages from the group chat buzzed onto his screen.

"Keep in touch."

"Is everything okay over there? What's your name?"

Such quick fingers.

Zhu Yan sent the blurry photo into the group chat, then snapped another unfocused picture of the entrance to the third level.

"No one is here," he typed rapidly. "I'm so nervous. I'm going down to take a look, so I'll stop chatting for now."

Inside the candy store.

The Bespectacled Man stared at the two blurry photos, his palms sweating from fear.

"Holy crap. I'd be nervous too if it were me. The fact that he managed to snap a photo at all is seriously badass!"

The hand Qi Yinming used to hold his phone was also trembling slightly.

It was obvious the photos were taken with shaking hands. The blurry entrance looked like a black hole capable of devouring everything.

This player truly had the boldness that came with great skill.

"I hope he's alright," he said, putting his phone away and looking at Yang Zhanbai.

"Let's go." Qi Yinming pushed aside a shelf. "I have good eyesight. You take the lead, and I'll back you up."