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“Where’s the car?”

Seeing that Director Jin’s expression was off, Zhu Zeyu hurriedly cut Yang Zhanbai off.

“We can’t stay here,” he said tersely. “Get in the car first. We’ll figure out the rest on the way.”

Yang Zhanbai froze at those words.

As he led everyone toward the vehicles, he asked urgently, “What do you mean, we can’t stay here? Where are we?”

Zhu Yan spotted the cars Yang Zhanbai had arranged.

The guy had certainly thought things through. Instead of using Director Jin’s usual official sedan, he had requisitioned three military SUVs.

The group split into three vehicles. Zhu Zeyu, Captain Zheng, Director Jin, and Yang Zhanbai took one. Jin Rongxu, Guan En, and the three Walking Corpses took another.

The remaining players, whose names Zhu Yan didn’t recognize, occupied the last vehicle. The two cars drove one ahead and one behind, firmly protecting Director Jin’s vehicle in the middle.

“Director, where are we going?”

Captain Zheng shut the driver’s-side door. The vehicle immediately gave off a pleasant, low hum.

“Just get on the road first.”

Director Jin didn’t know where they were going, either.

He realized that he had instinctively turned to look at Zhu Zeyu, hoping to find a reliable answer.

The young man beside him clearly hadn’t recovered yet. His face was still slightly pale, and he looked utterly exhausted.

Zhu Yan really didn’t have time to deal with Director Jin.

He was using the ability Rules Codex to trap the horrifying creature Illusion, and activating this ability consumed a tremendous amount of Shivering Delight.

Illusion still hadn’t given up struggling. In the short time that had passed, the Shivering Delight health bar had already dropped by another small chunk.

Trapping Illusion had been one part of Zhu Yan’s plan from the very beginning.

What had the red-letter warning said again?

He needed a domain of his own to serve as the dungeon space…

Hidden inside the puppet’s body, Zhu Yan watched the strings of garbled text before him grow increasingly frantic.

“You broke your promise!”

“You should have &¥¥# helped && me @!”

“You can’t succeed—don’t even think about it!”

…

In the underground auditorium, beyond Zhu Yan’s sight:

The sour, rotten stench of vomit mingled with the lingering perfume on the guests, spreading through the warm, murky air.

Most of the “people” there were in a bizarre state.

They sat in their seats with identical, exaggerated smiles, as if the chaos from earlier had never happened.

The cameras had been set up as usual, and the female teacher’s shrill voice came through the speakers, nasal and distorted.

Only the “people” along the outermost edge of the auditorium seemed different.

It was as if an invisible thread had been suspended above their spines, slowly and steadily pulling them backward at an angle.

Under the force of that strange pull, some of their heads soon struck the auditorium wall. Immediately afterward, their entire bodies lifted off the ground.

Bang!

One person’s head slammed violently into the wall. Pixelated blood trickled down its surface.

The person’s face still wore that grotesque, exaggerated smile. After the first impact, the smile actually widened.

Bang! Bang!

Two more heavy thuds rang out.

The bones warped. Irregular shards punched through the scalp, jutting out in all directions.

“Barrier!” the person shrieked. “Barrier! Barrier! I’m going to get out and kill you!”

Bangbangbangbang!

Like the hammer of a bell striking a bronze bell over and over, these people suddenly began smashing themselves against every part of the auditorium’s perimeter at a frenzied pace.

“You set me up! I couldn’t possibly have killed myself! Kill you! Eat you!”

…

Inside the car:

Zhu Yan watched the Shivering Delight health bar suddenly begin plummeting. Calmly, he turned away, unscrewed a bottle of mineral water where Director Jin couldn’t see, and cautiously dripped some Shivering Delight into it before downing the entire bottle.

His vision was now completely obscured by taunting red letters and garbled text, all blending into a thick layer of red paint.

Zhu Yan chose to ignore it entirely and gave the corner of his mouth a faint curl.

Panicking wouldn’t help.

Suicide was suicide. To get out, it had to successfully kill itself.

“…So,” Yang Zhanbai’s nervous voice came from the front, “I just got lucky and happened to make it up here?”

Zhu Yan’s vision was completely blocked by the densely packed text. He could only judge from the rustle of clothing that Yang Zhanbai had turned around.

“…That’s right,” Zhu Yan said. “Captain Jin really did see everything coming.”

After all, “Captain Jin” would help smooth over his lie about the vehicles.

“You saved me again?”

Yang Zhanbai completely ignored Zhu Yan’s attempt to flatter him. With astonishingly poor social awareness, he turned to Zhu Zeyu and thanked him sincerely.

“Holy crap, Dad, how are you always so far-sighted?”

Zhu Yan blinked, trying to shake the red letters out of his vision, and wanted to punch Yang Zhanbai right in the face.

“Ding-dong!”

He was just about to retort when the female voice over the broadcast rang out on cue. Yang Zhanbai simultaneously let out a startled “Fuck!”

“Did you hear that? Why did the broadcast suddenly come on?!”

Everyone heard it.

Even their vehicle gave a slight shudder, prompting Captain Zheng to apologize.

“Sorry. That thing startled me.”

“Dear players, welcome to the collective broadcast channel of Frenzied Happy Land!”

The female voice was bright and cheerful. Beneath its mechanical delight was a feverish, excited exuberance.

“First of all, we would like to extend our highest respect to all players who participated in the internal-test dungeons over the past two months—”

“Some of you used your lives to prove that Frenzied Happy Land cannot be defied. Others relied on cunning and intelligence to exploit a few minor loopholes, helping Frenzied Happy Land fix a handful of small bugs in the internal-test version.”

“Next, we are delighted to see all the new players who were unable to participate in the internal-test dungeons!”

“Welcome to the public-test dungeon!”

Zhu Yan took another drink of mineral water.

For some reason, the red letters before his eyes were no longer as frantic as before.

They were gradually disappearing, and even the rate at which the Shivering Delight health bar was being consumed had slowed.

It seemed that the horrifying creature known as Illusion was slowly running out of strength…

Whatever the case, Zhu Yan’s vision had become much clearer.

“Check your phones,” Yang Zhanbai said. “The internet’s blown up.”

In less than a minute, the terms “broadcast” and “public-test dungeon” had shot to the top of the trending searches on social media. The comments below were in an uproar.

The top post came from an ordinary account with only three thousand followers. It had been uploaded just thirty seconds earlier, yet it had already surpassed eight hundred thousand likes.

It was a video.

Zhu Yan tapped it open. The camera was shaking violently. It seemed that the entire street where the person was filming had been dragged into a dungeon.

A gigantic, pale monster was crawling out through the entrance of a stadium in front of the camera.

Heavy weapons had been deployed all around it and were blasting the monster relentlessly. Amid the thunder of artillery fire came shrill screams and the deafening clang of metal striking metal.

The person filming was breathing heavily and running desperately backward. The cries forced from their throat were almost incoherent.

“Holy shit… holy shit! Did you see that?! That thing crawled out of the shelter!”

“Fuck… fuck! The shelter’s been breached!”

The cheerful female voice continued its announcement.

“The arrival of the public-beta dungeon would not have been possible without the efforts of the [Hunters].”

“Next, we will publish the [Hunters] leaderboard for all players and [Hunters], and assess the [Hunters]’ task completion from several different perspectives.”