Global Collapse

Chapter 911 Recyclable Shroud
"Besides you, are there many other people you know who have this disagreement?" Gu Mian asked him.

Xu Xingcheng thought for a few seconds: "As I just said, he is unpredictable and doesn't like to socialize. He probably only knows a few people, and most of them are probably key figures in our low-dimensional world."

Gu Mian thought about what happened on the NPC street before: "This dog has also shown this kind of abnormality before, constantly calling out 'Hey' to an old fortune teller. Is there an old fortune teller among the key people in your worlds?"

"Hello?" Xu Xingcheng thought for a moment, "Actually, the key people in each low-dimensional world are elusive. I don't know them all. The only ones I've actually met are the Holy Maiden from the Exile World. I also know about Divergence, Luck, and Number One, but I've never met them. I don't know about the others. None of the people I know are fortune tellers."

Gu Mian also knew these people.

Gu Mian had met the Saintess in the "Angel's Redemption" instance, which was actually her brother's maternal home. Aside from their disagreements, Xu Xingcheng mentioned Lucky and Number One as key figures in the Seventh World Ragnarok and the First World/Second World, respectively.

"Sheng Sheng, Fen Fen, Xing Xing, Yi Yi..." The fat man next to him began to imitate Xiao Hei's way of addressing people, "It seems that none of these people call me 'Hey'."

“The one you met might not necessarily be a key figure from another world. Maybe he met someone else through a divergence? But I don’t know why he did that.” Xu Xingcheng carefully observed the little black dog in his hand. “Modifying a mechanical dog and putting it into the Paradise World to recognize people… I really can’t figure out what he’s thinking.”

“And it just so happens that the doctor brought it out,” the fat man began to speculate. “This is probably because the evil Divergents wanted to find out what the doctor was up to, so they made a camera and sent it here to keep an eye on the doctor’s every move.”

The black dog's head does indeed look like a camera.

Upon hearing this, the suspect, Xiao Hei, angrily yelled "What? What?" at the fat man.

Xu Xingcheng patted Xiao Hei a few times to comfort him: "He must have his own reasons for doing this. Maybe the disagreement wasn't just about recording the people he knew in the mechanical dog, but also recording other useful things."

As if to verify his conjecture, he asked Xiao Hei, "Xiao Hei, Xiao Hei, do you know how to save the world?"

Upon hearing Xu Xingcheng's question, Gu Mian and the fat man fell silent, with only the stopwatch on the wall clock chiming awkwardly in the room.

After the stopwatch ticked a few times, the fat man offered Xu Xingcheng his reasonable idea: "I think if you asked it what one plus one equals, it might be able to give you an answer. Asking a stuttering mechanical dog how to save the world is really asking too much of it."

But whether it was saving the world or what one plus one equals, the mechanical dog, Xiao Hei, didn't answer; it only focused on repeatedly committing the word "kill."

Xu Xingcheng lifted Xiao Hei to eye level and shook it back and forth: "It can't really be a fake, can it? Just like that goose in your yard, it grunts twice and then lies down. What was the point of creating it?"

The fat man quickly spoke up to defend the goose: "It's not usually like this. It's just been a bit listless lately since Miss 007 left..."

Just as the fat man was defending Xiao Hei, Xiao Hei, who had been stuttering and saying "Huh?", suddenly unlocked a new line—

“Bababababa…”

The fat man's evasive words stopped abruptly, and his eyes revealed a look of doubt: "Mr. Xu, you've become a father?"

It was born as a dog.

While it's true that a being like an evil god can't be categorized as "human," it's not like it would give birth to a dog.

Xu Xingcheng ignored the fat man's talk about becoming a father. He looked at the mechanical dog in front of him and tried to shake it slightly from side to side a few times.

He soon discovered that the dog would only bark "Dad" when he turned it to the left or right so it wasn't facing him directly.

“It wasn’t yelling at me.” Xu Xingcheng said, turning around to look in the direction the dog was looking. There was a window there, and through the window, he could see a huge shadow floating in the distant sky—the Upside-Down City.

The fat man also noticed this: "It's calling the Upside-Down City 'Dad'?"

“Obviously it wasn’t calling for ‘father,’” Gu Mian went to the window and looked intently at the shadow on the distant sky. “Ba? What does that mean?”

Xu Xingcheng casually placed Xiao Hei on the sofa: "Who knows, but it's definitely referring to the Upside-Down City. When we go up next week, we'll bring this dog along to see. Maybe it'll come up with something new... But the difference is, did he already know about the Upside-Down City? His creations even included information about the Upside-Down City."

The fat man hesitated for a moment before speaking, "But it doesn't call the Upside-Down City 'Upside-Down,' does it? Could it be that the real name of the Upside-Down City isn't 'Upside-Down' but something like 'Ba'?"

“It’s not impossible. The Upside-Down City was created by Earth. Maybe Earth renamed it before bringing it up here?” Xu Xingcheng tapped the window frame with one finger. “But we’ll have to go up there to find out the specifics. From your description, there are quite a few mysteries up there.”

When Fatty mentions the City of Upside Down, he thinks of his friends from the Ghost Valley base. And when he thinks of the base, he thinks of 007. Right now, 007 is still staying at the base where Ghost Valley used to be.

"Doctor, have you been in contact with Miss 007 from Huluwa recently?" The fat man thought about the messages he had sent to 007 in the past few days.

Gu Mian was too lazy to correct his incorrect place name: "She said the same thing again, that there was no need to look for her. She probably wants to develop her career in that base for a long time."

The fat man said with some regret, "I don't know how long it will be before I see Miss 007 again after this."

They might never see each other again, but the fat man didn't say it aloud. He still preferred a happy ending; weren't those the endings of fairy tales all like that? No matter what happened along the way, everyone lived happily ever after in the end. Xu Xingcheng casually remarked, "That's easy. Gu Mian now has a wish-granting function. If his wish is strong enough, he might even be able to reach across mountains and seven seas..."

"Are you talking about hitting a cow from across a mountain?"

"In short, it means to remotely bring back that 007 guy you guys call him."

"If that's the case, if we doctors develop our skills and wish for world peace, maybe the global game will end!" The fat man's words became more and more outrageous, and he actually put his hands together and made a wish to Gu Mian, "I wish that Miss 007 can come back soon, and I wish for world peace soon."

"Don't you have to burn incense when you pray to the gods? Go find two sticks of incense and stick them on his head, maybe it will be more effective."

Gu Mian: "..."

Besides the fat man, Hao Laoshi, who lives on the first floor, is also thinking about 007.

He'd been contemplating leaving for the past few days. He still had a considerable amount of game currency left, thanks to Gu Mian crashing the previous dungeon and receiving a thousand in-game currency as compensation. During his stay in the apartment, Fatty had frequently been kind enough to help them, so he hadn't spent much game currency.

Today, he repeatedly opened his game panel, staring at the game currency balance page with numbers displayed, and finally sighed.

"Still thinking about Hulu Gorge?" Guigu's voice came from behind.

Hao Laoshi closed the game panel in front of him and nodded: "Gu Mian and the others don't need Gu Mian to pick them up, but I definitely have to go back to Hulu Gorge. I plan to make some preparations and go back by myself."

“It’s really nice here, and if I could, I would like to stay here forever, but my family is still at the base…”

Hao Laoshi let out a long breath as he spoke, his expression revealing a hint of bewilderment. It would be normal for anyone to feel lost about traveling alone to a distant place.

"Mr. Gu, do you think I can get back safely?" After a moment of confusion, Hao Laoshi asked Gui Gu behind him, wanting Gui Gu to give him some encouragement.

But after a long while, he still didn't get a response from the person behind him. Hao Laoshi turned around in confusion and saw that Guigu, who had just been behind him, had disappeared at some point.

Hao Laoshi had experienced something similar before. There were many times when people suddenly disappeared in the Hulu Gorge base because they were teleported into special instances.

Special dungeons can appear anytime, anywhere, and they can pull in a whole group of people at once.

There might be other people in the apartment who were also pulled in.

Upon thinking of this, Hao Laoshi's first reaction was to go find Gu Mian and tell him about it. However, as soon as he stepped out the door and onto the stairs, he heard a series of loud thuds coming down from above, as if something big was coming down.

He stopped and looked up, seeing half of the fat man's face peeking out from the gap in the stairwell.

Upon seeing the half-face of the fat man with a tense expression, Hao Laoshi knew that someone on the fat man's side must have also been pulled into the dungeon. Just as he was thinking this, the fat man on the stairs hurriedly turned a corner and came down to the first floor, where the two met on the steps.

Hao Laoshi's expression wasn't much better than Fatty's. Fatty immediately understood from his expression: "Guigu was also pulled into the special instance?"

Hao Laoshi nodded: "Who... was pulled in there? Gu Mian?"

If Gu Mian and Gui Gu were to enter the special instance together, Hao Laoshi would feel at ease.

Just then, a lazy voice came from above the stairs: "I was saying there's a cripple from our Paradise World on the fourth floor. Shouldn't we be concerned about whether that person who can't even take care of himself has been pulled into a special instance?"

Xu Xingcheng was referring to Xie Bi'an.

When he arrived in this world, Xie Bi'an, who lived on the same floor, was bedridden and recuperating. He thought that Xie Bi'an was, after all, his fellow villager, so he should care about him more. Therefore, he took the "shroud" that Gu Mian was preparing to use on Xie Bi'an after he died.

Unexpectedly, just as he took the shroud, Gu Mian vanished with a bang.

After a few seconds of reaction, the fat man immediately started scratching his head anxiously, saying that Gu Mian had probably entered a special instance. He then hurriedly went downstairs to see if there were any other people in the apartment who had entered the instance with Gu Mian.

Xu Xingcheng followed him slowly downstairs with the shroud in his hand, and when he heard the honest man downstairs worrying about Gu Mian, he made a sarcastic remark.

But after he spoke, he didn't hear a response from the people below. The two people seemed to have suddenly become mute and didn't make a sound anymore.

Xu Xingcheng frowned, turned a corner, and looked down to the first floor. He saw that the area at the bottom of the stairs was completely empty, without a single soul in sight. The two living people who had been there just moments before had vanished without a trace.

"Strange..." He looked at the empty staircase, somewhat puzzled. "Could it be that two special instances have been triggered in a row this time?"

The author's words contained illegal and prohibited content such as pornography, vulgarity, violence, and gore, and could not be displayed.