Global Collapse

Chapter 916 The lamp cannot be brought back to life!
"What a big kid he is, all he does is play! He's played so much he's gone, and now he's waking up in the middle of the night to clean up the mess."

"I'm always cleaning up after you, it's never-ending!"

"Alright, alright, go to sleep!"

The "mother" carried the fat boy and strode to the toilet door, then put the "big kid" under her arm on the ground—or rather, threw him.

She seemed to have a lot of complaints she wanted to vent, but the description of this special item clearly stated, "After solving your troubles, Mom will immediately leave with disgust."

So she was forced to leave before she could finish venting her frustrations.

The fat man sat on the toilet floor, watching his enormous mother gradually become transparent and then disappear. He touched his sore buttock with lingering fear: "I almost broke my bone. Luckily, I have a lot of flesh on my butt."

“Where are you lacking in meat?” Gu Mian reached out and pulled the person up from the ground. The summoner could only be used once a day. This time he used the summoner to bring the fat man here. The next time he could use it would be 24 hours later.

"Hehe." The fat man chuckled when he saw Gu Mian. "Doctor, you really are a hero saving a damsel in distress! You have no idea how dangerous it was. I was hiding in the fitting room and I heard ghosts outside. The ghosts were about to find me when you suddenly appeared out of nowhere and saved me from danger..."

This is omitting the middleman "mother" – what an unfilial descendant!

Not only was he unfilial, but he was also greedy for money.

Even after being slapped to the ground, the fat man tightly protected his precious lantern, enduring the pain in his bottom without letting the lantern suffer any damage.

The flickering light Gu Mian saw earlier was coming from this lantern; it was an [Eternal Lamp], which Gu Mian recognized. Its illumination radius was twenty meters, and ghosts couldn't see the light emitted by the [Eternal Lamp]—truly a great help in horror dungeons.

The fat man enthusiastically handed the ever-burning lamp to Gu Mian: "Doctor, didn't you forget your flashlight? Use this, use this. This thing has a much wider beam than a flashlight, so you can spy on ghosts within twenty meters at once."

Gu Mian waved the ever-burning lamp in her hand: "You're making me sound like a voyeur."

Although the lantern's beam had a long range, its brightness was no match for Gu Mian's high-powered flashlight. If Gu Mian's large flashlight were used here, it could illuminate the entire mall as if it were daytime.

The light of the eternal lamp was very dim and bluish, and carrying it made it look like carrying a dark, ghostly fire.

Seemingly sensing Gu Mian's disdain, the fat man waved his hand at him: "It's a bit dim, not as good as your flashlight, Doctor, but it's the thing with the longest beam we have right now. And I've taken very good care of it because it's a special item the doctor gave me, so I've been cherishing it. I kept it close to my chest the whole way back, and it wasn't damaged at all. The quality is still top-notch..."

Just as the fat man finished speaking, the lantern in Gu Mian's hand flashed twice as if it were part of the scene, and then went out.

The two were plunged into darkness.

They remained silent in the darkness for a few seconds, then a light broke the awkward atmosphere—the fat man had taken out a flashlight from his inventory.

"Did I accidentally break it when I fell down?" the fat man said awkwardly, trying to cover it up. "Let me check where it got hurt..."

Gu Mian roughly knew where the lantern had been bumped or damaged. He didn't say anything, but simply reached out and stuffed the lantern into the fat man's free hand.

The surroundings lit up with a bright blue light again—a true medical miracle, the dead light had come back to life.

"Huh?" The fat man looked at the lantern in his hand that had lit up again, then at Gu Mian, who was bathed in eerie blue light. "It lit up again just because someone else held it?"

At this point, he realized something and shoved the ever-burning lamp back into Gu Mian's hand, and sure enough, the lamp went out again.

Take it back, and it lights up.

Put it back in, and it's gone.

In just a few seconds, the lights in this abandoned toilet were flashing more frequently than those in a disco.

After trying it six or seven times, the fat man finally understood: "Doctor, your luck seems to have gotten even worse."

Gu Mian gave him a kind smile: "Thank you, I already saw it without you reminding me."

Just as the two were studying "the conditions for the lamp's death and resurrection", Liu Ruyan spoke in the group.

[Liu Ruyan: He hasn't disappeared from my friend list, so he seems to be alive. But he probably won't last much longer. Should I buy a few shovels at the supermarket and dig a hole in the backyard to make a cenotaph for Fatty?]

The fat guy was typing rapidly in the group chat.

[Fatty: I'm not dead yet! A brilliant and miraculous doctor descended from the sky and saved me!]

[Liu Ruyan: Oh, what a disappointment.]

"Stop chatting in the group, let's talk about the important stuff in the dungeon." Gu Mian reached out and took the flashlight from the fat man's other hand.

Unlike the ever-burning lamp, this flashlight didn't have the guts to be extinguished on the spot by Gu Mian. It only flashed twice before continuing to work normally under the fat man's worried gaze.

Gu Mian stood at the toilet door, waving a flashlight to both sides of the corridor. Actually, the ever-burning lamp in Fatty's hand could illuminate a range of twenty meters in the corridor, but he still symbolically shone the flashlight around: "Did you encounter a ghost just now?"

The fat man nodded hurriedly: "I couldn't see what it looked like in the fitting room, I could only hear it moving around outside. The sound it made was very strange, like its feet were dragging on the ground and couldn't be lifted. But when it heard Mom coming, it hurriedly left, so I knew Mom was very capable."

Gu Mian: "..."

Before you know it, you've ended up sharing a mom with the fat guy, and he really doesn't hold back.

"Ghosts have mothers too. They're probably afraid of being caught by their mothers for playing in the mall at night instead of sleeping," Gu Mian told the fat man a corny joke.

The fat man knew, of course, that Gu Mian was lying.

He was also present when the [Mom Summoner] was upgraded. At that time, he joked that after adding the "Midnight Fierce Mom" ​​feature, "Mom" became a mosquito coil with a half-hour effect. Just summoning her to accompany him could ward off ghosts for half an hour.

But to cheer him on, the fat man still managed a few chuckles, indicating that Gu Mian's joke was very funny. Knowing that the fat man hadn't seen a ghost, Gu Mian changed the subject: "Did you see any claw machines outside on your way here?"

The fat man shook his head: "This instance gave almost no information, not even the number of participants was specified. The only thing was that the instance name included a claw machine element. So I specifically observed it after I came in. The clearance sale area where I was hiding didn't have a claw machine. Later, when Mom was dragging me around, I didn't see my surroundings clearly. She was walking too fast, and she made me dizzy..."

"This is all the information we have for this instance; it seems like it was hastily and hastily put together. Actually, I've seen similar situations before the global game started. Usually, the vendors don't have enough production capacity to complete the task within the allotted time, so they can only rush out a half-finished product with many defects. It's very similar to the situation we're in now."

At this point, the fat man leaned closer to Gu Mian with a sly look: "Doctor, do you think it's possible that the game's organizers and Earth have been fighting to the death, and with you diligently sabotaging the servers, the dungeon development team couldn't handle the heavy development workload and quit and ran away?"

Gu Mian walked out of the restroom with a flashlight in her hand: "Hopefully they can send us the service shutdown compensation before they run away."

Without any light source, he couldn't see the situation outside the door, but now, with the help of the ever-burning lamp in the fat man's hand, Gu Mian can carefully examine his surroundings.

Directly opposite the door is a wall covered with bright red and green advertisements.

"Happy Double-Layer Indoor Children's Playground Recharge Special Offer: Recharge 200 and get 20 free, recharge 500 and get a birthday cake (can be picked up at a designated time), recharge 1000 and enjoy half-price admission to the playground..." The fat man read the big advertisement on the wall in front of him, "There's an indoor playground here, and it's double-layered."

"It's a pity, you're past the age of playing this." Gu Mian didn't keep his gaze on the advertising wall for long. He looked to his left and saw a wall a few meters away on his left, a dead end.

The fat man also saw the wall: "The restrooms in shopping malls are usually built on the side. This must be some corner. Without a compass, it's impossible to tell which way it is."

As he spoke, he glanced back at the toilet window covered by stainless steel security bars, trying to determine the direction by the position of the moon outside, but after a while he realized that he did not have that ability.

Gu Mian then looked to the right side of the corridor. The fat man had come from this direction, and the ghost he mentioned was also in this direction.

The ever-burning lamp had a wide range of illumination. Gu Mian followed the light and looked ahead until her vision was blocked by a low wall. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be the outer wall of a restaurant.

There's only one road to the right right now, let's go that way and see.

Seeing Gu Mian turn right, the fat man quickly followed, carrying his lantern. Following behind Gu Mian, the fat man felt much more confident, his chest puffing out involuntarily.

As Gu Mian walked, she said, "Your name is on the list of six characters provided by the dungeon. If I remember correctly, you set 'number of obstacles per floor'."

"Yes, actually I still don't understand what that 'number of obstacles per floor' means. When I first entered the dungeon, I hadn't fully figured out what was going on when a panel appeared asking me to set the 'number of obstacles per floor'. There was also a note saying that the number of obstacles per floor cannot exceed five, so I took a middle number and set it to '3'."

The fat man scratched his head and said, "I think the number of obstacles is related to the claw machine, but I haven't found the claw machine yet and I don't know what the obstacles look like."

He was actually a little confused as to why the obstacles were layered, as he had never seen a layered claw machine before.

"So you don't even know what the obstacles you set up are, right? You only know that you set up three."

"Yes, no other information was given except for the one that sets the quantity."

As they spoke, the two arrived at the red outer wall. The outer walls of restaurants in shopping malls are mostly not solid walls. They are usually built to waist height, and then glass is installed above that. If the budget is insufficient, they don't even install glass.

This allows customers to see the restaurant's decor and the exquisite food on the tables at a glance from the outside, making the overall appearance of the mall much better.

The place in front of them was a mala tang (spicy hot pot) restaurant, the kind with insufficient funds, so it didn't have glass doors.

Gu Mian stood outside the low wall, observing the situation inside. The restaurant tables were piled up crookedly, blocking the restaurant door. Various plastic plates that had slid out of the cupboard were scattered on the floor. The menu on the glass of the food serving window was torn off in half, and there were several bottles of soda that had not been taken away on the counter.

The fat man was looking around the area surrounding the mala tang restaurant.

The view opened up here, unlike the crowded corridor he had been in. He saw a ramen shop next to the mala tang restaurant on the left, with similar interior design, and a clothing store with its doors disappearing on the right.

The clothing store was separated from this side by an aisle. The fat man saw that the clothing store was piled with mannequins, the kind that shopping malls usually use to display clothes.

But there were just too many mannequins in that clothing store, piled up from the entrance all the way in, creating layers of shadows that stretched deep into the store. Blocked by the mountain of mannequins, the fat man couldn't see anything further inside.

What unsettled him most was that the clothing store's main entrance was gone, and mannequins were flowing out and scattered in the aisle. The fat man felt that these mannequins might stand up and chase after him at any moment.

"Doctor, look at the mannequins in that clothing store on our right. I think there's something fishy going on there... This dungeon is related to claw machines, and the mannequins can barely be considered 'dolls,' right?" The fat man wanted Gu Mian to look at those terrifying mannequins, and as he spoke, he reached out and tugged at Gu Mian's clothes.

But when he reached out, he grasped at nothing.

He turned around nervously, only to find that Gu Mian had already climbed into the mala tang restaurant at some point.

The fat man asked anxiously, "Doctor, why did you go in there!"

As he spoke, he frantically tried to climb over the low wall, but his size limited his agility. The fat man huffed and puffed as he tried to step over but failed. In the end, Gu Mian reached out and pulled him inside.

After bringing the fat man in, Gu Mian clapped her hands: "Isn't the kitchen behind the food pick-up area? It's a separate little room there. I saw light coming from inside."

"Light?" The fat man looked towards the restaurant's food delivery area with a puzzled expression. "That's the first thing I looked at when I came in, but it was pitch black inside, I couldn't see anything..."

As he spoke, he turned his head toward the food vent, but when his eyes met the green light emanating from it, the fat man's remaining words caught in his throat.

That's strange, I didn't see any light when I looked over there just now.

Moreover, the color of the light was too strange; if it had been there before, the fat man felt he couldn't have missed it.

Something was definitely amiss. The fat man wanted to warn Gu Mian that there might be something fishy going on with her and that she should be careful. But upon closer inspection, it seemed that the person with "Be careful" etched on their forehead was someone else entirely—no, someone else entirely.

Thinking of this, the fat man quickly picked up a relatively intact chair leg from the messy ground and stuffed it into Gu Mian's hand: "Doctor, take this, and hit it hard in a bit, hit it on the head!"

April is here. Can Gugu turn over a new leaf, put down her wandering ways, and return to normalcy during this wonderful month? This is our promise, Gugu!