The corpse in front of them no longer resembled its original appearance.
A small apple tree grew on his face, and the roots of the fruit tree were like deformed animal claws, digging deeply into his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, twisting and winding, and had already dug deep into his entire face to the point of deformation. Some roots even broke through his forehead and skull and drilled out like thick earthworms.
His clothes had been stripped off long ago, and a wooden pole had pierced his chest. Vines grew out of his breasts, coiled around the pole, and hung down rich fruits.
His belly and crotch were filled with large cabbage flowers, and there were even a few small seedlings popping out from his legs.
This shocking scene is simply challenging people's psychological endurance limit. Gu Chen turned his face away and took several deep breaths. Lu Chenfei cursed softly.
You Ye closed his eyes and said, "So it seems that Sister Zhou had already started to grow seedlings yesterday at noon."
Yesterday at lunch, she picked a leaf that was stuck in Zhou Yaqing's hair. At that time, they all thought that Zhou Yaqing had accidentally picked it up in the forest.
But when she picked the leaves, Zhou Yaqing let out a low cry, and You Ye herself also noticed that something was wrong with the touch - she felt a slight pulling sensation.
But the feeling was too weak, and they didn't get enough clues at the time, so You Ye just kept this slight abnormality in his heart.
But now it seems that Zhou Yaqing was discovered and selected by the hotel probably because he had grown some talent.
Xia Jing and Song Yang stood up together.
Xia Jing turned to the side, kicked away some dirt with his foot, and sure enough, he saw another unfamiliar arm.
The six people looked around and saw two vegetable and fruit plots as big as playgrounds, with so many dazzling vegetables and fruits. How many corpses were buried deep under this land?
The sun was shining brightly, but a chill rose from the soles of my feet.
At this point, there are already many clues to connect.
This vegetable and fruit garden looks messy, not because no one takes care of it, but because the varieties of vegetables and fruits growing on the corpses are random and uncontrollable.
The person who takes care of this vegetable and fruit field and transports these bodies here must be the hotel.
Song Yang sorted out his thoughts and said slowly in a cold voice, "I think the hotel is probably using these seeds. After they discovered the existence of these seeds and found that the fruits and vegetables grown after these seeds take root in the human body are particularly delicious, they must have thought that they could use these ingredients to attract customers and make money."
"But since the seeds can crawl at night, they must also be able to find their own 'soil'. The hotel cannot let the outside world discover the secret of these seeds. Naturally, the seeds that wake up at night must be strictly guarded and cannot be allowed to do anything wrong."
Zhou Yaqing must have been taken away by the hotel in order to erase any clues.
"Could it be that all these corpses under our feet are customers who accidentally had the seeds get into their mouths, and the hotel moved them here to silence them?" Gu Chen was dumbfounded.
"Since the hotel wants to make money with these ingredients, they must have stable production," Lu Chenfei said coldly. "I'm afraid they also usually select suitable 'soil' for planting. But this process is under their control, unlike the seeds choosing their own 'soil'."
You Ye frowned and said, "There's one thing I can't understand. Sister Zhou didn't draw the mosquito net the night before last, but the door to our room was definitely shut. If the seeds could crawl in through the crack in the door, wouldn't that crack be a very obvious leak?"
"In order to keep the seeds secret, shouldn't the hotel at least seal this obvious loophole?"
Of course, they also understood that this was a setting deliberately made by the copy to kill players, but any detailed setting was related to their lives, so they had to figure it out.
At this moment, Xia Jing, who had already scouted the area nearby, suddenly picked up a piece of iron sheet about one meter long from the bushes. No one knew what the iron sheet was originally used for, and it was already covered with rust, but one could vaguely see a few large words sprayed with paint on the front of the iron sheet - "Smile City Forest Hotel Park Development 1.0".
Below this line of words is a date: February 13, 20XX.
In the corner of the iron sheet, someone had written something in a very casual handwriting: "Seeds?!"
Everyone walked over quickly, and Xia Jing asked Song Yang, "What date is it outside now?"
The others all thought that Xia Jing was just living a muddled life, but only Song Yang knew that Xia Jing really had no idea what year or month it was outside.
He said, "May 7th."
This also means that if the time in the copy is calculated according to the real time, it has been less than three months since the time recorded on this piece of iron!
Xia Jing leaned against the iron sheet and thought, "I think the hotel first discovered the existence of the seeds not long after February 13th."
This forest hotel itself does not look like a new hotel. Perhaps they wanted to expand their business and attract customers, so after operating for several years they suddenly wanted to develop a paradise in the forest.
They started work on this piece of land ten kilometers away from the hotel.
Then, they probably encountered these seeds for the first time here and awakened the seeds.
Awakening also means that these seeds were once buried deep under the soil.
So deep that they can't smell the scent of humans, so deep that they remain asleep.
Only after waking up overnight will it turn into a torrent that hits every night.
——This is a disaster caused by destructive development.
However, this does not seem to be a disaster for the hotel, but rather a twisted but brilliant way to get rich.
They stepped on countless human corpses, walked on this distorted road, and wandered in the ocean of money, feeling extremely happy.
Unlike Gu Chen and Gu Xing, who were feeling uncomfortable because they couldn't bear the nausea, Xia Jing's voice was calm from beginning to end.
He calmly analyzed, "In order to make money safely, the first thing a hotel needs to consider is not allowing guests to leave their rooms at will after dark."
Customers who are attracted by the hotel's delicious food are like addicted drug addicts. I'm afraid that at this point they will no longer care so much and will instead cooperate with the hotel's work.
"It's easy to restrict guests' freedom. Hotels can lock their guest room doors from the outside. But guests can still open the windows from inside the room, which is difficult for them to control. So the first thing they have to spend money to replace is all the windows in the hotel."
They welded shut all the windows that could be opened and closed, and sealed the hotel's exterior like an iron barrel.
"Now that the windows are fixed, the next problem is the doors. But replacing all the doors in the upper and lower rooms is a huge undertaking and would cost a lot of money. Apparently, they haven't made up their minds to do that yet."
Song Yang continued Xia Jing's words and said in a deep voice: "After all, as long as we guard the few external doors, we can ensure the safety of the entire hotel at night."
But at the same time, if there is a mistake in any link, the unsuspecting customers sleeping in the hotel may suffer.
For example, the glass that exploded automatically on the first night - I'm afraid the seed that entered Zhou Yaqing's mouth entered the hotel through that hole that night.
As long as they can enter the hotel, there are gaps in every door, so the seeds can almost travel all the way.
The seed finally chose Zhou Yaqing, the only player who did not pull the mosquito net that night.
Thinking of this, Gu Chen and Gu Xing's faces became very ugly.
If they had not followed Song Yang's advice and pulled up the mosquito net on the first night, would they have been like Zhou Yaqing at this moment, not knowing where they were?
Xia Jing suddenly thought of something and said to Song Yang, "The two doors in the hotel basement also have obvious gaps."
Song Yang narrowed his eyes and said, "All they need to do is completely block the door leading to the basement from the kitchen before going to bed at night. During the day, the seeds will die or hide, and it won't have any impact on them."
"'Evening' is also a very vague term. There must be a very specific time when the seeds awaken," Xia Jing pondered. "The time when the hotel locks us every night is-"
Song Yang: "Ten o'clock in the evening."
Ten o'clock in the evening is probably the time when the seeds wake up!
You Ye said quickly, "The first night you saw the seed it was 2:00 AM, and last night it was 3:30 AM. With no one in the forest, it would be difficult for the seed to find its target quickly. But if someone is outside now, it's hard to say."
If they had stayed outside the hotel without knowing the situation during the first two nights, they would probably have been swallowed by the seeds!
Gu Chen and Gu Xing swallowed their saliva and felt deeply scared.
"The question now is, how do we eliminate all these seeds?" Lu Chenfei lowered his head and looked at the land, frowning. "These seeds are all monsters. If we don't eliminate them all, we won't be able to pass this dungeon, right?"
Gu Chen's face turned pale. "Yes, but the seeds have obviously spread throughout the forest. Do we have to dig up all the soil in the forest?"
This entire forest is so big that they can't walk through it in ten days and ten nights!
How much time do they have left in this instance? !
The brother and sister felt their scalps tingle when they thought of this.
You Ye frowned and rejected it: "No, the dungeon will never allow us to use such a stupid method to deal with monsters. There must be other ways."
Xia Jing said softly, "The secrets of this forest must be held by those who know them best."
Gu Chen and Gu Xing were stunned.
And in this copy, who is the person who knows this forest and these seeds best?
Their eyes widened: "-Hotel!"
The solution to the monster must be hidden deep inside the hotel!
Gu Chen asked anxiously: "Then do we still have to hurry back to the hotel?"
Song Yang thought for a moment and shook his head, "I think we can directly target the basement of the hotel. There is no way the hotel would leave the secret of the seeds somewhere else."
So in the end, they still had to find another entrance to the basement first!
Questions came one after another, and just when Gu Chen and Gu Xing showed despair, the other four people had already started moving.
They spread out and dug everywhere in the vegetable and fruit field.
Gu Chen and Gu Xing were somewhat bewildered. Xia Jing said slowly, "It's impossible for the hotel staff to cross the ten kilometers of the forest surface every day to transport the bodies here. First, the journey is difficult, and second, it would be too conspicuous."
The young man said, "They need an underground passage."
"The other entrance to the underground passage must be right here."
*
Deep in the forest.
Lu Xiang sat down under a big tree, with his eyes closed and his hands on his stomach.
His stomach kept growling, and the hunger almost made him feel like his chest was sticking to his back. He couldn't even open his eyes to look at the plants in front of him.
He felt that as soon as he saw those plants, he would pounce on them immediately and start gnawing at them like a mad dog. This uncontrollable and ferocious desire frightened him.
He kept swallowing his saliva, and his throat began to smoke under the high temperature.
Craving plant fiber, craving moisture.
If I don't consume fruits and vegetables, I will die.
Lu Xiang felt extremely uncomfortable. He closed his eyes and asked weakly, "Uncle...Uncle Cheng, are you okay?"
After the main force left, Lu Xiang initially tried to start a conversation to kill time, but Cheng Hua didn't respond at all, and Lu Xiang naturally didn't want to make himself look boring.
He knew that this uncle didn't like him. If he wasn't really bored, who would want to pay attention to him!
But at this moment he really couldn't hold it in any longer. If he didn't divert his attention, he felt that he was about to go completely crazy.
The hot wind blew, but no one responded.
Lu Xiang complained, "Uncle Cheng, don't you feel it's hard to be so bored? You must be starving too! I know you're pretending, but what's there to be embarrassed about? I see everyone is quite hungry and is just trying to hold on!"
Chenghua still ignored him.
Lu Xiang was so angry that his teeth itched: "Uncle, can you please stop being so prejudiced? Although my Xiao Xiangxiang likes men, not all men like her. You don't have to think that I would be attracted to you!"
He was still the only one talking to himself.
Lu Xiang was so angry that he suddenly opened his eyes and turned around and said, "Can you please respect others——"
As soon as he finished speaking, Lu Xiang was stunned, because the place where Cheng Hua had originally sat was empty.
He turned around and looked around, but didn't see Cheng Hua at all.
Where did this uncle disappear without a sound?!
Lu Xiang stood up in shock, holding on to the tree trunk.
At this moment, he seemed to smell a hint of fruity fragrance.
It was not known whether his sense of smell became extra sensitive due to hunger, or whether he was simply too hungry and had hallucinations, but in any case, Lu Xiang swallowed his saliva and an intuition emerged in his heart.
He stumbled towards the fruity scent, calling out uncertainly, "Uncle Cheng?"
After shouting a few times, he followed the smell and pushed aside a patch of bushes, and the scene in front of him suddenly came into view.
His pupils suddenly contracted and his whole body froze.
How can I describe this feeling?
The blood in his body was almost instantly excited, and his tongue was instantly filled with saliva. A beast appeared in his throat, clamoring frantically: it wants to eat, it wants to eat, it wants to eat in big mouthfuls -
Lu Xiang's breathing became rapid, and the blue veins on the back of his hands suddenly bulged. He pulled the branches away with force and staggered towards there.
His eyes became fixed, covered by a mad appetite, and saliva flowed from the corners of his mouth and flowed down his chin.
Lu Xiang stretched out his hands, but his hands were shaking because of excitement and hunger. But at this moment, he was suddenly tripped by a branch under his feet and fell heavily to the ground. His whole face hit the ground, and his nose hit the stone, causing him to see stars in pain.
This pain made him shudder and wake up instantly.
Lu Xiang thought in disbelief, he was crazy, how could he be so hungry that he had lost all reason, had he really been manipulated by his appetite into a beast?!
This is not right, this fruity aroma is not right either, it's too tempting and too strong!
——This is not a normal fruit!
Lu Xiang lunged forward, grabbed Cheng Hua's feet, and tremblingly shouted, "Uncle Cheng, stop eating! Stop eating! Something bad will happen!"
"Uncle Cheng, wake up!"
Chenghua was standing in front of a small peach tree, holding a bunch of peaches in his hands. When he heard the sound, he turned his head slowly and looked down at him.
The man's face was splashed with peach juice, his nose and cheeks were covered with finely chopped fruit pulp, and chewed fruit residue mixed with his saliva hung from the corners of his mouth.
The peaches on his hands were bitten into a pulp, and the juice leaked through his fingers, dripping down.
When Lu Xiang met Cheng Hua's dull eyes, his heart skipped a beat.
Chenghua turned around.
A shadow covered Lu Xiang's head.
*
In the vegetable and fruit field.
Several people dug for an hour and finally stopped when Lu Chenfei said, "I'm leaning here."
The other five people gathered together.
It was next to an inconspicuous strawberry seedling. After pushing aside the vines and weeds that were deliberately covered there, a wooden door appeared underneath.
It's not impossible to open the door and face the hotel NPC coming out from inside, but at this time, who cares about it? Let's just deal with it.
Lu Chenfei opened the wooden door, looked down, and said, "It's a tunnel. There's a light inside, but no one is there now!"
Gu Chen: "So, are we going in now?"
Song Yang said, "Before 10 p.m., there will definitely be people in the kitchen and basement, and they might also come towards the underground passage. If it's just a single NPC, we might be able to deduct points if we handle it carefully, but if we confront a large number of NPCs head-on, we will definitely be locked up in the small dark room."
Gu Chen was stunned: "Do we have to wait here until 10 o'clock in the evening?!"
When the seeds wake up, this wooden door will obviously not be able to stop the seeds. Will they have to race with the seeds all the way?
Even if he could hold on, Gu Xing couldn't.
Gu Xing's physical strength has reached its limit, and her eyes can't help but drift towards the vegetable and fruit field, which means her appetite is increasing wildly.
Song Yang thought for a moment, then said to the other five people, "Let's go into the tunnel first. If we run into any NPCs, we'll deal with them accordingly. If we can successfully reach the third door, I have a disposable offensive item we can use to pile up dirt and build a wall. We'll block the way in, at least to stop most of the seeds. Then we have to block the third door as well. When ten o'clock comes, the NPCs will inevitably retreat from the basement, and we can then break in."
"Of course, no matter what, there will definitely be seeds coming here, including in the basement—"
"There are probably some bodies stored in the hotel basement. The person behind the door that Xia Jing saw last night is probably one of them."
At that time, as soon as the mustache-wearing manager appeared, the eye behind the door quickly slid away and disappeared. Thinking about it now, such a strange situation was probably because there was an employee inside at the time, most likely the chef who disappeared from the kitchen.
The chef heard the manager's voice and knew that Xia Jing was standing on the other side of the door, so he quickly dragged the body away.
As they had initially guessed, Cao Jun and Zhou Yaqing were probably still locked in the basement. After all, they had searched the entire vegetable and fruit garden but hadn't found them.
"In this instance, where there are corpses, there will likely be plants, and where there are plants, there will be seeds. At ten o'clock at night, the seeds in the basement will awaken, and we will be attacked from both sides."
Gu Chen and Gu Xing's faces were tense.
"I have a fire attack item on hand, what do you think?" Song Yang asked.
Lu Chenfei: "What a coincidence! I have three torches bought from the official supermarket in my space bag."
You Ye: "I don't think the props I have now are of much use. Lu Chenfei, please lend me a torch. I will return it to you later."
Lu Chenfei: "Okay, who else wants a torch?"
Gu Chen said: "We don't have any props on hand."
Lu Chenfei: "Then there is one for you two brothers and sisters."
Song Yang looked at Xia Jing. Xia Jing glanced at him and said with a raised lip, "Don't worry about me."
Song Yang paused and whispered, "Try to stay close to me when the time comes, and don't run around."
Gu Chen hurriedly said, "Then let's bring Lu Xiang and Uncle Cheng over first?"
It is estimated that these two people have completely exhausted their physical strength, so they can be allowed to go back to the hotel alone. Once they have dealt with the monsters, Lu Xiang and Cheng Hua can naturally leave the copy.
But at a certain time tonight, the hotel manager will definitely notice that something is wrong, and who knows how he will deal with them then - the NPC is unlikely to tie the two of them up as hostages like a robber, but if the willpower of these two people has been exhausted, they will fall into the NPC's trap unexpectedly and end up buried in this dungeon.
Therefore, taking them with you is the best option.
Thinking of this, Song Yang contacted the two of them, but both of their calls were unreachable.
Song Yang paused, put down the phone and said coldly: "I think something happened over there, let's go."
The expressions of several people changed, and they immediately turned around and went back.