Song Yang and his team found them about three hundred meters away from the place where Lu Xiang and Cheng Hua had originally rested.
The scene at that time made the six people stop in their tracks and look shocked.
Seonghwa sat under a peach tree, his elbows on his knees, his face propped up in his palms.
Not far from his feet, Lu Xiang was lying on his back on the ground, with a large pool of blood spreading from the back of his head.
Song Yang's face darkened and he walked over quickly to see that Lu Xiang's pupils were dilated and he had stopped breathing.
There was a sharp stone under the back of his head.
The scene was self-explanatory. Gu Xing covered his mouth, and Gu Chen cried out incoherently: "Uncle Cheng, you...what happened to you?!"
Cheng Hua seemed to come back to his senses when he heard the shout.
He slowly moved his hands away, and Xia Jing immediately noticed the number on his palm - 0.
This is the player's points. They were probably painted over by Cheng Hua before. Now that the paint has spread, the numbers are revealed.
His points were reset to zero, but he was not locked up in a small dark room. This was the judgment of Cheng Hua by the Smiley City system.
Xia Jing glanced at the stone under Lu Xiang's head - perhaps it was this stone that affected his judgment.
Chenghua shuddered when he saw them.
He didn't seem to want to defend himself. He just grabbed his hair with both hands, his eyes bloodshot as he said, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry. When I realized it, he was already like this... I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to kill him..."
Chenghua didn't know when he was completely consumed by appetite.
When Lu Xiang and Gu Xing were clearly starting to feel hungry, he felt he could still hold on. But he didn't know if it was because he was tense all night, but when he woke up early in the morning, he was starving. He was so hungry that he was absent-minded the whole way. He had no intention of looking for clues at all. His mind was only thinking about eating, eating, and eating!
At that time, he was very restless and stayed here with Lu Xiang. On the one hand, it was to calm himself down, and on the other hand, he was really volunteering to be Lu Xiang's bodyguard.
Unexpectedly, after sitting under the tree for a while, his appetite became stronger and stronger. At the same time, he smelled the sweet scent of fruit...
The smell made him crave it, and when he actually took his first bite of the peach, he went completely crazy.
At this moment, Cheng Hua no longer remembered how he attacked Lu Xiang and how Lu Xiang died, but he knew clearly that he had done it all.
He actually killed someone!
Cheng Hua stared at the ground blankly, muttering like crazy: "I'm sorry... I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to do that. I didn't mean to kill him..."
Gu Xing cried and hid behind Gu Chen, shouting in dismay, "Brother, that peach tree smells so good, I can't help it, I want to eat it so badly..."
She grabbed her collar with one hand and tightly grasped Gu Chen's clothes with the other, enduring the pain.
Gu Chen was startled and quickly turned around to stop her.
Lu Chenfei frowned and asked, "Why is there a peach tree here?"
You Ye looked at Gu Xing on behalf of Gu Chen and said coldly, "We've walked so far in this forest. Have you seen any other normal edible plants? None at all."
——There is definitely something wrong with this peach tree appearing here.
Xia Jing and Song Yang walked towards the peach tree at the same time. When Cheng Hua heard their words, he turned his head and looked at them blankly.
The peach tree was laden with fruits. Xia Jing picked up a peach and turned it around. He saw three red seeds stuck on the back of the peach.
Chenghua's Adam's apple rolled, and his face turned pale as he asked, "What's wrong...what's wrong with this peach tree?"
Song Yang's face was solemn as he asked, "Uncle Cheng, how many peaches have you eaten from this tree?"
Chenghua was stunned.
From falling into madness to regaining consciousness, in the first half, he was controlled by his appetite and lost his mind. In the second half, he fell into a state of collapse in which he killed the player and had no intention of paying attention to anything else.
But at this moment, he realized that something worse might have happened.
Seonghwa swallowed, his heart pounding in his chest.
He glanced at the peaches on the tree and mumbled, "Not many... I don't remember, there shouldn't be many...?"
"When people are scared, they will instinctively imagine everything that happens when they are unconscious as beneficial to their own development." Xia Jing's tone was calm, even gentle.
Cheng Hua suddenly froze.
The young man held out his hand to him.
Unlike his strange face, the young man's hands were very slender and beautiful.
But when this hand reached out, Cheng Hua didn't know why, but he became stiff and unable to move, his heart beating like a drum.
Xia Jing's hand went around his neck and reached the back of his neck.
Under the silent gaze of the other five people, Xia Jing gently pinched a tender leaf that had just grown out with his index finger and thumb and picked it off.
At this moment, Cheng Hua clearly felt a pulling and stinging pain on the back of his neck, as if a hair had been pulled out. His muscles suddenly contracted and his whole body shook.
He covered the back of his neck and looked at the tender leaf between Xia Jing's fingers in panic. His throat became increasingly hoarse and his voice trembled.
The man who had been trying to appear calm since they first met finally couldn't contain his fear and shouted, "What is this...what is this thing?! It was pulled out of my body?! How could something like this grow on my body!?"
He opened his hands and lifted up his clothes, examining himself frantically.
"Uncle Cheng, when you were eating peaches, didn't you notice the seeds on them?" Song Yang picked a peach, threw it over, and asked in a deep voice.
Cheng Hua looked over suddenly and saw the peach rolling a few times before stopping in front of him. Several strange blood-colored seeds were exposed in his sight.
Chenghua was completely stunned.
He had already lost his mind while chewing the peach, so how could he possibly notice something like this on it...
Soon, he remembered Song Yang's instructions on the way here today.
Song Yang said, don't put the seeds in your mouth...
Cheng Hua's face twisted, he gasped for breath, and asked, "What will become of me? ... What will become of me after eating these seeds?! Will I die? Am I dying?!"
Song Yang felt a little complicated.
He took a deep breath and signaled Lu Chenfei and You Ye to help explain the matter to Cheng Hua, while he and Xia Jing squatted down under the peach tree.
They no longer have time to worry about anything else and must get down to business.
——This peach tree is far away from the vegetable and fruit field, growing here alone. There is obviously something wrong and it doesn't seem like the work of hotel staff.
The two men quickly pushed aside the thick fallen leaves covering the ground and found a body.
Unlike the corpse in the vegetable and fruit field, this corpse was fully clothed. Both the clothes and the condition of the corpse indicated that the person had died only two days earlier.
Xia Jing quickly concluded, "Is this the crazy man that the mustache manager mentioned?"
The peach tree grew out of the man's stomach. The corpse was still lying sideways, covering his stomach, with a hint of pain in his expression.
Song Yang found a cross-body bag from behind the body, with a notebook and a pen scattered next to the bag.
The notebook was blank with the pages open. Song Yang picked it up, flipped through it, and soon found the page where the NPC had written the messy notes.
"If someone finds me and I'm already dead, then when you see my last words, please believe what I say, don't treat me as a lunatic, and... call the police quickly!"
"The Smiley City Forest Hotel is a devilish hotel. The vegetables and fruits served here are so abnormal that they are addictive. All the customers are crazy, myself included!"
"There's a basement hidden in their kitchen. I saw many corpses in the basement, and growing on those corpses were the very plants we eat!"
"I secretly saw the chef solemnly closing a white cabinet. The cabinet must have hidden all these secrets, but I couldn't break in because I was discovered. I had to escape without stopping!"
"My phone fell down along the way too!"
"It's early morning now. Last night, I lost consciousness when I was drowned in seeds, but I know many seeds have crawled into my mouth and crawled all the way down my esophagus to my stomach... My stomach is about to burst. These demonic seeds will take root and sprout in my body. I'm about to die..."
The notes end here.
Xia Jing and Song Yang looked at each other and stood up.
At this time, Lu Chenfei and You Ye had almost told Cheng Hua all the clues they had found, and Cheng Hua looked ashen.
Perhaps because he ate too many seeds at once, his seeds germinated much faster than Zhou Yaqing's.
In such a short while, a tender leaf had grown out of the back of his neck again, and the thin branches holding the leaves together could be faintly seen at their roots.
Cheng Hua gritted his teeth and stretched out his hand with a ferocious face to pull out the branch. As a result, he let out a wail and drew blood. There was some flesh on the branch, and a small bloody hole appeared where the branch was rooted!
Gu Xing exclaimed, and You Ye shouted, "Stop pulling it out!"
Once a seed starts to sprout, there's probably nothing that can stop it.
It will grow back if you pull it out, there is no point!
Chenghua burst into tears.
Humans are very strange creatures. Last night, he dared to stay in the room alone, ready to fight the monster alone. Even if he died, he didn't want to drag others down.
But at this moment, his willpower seemed to be completely crushed.
His body was still hungry, he had just killed a companion, and his body was parasitized by strange seeds. Chenghua had never been so devastated in all his years.
He shouted, "Kill me, kill me now, okay?!"
The six people looked at him in silence.
Not to mention whether they could bear to attack fellow human players, even if they gritted their teeth and killed Cheng Hua, they would have to pay a corresponding price.
With the dungeon game seemingly nearing its end, no one dared to attempt that price.
This silence made Cheng Hua even more devastated - he couldn't even die. Was he destined to be ruptured by the sprouts from the seeds, having his body sucked out of all the nutrients, and then tortured to death?
Song Yang closed his eyes and said calmly, "Follow us. We don't know how long it will take for the germinated humans to die completely. Maybe there's still time."
Chenghua burst into tears.
Song Yang asked Lu Chenfei to help Cheng Hua, and then whispered to Gu Chen, "Keep an eye on Gu Xing."
Gu Chen nodded solemnly.
You Ye sighed and covered Lu Xiang with an outer coat, and the group turned around and returned to the vegetable and fruit field.
Coming back to the entrance of the tunnel, Song Yang said to the others, "Let's proceed according to the plan just now."
Everyone nodded heavily.
At this moment, it is 4:30 in the afternoon.
Seven people filed in and entered the tunnel.
Song Yang and Xia Jing led the way, followed by Gu Chen and Gu Xing. You Ye looked after Cheng Hua, and Lu Chenfei was the last one to come.
The tunnel stretched into the distance, seemingly endless. There was a light every ten or so meters, and the light was barely enough to maintain vision.
The two ventilation holes at the beginning and end were too far apart, and the seven people felt stuffy as soon as they entered.
After running only a few steps, Gu Xing began to pant and his face became paler and paler.
Cheng Hua was completely dejected and just let You Ye urge him forward in a daze.
A thin branch has emerged from the bloody hole on the back of his neck, and a leaf has also emerged on his left cheek. It is obvious that his first wave of germination will be concentrated on his head and neck.
Cheng Hua stumbled forward, muttering, "I killed someone. You don't really need to save me."
The tunnel is very narrow. This sentence reached everyone's ears, and everyone reacted differently.
Lu Chenfei was the first to whisper, "You said it yourself, you didn't mean to kill him, did you?"
"Yes... but I still killed someone. This sin won't disappear just because I didn't mean to," Cheng Hua muttered, "and my points have been reset to zero. There's no point in completing this dungeon."
"Uncle," Lu Chenfei said, feeling a little hungry and tired from running, "You know there are so many players in Smiley City right now, and the top player only gets a little over 5,000 points, right?"
The footsteps of the crowd intertwined in the tunnel, and everyone listened to Lu Chenfei in silence.
"Every time you clear a three-star dungeon, you'll get about a hundred points. Ten thousand points is just one hundred attempts. Smiley City has been running for over two hundred and fifty days. Have you ever wondered why the top-place finisher only gets a little over five thousand points? The lion's share of those five thousand points was earned by just one player, the one who survived the previous four-star dungeon!"
"And the answer is simple – because many, many people have died before us!"
"In these two hundred days, there may have been several players with high scores and super-high IQs, but ultimately, we're all mortal. Everyone's success is a combination of innate strength, acquired caution, and metaphysical luck. But again, no one can predict when all these factors combined will be no match for a single, single-second distraction. Humans are such fragile creatures."
At the front, Xia Jing glanced at Song Yang beside him.
The man stared straight ahead in silence.
"You didn't expect that you wouldn't be able to resist this hunger, otherwise you would definitely prefer to stay with our main force. We have more people and can at least control you. Lu Xiang didn't expect that you were completely crazy, otherwise he would definitely not come close to stop you. I'm not saying this to comfort you. After all, killing someone is killing someone. In the real world, you should go to jail, but we are in Smiley City now!"
"In this damn place, your fragile life will be more meaningful if you keep it than if you die. Do you understand?"
Lu Chenfei said bluntly: "To put it bluntly, even if you have to die, you have to die meaningfully, and die in a way that can save more fragile lives. If your death is meaningless, then keep this life and die next time. Now try your best to live!"
Chenghua shuddered.
Lu Chenfei is much younger than him, but his words are very clear and straightforward.
Cheng Hua closed his eyes in shame. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, his look was much firmer.
That's right, even if he has to die, his death must be meaningful...
His life should still be of some use.
It was a ten-kilometer journey, going back and forth at an extremely fast pace. Apart from Xia Jing's inhuman physique, almost no one present could say that they could handle it.
In the middle of the process, Gu Xing's legs gave out and she fell to the ground. Gu Chen quickly helped her up.
He panted and asked nervously, "Xiaoxing, are you okay?"
Gu Xing's hands were like claws, digging deep into the skin of his arm, and the force was so great that Gu Chen was startled.
Gu Xing swallowed hard and said in a hoarse voice: "I...I'm fine."
She struggled to her feet and raised her head.
When he met his sister's straight gaze, Gu Chen felt as if a bucket of cold water was poured over his head.
He pursed his lips, grabbed Gu Xing's wrist with force, and gritted his teeth and said, "Hold on a little longer, Xiaoxing!"
Time passed by minute by minute, but the scenery in the tunnel remained unchanged.
They ran for a while and rested for a while. Later, even You Ye and Lu Chenfei held on to the wall, as if they would vomit at any time.
Xia Jing glanced at the time and panted slightly, saying, "It might be exactly ten o'clock in the evening when we arrive at the hotel."
Song Yang closed his eyes, tried to regulate his breathing, and nodded.
Xia Jing looked at him like this, tilted his head and asked, "Do you need me to carry you, Doctor Song?"
Song Yang laughed, opened his eyes, rubbed his head, and said in a hoarse voice: "Not really."
"That's good," Xia Jing paused, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "Will any human die from exhaustion?"
"Of course, humans can even choke to death on food," Song Yang stood up straight, "but just like Lu Chenfei said, even if I die, I won't let myself die in this way."
Xia Jing looked at him for a while, then looked away and said calmly, "Then I hope you can live well, Doctor Song."
Almost as soon as these words came out, a whimper was heard behind them.
The two of them turned back quickly.
Cheng Hua fell to his knees. At the back of his neck, branches suddenly stretched out, grew thick, and grew leaves. In the blink of an eye, it had grown into a small tree!
On the small branch, two red apples hung between the leaves at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The heavy weight almost pulled Chenghua back. He tried hard to support his body, and his face turned red with strength.
Beside Gu Chen, Gu Xing took a step forward.