“Yes,” Feng Bujue answered.
The man nodded in response. “Okay, there’s no problem. Go through the decontamination pathway.”
After saying that, he got the others and the equipment to carry out the refuel process and maintenance of the craft.
Hank led Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword away from the platform. They did not use the elevator but took the stairs; the elevator was reserved for the supply team.
When they walked down the stairs, Flashes of Sword could not help but ask, “Don’t you think this is strange? You merely told him verbally that nothing was retrieved, and he believed you so easily.”
Then he turned to Hank. “Isn’t there an inspection or something to see if anyone is keeping stuff for themselves?”
“Keep things for themselves? What are you talking about… who would do that? The punishment is death if it’s discovered!” Hank replied with shock. “Plus, what’s the point of keeping the stuff for ourselves?”
Flashes of Sword was stumped by his question. Feng Bujue chuckled. “It’s pointless to discuss the idea of personal effects with slaves. For them, even money is meaningless; the only thing worth owning is food. As long as they won’t starve to death, risking their lives for a few more bites of food is not worth it.”
“Slaves…” Hank repeated the term. “What is the meaning of that? And… what are personal effects?”
Feng Bujue shrugged. “Hank, certain things are better left unknown.”
The three walked down the stairs. When they reached the bottom floor, they turned into a pathway. The path looked rather rickety because the walls were not made from metal but instead were constructed from rocks. Even the lights dangling from the ceiling appeared dangerously simple. Overall, the path looked like a tunnel with an alarmingly low safety rating, and no one would be surprised if it suddenly collapsed.
After walking another three hundred meters, they came to a place that looked like a sentry post. It was a hexagonal metallic structure with a window that faced outside. It was similar to the ticket tooth on the highway but with a different shape.
They stopped before the window. The worker sitting inside asked in an officious voice, “Code number, names, and time of departure.”
“Scavenger team, code name 24. Hank, Jarvis and Joy,” Hank answered. “We left the village this afternoon.”
The man looked at the document in his hands and then raised his eyes to look at the three gathered before him. “The team lost two people?”
“Yes,” Feng Bujue answered.
“Such a shame,” the man observed. “No one lost their keys to the dressing room, right?”
“No,” Hank answered. The scavenger team usually left their keys to the dressing room inside the Shark Coach and rarely took the keys with them.
The man raised his head to look at the time. The Village of Heavenly Blessing had its own time system that separated a day into ten hours and thus had their own version of clocks. He then jotted something down on the document. When he was done, he said, “Get on in. Please ensure the cleanliness of the dressing room. When the decontamination is happening, do not move to prevent accidents.”
As he spoke, his attention was already elsewhere. He probably had to repeat this many times a day, and he could rattle it off in his sleep.
The three continued ahead. In front of them was a metallic pathway. It was not that long, only about one hundred meters, and the pathway grew wider as it went down. The door at the end was about five meters tall. The area beyond the door felt like the platform at the train station. The area was about seven hundred square meters big. It had the shape of a fan, and the ceiling was eight meters tall. Many metallic columns decorated the area, and each column was numbered distinctively.
Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword were led by Hank to walk through this area. At the opposite end of the fan-shaped hall was an arc where many metallic doors sat. They were around 1.9 meters tall and one meter wide. All the doors were closed, and they supposedly led to the dressing room.
Hank used his key to open the door, and they walked into one of them. The space inside was surprisingly cramped, and welcoming them were five isolated chambers that looked like telephone booths. These booths should be used to conduct the ’decontamination’ of the scavengers.
“Sit down once you get into the booth and wait for a moment,” Hank explained.
Feng Bujue nodded as he turned to share a look with his teammate. Flashes of Sword was okay with anything by then. Somehow, a Killing Game had turned into Team Survival Mode. He was quite speechless, so no matter what Brother Feng said, he would follow along… From a certain perspective, the remaining Doomsday Assault was no different from a dead man, so Flashes of Sword currently had a ’nothing matters anymore’ type of attitude.
From Feng Bujue’s earlier proclamation that they would make life a living hell for the other two so that they understood the true meaning of power, he had thought that it would lead to a hellish battle, one that would mark him for life. To nab a victory in combat to have those cheaters understand that a real expert could beat even cheats. But he really did not expect that what Brother Feng meant was something completely different.
As the saying goes, the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without combat, and that was exactly what Feng Bujue did. At this point, Flashes of Sword finally understood why the system deemed Brother Feng a strategy-based player. For players like him, combat was the worst strategy and the worst outcome. By achieving the goal without taking any risk, that was the true mark of a great strategist.
If not for Feng Bujue, Flashes of Sword really would not have known that one could win a Killing Game with such a method. He could not help but feel the sting of fear as he thought back to his 1v1 with Feng Bujue. What if the system did not place them together at the start or it was a 2v2 or 3v3 team battle? Then he might have ended up in the same state as the two from Zombie Blade. No matter how good he was at fighting, it would be pointless.
While they completed this scenario, Flashes of Sword realized more and more how valuable Feng Bujue was. In other games, the value of a celebrity player might depend fully on their fighting capability, but in Thriller Paradise, a player like Feng Bujue could bring even bigger benefits than the players on the top ten fighting ability ranking.
Unfortunately, it was unlikely that he would be able to get Feng Bujue to join Jiang Hu. Even though he did not have as good an eye as their guild leader, World’s Enigma, his instinct had always been sharp. He knew very well that in the game’s world, players like Feng Bujue would not bow down to others. Even if he offered his services to others, it would only be temporary.
This kind of player sought freedom and fun, and what they hated the most was taking orders from another person. Of course, similarly, they did not like to order others to do things. Flashes of Sword was this kind of person as well. World’s Enigma and Bladeless Swordsman were his buddies in real life, and the three of them were the founders of Jiang Hu. That was the only reason he could survive in this system for so long. Therefore, he would not have joined another gaming studio for the best treatment. If Jiang Hu fell, he would rather work alone. This was why Regulation’s plan to consume Jiang Hu had failed each time.
Flashes of Sword admired players like Feng Bujue; he was something like a kindred spirit. Even though there was no chance of inviting him to join the guild, cooperation was still possible. In any case, Flashes of Sword had remembered the badge for Underworld Frontline. No matter how big or small the guild was, at least with a player like Feng Bujue around, it would not be a guild with any dead weight. Even if they could not end up as buddies, at least there was no reason to have any altercations.
In conclusion, if the situation permitted it, it was wise not to enemy of someone like Feng Bujue…
…
Each of them walked into a booth. There was only a chair inside the booth. After they sat down, what happened next was disastrous.
Feng Bujue’s chair slowly lowered, and when he was on the same level as the floor, the chair slowly moved forward. He felt like he was on a conveyor at the car-washing place. Even though the place was so dark that he could not see anything, he could feel the rushing the water and air. Instead of saying that this process was decontaminating the poison, it was more like they were washing the protective gear with the humans inside as mannequins.
Thankfully, the process was not long or particularly painful. It lasted less than a minute. The metallic plate before them rose, and light shone the way ahead. Then, the three entered the real ’dressing room’.
Feng Bujue stood up and walked over, and the metallic plate behind him closed. The room he was in was about twenty meters wide. One of the walls was arranged with a row of lockers, and a long bench fixed to the ground sat in the middle of the room. The four walls were made from metal, and the light that showered down from the ceiling was adequate enough.
Hank and Flashes of Sword arrived seconds later. Hank said, “There are changeable clothes in the lockers. You need to remove the protective gear and put them in there.”
He did not know that players could not change their clothes inside a scenario. They could put on the protective gear because its purpose was defined as a plot item, and it was put on over the clothes. When they were wearing the protective gear, the player’s outfit had not changed, but they were never going to change into the clothes inside the locker.
Feng Bujue did not say anything as he walked forward to open one of the lockers. As he expected, the locker was not locked, and he noticed soon that all the clothes were of the same style.
Flashes of Sword took out one of the sets and said, “This is my first time encountering apparel in a scenario. If this was still the closed beta, we’d be treated like God if we left with these outfits.”
“Hmm… Unfortunately, we’re not in the closed beta anymore,” Feng Bujue said. “Plus, these outfits with their outdated style probably wouldn’t sell for much even if we took them out with us.”
He was right. The design for the outfit of the villagers was extremely simple. It had long sleeves and long pants. The color was uniformly gray with no pattern on the shirt. The position of the pocket was standardized, and it had a common circular collar.
“What should we do?” Flashes of Sword asked. “We can’t adjust our apparel in the scenario.”
“Easy,” Feng Bujue said matter-of-factly, “just keep wearing the protective gear.”
Hank overheard this and said, “But in the residential area, we all wear…”
Feng Bujue waved his hands to cut Hank off. “I have my plan. Just change into your clothes.”