Su Zimo could be sure that the nightmare world he led An Yu Yi Yu to this time was a university campus in the evening.
When Su Zimo looked around, not a single figure could be seen, not even mentioning ghosts. The entire campus was like a deserted city, with no trainers and no ghosts.
In Su Zimoâs view, that may be because the worldâs task clearance hadnât begun, so the ghosts were still hiding in some dark corner of the school.
Thinking of the campus, Su Zimoâs first though was of the âBloodstained Set Square that the young girl, An An, had traded to him before. Since a set square used by a malicious spirit could become a two star ghost tool, Su Zimo felt that his gains from this school shouldnât be too small.
After standing at the door to his shop and looking out for a while, Su Zimo heard some movement from the playground not too far away. He took out the one star âAmulet of Fire,â told the ghosts in the shop to take good care of the store, put on his backpack filled with drinks, snacks, and his trusty metal pen for self-defense, and then dove ahead into the direction of movement in the darkening evening.
Su Zimo wrapped the âAmulet of Fireâ simply around his wrist, and some faint smoke began to appear around his body. The smoke was like a pet obediently following his commands, stretching around and able to become thicker or thinner at will. Except for the fact that the smokeâs range of cover wasnât very large, so his figure couldnât be perfectly hidden, it could be regarded as an obedient ghost tool.
After walking to a dark area near the playground, Su Zimo hid himself within the smoke and watched from an excellent vantage point.
Surprisingly, among the six people who appeared on the playground, four of them had already been seen by Su Zimo.
*
Lin Xiao was a very ordinary young girl with an innocent studentâs spirit. She even habitually wore a high ponytail like a high school girl. She had some of the advantages and shortcomings of ordinary people. She lived in a world of temptation. She was stressed out by certain things, but she had to continue living and smiling in front of her relatives and friends.
Lin Xiao felt that things had become different, and it was a recent development.
Recently, there had been more and more mysterious disappearances on the internet, and more and more people who had disappeared suddenly came back within sight of the public. Everything seemed strange. Lin Xiao, who didnât hesitate to use her phone to scan the hot searches list on social media, wouldnât miss such news everyday as she ate and cleaned.
Like Lin Xiao, there were thousands of netizens who wanted to find the truth about the disappearances. As a result, social platforms had even established special topic columns to help collect information about the missing people. Many relatives, lovers, friends, peers, and even elementary school classmates all jumped to participate in the hot topics. It was so lively that it made Lin Xiaoâs boring life more fun.
What attracted the most attention was the group of missing people who were the first to return to the public eye. Lin Xiao heard that those missing people were trapped by a swarm of reporters as soon as they appeared. Their microphones almost pierced the nostrils of those who had gone missing, trying to get the so-called âexclusive news.â
But at the beginning, Lin Xiao didnât see the people who had disappeared open their mouths. Most of the titles she saw were fabricated, boring headlines. If she read too much, it was all the same, and it didnât mean anything.
However, the mediaâs pervasiveness was notorious. It didnât take long for some certified accounts and a fan marketing account to announce that they knew the inside story and learned the reasons for their disappearance straight from the mouths of the people who had disappeared.
Itâs just she didnât know if that marketing account was doing it for a sense of popularity or what. They only said they knew the truth. they didnât say what the truth was. They just said that in a few days, they would announce a revelation that would change the world. They also said some âtoxic oathsâ like if the netizensâ jaws didnât drop, they would eat their mouse and keyboard.
The mystery was so terrible. Lin Xiao and those ordinary netizens all had their appetites. Various rumours were blowing up on the internet. Some said that aliens were invading, some said that a mysterious organization was conducting human experiments, some said that they had lost their memories after journeying together for hundreds of years, and some even said that they were taking into another world and needed to complete a task to returnâŚâŚ
All the rumours were becoming more and more exaggerated. Lin Xiao and the other netizens werenât discussing seriously, ther were just watching the excitement and imagination to bring some fun to their boring work-and-study lives. Whenever she recalled those short few days, they were by far the most interesting and exciting of her life.
When the date set by the marketing accounts and certified accounts arrived, Lin Xiao rolled out of bed early in the morning and frantically refreshed her social media platform.
ButâŚ
All the information related to the âmissingâ on the internet was gone.
Even the hot topics area at the top was gone. There was no trace of it.
Lin Xiao suspiciously sent out a status message, with the hashtags #Missing #MysteriousDisappearance together, asking why no one was discussing that matter anymore, and why all the marketing accounts that were supposed to break the news were silent.
Lin Xiaoâs status message was updated successfully, but after four or five hours, the reading stats were still at 0. No one could see the message she sent!
Maybe there were some problems with the social media platform, but there was no problem with the mouths of real people. Just now, Lin Xiao walked into the classroom in a daze and heard the noise in the big classroom. Everyone was discussing the mysterious disappearances and how that social media platform was haunted.
She even heard someone yellâ
âIf the world is ending, do we not have to pay off our student loans?â
Such a shout resonated greatly in the classroom filled with university students. Lin Xiao also secretly clenched her fists, walked to a person she knew, then sat down and chatted with the people around her.
The boring class soon ended with low-pitched chatter. Lin Xiao even saw the young lecturer at the front pick up his phone and swipe, as if he wanted to know what was happening online.
Not long after Lin Xiao and her friends left the building with their phones, Lin Xiao, who was walking with her head down and swiping on her phone as usual, suddenly felt that something around her was wrong. It was obviously only two or three oâclock in the afternoon, but it had suddenly darkened. There was still a campus around her⌠but it didnât look like her school at all!
Before, Lin Xiao was clearly walking through the small garden between the two teaching buildings, but now she was in an evening playground. There was an old broken plastic slide and the grass was growing unchecked. An open-air spectator stadium that seemed pretty large was completely unfamiliar to Lin Xiao.
This wasnât her school at all!
âWhere is this! Whatâs going on?!â Lin Xiao looked around in a flustered manner, only to find that there were five complete strangers behind her.
Four of them looked around her age, but they all held things like hiking poles or even daggers, and most of them were carrying a heavy bag behind them. They were fully armed and had nothing but blank looks on their faces.
The remaining person was a middle aged man in his thirties or forties. He was stiff and kind of expressionless, but he was looking around cautiously, even taking out his phone from his back and aiming it around.
âPhone!â
Lin Xiao quickly looked at the phone in her hand, but soon discovered that she had no signal at all and all of her network functions couldnât be used normally.
âWhere is this place?â Lin Xiao became even more nervous because her cell phone couldnât access the internet.
âDo you know about the recent mysterious disappearances?â Lin Xiao was answered by a thin young man, but the look in his eyes scared her.
âI know.â Lin Xiao nodded subconsciously.
âCongratulations. Youâve disappeared from the real world.â The young man slightly smiled and stretched his hand out to Lin Xiao. âMy name is Wu Qing. Welcome to the nightmare world. From this moment on, weâre teammates. You two are welcome to join my team.â
After Wu Qing and Lin Xiao shook hands, they also shook hands with the middle aged man next to them.
âNightmare World?â Lin Xiao smiled blankly.
âDonât worry. Iâll explain carefully to you. If you two are willing, you can also join our team with team medallions and we can fight and support each other in the future.â Wu Qing smiled brightly.
As Lin Xiao listened carefully to Wu Qingâs explanation, Su Zimo, who was hiding, was also surprised.
The four acquaintances who appeared on the playground were clearly the hiking club members that Su Zimo met in the metro station nightmare world before, but the veteran trainer called Xiao Yuyang wasnât among them. Now the one who was leading them⌠turned out to be Wu Qing, the thin young man who was bullied by the entire hiking club!
That was the novice trainer who wanted to steal the ghost umbrella as soon as they met.
Itâs just that the cowardly boy from the beginning seemed to have refined himself a lot now. It was originally the members of the hiking club and that young lady who were domineering, but Su Zimo didnât remember their names. They stood behind Wu Qing with lowered faces and didnât say anything.
Su Zimo also noticed that among the four people, only Wu Qing didnât have a backpack, and that the lady who was once invincible⌠She was carrying a bag on her front and her back. She was obviously a veteran, but she looked very embarrassed.
And Su Zimo noticed that Wu Qing had mentioned a âteam medallion!â
Su Zimo was very clear in his heart that there were no team medallions in the nightmare world. There were only slave medallions that would place people at the mercy of others!
Looking at Wu Qing and the others, Su Zimo really did find a small, odd medallion on their chests. It looked like a tiny button, completely white with some small black dots on it.
Wu Qingâs medal had one black spot, the young lady behind him had two, and the other two people had three and four black spots, as if they were being numbered by the medallion.
So judging by the number of black spots on it, the leader of the slave squad turned out to be Wu Qing, who everyone had originally looked down upon!