"Besides, since none of us could row to that ship, others certainly wouldn't be able to either. So, this adventure probably wasn't about getting on the ship or fighting ice corpses."
Gu Xiang Kai scratched his head. "I think it might have just been a hallucination, just like... just like the first day."
Nan Yue looked at Gu Xiang Kai and smiled. Though he was a bit reckless, his logic for passing the mission was sound.
Gu Xiang Kai had always been more observant than he looked, and throughout the days they had spent on these missions together, everyone had grown.
The scavengers who had escaped the hallucination waited where they were until it was clear no one else would be coming out.
They did a quick headcount and found that two scavengers had failed to leave the illusion.
One was Wang Yaxu, and the other was Luo Jiyun.
Given Luo Jiyun's psychological value lately, Nan Yue wasn't surprised he hadn't realized it was a hallucination.
The theater doors opened automatically, and the air outside, smelling of salty seawater, flowed in like a breath from another lifetime.
John was waiting outside the theater. He nodded coldly to the group, his blue eyes scanning everyone as he announced the next mission in his usual mechanical tone.
"Congratulations to the explorers. I will now announce the fourth adventure: Find Jessica's ball."
Nan Yue thought to herself, it finally appeared.
Jessica, the captain's daughter.
Some scavengers didn't even know there was a child on the ship and were looking around in a daze.
Nan Yue gave a brief explanation of who Jessica was, but she hadn't found much more information than that.
"So all we know is that she's a little blonde girl, but does Jessica only have one ball? Is this a competitive mission?"
The question came from Fan Jiayuan. He hadn't had much contact with Nan Yue's group and was surprised she was willing to share her clues.
"Probably not. Even in a competitive mission, it wouldn't be designed so that only one person can pass."
Based on Nan Yue's experience and Zhu Xi Ning's intuition, this wasn't an extreme mission that would require them to kill each other until only one survivor remained.
Everyone was confused. Although the previous hallucination had been fake, the psychological damage it caused was very real.
As it was getting late, most people preferred to head back and rest first.
"Boss, the question he asked makes some sense,"
Wen Xiang Yuan said as she walked beside Nan Yue. "This exploration is very strange."
Zhu Xi Ning yawned as she walked along. "That just means finding the ball isn't the main point, or rather, it's not the key to completing the adventure."
Nan Yue nodded. "Midnight is coming soon. Everyone stay alert tonight. It's hard to say when this adventure will actually begin."
When Nan Yue returned to her room, she took a careful look at the photos. Luo Jiyun's photo had already vanished, but ink stains had appeared on the photos of several other scavengers.
Strange...
The one with the most ink stains now was Chen Shaofei. Nan Yue remembered his photo being clean before. Had he suddenly done something?
Back in her room, she did a quick wash and lay down on the bed. The room felt very oppressive, but Nan Yue wasn't affected by it.
"Are you thinking about something?"
Thanks to her luck buff, Tan Xiaonan had found the last few missions with Nan Yue quite easy.
She thought Nan Yue was incredibly capable, but for some reason, the woman's expression was currently quite grave.
"I think the missions seem a bit too simple."
Tan Xiaonan was speechless.
"You've noticed it too, right? The common thread between these adventures."
Tan Xiaonan realized it belatedly. "You mean... the adventures themselves don't actually cause us much direct harm. Most deaths are caused by our own unstable psychological value."
Nan Yue nodded, turning onto her side to look at Tan Xiaonan.
"If you can think of that, many other scavengers can too."
"For those of us with experience from the previous missions, the difficulty of the upcoming adventures should only decrease."
"I've done the math. Except for special missions, the death rate for a standard mission is usually around sixty to seventy percent. This mission is being too generous."
Tan Xiaonan didn't say anything. In reality, she was always struggling just to survive each mission and didn't have the spare energy to track death rates.
But thinking back now, it was indeed about as Nan Yue described.
There were seven adventures in total, and they were halfway through with only four scavengers dead. It was indeed...
A bit abnormal.
"Could the difficulty spike suddenly in the later adventures?"
Nan Yue pondered. "That's a possibility, but..."
She kept wondering: what were the barnacles that Zhu Xi Ning had seen?
A ship covered in barnacles would slow down or even sink due to the added weight.
Did they have to clean the barnacles off the ship ahead of time?
Nan Yue didn't sleep well that night. In the middle of the night, she heard the sound of a ball rolling in the hallway.
There was no sound of doors opening. It seemed that even if people suspected it was a competitive mission, no one wanted to open their door at night to look for a ball.
"Decapitation Valley... Listening Cliff... Flowers bloom in the seabed graveyard... La la la, the sea breeze sends me home... Flowers bloom in the seabed graveyard."
A crisp child's voice rang out accompanied by the rhythmic slapping of a ball. The sound was quite loud, and Tan Xiaonan sat up beside her.
"Is that... Jessica?"
Nan Yue grunted in response from the darkness. "The adventure has already begun."
"What is she singing? It's creepy."
A little girl and a creepy nursery rhyme were standard horror tropes, but this was too bizarre.
She couldn't understand a single line.
Nan Yue rolled over. "It's just the same few lines over and over. Let's wait until we get up to look for clues."
Nan Yue's attitude was so dismissive that she soon fell back asleep. Tan Xiaonan, however, had what little drowsiness she had gained from Nan Yue chased away by the noises outside.
She stayed awake until dawn. When Nan Yue woke up feeling refreshed, she saw a haggard Tan Xiaonan.
"You didn't sleep after that?"
Tan Xiaonan shook her head. "No... Jessica entered the room last night."
Nan Yue was startled. "She entered the room?"
She hadn't felt a thing...
But while Nan Yue could get good sleep during missions, her perception of danger remained active.
If there were real danger, she would wake up instantly. This was an animalistic intuition developed over twenty years of training at the academy and dealing with the thing inside her.
If she hadn't realized it at all last night, it meant Jessica wasn't coming for her.
"What did she do?"
Tan Xiaonan shook her head. "I couldn't tell in the dark. I just felt the sound of the nursery rhyme move inside the room, and it was moving around."
"...It seemed like she was looking for something."
Looking for her ball.
Tan Xiaonan was still immersed in the fear of a little girl mysteriously entering their room and searching for something in such a cramped space.
Nan Yue, meanwhile, was thinking that this was indeed a mission targeting the scavengers' psychological value.
Those who had failed to sleep like Tan Xiaonan likely had similar experiences. With such a scare, their already frayed nerves would be even closer to the breaking point.
And they still had three adventures left.
"Let's get up and eat. Today's adventure has only just begun."
Rate on N.U.
