Chapter 170: Blocker

Chapter 170: Chapter 170: Blocker

The base leader knocked on the table, drawing everyone’s attention. "The instance will open in three days. Tonight, we’ll take care of the people outside first."

"Wei Zhan, Jiang Jing, Luo Chuan, Wen Bai. The four of you will each lead a hundred men and surround them from all four sides. Make sure no one escapes.

Leave the rest to me."

Late that night, a one-sided slaughter began.

When the new day arrived, blood stained the surface of the ice. Huaxia Base had won the victory with zero deaths and only twenty minor injuries.

All the bodies were gathered in one place and burned to ashes.

The soaring flames brought a rare warmth.

Shi Zhile found a few people to help her wash down the island. Beside her, Jiang Jing looked like he wanted to say something but was hesitating.

"If you have something to say, just say it."

Jiang Jing took a deep breath. "Wang Hai..."

"He tried to corrupt my convictions. He deserved to die!"

Jiang Jing was speechless.

Seeing Jiang Jing’s dumbfounded expression, Shi Zhiyi burst out laughing. "You actually believed that? Wang Hai was a traitor. He was the first person Delangbu contacted when he arrived near the base."

"They met up in the woods on Stone Island to discuss how to coordinate an attack from the inside and how to kidnap me to threaten Lele into working for them. Every single word they said was recorded by our surveillance.

If she wasn’t worried about alerting the others, Lele would’ve grabbed her axe and gone after them long ago."

Jiang Jing asked, "So when the Japs agreed to join the base, they were actually planning to coordinate with Delangbu’s group to break through our defenses?"

Wen Bai clapped him on the shoulder, a smile on his face. "Exactly!

They thought they wouldn’t be exposed since there are so few people on Stone Island, so they always met in the woods to plot against us.

But every time they schemed, we were watching them on the monitor. Not only was the audio crystal clear, but we were watching in ultra-HD."

Luo Chuan came over too, draping an arm over Jiang Jing’s shoulder. "You probably don’t know this either, but we conspired with the base leader to demand that the Japs hand over all their supplies before we’d let them into the base.

To avoid handing over their supplies, those dumbasses hid their stuff on Stone Island in batches.

And that moron Delangbu wanted to both scavenge and hide his car. He snuck over at night to hide his car in the reeds on the west side, but he ran into the Japs who were there hiding their supplies and nearly scared himself to death.

He’d no sooner parked the car than we went and collected it. The next day, he found his car was gone and spent the whole day jumping up and down, cursing."

Shi Zhile chimed in, "You know how Delangbu and the Japs started fighting? That was me.

First, I took all the supplies they’d hidden on the island. Then, I lured the Japs to the reed patch. Delangbu thought the Japs stole his car, and the Japs thought Delangbu stole their supplies. The two groups fought every day, and quite a few of them ended up getting killed."

Jiang Jing looked at the excited group, remaining silent for a moment before saying, "So...

Not only did you guys have all this fun without me, but you also hid it from me?"

Shi Zhile: "..."

Shi Zhiyi: "..."

Wen Bai, Wei Zhan, and Luo Chuan: "...Uh... Actually, Jiang Yu knew too!"

Jiang Yu, who had just walked over and had no idea what was going on: "..."

"I knew what?"

Luo Chuan said, "You know, about that stuff. You get it. We told you all about it, didn’t we?"

Wei Zhan added, "Yeah, just that stuff. All the things you know about. You know, all that messy, annoying business."

Jiang Yu said, "...Zhile, I came to ask you, do you know where Chuyi is?"

The moment Chuyi’s name was mentioned, everyone except Luo Chuan fell silent.

Jiang Jing looked like he wanted to speak but hesitated, not knowing how to tell his sister about Chuyi.

Jiang Yu looked around at them and guessed that something must have happened to Chuyi.

"You don’t have to hide it from me. I’ve known about his identity from the very beginning. It’s just that I can’t contact him right now, and I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.

Before the Island Survival instance began, he said he had something very important to tell me after it ended. But he disappeared before the instance was even over."

Shi Zhile recalled the last time she saw Chuyi. He had been surrounded by other players. If she hadn’t run into him, that group of players would have likely hacked him to death.

At the time, she had thought the players ganged up on him because they were after his supplies.

Thinking back, she realized the players’ group attack likely wasn’t over supplies, but was related to that "very important matter."

’A very important matter?’

’Could it be what Chuyi was talking about?’

’But why would Chuyi tell Jiang Yu?’

’Was it really because he likes her?’

’I don’t think so. Chuyi seems to like Jiang Yuxing more!’

Shi Zhile and Shi Zhiyi exchanged a look. The latter understood and stepped forward to comfort Jiang Yu. "Jiang Yu, Chuyi... his identity is extremely special. So special that he’s the first case of his kind we’ve ever known.

How did you two meet? Was it in the game or outside of it? We can only help you find him if we know the details of your history together."

Jiang Yu replied, "We met outside the game. That year the pandemic broke out, he and I were quarantined in the same area. We were neighbors, actually.

He asked to borrow my phone, but it turned out he didn’t know how to use it. We got to know each other while I was teaching him."

Shi Zhile frowned slightly. "He didn’t have a phone back then?"

Jiang Yu said, "He had a micro-brain, but... he didn’t have internet."

Everyone: "..."

They never would have expected that to be the reason.

In this day and age, it doesn’t matter how backwards or advanced you are; if your internet can’t keep up, even the most cutting-edge equipment is useless.

Jiang Yu gave a light cough and couldn’t help but smile, but her smile quickly vanished. "Before we entered the game, he gave me a comprehensive survival guide. It had everything from starting a fire to descriptions of all sorts of creatures, but I never finished reading it."

Jiang Jing gripped Jiang Yu’s shoulder. "Where’s the book? How much of it do you remember?"

Just as Jiang Yu was about to speak, Shi Zhile cut her off.

"Let’s talk about this later. It’s getting late. We should head back to the base first."

There weren’t many players left cleaning up the bloodstains. Ahead of them was an endless expanse of ice, so vast and empty it sent a chill to the bone.

’If we get swarmed by monsters and can’t enter our pocket spaces, we’ll all die here.’

The fear of monsters appearing was secondary. The main concern was that this was the edge of Stone Island, and there was a Teleportation Gate between Stone Island and Jiang Yuxing’s island.

If Jiang Yuxing himself were on the island, it would be one thing. But now it was the unpredictable Xi Nan, and he gave her a very dangerous feeling.

He always appeared relaxed, as if nothing and no one mattered to him. People like that were either useless trash or they had everything under control and simply didn’t care about minor squabbles.

Clearly, Xi Nan was not useless trash.

Jiang Yuxing wanted to kill Jiang Yu, so Xi Nan would likely want to kill her too. If that guy suddenly showed up, she wasn’t confident she could save her.

Back at the base, the deputy base leader cheerfully took out a square box. With a few manipulations she couldn’t follow, he somehow managed to completely block their system panels.

Shi Zhile tried to open the Teleportation Gate to the Primitive Forest, but it failed. She then tried to open her pocket space, which also failed.

Once it was confirmed that there were no issues, the deputy base leader’s smile finally looked genuine.

"This is a blocker developed by the base. We’re over 90% confident it can block in-game energy, but it’s time-limited. Each one only works for half an hour."