Chapter 1 What a Twist!

“What kind of development is this?” Feng Bujue said. “The doctor we're supposed to rescue is actually the villain?” He replayed the deduction he'd just made in his mind, combining it with the mission details, and a few seconds later, his expression changed subtly. “Ashford wouldn't be the one who committed the murders and poisoned everyone, would he… Could the truth be that after escaping the lab, he used some device on the roof of the building to release a variant of the virus across the city? That's why the virus spread explosively in the city, and I haven't found a single survivor to this day?” He couldn't help but curse, “This guy is a damn Lizardman!”

He was alone at the moment, and there were no working surveillance devices nearby, so the system didn't censor or mute those curse words.

“Wait…” Feng Bujue suddenly realized something. “Who exactly are those two… Pan Feng and Hua Xiong? They went straight for the main quest as soon as they entered the building, as if they knew they could clear the level without coming to this underground research institute.” He pondered, “Normally, the plot should go like this… players enter the building, go to the research institute, find the serum, take down a small Boss or something, and then discover some clues that Dr. Ashford is the villain, and then, based on clues and hints, go upstairs to kill him… But what on earth are these two doing? Are they going straight up to expose that Boss's identity, and then use force to beat him until he reveals his true form?"

Xiao Tan was still alive, so he could basically confirm that he was acting with these two people, but he didn't like to order people around, nor was he good at it, and he had no reason to order them to go upstairs. What's more, the other party were players with outstanding strength, so it was unlikely that they would listen to his commands.

"So… the two of them are moving forward according to their own will, and they are completely correct…”

The more Feng Bujue thought about it, the more he felt that the situation with this script was wrong. He focused his mind, calmed his slightly overexcited emotions, took out the Winchester, loaded it with bullets, and rushed out the door.

Although his previous exploration had been hasty, he had been organized in his haste, remembering all the routes he had taken in his mind. Moreover, there were zombie corpses as guideposts, so Feng Bujue returned to the elevator quickly.

Relying on the Jazz Dance's running bonus, he was able to move quickly towards his destination at a speed that other players could only achieve by sprinting desperately, without consuming much stamina.

Ten minutes later, Feng Bujue returned to the elevator leading to the ground floor. When he left here earlier, he was in a hurry and didn't clear away the corpses piled up in front of the elevator door, so the elevator door was still stuck and not closed. He spent more than three minutes dragging seven or eight corpses blocking the elevator into the corridor, then rode up to the first floor of the building, where he happened to meet Wang Tanzi in the lobby.

"Hey! Xiao Tan!" Feng Bujue called out to him.

Xiao Tan turned around: "Eh? Bro Jue, how did you get behind me…"

"Cut the crap." Feng Bujue interrupted him, walking forward while taking a tube of antitoxin serum from his bag and handing it over, "Drink this."

"What's this?" Xiao Tan asked as he took the serum, looking at the item's properties. "How did you get this?"

"I went to the underground research institute just now," Feng Bujue replied.

"Ah? Then the other two…" Xiao Tan hadn't finished speaking, but Feng Bujue knew what he was going to ask, and replied directly, "They died somewhere else."

The two only exchanged a few words before setting off for the top floor of the building. Along the way, they told each other everything about their experiences and what they knew.

Xiao Tan's account corroborated Feng Bujue's deduction, making him even more suspicious of the two guys, [Unparalleled General Pan Feng] and [Thousand-Man Slayer Hua Xiong]. To Feng Bujue, the strength of these two was actually within an acceptable range, but the problem was their actions. Without collecting any clues, they went straight to the top floor to find Ashford. This was either amazing "luck," or they had some information that normal players couldn't obtain beforehand.

Feng Bujue followed Xiao Tan all the way to the fifty-first floor. Before reaching the forty-seventh floor, they followed the route that Xiao Tan and Pan-Hua had taken earlier. Xiao Tan hadn't been to the last four floors, but according to the corpses of the monsters on the road, they could still track the footsteps of their predecessors.

As they approached the top floor, Feng Bujue asked, "When you first went up with them, did you ever go back or encounter any dead ends?"

"Hmm…" Xiao Tan recalled, "Not really, huh." He then said, "But the route we're taking now is already winding around, and we've changed elevators several times, and we have to cross several floors and take the stairs in different places." He paused. "Eh? That's not right… How would they know which floor to change stairs on…"

"They even know the route…" Feng Bujue muttered.

As they were talking, the two arrived on the fifty-second floor.

Coming in from the stairs, there was a corridor in front of them. Every ten meters or so in the corridor, there was a large flower pot. Directly opposite was a glass wall. Through the Eyreleip logo printed on the glass, they could see a very large office area inside. This space had been opened up throughout the entire floor. There were many cubicles in the office area, and the furnishings were very ordinary, with office desks and chairs, computers, water dispensers, sundry shelves, etc… There were several separate offices at each end of the area.

It seemed that this floor was indeed as written on the floor plan downstairs - "office area", nothing more.

They walked along the corridor for a while and entered this vast office area through an automatic door. There were no traces of blood or zombie activity on this floor. This was not a good sign, but rather a sign of Boss-level monsters.

Feng Bujue had just glanced around the environment and hadn't had time to conduct any investigation when he felt a shock under his feet and heard a bang in his ear. He saw the ceiling dozens of meters ahead suddenly breaking apart, and a deformed human-shaped monster crashing in from the roof. The broken cement blocks crashed onto the ground with a crackling sound, and a cloud of thick dust immediately bloomed where the ceiling had collapsed.

Then, two more figures jumped down from that hole. Needless to say, those must be the two great gods, Pan Feng and Hua Xiong.

In the rolling dust, three figures could be seen fighting in a melee, the light of axes and the shadows of spears intertwining and overlapping. From time to time, they could hear the sound of blades piercing flesh, and the ground was gradually covered with a layer of blood.

After about a minute of this joint attack, the smoke gradually dissipated. Seeing that it was difficult to resist, the monster actually turned and rushed towards the outer wall glass of the building. Pan and Hua also knew that it was going to run, and of course they didn't want it to escape, otherwise their plan to end the script here would be ruined.

Hua Xiong leaned forward and darted to the monster's side, swept and pushed, the spearhead pointed directly at the monster's head, and the spear turned into a phantom and went away. Because Pan Feng's weapon was heavier, his speed was also a little slower. He could only take a step forward, close in on the target, and chop the mountain-opening axe vertically at the monster's back.

The two of them pursued relentlessly, step by step, forcing Ashford's mutant to a dead end. At this time, in order to escape, it did not hesitate to take the stab of the spear. The tip of the spear pierced through the monster's left eye socket, protruded through the back of its head, and brought out a splash of dirty liquid.

But this kind of injury was still not enough to kill this mutant. It endured the blow by curling its body forward, successfully avoiding Pan Feng's axe, and came to the outer wall glass. Then, it used the jagged bones protruding from its elbow to hit the thick glass, smashed out a crack, and then its entire body curled into a ball, broke through the window, and flew out of the building.

Pan Feng and Hua Xiong rushed to the edge of the outer wall, looked down at the rapidly falling figure of the mutant. After descending a certain distance, the latter used the suction cups and mucus on its body to cling to the outer wall, and then swam quickly to the ground, escaping the sight of the two.

"Tch… it still got away." Pan Feng said.

"As expected… if we two directly engage the Boss without the accompaniment of other players, it will cause its intelligence and reactions to change." Hua Xiong responded.

"The two of you." Feng Bujue's voice sounded behind them, startling the two of them.

They turned around and saw Feng Bujue with an unkind look in his eyes and Wang Tanzi with a blank expression.

"Can you explain to me…" Feng Bujue asked directly, "Who exactly are you people?"