“Yes,” Feng Bujue replied.

The man nodded upon hearing this. “Alright, nothing else. Go through the filtration passage.” After saying this, he beckoned the four people beside him to take the equipment for fuel replenishment and cabin maintenance.

Hank led Feng Bujue and Kuangzong Jianying away from the platform. They didn’t take the elevator, but instead went down a flight of stairs next to it. The elevator was for the exclusive use of the supply team.

As they walked down the stairs, Kuangzong Jianying finally couldn’t help but ask, “Don’t you find it strange?” He looked at Feng Bujue and said, “You just said it verbally, without retrieving the item, and he believed you.” He then turned his face to Hank. “Don’t you need to undergo inspections or anything? To see if you’re hiding anything.”

Hank replied in surprise, “Hiding things? What are you talking about… who would do that? It’s a capital crime if you’re caught!” He paused. “Besides, what good would it do to hide things?”

Kuangzong Jianying was rendered speechless by the other party’s reaction.

Feng Bujue laughed and said, “Don’t bother talking about private property rights with slaves. For them, even money is meaningless. The only thing worth hiding is food, but when you’re not starving, it’s not worth risking your life for a few extra bites.”

“Slaves…” Hank muttered. “What does that mean? And… private property?”

Feng Bujue shrugged. “Some things are better left unknown, Hank.”

The three of them walked down, arriving at the bottom floor, and turned into a passage. This passage looked very unreliable, because the walls were not all metal, but a mix of rock and support structures. The lighting equipment overhead also looked very crude. Overall, the passage looked like a mine with a very poor safety rating, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it suddenly collapsed.

After walking about three hundred meters, they arrived at a place like a sentry post, a hexagonal metal guard booth with a window facing outward, like a toll booth on a highway, only with a different shape.

They stopped at the window, and the staff member sitting inside said in a formulaic tone, “Number, name, departure time.”

“Scavenger team, number twenty-four. Hank, Javi, Joey,” Hank replied. “Left the village this morning.”

The other party looked at the documents at hand, then looked up at the three people in front of him. “Lost two people?”

“Yes,” Feng Bujue replied.

“That’s a pity,” the man responded, then added, “The locker room key hasn’t been lost, right?”

“No,” Hank replied. Scavenger teams usually leave the locker room key inside the Sandshark cabin and don’t take it out with them.

The man looked up at the time (Shenyou Village’s timekeeping divides the day into ten periods, with its corresponding special clocks), then scribbled a few strokes on the document and said, “Go in, please ensure the cleanliness of the locker room, and keep your body still during ‘filtration’ to avoid accidents.” He said these words absentmindedly, probably because these few sentences were prescribed terms that he was tired of saying.

The three of them continued forward, and ahead was another passage, entirely constructed of metal. This section wasn’t long, about a hundred meters, and it gradually widened. The door at the end was more than five meters high. The area after passing through the door looked like a train station platform, with an area of at least one *mu* (a Chinese unit of area, approximately 667 square meters), shaped like a fan, with a height of seven or eight meters. There were many metal pillars standing in it, each with a number on it.

Feng Bujue and Kuangzong Jianying, led by Hank, passed through this area. On the opposite side of the fan-shaped hall, along the “arc,” stood many metal doors, about 1.9 meters high and 1 meter wide. These doors were all closed, and inside were naturally the locker rooms.

Hank opened a door with a key, and they walked into one of them. It was surprisingly narrow. Facing them were five individual compartments like telephone booths. These compartments should be the devices used to “filter” the scavengers.

Hank explained, “Sit inside after you go in, and wait a moment.”

Feng Bujue nodded and winked at his teammate. Kuangzong Jianying was now in a state of not caring what happened. The killing game had turned into a team survival game, and he was speechless. Anyway, whatever Brother Feng said, he would just do it… In a sense, the remaining Doomsday Assault and Dead Man were no different, so Kuangzong Jianying now had an indifferent attitude.

He originally thought that Feng Bujue’s previous sentence, “Let’s get a little serious and take out these two guys, let them see what real strength is,” meant a world-shattering battle, competing with the opponent in combat ability, letting them know that real experts can even defeat death. He never expected… the words “serious,” “strength,” and “take out” in Brother Feng’s mouth were completely different concepts.

There’s a saying that goes, “Subdue the enemy without fighting,” but Feng Bujue’s approach was to put people to death without fighting. Now Kuangzong Jianying understood that Brother Feng was indeed the man who could “laugh and watch thousands of troops break, plan the universe and calculate cause and effect.” For a non-combat player, fighting itself was the worst strategy and the worst plan. Achieving the goal without taking risks was the embodiment of his strength.

If it weren’t for Feng Bujue, Kuangzong Jianying would never have thought that he could win a killing game like this. He couldn’t help but feel a little fortunate and fearful. Thinking back to the previous one-on-one fight, if he and Feng Bujue hadn’t met at the beginning, or if it had been a 2v2 or 3v3 team battle, he would probably have ended up like Corpse Blade’s duo, no matter how good he was at fighting.

In the process of this script, Kuangzong Jianying felt more and more that Feng Bujue was an extraordinary person. In some other games, the evaluation of star players mainly depends on their combat ability, but in Thriller Paradise, players like Feng Bujue can bring benefits that may even exceed the top ten players in the combat power ranking.

It was a pity that inviting Feng Bujue to join Jianghu seemed impossible. Kuangzong Jianying wasn’t as good at reading people as their guild leader, Xiao Wen Cang Tian, but his intuition was very accurate. He knew very well that in the world of games, people like Feng Bujue would not be content to be subordinate to others. Even if he temporarily became someone else’s subordinate, it wouldn’t last long.

These players pursue freedom and enjoyment. The most unbearable thing is being bossed around, and of course, they don’t like to force others to do things. Kuangzong Jianying himself is actually this kind of person. Xiao Wen Cang Tian and Wu Dao Ke are his real-life buddies, and the three of them are the founders of Jianghu Studio, so he can stay there. If he were to work for another studio, no matter how good the treatment was, he wouldn’t go, he would rather work alone. This is why the Order’s poaching of the Sword Laughing Trio and the merger plan for Jianghu didn’t succeed.

Kuangzong Jianying quite appreciated players like Feng Bujue, with a sense of mutual understanding. Although an invitation was hopeless, wooing and cooperation could still be considered. The “Infernal Frontline” badge, Sword Shao had already remembered. No matter how large this guild was, with a player like Brother Feng, it could never be an organization of idiots and weaklings. Even if they didn’t befriend them, they should try to avoid any conflict.

In short, the idea was that if conditions permitted, it’s best not to become enemies with people like Feng Bujue…

…………

The three of them each walked into a compartment. Inside the compartment was only a seat. After they sat down, the next thing that happened was very bad.

The chair Feng Bujue was sitting on gradually sank, reaching the floor below, and then slowly began to move forward.

He felt like he was sitting on a car wash conveyor belt. Although it was dark in front of him, his body could feel the washing of water and air currents.

It was more like cleaning the protective suit by treating the person as a clothes rack than disinfecting the person.

Fortunately, the process wasn’t long, and it wasn’t painful. In less than a minute, the “filtration” was over. A metal plate in front of him automatically rose, and light illuminated the path ahead. At this time, what was in front of the three of them was the real “locker room.”

Feng Bujue got up and walked out, and the metal plate behind him fell again. The room he was in now was about twenty square meters, with a row of lockers against the wall. A long bench fixed to the floor was in the center of the room. The walls were all metal, and the light from the ceiling was quite sufficient.

Hank and Kuangzong Jianying arrived here almost at the same time. Hank said, “There are clothes in the lockers to change into. After taking off the protective suit, put it inside.” He didn’t know that the two players couldn’t change clothes in the script. They could put on the protective suit because the protective suit was defined as a functional plot item and was worn outside the clothing. When wearing the protective suit, the player’s own clothing didn’t actually change. But the clothes in these lockers couldn’t be put on.

Feng Bujue didn’t say anything, but walked forward and randomly opened one of the five lockers. As he expected, none of these lockers were locked. And then he discovered that everyone’s clothes were the same style.

Kuangzong Jianying also opened a locker and said after taking out the clothes, “This is the first time I’ve found ‘clothing’ in a script.” He smiled. “If it were still the closed beta, wearing these two sets out would definitely be seen as a godlike existence.”

“Well… it’s a pity that it’s not the closed beta anymore,” Feng Bujue said. “Even if you bring this kind of not-so-good-looking clothing out of the script, you probably won’t be able to sell it for much money.”

He was right. The standard clothing of the villagers of Shenyou Village was extremely simple in design, with long-sleeved tops and trousers, all in shades of gray-brown. There were no patterns or designs on the clothes, and the position and style of the pockets were also very ordinary, with a common round collar.

“What should we do? We can’t adjust the things in the clothing column in the script,” Kuangzong Jianying asked.

Feng Bujue replied in a matter-of-course tone, “Just keep wearing the protective suit.”

Hank, who was beside them, said upon hearing this, “But in the residential area, we all wear…”

Feng Bujue waved his hand, interrupting Hank. “I have my own plans, you just change your clothes.”