"So, you're going to confess now that you actually saw it back then, but lied and told you didn't?" Gu Mian looked at Chu Changge.
Chu Changge indeed looked like he had seen it at the ti, but he seed to have so unspoken difficulty that prevented him from saying it.
"No," Chu Changge shook his head. "I didn't see it."
It seed he wasn't planning to confess.
After shaking his head, Chu Changge continued, "What I an is that the hidden word might also be so kind of hint."
He paused for a mont, seeming to organize the clues. "You learned from Teacher Sweet that 'seven' is related to 'Snow White and the Seven Little Dwarfs.' Coincidentally, we encountered the clue about the seven Little Dwarfs much earlier, in the Crazy Guessing Words instance, but we didn't think deeply about it."
"This might not be a coincidence. My idea is that the ga was hinting at certain clues from the very beginning. These clues might be hidden in the daily routine of an instance, or they could be displayed in very obvious places, just like 'Snow White and the Seven Little Dwarfs.'"
"Do you rember Mr. Green's expression when the phrase 'Snow White and the Seven Little Dwarfs' appeared?"
Gu Mian rembered. It wasn't that he paid particular attention to Mr. Green, but rather that when this phrase appeared on the word guessing board, the expressions of the others were exceptionally peculiar.
Not knowing what the phrase was, Gu Mian had specifically observed everyone's face. Among them, Mr. Green's was the most spectacular; it could almost be described as breathtakingly turbulent.
However, this breathtaking expression only lasted for a mont before he quickly concealed it.
At the ti, Gu Mian thought he was just marveling at how perverse the words were, but thinking about it now, it seems there was more to it.
"Speaking of which, I suddenly rember..." Fatty interjected weakly. "Back then, when the phrase appeared on the blocked-off prompt board, Mr. Green was especially anxious for us to go get the rewards. If we go by what Brother Chu is saying, he must have been afraid of us seeing sothing."
Gu Mian thought for a mont. "If we consider it like Chu Changge said, then it's highly possible that the instances we experienced before also contained certain hidden pieces of information, but they were all overlooked."
Hearing this, Fatty's face scrunched up slightly, as if he were trying to recall clues from the previous instances.
"I rember the first instance was a story about a girl and her classmates who were burned to death. The second was a terrifying Spirit Car driving test. The third was your own, Doctor, right? I rember Brother Chu and I didn't enter the third instance..."
"Yes," Gu Mian nodded. "The third instance was the story of a headless female ghost."
Fatty's face wrinkled deeply. Why did the topic always seem to beco so bizarre when Gu Mian talked about it?
Gu Mian continued, "The fourth was the Crazy Guessing Words instance. The fifth was the Slaughter Ga instance, which was my professional instance. Inside, there was a doctor who wanted to save the world by eliminating the divide between Upper Class People and Lower Class People. And yes, he achieved this wish before he died."
"Let's just talk about these first five for now. Did you discover anything in these instances?"
Fatty racked his brain, but it seed he couldn't think of anything, so he just shook his head.
Chu Changge remained silent, his thoughts unreadable.
Gu Mian, however, began to recall them carefully. Among these five instances, the most significant one should be the Slaughter Ga instance.
The absolute restricted zone, the mad doctor, the audience that reveled in suffering—this was the largest-scale instance Gu Mian had ever experienced, and it could also be called the most deranged.
Thinking back on this insane instance, Gu Mian couldn't seem to recall any useful details.
Just then, Chu Changge, who was beside him, suddenly spoke up, "You're thinking about the Slaughter Ga instance, aren't you?"
Gu Mian looked up at him and nodded slightly.
It seed Chu Changge also had a deep impression of the Slaughter Ga instance.
Chu Changge paused for a mont, then continued, "I'm thinking, from a broader perspective, the Slaughter Ga is also called a ga. We are currently in a global ga. While the details differ, gas always share similarities. If this global ga is terd the 'big ga,' then a Slaughter Ga instance within it can be considered a 'small ga.'"
Gu Mian understood imdiately. "You an it's a reflection?"
Gu Mian's grasp of Chinese was quite good; he could imdiately think of several idioms to describe it.
Sothing like 'seeing the larger picture from a small instance,' 'understanding the profound from the minute,' or 'peeking at the sky through a tube.'
A small ga can reflect the larger environnt of Earth.
This global ga is equivalent to the restricted zone in the Slaughter Ga instance, where countless players are struggling desperately.
And each instance is like a monster within that restricted zone, bringing danger to the players.
But if this analogy truly holds...
Gu Mian touched his chin. "Then, what on Earth corresponds to those frenzied spectators from the instance?"
Hearing this, a chill suddenly ran down Fatty's spine. "That is to say... there really might be sothing on Earth corresponding to the reveling spectators in the instance, and we just don't know it? No, no, we have to think on the bright side. What if that Slaughter Ga instance has nothing to do with this global ga? After all, these might just be our assumptions."
At this mont, Chu Changge suddenly took sothing out.
Gu Mian, with his sharp eyesight, recognized it as a special item obtained previously.
[Mail From Hell]
For so reason, Chu Changge rarely seed to use these special items. After obtaining them, he would just store them in his inventory. Gu Mian had almost forgotten this thing's function.
[Description: A letter mailed by a bored Evil Ghost. There are ten such letters in total, and this is one of them. It contains so idle words:
'This is a place of exile.'
'We are all monsters in a cage.']
Its function is that burning the letter prevents the user from being discovered by ghosts for ten minutes, as long as they don't shove themselves right into a ghost's face.
It's worth ntioning that when Gu Mian first read this letter, he thought the tone was ridiculously over-the-top, but now it seed that this over-the-top tone was full of hints.
"'This is a place of exile; we are all monsters in a cage,'" Gu Mian repeated. "Looking at these two lines alone, they do bear so resemblance to the Slaughter Ga instance."
Chu Changge nodded slightly. "But this isn't a special item from the Slaughter Ga instance; it was obtained much later."
This item isn't related to the Slaughter Ga, yet it's remarkably similar.
Could these two sentences actually be hinting at this world?
Fatty was struck dumb. It seed he was once again trying hard to recall the previous instances, his expression looking constipated. "I need to think carefully about the previous instances..."
Just as Fatty put on his constipated expression and was wracking his brain to recall past events, a soft "THUD" suddenly ca from the left side of the car.
It sounded like sothing—or soone—had bumped into the car.
To make it easier to talk, Gu Mian had already parked the car on the roadside.
Hearing the sound, Gu Mian tilted his head slightly, looking in the direction it ca from. "What's going on? An insurance scam?"
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