绝代双骄 林志颖

“There’s a next game?” Ge Xiu was a little surprised.

“…” Cheng Xiao looked at Ge Xiu with a complicated expression and then said, “Did you think it’d be over after one time?”

Ge Xiu: “…”

He really thought so at first.

“Have you never read this type of webnovel?” Cheng Xiao couldn’t believe it: “There are many such movies and TV series, have you never been in contact with it?”

Ge Xiu: “…No.”

Cheng Xiao was taken aback and stared at him carefully for a while, trying to find clues from the other party’s expression.

Ge Xiu looked bewildered.

Cheng Xiao sighed: “Forget it, I’ll send a link to one later.”

He took out his mobile phone from his pocket: “Add a WeChat account?”

Ge Xiu glanced down at the mobile phone held in the other party’s hand and replied, “I don’t have it.”

“No WeChat?” Cheng Xiao turned off WeChat and clicked on the little penguin icon on the screen: “What about QQ?”

Ge Xiu: “I don’t have a mobile phone.”

Cheng Xiao: “…”

? ? ?

He looked up at the young man with a calm face in front of him, and said slowly: “…Are you joking?”

“…No.”

“Do you simply don’t want to know me?” Cheng Xiao was shocked: “Do I look so much like someone with malicious intentions?”

Ge Xiu: “…you think too much.”

A few minutes later, Cheng Xiao finally accepted the reality.

He was puzzled: “So, you don’t have a mobile phone and you have never surfed the Internet?”

Ge Xiu nodded.

——at least that’s the case in this world.

Cheng Xiao was dumbfounded, he looked at Ge Xiu as if he was looking at a rare species: “Could it be that you lived in a remote village without internet access before?”

Indeed, it was true that there was no internet access in the prison.

And it was also on the edge of Interstellar, so it’s quite appropriate to say it’s a remote place.

Ge Xiu: “Pretty much.”

Cheng Xiao shook his head and sighed:

“Although this game is indeed very ruthless, it is the first time I had known that it can cheat people to such an extent…Buddy, you are too miserable.”

“Then… Do you have a place to live now?” Cheng Xiao looked at the young man in front of him sympathetically and asked.

Ge Xiu shook his head.

Such a good-looking person, with a blank slate of life experience, not to mention being pulled into an escape game, but he was even trapped in a strange city without knowing where to spend the night, it was simply too horrific.

Cheng Xiao felt a desire to protect arise spontaneously.

He scratched his head in embarrassment and suggested hesitantly, “Then…would you like to come to my house?”

At that moment, Cheng Xiao suddenly felt a chilling coldness sweeping through his bones, that cold feeling instantly swept through his body heavily, making him shiver uncontrollably.

Cheng Xiao sneezed, looked around suspiciously, and shrugged his shoulders.

——Why did he suddenly get cold?

He didn’t care, but turned to look at Ge Xiu standing in front of him, and continued:

“I rented an apartment nearby and I live alone. It’s quite big. If you have no other place to go, I can take you in for a while.”

Ge Xiu raised his eyebrows: “Aren’t you worried that I would have bad intentions?”

Cheng Xiao sighed: “Alas, after entering this game, who knows how long can one live.”

And…

He raised his eyes and glanced at Ge Xiu, then coughed lightly and swallowed the rest of the words back into his mouth.

In terms of appearance, the other party was more likely to be targeted by malicious people anyway!

Cheng Xiao carefully took in the features of the other. Although he himself was absolutely straight, when he saw the other party’s face, he still couldn’t help but feel his sexuality he’d insisted on for more than twenty years was a little shaken— when he was in the dungeon before, he was surprised by the other person’s appearance. Now that he was able to observe the other person’s appearance at a close distance, he had to admit…some beauty really did not distinguish between genders.

He asked himself, if the newcomer had an ordinary appearance, would he still be so kind as to help when the other party stood in the middle of the road and was almost surrounded by crowds of onlookers.

Humans were superficial visual animals.

Cheng Xiao stared at the young man’s face in a daze for a while.

At this moment, the temperature around him suddenly dropped.

“Achoo!” “Achoo!”

Cheng Xiao sneezed twice a row. He rubbed his still itchy nose and looked up at the sunny sky above his head.

Strange, why did the temperature suddenly drop?

Ge Xiu nodded: “That’s fine.”

Seeing the other party nodding, Cheng Xiao also felt better.

·

Along the way, Cheng Xiao introduced the rules of the game he knew to Ge Xiu while walking.

No one knows where this escape game came from, whether it was a high-tech product or an experiment made by aliens. What they know was that as long as the players who were pulled into the game could successfully pass ten copies, they could leave the game and get a chance to make a wish, but until now, no one had actually survived ten games.

Players who had successfully passed the first round of the game would get a watch that was uniformly distributed by the game on their wrists. This watch only appeared in the real world, showing the countdown to entering the next game.

Counting the previous experience with Ge Xiu, Cheng Xiao had already experienced three dungeons.

He turned his head to look at Ge Xiu, who was listening to the rules of his science popularization game and once again puffed up with pride, he patted his chest and said, “Don’t worry! If you need anything in the future, just come to me! I will answer all questions and respond to every request!”

Newcomer player Ge Xiu nodded obediently: “Yes, thank you.”

“Achoo!” Cheng Xiao sneezed again deafeningly.

He wiped his nose with a tissue and began to seriously consider whether he should buy some medicine for cold later.

Cheng Xiao asked, “So, when is your next game?”

Ge Xiu looked down at the watch on his wrist. It was an electronic watch, the numbers at the end were flashing, as if it was counting down.

“Generally speaking, the more times you experience the game, the longer the interval between.” Cheng Xiao continued, “But you don’t have to worry, the game will take into account that you are a newcomer. Generally speaking, the between the first and second time, you will be given three or four days to prepare, for example I waited for almost three and a half days…”

“One hour.” Ge Xiu said.

Cheng Xiao suddenly got stuck: “…what?”

Ge Xiu repeated patiently: “There is one hour left on the watch.”

“How is it possible??!!” Cheng Xiao’s voice suddenly became louder, he leaned foward in disbelief and looked down at the watch on Ge Xiu’s hand.

The passers-by around were startled by Cheng Xiao’s shout and turned their heads to look over.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Seeing the other party’s sudden excitement, Ge Xiu changed the wording in a considerate way: “It’s fifty-five minutes left.”

Cheng Xiao: “…”

The display on the watch indeed didn’t show much time left time.

He slowly raised his head to look at Ge Xiu: “…you must have offended this game.”

Ge Xiu raised the corners of his lips, his eyes were slightly bent, a starlight was contained in his dark eyes: “It’s possible.”

The two soon came to Cheng Xiao’s house.

Cheng Xiao took out the key, opened the door and ran towards the room at a 100m sprint speed. He took off his backpack and then stuffed some supplies that might be used in the dungeon into the bag, starting from the bandages, flashlight, first aid medicine, compressed biscuits, and so on, stuffing the deflated backpack that had been basically been emptied by him in the last copy once again.

He handed the backpack to Ge Xiu’s hand and then said earnestly:

“After entering, don’t rush to complete the task, let other players explore the way first, and save your life first.”

“Yes.” Ge Xiu listened carefully to what he said .

“When you encounter some strange phenomena, don’t rush forward. As soon as you realise something off, run quickly. Don’t worry about getting hurt. As long as you can survive the dungeon, all the wounds on your body will be healed, just like mine from previous game.” Cheng Xiao stomped his feet: “Look, I’m still fine, right?”

Ge Xiu nodded, “Yeah.”

“But you don’t have to worry too much, the first two dungeons for newbies are often not too difficult…”

Cheng Xiao got stuck halfway through the sentence.

He recalled his previous experience of being slapped in the face instantly and he didn’t dare to set any flag anymore.

“Do you remember what I just said?” Cheng Xiao was worrying: “In short, it’s best to be cowardly and run to save your life, do you understand?”

Ge Xiu nodded again: “Okay.”

An hour flew by quickly, before he realized it, the countdown on the watch on Ge Xiu’s wrist reached the last seconds.

3, 2, 1

At the moment when the countdown ended, the young man who was standing in front of him suddenly disappeared in place, leaving only an empty space.

Cheng Xiao stared at the open space worriedly, feeling the sadness of being a mother for the first time since he was young.

But…

He raised his hand and touched his arm where the goosebumps were slowly receding, sniffed, and turned his head to look at the sky outside the window in some surprise.

Why did the temperature suddenly rise up again?

What’s going on with the recent weather?

Ge Xiu’s eyes went dark and the scene in front of him suddenly changed.

When he opened his eyes again, the simple and cozy apartment just now had disappeared, replaced by a wasteland.

Different from the thick darkness last time, this time the sky was gloomy and misty, almost blending with the barren and scorched land. Not far away was a small village made out of crooked and dilapidated houses. The dirt road between the houses meandered towards the distance, getting swallowed up among the uneven gray walls. Under the black sky, this scene looked extremely dilapidated, desolate and lifeless.

A few players who had already arrived stood in the open space, including a few experienced veterans and a few newcomers who looked panicked.

Ge Xiu sharply saw a dark figure flashing past the end of the road in the distance.

At this moment, the mechanical female voice sounded from above the head:

“Welcome everyone…”

Before it finished speaking, the young man with the backpack ran towards the ghostly village without any hesitation and chased after the place where the shadow flashed just now, disappearing at the entrance of the village at the blink of an eye.

The sound of the game halted momentarily before resuming: “…a large-scale real-life escape game.”

The remaining players stared dumbfoundedly at the rapidly shrinking back of the other party, and watched him disappear out of their sight at full speed in a daze.

This… what was the situation?

This reaction was too big, right?