The rabbit-heads were so fast that from the time they appeared to the time they fled, everything happened in five seconds. In the blink of an eye, there was not a single rabbit-headed person to be seen in the vicinity of Xinjiekou Square.
Tang Mo looked down at the wooden badge in his hand and turned to Xiao Jitong. He handed the badge over, "After killing a rabbit-headed man, you can get a badge like this, with an 'S' letter on it." Xiao Jitong takes the badge and the members of the Nanjing and Raider teams look at it carefully. Tang Mo: "We don't know what the letter means yet, but rule five of the game says that players can pass the game by putting the surprise in the rubbish disposal."
Xiao Jitong understood what Tang Mo meant when she saw the badge: "It's a game of collecting badges. If you kill a rabbit-headed person, you get a badge, and if you collect eight badges, you can pass the game." After a pause, he said, "This is just a guess. The rabbit-headed man's attack wasn't strong enough to hurt us, but it would have been difficult to catch him. He's too fast. And ..."
Xiao Jitong looks to Fu Wenduo.
Fu Wenduo's voice was calm: "They have the ability to break free from props. The rope I just used is The black tower prop, and what is tied to it will not break free." Fu Wenduo was a little vague, not exactly telling the two Nanjing players his strength, but simply saying, "The way to get the badge is to kill the rabbit-headed man, but the moment you kill him, he turns into the badge. No one will be able to catch him."
Xiao Jitong asked calmly, "Are you sure, none of us will be able to catch him?"
Fu Wenduo: "OK."
The two of them appear to be playing a riddle, to the confusion of Chai Rong and the others nearby. Xiao Jitong stares hard at Fu Wenduo, trying to get some more information out of him. But Fu Wenduo did not speak. Xiao Jitong is not close enough to them to be able to tell them what the rope prop does, Fu Wenduo just needs Xiao Jitong to know that no one can catch the Rabbit Head, and the only way to get the badge is to kill him.
The group studied the badge for a while longer and finally returned it to Fu Wenduo.
This is an extremely plain wooden badge, as if it had been carved by a beginner with a knife from a random piece of wood. The rounded edges of the wood are rough and uneven, and the "S" on the badge is carved in a crooked manner.
The rabbit-heads have now all run away," says Tang Mo, "and they were very scattered when they escaped. I'm not sure if this is the only place where rabbit-headed people have appeared, but perhaps there are others in Nanjing as well. But they were very few in number, and there seemed to be only a few hundred of them just now. I don't recommend that people gather together to look for rabbit-headed people."
Xiao Jitong agrees: "I also agree. It takes killing a rabbit-headed person to get a badge, and if we look for rabbit-headed people together, the search area will be smaller and we won't be able to distribute the badges when we get them. The rabbit-heads are not too strong, and it is better to divide into small groups of three to four people to search for them."
The members of the Nanjing group listened to Xiao Jitong's advice. Xiao Jitong and Ningning decided to go back to the Raiders' base and meet up with Little Qiao and the others. Fu Wenduo and Tang Mo are also planning to find the rabbit-heads themselves and collect the badges. All they can do, at least for now, is "kill the rabbit-heads and collect the badges".
Fu Wenduo looks down at the diminutive boy.
Fu Wensheng hesitates for a moment: "I'm with the captain. Me, the captain, Rong and Ho have always played The black tower game together, so we'll work better as a group."
Fu Wenduo's dark gaze was fixed on Fu Wensheng. The boy's body tensed up, fearing that Fu Wenduo would not allow him to move with the Nanjing group, and insisted on pulling him to his side. However, Fu Wenduo just looked at him and turned around, leaving with Tang Mo. Before he left, he left a message that took Fu Wensheng half a day before he could breathe a sigh of relief.
He recalled the words and repeated them in a whisper, "Now that you've made a decision, take responsibility ..."
"Keep your voice down and go." Chai Rong said in a loud voice.
Fu Wensheng: "Coming, Captain!"
Fu Wenduo and Tang Mo soon left Xinjiekou Square and they followed the underground line in search of the Rabbit Head Man.
In the darkness of the night, players in a hurry can be seen from time to time. When they see Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo, they stare at them warily, but there is no confrontation. This is Nanjing, and even if a large real-life replica game suddenly opens up, players won't immediately panic and kill each other.
After going solo, Tang Mo asked bluntly, "Something tied by that rope that can't actively break free?"
It was a straightforward guess, but it was a good one. The corners of Fu Wenduo's mouth curved up: "Pretty much. The specific effect is that once the rope is tied around something, it can't be untied for ten minutes. I can't untie it either." After a pause, he added, "It's the law of cause and effect."
Tang Mo's heart fluttered. After thinking for a moment, he said, "The rabbit-headed man broke free of your rope when the law of cause and effect was at work. That means he may also possess a karmic law ... Could it be that The black tower has given him a karmic law that can never be tied to anything? So we can't have a chance to catch him, we just have to keep killing him and getting the badge."
Fu Wenduo: "I suppose so. And his karmic law is more advanced than my rope."
Any prop or psychic ability that is associated with the law of karma can become very serious. For example, Tang Mo's ability to change names. For three days, the person whose name he changed would think he was called by another name because of the law of karma, whether they knew him or didn't know him. Even The black tower, when announcing Tang Mo's attack on the tower, was affected by the law of karma and gave the name "MOMO".
Once the action has taken place, the result is irreversible, and this is what makes the law of cause and effect so terrible.
Yet it is like the dialectic of contradiction. When a spear that can break all shields and a shield that can block all spears meet, one will always be broken and its law of cause and effect will cease to exist. So suppose Fu Wenduo ties a rabbit-headed man with a causal law that is "absolutely unbreakable" to a causal law that is "absolutely unbreakable", one of the two must have an invalid causal law.
It is clear that what is being suppressed is the causal law of the rope.
This speculation caused Tang Mo's face to sink. The rabbit-headed man is incredibly difficult to catch and is extremely fast, faster than any of the players. It was difficult to kill him because of his dexterity. But for Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo, and indeed for the players in the Nanjing group and the Raiders, the problem was not so great. But for the rest of the Nanjing players ...
Tang Mo's face changed and finally he sighed, "So, this is a game of trash sweeping. Players with a certain level of strength can kill the rabbit-headed man and get the badge. But players with lesser strength, they might not even be able to stop the rabbit-headed man's claws and whistles. Players who are too weak will even be killed by the rabbit-headed man in return. After this game, players are screened away. Assuming the rabbit-headed man could be caught, they might still be able to join hands as a group to lay a trap, catch the rabbit-headed man and earn the badge. But the rabbit-headed man cannot be caught, only killed."
Tang Mo alone can kill a rabbit-headed man, but it takes perhaps ten average Nanjing players to kill one.
One badge to be divided among ten people.
At first it was fine, there were plenty of rabbit heads and players could still see hope. But as the clock ticked down to the last hour, what would happen in that hour ...
Tang Mo looks down and ponders the nine rules of the game given by The black tower. He was not convinced that the only way to pass the game was to "kill the rabbit-heads and collect the badges". If so, The black tower's screening of the 'trash' is too obvious, giving little chance to the lesser players.
Tang Mo says: "If you don't have enough force, you're bound to fail, so The black tower doesn't need to give such a complicated game. It can force poor players to just attack the tower," Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo have both been punked by The black tower before. Tang Mo looks up at Fu Wenduo: "It must have designed the game to give those players who are not good enough a chance to survive. What is it ..."
Fu Wenduo looked at Tang Mo's contemplative appearance with a strange gleam in his eyes. After a long time, he was about to speak, when suddenly he looked up at a small six-storey building not far away with a cold expression. Tang Mo also turned around in a flash and looked towards that building.
Only to see a pair of scarlet eyes staring straight at Tang Mo's Fu Wenduo on the roof of the small building. The three eyes collided in the air, and the rabbit-headed man turned his head and ran, leaping from room to room in the building. Tang Mo's feet flared and he immediately gave chase. Fu Wenduo separates from Tang Mo at the crossroads and wraps around to the back of the block to pass.
Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo had a distance of 100 metres from the rabbit-headed man when they found him. The rabbit-headed man was unsure of his direction and just kept jumping around, giving Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo the possibility of catching up with him.
As Tang Mo ran around a corner, he looked up and came face to face with three young women. The three women screamed in terror as if they were birds of prey. As they screamed, seven or eight more people came running from all directions.
At that moment, a majestic rabbit-headed man flew out from the top of the building and leapt to another building.
"Ah! Rabbitheads!"
The newly emerged men were closer to the rabbit-headed men and they hurried after them. Tang Mo's eyes froze as he raced up to them. He saw the seven or eight men surrounding the rabbit-headed man, who was making angry gibbering noises to intimidate them and not allow them to approach. Some of the men were holding pocket knives and some were holding a gun.
Someone shouted timidly, "Kill him", and the rest of the group attacked. The rabbit-headed man's sharp claws left a trail of wounds on their bodies, and his ear-splitting whine made the players dizzy. But there were so many of them, after all, that the rabbit-headed man failed to escape unscathed several times. Finding an opportunity, the rabbit-headed man leapt out of the encirclement with his legs on the ground.
One player raised his pistol in horror and shot the rabbit-headed man in the chest.
The bullets had just been fired when a black figure jumped up out of the air, leaping over the heads of these players and flying over to the rabbit-headed man. The small pink parasol stabbed through the back of the rabbit-headed man and out of his heart. Tang Mo turned his head slightly sideways to avoid the oddly skewed bullet. He landed firmly on the ground and a wooden badge with the letter "E" appeared in his hand.
The players looked at him in dismay, as if they could not understand where this man had come from. Their eyes slowly moved down to the wooden badge in Tang Mo's palm.
One man whispered, "That's the badge ..."
The crowd's eyes became greedy and some could not resist taking a step forward.
Bang!
The speaker hurriedly backed away in fear and a deep black bullet mark appeared just where he had stretched his foot. Not far away, Fu Wenduo moves his fingers and the pistol disappears into his hand. Tang Mo looked over at him and walked over to his side with his badge in hand. The two men swept the group of players away together.
Within an hour, Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo had collected a total of five badges. There were so many players in Nanjing that they only found seven rabbit-heads in total. Two of them were killed by other players. Tang Mo didn't take their badges, but as long as they killed the rabbit-heads themselves, Tang Mo wouldn't let any of them go.
As the second hour approaches, The black tower announces the appearance of a new rabbit-headed man. Tang Mo lifted his head and stared coldly at The black tower. A low voice rings out from his side: "The Nanjing team said that there are less than 20,000 players left in Nanjing. Each of them must collect at least eight badges, that's 160,000 badges and 160,000 rabbit-heads. There are twelve batches in total, with each batch dropping at least thirteen thousand rabbit-heads."
Tang Mo: "Just now, were there really that many rabbit-headed people?"
Fu Wenduo's tone was positive: "No."
At night, the huge The black tower hovers above Nanjing like a blackened monster, watching the war raging all over the city. Tang Mo watched The black tower for a while, then turned his head to Fu Wenduo and suddenly asked, "When will those people arrive?"
Fu Wenduo replied directly, without questioning him: "According to the time and distance, the nearest ones should be Zhenjiang and Chuzhou, and after that, perhaps Wuxi and Changzhou will also come. Shanghai is a bit further away, but it's just possible that they will come. Within twelve hours, anyone who can make it in six hours is likely to come."
"That's ... Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui."
At the other end of Nanjing, in front of an abandoned secondary school.
Xiao Jitong heard The black tower announce the appearance of the second group of rabbit-heads and he stopped and looked at the huge tower in the distance. Little Qiao turned his head to look at him curiously, "Captain?"
Xiao Jitong looked at it for a moment, smiled and shook his head, "It's nothing. An hour has passed now?"
Little Qiao nodded, "Well, it's seven o'clock."
"In an hour, the players from Zhenjiang should have arrived. Another batch of rabbit-heads, players from Anhui and other places are also likely to arrive. Alright, let's not waste any more time. Let's gather the badges we need for ourselves first and hurry up."
Meanwhile, Shanghai Pudong .
Luo Fengcheng sits in his office, looking at a map of the Yangtze River Delta on his desk. He taps his finger on the word Nanjing, and he traces the distance between the cities of Nanjing and Shanghai with his finger. Tang Qiao stands silently beside him, not saying a word.
Three minutes later, Luo Fengcheng heaved a sigh of relief and laughed: "We're not going. Shanghai is still too far away. If we go from Shanghai, we might run into a few people on the way and get delayed. By the time we get there, it will be after 0:00 and we will only have six hours of play time left. We don't know the exact rules of the game, and those people have already been playing in Nanjing for six hours. It didn't pay off."
Tang Qiao wanted to say more, but when she saw Luo Fengcheng's serious look, she shut up and walked out of the office.
In a small, unoccupied restaurant next to Nanjing's Chicken Temple. Tang Mo stands behind the door, calmly observing the outside environment.
"The right to be exempted from attacking the tower once is a tempting reward, especially for players who have been forced to attack the tower by The black tower. The fact that these ten zones are classified by The black tower as the bottom of the pile indicates that the level of players here is very low. By announcing the list of the ten zones to all of China, it is not just informing the players of these ten zones that they have entered the game. It is telling players from other zones where they can go to participate in the sweepstakes."
After a pause, Tang Mo continued, "From 18:00 on March 5 to 6:00 am on March 6, all players who set foot in the ten zones are considered to be participating in the game. This rule ... is fine as long as you come in during this time."
The corners of Fu Wenduo's mouth curved imperceptibly as he watched Tang Mo sigh. He said lightly, "There may not be many players who are willing to volunteer for an unknown game of The black tower, but they must be strong, ambitious and ruthless. The biggest possibility is that they are stowaways."
Tang Mo looks up at Fu Wenduo, who also looks at him calmly.
The two men stared at each other.
After a long time, Tang Mo laughed and said, "Go?"
Fu Wenduo curled his lips, "Go."
In the thick of the night, from everywhere, black figures after black figures crept into the territory of Nanjing. Eleven hours remain.
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The author has something to say.
Mr. Fu :[A shot out]... just heard that you want to steal my daughter-in-law's badge?
A group of Nanjing players: [hurry up and shrink their feet] I'm not, I'm not, don't you talk nonsense QAQ!!!