Mu Anqi and the others quickly went downstairs, just missing the unknown player team.
The sixth floor was a key point—it might have a sealed ghost or something else hidden there—but now was not a good time to explore. The reason was simple: there were too many players here. Whatever they tried to do would be inconvenient and might even cause unnecessary misunderstandings. After all… other players wouldn't believe that you reached a place first but got nothing from it. Unfortunately, Zhao Guogu and Mu Anqi both happened to have plenty of items.
Zhao Guogu relied on the lottery draws after each game, while Mu Anqi depended on spending money.
"Wait a moment." Zhao Guogu made a gesture and stopped between the fifth and fourth floors. She took out a palm-sized black box from her backpack. Inside lay a small ladybug and a folded mirror. She threw out the ladybug, using her mind to control it to fly up and observe the situation behind the closed sixth-floor door. Then she unfolded the palm-sized mirror until it expanded to the size of a phone. Zhao Guogu tapped the mirror, and the ladybug's viewpoint appeared within it. "A rather interesting item I got from the draw—it can be used as a monitor. But restricted-level stuff will automatically be pixelated."
"Advanced!" Mu Anqi thought of the remote-control car gathering dust inside her ring, then looked at Zhao Guogu's item—there was really no comparison. As for the pixelation restriction… that was a long-standing tradition in Nirvana Space. Players' privacy during the game was well protected—things like going to the bathroom or taking a shower would automatically be censored and hidden, ensuring nothing private was leaked. "Can you control it to go directly into the sixth floor and see what's going on?"
"It can, but… if it's discovered, it has no ability to escape or defend itself, and it can't be repaired or replaced." Zhao Guogu scratched her head. Since it was won from a lottery rather than bought from the weapon shop, naturally, there was no warranty or replacement.
"Then forget it. Following behind the other players to check things out works just as well." Saying this, Mu Anqi and the others went downstairs. The exploration inside the apartment was done, so it was time to head out and regroup with Xia Yun and the rest.
The moment she stepped out of the apartment door, Mu Anqi was hit by a gust of cold wind that made her shiver. It had only been cloudy before they entered the building, but now the sky was almost completely dark. Thick black clouds hung heavily above the apartment, creating a suffocating sense of pressure.
The apartment had railings and a main gate. At the entrance stood two trees—one locust tree, and the other… also a locust tree.
Mu Anqi was amused by her own "Lu Xun meme" association and laughed. As they walked out, they happened to run into a team of players returning. This team consisted of three men and two women. They merely glanced at Mu Anqi and her group without saying anything and brushed past them.
"That team gave me a dangerous feeling." Once the players had gone far enough, Zhao Guogu whispered. She glanced back at the team that had just entered the apartment. "That two-meter-tall dark-skinned guy felt the most dangerous to me. His abilities must be pretty strong."
"Then do you think I'm dangerous?" Mu Anqi hadn't expected Zhao Guogu to have that kind of perception and asked curiously.
"…You're my teammate—how could I think of you as dangerous or not dangerous?" Zhao Guogu was speechless. That was a specific kind of intuition! Intuition! But it also meant… "If I can sense danger, that suggests the relationships between player teams probably aren't cooperative. Or maybe that team has some intention of eliminating other players… like us."
"Your ability… don't tell me it's mostly passive?" Hearing Zhao Guogu's words, Mu Anqi thought that Zhao the Lucky Draw Queen hadn't shown up for a few games, only to evolve into a "malice radar."
Zhao Guogu smiled shyly. "Same difference~ But I still have two active skills."
Mu Anqi thought about her own abilities and immediately felt relieved: she actually had five active skills! Of course, not all of them were usable.
As they prepared to continue walking outside, Mu Anqi heard someone call her name. In the next moment, Xia Yun rode her sword and landed steadily in front of Mu Anqi. Wu Sansheng dismounted from the sword with a neutral expression and opened a piece of draft paper, handing over the sketch.
"This is the apartment," Wu Sansheng said, pointing to the simple drawing of the building. "Centered on the apartment, the surrounding area is all wild forest, and further out is a layer of black fog where nothing is visible."
"To the northeast, there's a pond," Wu Sansheng paused before continuing. "There should be something there—the water is green. A faint green mist surrounds the pond, which may be toxic. Xia Yun and I haven't investigated it closely."
"In the southern wild forest, there's a cave. That cave… is a bit abrupt, and the whole 'mountain' is shrouded in gray mist," Wu Sansheng said. "Actually, the wild forest itself is also problematic. When Xia Yun carried me on her sword to observe, a group of crows came and perched at the top of the branches, watching us. When we moved, the crows moved with us, but they didn't show any aggressive tendencies."
On this simple map, the locations of these points were drawn:
Apartment, pond, cave, wild forest.
—The ancient tomb? Could it be inside the cave?
Should they explore it today? What exists inside the cave? Or… should they first eliminate the hazards in the apartment? Before a decision could be made, Mu Anqi and the others suddenly felt the entire ground tremble for a moment. Wu Sansheng pointed to the apartment behind them and, in the same emotionless tone, asked, "Is there a ghost sealed inside the apartment?"
"…The sixth floor? We haven't gone up there." Mu Anqi turned around and saw thick black fog spilling from the top floor of the apartment, covering its upper half. The black fog blocked the sky, seemingly merging with the edge-of-game black mist Wu Sansheng had mentioned, creating a truly striking scene.
Zhao Guogu unfolded the mirror, and the image happened to focus on a huge coffin. Of course, the image only showed the outline of the coffin, not the detailed patterns or its interior. Most of the image was shrouded in black fog. Under Zhao Guogu's control, voices could still be heard: "How could this happen?!" "What do we do now?" "We shouldn't have opened the coffin!"
Unbelievable… on the very first day of the game, they went up to the locked sixth floor and even opened the coffin—what a brave team. Mu Anqi was speechless. "Can we see the previous footage?"
"Yes, wait a moment." Zhao Guogu clicked a few times on the mirror. Mu Anqi and the others couldn't see the options on the mirror; obviously, only the item's holder could operate it. In the next moment, the footage began rewinding, all the way back to the closed iron door, and then started playing.
Up came a team of six players—four men and two women. They also seemed to be exploring the apartment and hadn't noticed anyone coming to the fifth floor.
"Fast-forwarded at triple speed to save time."
"The locked iron door?… Just kick it open. We should find something on the sixth floor," one male player said, sounding a bit puzzled. "Why hasn't anyone else come here before?"
"Probably choosing rooms and scouting outside the apartment. Since no one's been here, we can get first-hand information," said a female player. She rolled up her sleeves, pressed both hands hard against the long chains on the iron door, and with a sudden force, snapped the chains in half. Then she delivered a sidekick, sending the door flying open, leaving a clear footprint on it.
They clearly wanted to explore the perimeter as well, so their movements were very swift. The moment the iron door opened, they headed straight for the sixth floor.
Who would have thought… the sixth floor didn't have any apartment rooms at all. The extremely empty floor was draped with layer upon layer of hanging white cloth. The player team lifted and tried to touch the hanging strips, but nothing unusual happened. As they uncovered layer after layer and walked deeper, they realized the sixth floor only had one passage up and down. The staircase Mu Anqi and the others had used to descend didn't connect to the sixth floor. Thus, as this group of players walked through the layers of white cloth, they seemed to catch a scent.
"Is this… the smell of incense?" Mu Anqi and the others clearly heard the players' confused voices. The little ladybug followed tightly behind the team, capturing both the images and the sounds.
"W-what is this?!"
The white cloth turned into black cloth. After passing through this layer, the players seemed to step into a world of a completely different style. Candlesticks flickered at the four corners of the room, casting dancing flames. In the center of the room stood a large, extremely antiquated black coffin, and in front of the coffin was an offering table.
The huge black coffin had no patterns, only four strips of yellow talisman paper attached to it. The whole scene… really looked like something out of a zombie movie.
"Ancient tomb apartment… could it be that this isn't an apartment next to a grave, but that there's an ancient tomb inside this apartment?" The player team hadn't expected such a discovery. They spread out through the room, searching thoroughly, but found no information or description related to the coffin.
Mu Anqi saw that one player, upon passing the coffin, suddenly seemed dazed, as if hypnotized, and reached out to touch the talisman paper. In the next moment, the player snapped awake, not showing fear, but instead exclaimed with excitement: "An item! This talisman is an item!"
"Don't touch it recklessly. What if there's a curse or a zombie inside the coffin?"
"But this talisman is an item. What's inside the coffin could also be an item! With so many players in this game, even though the sixth floor has an iron door and chains, it's nothing for us. This coffin was meant to be discovered by us."
This team seemed to get into an argument. One group of players wanted to open the coffin—since the talismans were items, there might be treasures inside the coffin as well. At worst, the coffin itself was a valuable item! As for the possibility of a BOSS or something else inside—if they didn't open it, someone else would, so they were just getting a head start.
The other group thought it was too early; they had just entered the game and didn't know any information yet, so they should proceed cautiously. The players argued for quite a while. In the end, the ones opposing opening the coffin were convinced. One reason was that the coffin might contain information. The second reason… came from the thin young man in the team wearing a black baseball cap, who said: "If there's any danger, I can instantly teleport everyone to the apartment's main gate. I set a coordinate point there."