This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 344: The Ground is Full of ’Evolutionary Bodies

Chapter 344: Chapter 344: The Ground is Full of ’Evolutionary Bodies

Over Qingquan City.

A "Dragonfly" transport plane was circling along the edge of the Fifth Ring.

Gazing out of the cabin at the endless yellow-green fog, Bun Brother unconsciously clicked his tongue, surprise rising in his eyes.

The spore clouds gathered in the city center resembled a waterfall cascading from the clouds, looking from afar like a giant tree with lush branches.

The towering trunk devoured the earth, its sprawling branches invaded the sky.

Were there really weapons in existence that could destroy this thing?

Even if it were a nuclear bomb...

A faint chill crept up his gaze, and Bun Brother shook his head and picked up the walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder, shouting,

"Are you guys ready?"

Accompanied by the crackling sound of electric current, Old White’s intermittent voice came through the headset.

"OK."

The signal had already begun to fluctuate unstably, intuition told Bun Brother that without anti-electromagnetic interference equipment, this was the limit to which the plane could approach.

He pulled the control lever beside him.

With a bout of unstable trembling, the locked tailgate of the plane slowly lowered, and the turbulent airflow rolled into the cabin.

"Cabin door opening—"

"Good luck to you all!"

Simultaneously, Old White standing at the cabin door gestured to his teammates behind him, braving the howling airflow, and stepped out first.

The camera pulled back to reveal several black dots separating from the plane, racing towards the direction of Qingquan City Center. Soon after, six parachutes bloomed above the Third Ring.

After landing, the team quickly gathered towards the direction of the airdropped supplies, reclaiming ammo and support equipment like RPG rocket launchers stored there.

Meanwhile, on the other side.

In Boulder City, situated on the edge of the West Third Ring within the radar station on the giant wall, the duty operator had already spotted the plane hovering at the border of the Third Ring.

"An unidentified flying object is approaching our airspace!" exclaimed the operator at the radar control terminal, who was the first to spot the red dot on the screen.

Far from being nervous, he shouted out excitedly.

The radar station was instantly bustling.

The staff there largely shared his mood.

They had not seen any other Survivor Forces’ aircraft appear within the radar warning area for too long.

"Damn, I’m sure! It’s those scavengers from the North Suburb!" an operator cursed excitedly.

"They haven’t responded to our communications!"

"Could it be that they don’t have radio equipment capable of receiving signals?"

"Ha, maybe!"

As he spoke, his colleague next to him had already manned the anti-air system, aiming a rapid-fire cannon at the slow-moving silver "big bird."

The computer had already calculated the lead pursuit circle based on the plane’s motion parameters.

He only needed to press the fire button, and the silver big bird would turn into a ball of fire.

"The target has entered our firing range!"

"Should we shoot it down?"

Unlike the excited operators in the radar station, the station chief, charged with managing the radar facility, appeared much more cautious.

"Wait a little longer."

The plane did not continue towards Boulder City but soon turned around, heading back towards the north suburb of Qingquan City.

The weapon operator’s expression was slightly disappointed.

He had been sitting on the cold bench for nearly ten years, and the wall’s air defense systems had never been used.

One staff member grumbled indignantly.

"This is a provocation against us!"

"Whether it’s a provocation is for the city lord to decide," interrupted the chief of the radar station, looking towards his deputy, "report this incident immediately!"

His deputy nodded.

"Yes!"

...

South Third Ring of Qingquan City.

The Cattle and Horse Squad of five, who safely landed, successfully rendezvoused near the airdrop box and retrieved the weapons stored inside.

However, everyone’s expression was far from optimistic.

The situation here was far worse than they had imagined.

It could even be said...

It was completely unexpected.

A dark red fungal mat almost covered every building, every elevated bridge, and every corner of the streets.

Ferocious Eaters and those more fierce than the Eaters, the Mucor species, aimlessly wandered the broken streets.

What was most troublesome was not just these threats, but the intricate and complex terrain that significantly increased the danger.

High towers penetrating the clouds were interconnected by tunnels, turning this place truly into an "Iron Forest."

As they parachuted down earlier, Night Ten almost got caught on a pedestrian bridge.

Fortunately, he was lucky, as his parachute passed through the middle of the broken bridge, allowing him to land safely and reunify with his teammates.

"Holy shit... so this is what the city center of Qingquan City looks like."

On the fiftieth floor of a kilometer-tall building, Night Ten, wearing a gas mask, stood by the damaged wall, holding binoculars looking in the direction of the crash site.

The crashed W-1 Mosquito-style glider was stuck on the facade of the high-rise opposite them, its front half embedded into the wall.

Falling Feather should be inside.

Night Ten glanced down at his feet.

Below him was an abyss, the dense spore clouds resembled water in a pool of poison, with a very limited visible area.

Due to the spore clouds gathered in the city center, visibility was less than two hundred meters.

In reality, due to the countless rubble and reinforced concrete, the actual visibility was even less than half of that number.

This was much more thrilling than the Tide.*/

"You haven’t explored this place before?" Quit Smoking asked nervously.

Wild Wind shook his head.

"No one has ever mentioned coming here."

Fang Chang also mentioned, "There’s no mission here, and you can’t save your progress. Even if you come here, there’s no point."

One couldn’t go far without high-value equipment, and with it, one had to consider the risks.

The game didn’t restrict players’ specific gameplay, but it also emphasized that everyone was an adult and needed to be responsible for their own choices.

Earlier, they had indeed tried to set out from Giant Stone City and explore towards the depths of the three-ring route.

However, along the way, the combat power of the variants they encountered grew increasingly stronger, and after wasting a ton of bullets with no gain, they eventually gave up.

Closely observing the situation along their path, Night Ten’s expression grew heavier, and he lowered his voice.

"...There are quite a number of evolutionary bodies here!"

On hearing the word "evolutionary bodies," everyone’s expression immediately turned serious.

"Decaying Knight?" Old White said with a grave tone.

Night Ten shook his head, didn’t speak but gently pointed towards the high-rise outside, linking to another building’s concrete overpass.

There lay the wreckage of several cargo drones, nearly a hundred by a rough count, with packets from two hundred years ago and boxes scattered nearby.

The dark-red shells looked as though they had rusted, but a closer observation through a telescope revealed that what clung to the surfaces of those drones was not rust at all.

It was the horrifyingly eye-catching "Mutated slime fungus"!

"Those things... I can sense that they are alive," paused Night Ten, then added in a low voice, "and probably won’t be easy to deal with!"

Wild Wind frowned.

"Should we bypass them?"

"The situation below isn’t any better, have you forgotten what we saw while coming up?" Old White took out the RPG rocket launcher from behind, loaded a high-explosive grenade, and signaled to Quit Smoking, who was carrying a machine gun, "We can only try."

Bypassing was impossible.

The stealth difficulty in the game was extraordinarily high, especially for those mutated slime fungi. With spore clouds around, their heads were like search antennas installed.

Get slightly close, and they’d aggressively charge at you.

The best strategy was to choose a relatively safe path, lure out the monsters within the area, eliminate them, and then proceed.

Seeing Old White readying the RPG, the other squad members tacitly moved to their respective combat positions and turned off the safety on their weapons.

"I’m ready."

"I’m good to go on this side too."

"+1"

"..."

The team coordinated very well, having not teamed up for the first time and already having undergone countless battlefield trials.

Seeing his teammates ready, Old White took the lead in pulling the trigger.

Tail flame blasting!

A high-explosive grenade boomed in the middle of the dense drone swarm!

With the immediate explosion of blaze and heavy smoke, a large number of drones were sent flying by the blast wave and shrapnel, cascading downwards.

Quit Smoking, who set up the machine gun not far away, also triggered it instantly, unleashing fierce firepower on the area ahead.

The barrage of 10mm bullets formed an orange-yellow hail of fire in the air, savagely reaping the startled rising swarm of drones.

"Holy shit... These things can actually fly?" Fang Chang, who was firing a rifle, questioned in astonishment.

After two hundred years, unless it’s nuclear-powered, even the most durable chemical batteries couldn’t last that long!

Clearly, the mutated slime fungus had replaced the drones’ batteries, becoming the new power source, and in a peculiar way, they even drove the propellers, turning part of the fungal mat into the propellers themselves.

However—

In the face of absolute firepower, none of these mattered, as swarms of drones, with thick smoke trailing behind, were massively harvested by bullets.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly.

However, just then, an unexpected mutation happened!

The drones knocked down by the high-explosive grenades didn’t all crash to the ground and shatter; some of the surviving little fellows shakily flew up again.

Simultaneously, more drones floated out from the overpass and even from the opposite building, starting to flank from both sides.

The squad behind cover immediately found themselves in dire straits.

"Damn it! Are there that many?!" Quit Smoking cursed as he emptied an entire drum magazine and hurriedly reloaded.

At that moment, Wild Wind, busy pulling the trigger and unleashing firepower, suddenly spoke.

"Is there a possibility?"

Fang Chang asked, "What are you trying to say?"

"The mimicry ability of mutated slime fungus, it’s not just mimicking individual drones but the entire swarm itself..." After a pause, Wild Wind continued, "In simple terms, what’s attacking us isn’t just a single package, but an entire delivery locker."

Night Ten was shocked.

"Holy crap! Don’t jinx it!"

"It’s not really a jinx, as long as we find the ’drone hive’ controlling these little guys, we should presumably be able to disorganize them..."

As Quit Smoking’s machine gun resumed firing, Wild Wind took out a drone tied with an IED from his backpack, preparing to control it to fly to the opposite building.

VM turned on.

Neural-interface device worn on the head.

However, just at that moment, Wild Wind’s expression suddenly stiffened.

Noticing the change in his expression, Night Ten quickly asked.

"What’s going on?"

Wild Wind, holding the headset tightly, glanced at the VM screen placed in front of him and said gravely.

"I can’t connect..."

This was bizarre.

There was supposed to be a little signal left!

"%￥#@!"

Night Ten cursed, knocking off the empty magazine from his rifle.

Now, no one could be relied on.

To survive, they had to go all out and shoot down all the drones in sight!

However, just then, a drone suddenly broke through the barrage of fire, passing through the broken wall on the side of the building and charging towards Night Ten.

A sudden alarm rose in his heart!

Night Ten reflexively released the magazine he was holding and drew a Ten-Husband Long Pistol from his gun belt.

However—

Even with an early warning of danger, his hand was ultimately still a step too slow.

The drone, covered in a dark red fungal carpet, crashed forward, and its tendrils shot out from under its body as fast as lightning, fiercely striking at his face.

Night Ten only managed to catch a glimpse of a shadow flashing before his consciousness plunged into boundless darkness.

A pale blue pop-up window appeared.

[Connection Lost]

At the same time, in another world.

Jiangcheng University, a boys’ dormitory, where a sudden scream erupted.

"Chuo!"

Hearing the noise from the bed, the guys sitting below playing PUBG were dumbfounded, even stopping their gunfire.

What’s going on?

The dorm room was dead silent.

Sun Gan turned his head to look at the bed behind him, about to ask what had happened when Ah Weh’s voice drifted from above.

"Sorry... just had a bit of an accident."

Ye Wei, sitting on the bed, stared at the helmet in his hands as his chest rose and fell slowly.

The three roommates exchanged looks.

Although they didn’t know what had happened, it was good that he was alright.

"Pfft... minor issue, nothing serious."

"We don’t mind, just take care of your health..."

"Seriously, playing an R18 game and shouting so loud, we can’t help but worry for you, buddy."

Ye Wei: "..."

Damn it!

These wretched things!

Ye Wei rolled his eyes and tossed the helmet beside his pillow.

He got up, supported himself on the ladder to get down from the bed, then went to the balcony to wash his face. Leaning on the railing, he pulled out his mobile phone and checked a small group chat.

"Anyone here?" he sent a message.

After a good while with no reply,

Ye Wei breathed a sigh of relief.

It looked like everyone else was fine, and he was the only one who had messed up.

However, the thought that he wouldn’t be able to log in for the next three days depressed him.

Good lord.

The withdrawal symptoms had already started!

Just as Ye Wei was about to close the QQ group and check the official website to see what new nonsense the developers had come up with, a message suddenly popped up in the group.

Ah Guang: "Yes, what happened?"

Surprised by the suddenly resurrected ID, Night Ten was shocked.

What the hell?

Dog plan!

"Brother Guang?!"

"You’re still alive??"

Realizing his way of asking might be a bit awkward, Ye Wei hurriedly deleted the message, quickly typing a follow-up underneath.

"Uh, I mean, you actually remembered your account password."

Ah Guang: "..."

Embarrassed, Ye Wei sent a dog emoji to ease the atmosphere.

But the ever magnanimous Brother Guang didn’t dwell on such trivialities and soon shifted the topic.

Ah Guang: "How’s the situation on your end? Did you encounter the enemy?"

Isn’t this knowingly asking?

However, rare as it was to chat with the developer, Ye Wei still replied honestly.

"Yeah, we just landed not long ago and immediately ran into Variants. The situation inside the West Third Ring is worse than we expected—ground, air, and underground... The complex traffic is like a maze. Paper maps and compasses were utterly useless, and in the end, we could only rely on VM and weak signals to determine our positions."

"And then there are Variants... Here, it’s not just Eaters, Crawlers, and Tyrants, but also lots of ancient machines active in this area."

Ah Guang: "Ancient machines?"

Ye Wei continued typing.

"It’s the Evolutionary bodies! Like the ones previously featured in the Tide expansion pack, covered in mucor, power armor, tanks, autonomous robots, etc... all sorts of peculiar things."

"Also, drones! We encountered a massive swarm on our way to the crash site, dense like locusts."

Ah Guang: "Can you explain in detail about those evolutionary bodies?"

After a few seconds, he added.

"I mainly want to understand the situation of the new map from the players’ perspective."

Although it felt a bit odd, Ye Wei didn’t think much of it. He continued to scratch his phone screen, sharing his experiences within the West Third Ring with Ah Guang in detail.

After a while, Ah Guang replied.

"Got it, roughly understand now."

After laying the groundwork for so long, Ye Wei immediately typed his next message.

"Brother Guang, isn’t the difficulty inside West Third Ring too high? Our gear can’t keep up, and it’s hard to proceed with just a few light weapons."

"Strongly suggest the weapon shop stocks up on power armor!"

Too many high-level monsters!

This level design is simply unreasonable!

However—

Ah Guang seemed not inclined to take his suggestion.

"I can’t do much about the difficulty level, the Game content is partially generated by the server itself and partially added by players, we are only responsible for maintaining server operations and handling violations... My condolences."

"I have some matters to attend to, so I’m logging off now, we’ll chat later."

The automatically generated Game content is still okay.

What sort of nurturing behavior is this?

Looking at the two messages on the screen, Ye Wei had a helpless expression on his face.

Whether he believed it or not, Ah Guang didn’t plan to continue explaining; after asking what he wanted, he ruthlessly went offline.

He was the only one left in the group.

Continuing to wait was pointless, so the lonely and bored Ye Wei sighed, closed the group chat window, and logged onto the forum.

The forum was bustling at this hour.

The speed of the messages flooding the gossip section was overwhelming; almost every refresh completely changed the posts on the homepage.

At that moment, Ye Wei suddenly noticed, to his surprise, that Ah Guang had stealthily posted a new announcement while he wasn’t looking?

Curious, he clicked to have a look and was stunned on the spot.

[Map Information Update: Qingquan City Center]

[Map Overview: The center area of Qingquan City has completely fallen under the erosion of the slime fungus, and a large amount of equipment from the Prosperity Epoch has been assimilated by the sub-entities of the "Mutated slime fungus," forming structurally unique evolutionary bodies...]

[Recommended Exploration Level: LV.25 and above]

[Map Tip 1: Collect evolutionary body remains and exchange them for high rewards at the scientific research group!]

[...]

The recommended exploration level and map tips were fine.

But that section in "Map Overview"...

Why does it look so familiar??

...

Waste World.

Dawn City Industrial Zone, near the Bachi Aluminium Factory train platform.

Workers were busily operating crane devices, loading large disassembled equipment onto cargo train pallets.

The New Alliance’s industrial zone was migrating northward.

This work would be conducted simultaneously with the construction of Dawn City.

Eventually, Dawn City’s industrial zone would transition to a light industry base primarily producing consumer goods.

Heavy industries, including steel, weapons, and heavy equipment production, would move to Dawn City in the north.

After listening to Little Fish’s explanation, Pai curiously asked,

"Why are you moving north?"

Little Fish said helplessly,

"Because we’re too close to our neighbors."

Pai delved deeper,

"Don’t you get along with them?"

Touching her chin, she thought for a moment before answering,

"Um... it’s hard to say whether it’s good or bad. According to Brother Chu, we’re too close to each other, and it’s dangerous for both."

Of course, there were also factors such as being closer to raw material sources and having a larger population up north, but explaining all that in detail was too complicated and Little Fish didn’t fully understand it herself, so she simply left it out.

"Alright."

Pai tentatively accepted this explanation and set aside this trivial matter for the time being, continuing her scavenging near the material pile area.

Watching her actions, Little Fish couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity,

"What are you looking for?"

"Some raw materials!"

"Raw materials?"

"Don’t worry about it, it won’t harm you guys!"

Watching Pai’s confident demeanor, Little Fish tilted her head in confusion, still very curious but ultimately refraining from asking further.

"Alright... can I help you?"

"Really? That would be great!" Pai’s eyes lit up as she gestured the size of a cup with her hands, "First, I need a bottle of crude oil, any type will do... about this much should be enough!"

To give that impolite fellow a serious lesson.

This was a necessary material!

"Crude, crude oil?" Little Fish hesitated, then asked softly, "Can it be biomass crude oil?"

Pai stroked her chin, thinking for a moment,

"Biomass crude oil... a bit tricky, but it will do!"

"Anyway, let’s get a bottle first and see!"

...

Elsewhere.

In the nursing home within Linghu Wetland Park, Southern Dawn City.

Having just gotten an update on the city center situation from Night Ten, Chu Guang was planning to continue working on the unfinished reform plan and the Beta0.3 version update.

However, as he stared at a new folder on the screen, considering what a suitable title would be, an unexpected phone call suddenly came through.

Seeing the communication request from "New Union’s Office in Stone City", Chu Guang paused his work and pressed the answer button.

Soon, Shu Yu’s voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Five minutes ago, someone from Stone City Hall visited me here."

People from the City Hall?

A hint of surprise appeared in Chu Guang’s eyes.

"What did they say?"

Shu Yu continued,

"Regarding trade and security issues..."

"The head of the City Hall would like to speak with you over the phone."

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