Fu Mingxu worked out regularly, so his combat ability was high. He also had strong mental resistance, able to ignore player control skills.
Add in attribute boosts from his Clown transformation, reinforcements that could arrive quickly, and all kinds of traps in the Park Director’s office—there was no way players could get out alive.
Yet with all these advantages, he had no chance to use them. After watching the surveillance for so long, the players hadn’t even figured out where the Ghost House was, let alone his office.
He knew that whenever a Copy was used for the first time, with no prior experience or guides, the player death rate would be high.
But this was way too fast! It wasn’t even time to return to the hotel, and only one in ten players were left.
“You’re the safety net,” Su Shisan comforted calmly. “If they could trigger the Copy’s safety net this quickly, wouldn’t that mean I’m useless?”
Even so, Fu Mingxu couldn’t help but sigh: “But their Copy-clearing progress is just too slow, and yet they’re dying so fast.”
But he actually understood the reason—the Copy designed by Su Shisan was just too novel. Many players probably died without even knowing how, or why they went insane for no reason.
His Builder had specifically sent him as an NPC to observe because of the novelty of Su Shisan’s Copy.
Their conversation was happening in the NPC Channel, so He Feixian could hear it too. After a pause, she spoke up:
“There are already players at the hotel. It’s a man and a woman, teamed up. They asked me if the hotel was absolutely safe. I answered honestly, just like you instructed, Boss.”
The so-called honesty was to tell them the hotel was currently safe. She didn’t mention that once someone brought in a balloon, the hotel would no longer be safe.
“Did they leave after registering?” Su Shisan asked, puzzled.
At this time, players shouldn’t be at the hotel unless they’d completed all activities except the Ghost House and Ferris Wheel. Why weren’t they hurrying to do their tasks? Why come to the hotel?
“They left after wandering around the hotel for a bit,” He Feixian replied, also puzzled. “Maybe they were scouting the area?”
That was possible, but Su Shisan felt something was off:
“Fu Mingxu, pull up the surveillance footage of those two and send it to me… Oh, by the way, has that NPC who turned into an employee always been in your line of sight?”
“Ah, no. After touring the Ghost House, he left. I kept watching him. After leaving, he went to an Energy Station, took a case of bottled water, then returned to the Ghost House.”
As he said this, he suddenly noticed something: “I just checked the footage—he seems to have interacted with those two players! Well, not really interacted; they just brushed past each other on a street.”
Because there was almost no interaction, Fu Mingxu hadn’t noticed before.
It seemed Jun Qian’s employer was among those two. According to what he said before, the person he wanted to protect was a Builder’s younger sister, so it was probably the woman.
But then again, maybe he said that on purpose to mislead her. It didn’t matter; with the Copy’s overwhelming advantage, she could simply crush any tricks:
“Keep watching that NPC. I’ll go meet those two.”
Guided by the surveillance, Su Shisan approached the two players.
They were currently doing the Pirate Ship task, and seemed in good spirits, clearly having eaten plenty of food and not suffering much contamination.
In this state, as long as they survived the Clown hunt at the hotel, they should have no problem reaching the Ghost House before midnight.
They were definitely suspicious. Su Shisan, holding a stick of cotton candy, pretended to accidentally bump into them.
The two reacted quickly and dodged, but just because they avoided her didn’t mean they could dodge the cotton candy she threw.
“Ah! Sorry, sorry!” Su Shisan feigned panic and bowed repeatedly, then quickly pulled out a tissue to wipe at both of them.
Such little Copy incidents would make any experienced player vigilant. With so many NPCs, all sorts of accidents could happen, but ignoring any of them was not something a professional player would do.
“That’s enough,” [Heart of Durian] firmly grabbed Su Shisan’s hand and pulled it away, then looked at her teammate and signaled with her eyes.
[Cheng Yu (Modern)] thought for a moment, quickly understood, and reached into his pocket to check his ticket. Finding it was still there, he nodded, signaling that everything was fine.
Seeing this, [Heart of Durian] released her grip and also checked her own ticket. It was there too: “Be careful next time. We’re leaving.”
She nodded at Su Shisan, then turned and left with her teammate.
Su Shisan watched them go, smiling as she opened her palm—there were two tickets right there!
Since the rules clearly stated tickets couldn’t be lost, and as someone destined to mess with the players, there was no way she’d pass up such a good rule—she’d even bought herself a temporary theft skill.
The skill wasn’t expensive; just 50 points for a God Thief Experience Card.
But the reason it was cheap was because of all the restrictions. First, you had to be very close to the target.
Second, there had to be physical contact for more than three seconds. And finally, it could only be used for one minute.
So many restrictions, but the effect was great. She swapped two real tickets from the players with two fake ones. In this Copy, tickets couldn’t be replaced, and without a ticket, you couldn’t clear the Copy.
If they didn’t realize their tickets had been switched and couldn’t snatch others’ tickets in time, the Copy was already a guaranteed failure for them.
Unfortunately, this item could only be used once per Copy, so she couldn’t steal all five tickets from the remaining players. If she could, that would be foolproof.
After all, when a player died, their ticket would automatically disappear, so no one else could pick it up. In other words, there were only five tickets left on the field.
If all five were taken, there would be no way for the players to clear the Copy.
Thinking about it, Su Shisan had a new idea:
“Feixian, if those remaining three players come to the hotel, see if you can trick their tickets from them. Don’t you have a few fake tickets too? Mark them in advance according to the surveillance, so it’ll be easier to swap them.”
The two tickets she just handed out were already marked in advance—she’d checked the original tickets’ marks via surveillance, and then forged identical fake ones.
“Alright, I’ll try,” He Feixian agreed readily, without any excuses.
She knew her competitiveness as an NPC was too low, while her boss’s potential seemed way too high. At this rate, her boss would definitely hire even more powerful NPCs in the future.
If she couldn’t prove her value, the resources allocated to her would just keep shrinking.
Maybe she wouldn’t be sold back to the Player Mall, but she’d definitely be marginalized. And that was something He Feixian, who had always been the center of attention, could not accept.
So she was determined to complete this task.
Seeing her agree, Su Shisan nodded and hung up. She didn’t have high expectations for the task she gave He Feixian—just taking a shot in the dark. Who knew, maybe it would work?
To keep the Continuous Teamwipe going, it was necessary to be cautious. But she needed to think more, since there was still an unexpected presence in this Copy.
Thinking of Jun Qian, Su Shisan couldn’t help but frown. Her mind told her clearly that he’d been way too quiet lately—totally unlike the impression she had of him.
In the last [Director Liu]’s Copy, even though she’d only interacted with Jun Qian for less than three hours, it was obvious he was someone who loved stirring up trouble and acted lively on the outside.
Now that his identity was exposed, there was no reason for Jun Qian to pretend to be quiet—she certainly wouldn’t believe it, and he would know that too.
Based on what she knew of Jun Qian, he couldn’t just sit still and let his employer handle the crisis. The only reason he’d been so idle was because he’d already finished all the preparations he needed in the early stages.
That confident? But what exactly did he do?
Su Shisan couldn’t help but furrow her brows again, massaging her temples in frustration.
It wasn’t that she thought too highly of him, but a freely moving S-Rank NPC was not something she could ignore. She hadn’t even qualified to meet an S-Rank Builder yet.
Recalling all his known actions, Su Shisan suddenly noticed something: “What was the point of that water?”
Earlier, Fu Mingxu had said Jun Qian took a case of water to the Ghost House. If he had taken a Human Doll, that would make sense—a Human Doll could ward off ghost interference.
Even if he didn’t know that, just looking at the price would hint at its importance.
Of course, if you didn’t pay, the doll would be useless. This was a restriction Su Shisan had set to prevent anyone who became an NPC from cheating for other players or themselves.
She hadn’t expected it would actually come into play.
But no matter its use, at least taking a doll made logical sense. Why take water?
In this Copy, water and food only restored San Value. There was no way Jun Qian planned to have a player drink water non-stop in the Ghost House to keep their San Value from dropping, right?
If that was really his plan, Su Shisan could only say he was overthinking it—there was no way she’d design such an obvious bug into the Copy.
Water and food had limited uses; you could only recover a set amount of San Value per day. Beyond that, eating more wouldn’t help. And if the balance wasn’t right, it could even cause waste.
Trying to keep up San Value by drinking water nonstop—unless Jun Qian was a fool or thought she was one, he wouldn’t expect such an unrealistic possibility.
“Did he do anything with the water?” Sensing something was wrong, Su Shisan called the Park Director monitoring the surveillance through her earpiece.
Fu Mingxu was watching Jun Qian, so he quickly replied: “No, that case of water is still sitting next to him. He seems to be catching up on sleep, hasn’t opened his eyes.”
He Feixian, also in the channel, asked curiously: “Boss, are you overestimating this guy? Do you know him?”
“He’s an S-Rank NPC,” Su Shisan replied concisely.
“Hiss—!”
“Hiss—!”
Two sharp intakes of breath came through her headphones.
“Let me know immediately if he does anything,” Su Shisan said no more and cut the channel, continuing to think.
For now, she couldn’t figure out what Jun Qian was planning, but she was definitely staying alert.
Wasn’t this always how it went in movies? The villain thought everything was foolproof, but then some early clue came back to bite them at the last moment.
Or the main cast suddenly had a flash of inspiration, and with the power of friendship and bonds, unraveled the plot and defeated the villain.
Either way, it would make her look pretty foolish to fall for a trap she already suspected was there.
If she were just a projection, it wouldn’t matter, but she herself was inside the Copy. As a seasoned screenwriter who now doubled as a director, Su Shisan believed she should be able to improvise based on the actors’ actions.
So, the question was: what method could she use to guarantee failure for the players and Jun Qian, no matter what they did in the end?
Sitting on a wooden bench by the roadside, Su Shisan searched her mind for a long time before finally coming up with an idea:
Since Jun Qian was the unstable factor that worried her, and she didn’t have a surefire way to stop him with her current power, she’d just have to leave the final killing blow somewhere he couldn’t reach.
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