Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 726: The Second Batch of Players

Chapter 726: Chapter 726: The Second Batch of Players

"The weather is indeed a bit odd; it feels like the sun came out shortly after it wasn’t there," Long Aotian also took off his clothes, revealing a vest and the black number on his back. He didn’t care at all about others seeing his number; in fact, he conspicuously showed off his modified tattoo.

"Although the number can’t be tattooed, the area around it can. What do you think of my fierce beast emerging from its cage?"

Most people didn’t care about his tattoo; only Jie Ling looked at it curiously for a moment and said, "I wanted to get a tattoo before, but my boyfriend was against it, so I didn’t."

"Girl, that’s not good. You shouldn’t give up on what you want to do for a partner." Long Aotian took a sip of water. "If my girlfriend didn’t allow it, I’d definitely break up with her."

"It’s all the same whether we break up or not, since he’s already dead," Jie Ling said with little concern.

"That’s rather harsh," Long Aotian said with a meaningful tone.

"It wasn’t me," Jie Ling quickly explained, "Kill someone over a tattoo? I’m not that insane. He got himself killed by showing off after evolving."

"Cool!" Long Aotian gave a thumbs up.

Jie Ling bashfully smiled and glanced at the time, "It’s already noon."

Indeed, they had left the Wax Figure Gallery at dawn when it was only six in the morning. Meeting up with others, resting, and now heading to the Human Model Tower shouldn’t take six hours.

"Could our perception be off?" The middle-aged man quickly checked the game panel, "The time on the watch and the game’s instance time match up."

Their watches were often adjusted according to game time after they arrived at the instance, so a match between the two indicated no problems.

Moreover, many shops in Museum City, as well as some public resting places, had timers, and the time on those timers matched theirs as well.

"Could we be too fatigued?" Xu Ruosi said: "It’s impossible that even the game system time is wrong."

If the time was correct, then they were all experiencing a collective perception issue.

Xu Huo looked at his short shadow below and then suddenly turned towards the entrance of Museum City.

A moment later, the long-haired individual said, "Someone’s coming, and there’s quite a number of them!"

By then, most of those present had noticed the same, exchanged looks, and immediately sensed trouble. They quickly hid in a shop nearby.

Xu Huo chose a small two-story dessert shop next door. He silently went upstairs and picked an appropriate spot to observe the direction of the main entrance.

The doors of Museum City were pushed open from the outside, and a group of about a dozen players filed in. Like them the day before, these people didn’t rush around after arriving but gathered to observe the overall structure of Museum City.

"Why are so many players arriving again?" Long Aotian, who followed Xu Huo, only spoke after taking out a Silencer Prop.

"Have you ever encountered instances where players are split up into different batches before?" Xu Huo asked without looking back.

"Apart from random instances, aren’t fixed instances only opened once?" Long Aotian was puzzled too, "If there’s a sequence, everyone’s instance progress is different, and everyone would suffer a loss. The game wouldn’t play out like that."

"Fixed instances, fixed modes, are only in a general sense; it never said it’s absolutely impossible," Xu Huo mumbled to himself. Sifang Palace was an example, but Shared Vision was a survival instance, so the situation was different.

The "1/6" on the game panel hadn’t changed; they indeed had reached one-sixth of the task progress. At this rate, any new players coming in would lag behind in progress, and there’s also a chance of being ambushed by players who arrived earlier. Likewise, if the earlier players were injured, the newcomers would pose a threat... Could the Museum City instance operate in this manner?

If new players kept entering every day, wouldn’t this instance never close?

Considering the size of Museum City, the number of just ten or twenty players seemed small. If new people arrived daily, in the long run, Museum City might indeed turn into a bustling game city.

"But since we came first, we have the upper hand, right?" Long Aotian added.

Xu Huo thought of the two fresh corpses in the Wax Figure Gallery. Did they arrive early on the same day, or had they come the previous day?

"Should we meet up with these people?" Long Aotian asked, "Energy is limited, and the chances of clearing the game are bigger with cooperation with others."

Indeed, although cooperating with players came with certain risks, the mortality rate of this instance was too high. With so many galleries still unknown, and uncertainty about which of the remaining five were part of their progress bar, they needed to consider cooperation overall.

"We’ll talk about it later," Xu Huo moved away from the window, descended the stairs, and quickly checked another shop nearby.

"What are you looking for? Just say it, and I can help," Long Aotian said hastily.

"A date," Xu Huo said. "Besides the time-telling clocks, there seems to be no calendar in Museum City."

Neither paper nor electronic.

"Is the calendar that important?" Long Aotian didn’t understand, "Can’t we just look at the date on the game panel?"

The date on the game panel was perfectly normal.

Xu Huo couldn’t articulate any specific misgivings, but driven by intuition, he searched from one shop to another.

The group of players who had just arrived had moved towards the crossroads. Jie Ling and others came back to meet up with Xu Huo, and after hearing about searching for a calendar, Xu Ruosi said, "I have a time-display prop."

She took out what looked like a paper calendar, with dates on the front of the grid paper and time on the back.

"Each game zone’s year, month, and day numbers are not the same. Generally, devices like our own watches could adjust the time, but the year, month, and day calculations in the zones are more complex. Rarely would clocks or timers include this function."

"This prop can automatically adjust the date and time based on the Wormhole Points and location in the zone."

As she said this, she pressed the button on top of the prop and the time digits on the paper quickly began to change, soon halting at twelve fifty-three.

"The time matches."

Next was the date.

The year and month in front, as well as the game panel, all matched up, but when it came to the specific day, the numbers on the prop differed from the game panel.

The group fell silent for a moment. Long Aotian said, "Maybe your prop is broken?"

"Impossible," Xu Ruosi pressed the button again, and it still showed the same number. After trying twice more, she had to admit, "The prop’s date is one day earlier than the game time, so maybe the prop really has an issue."

"Is it really the prop that has an issue?" Jie Ling turned to ask Xu Huo.

Xu Huo shook his head, "I’m not sure; let’s head to the Human Model Tower first."

Though he seemed composed, his mood had certainly taken a turn for the worse.

An entire day’s discrepancy doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, especially when it comes to time. Although "time" is a concept invented by human beings, the game operates under time rules, and the time provided by the game panel can’t be wrong, so the problem must be with Museum City.