Cheng Feng usually didn’t rely on intuition. However, when unreliable intuitions kept popping up one after another, she felt that this side quest still had a long way to go.
While waiting for the reload, Shen Dan gritted her teeth and forced out each word. “In my entire life…”
Song Zheng continued for her, “I hate losing the most.”
Cheng Feng felt the same, but…
“Then why do you still enjoy manually operating the mech so much?”
Shen Dan said with righteous indignation, “I’m competing against myself!”
That made a lot of sense.
It really was a battle between two great minds.
The senior laughed a couple of times, easing the atmosphere slightly.
After the one-minute countdown ended, the team logged back in.
As the interface transitioned, everyone appeared inside an armored vehicle parked right at the hospital entrance.
Cheng Feng immediately checked the time.
9:41 a.m. Their mission had failed around 12:20 p.m.
That meant they still had about two and a half hours of investigation time left.
“So tight!” Song Zheng pushed open the car door and said with conviction, “I’m sure the other schools can’t do it either! San Yao played this one way too dirty!”
When the instructor saw the team start the second round, his heart sank, completely losing the ease he’d had at the beginning. He paced half a circle around the classroom with his arms crossed, his aura growing increasingly gloomy, suppressing everyone into silence.
Then he heard Song Zheng’s reminder. His eyebrows twitched slightly, as if something had occurred to him, and his expression brightened a little.
He pulled out his optical computer and secretly switched to the perspectives of several other military universities.
Sure enough, in this side quest, all teams had been completely wiped out.
The situation at the other military universities was even more tragic – they still had no idea what had actually happened, with multiple conflicting opinions and endless arguments in their team channels.
After reloading the save, they remained just as clueless, stuck doing useless searches in the hospital.
Judging by this trend, they wouldn’t just have a second round, but a third, a fourth -round after round without end.
He was fine now. He was healed.
The smile returned to the instructor’s face.
He found a few familiar names at the bottom of his contacts list, quickly composed a message, and hit send.
“Ah, this is so tough. Our batch of students just isn’t adapting to this type of side quest – they only found the virus lab after starting the second round. So annoying, actually failing once.”
The message showed as read, but the recipients didn’t reply.
Truly a bunch of narrow-minded people. The instructor coolly put away his optical computer. Unlike him, he always enthusiastically shared every beautiful moment of his life with everyone.
Jiang Linxia turned his head and whispered to the person beside him, “San Yao is so sneaky, this side quest is no joke.”
When they invited students for internal testing, San Yao had hinted that this side quest was moderately difficult.
Moderate, my ass. If it were truly moderate, they wouldn’t have set up a reload function at all.
Xiang Yunjian said, “Maybe to the data provider, this level of difficulty has been scaled down and counts as moderate.”
Jiang Linxia said, “Uh…”
The UFU team split into two groups again.
The younger members stayed by Cheng Feng’s side, waiting for her to figure things out. The sophomore seniors, on the other hand, rushed straight in to interrogate the medical staff who had remained at the hospital.
“How are we supposed to find the location of the virus research institute from here?” Shen Dan said thoughtfully. “After the power outage, all the data is inaccessible. Judging from the fact that the mission failed, our investigation method was probably wrong – that’s why we wasted so much time and still came up empty-handed.”
Cheng Feng nodded. “Maybe the power outage was the system’s hint, telling us not to try finding a needle in a haystack by searching for loopholes in the hospital’s massive database.”
Yet everyone’s attention remained fixated on the hospital.
Li Qing said in the team channel, “It’s no use. These NPCs refuse to disclose any information. No matter how we threaten them, they only answer, ‘I’m just an ordinary doctor.’ Good grief, if they hadn’t said that, I might have actually believed they were ordinary doctors!”
“Come down,” Cheng Feng said, turning to run in another direction. “We’ve all been mistaken.”
After all, full simulation was just a simulation – compared to the complex and redundant information interference of reality, it already significantly reduced the difficulty.
The very existence of many things was itself a hint.
Cheng Feng hadn’t played many games, so she didn’t have that kind of mindset and had subconsciously overlooked it.
“We need to go to the emergency department to get someone to authorize access to the ambulances.” When Cheng Feng was brimming with confidence, even her expression as she spoke was impeccably cool. “Something that doesn’t require restoring the hospital’s power to search and is related to location coordinates – the ambulance’s map navigation system.”
It suddenly dawned on everyone.
The senior slapped a fist into his palm. “Damn, how did we forget about that?”
Song Zheng, ever clear-headed, remarked, “It’s not that we forgot – it’s that it never even existed in our minds to begin with.”
The senior quickly grabbed an NPC, completed the authentication, and started the ambulance. Cheng Feng unhurriedly took off her gloves, settled into the spacious driver’s seat, and pulled up the control panel. Meanwhile, Shen Dan went to another vehicle to search through its records.
“Based on the locations and directions the infected patients came from, the search range is roughly from No. 16 to No. 72 on XX Street… Using this as the diameter to draw a circle…”
The ambulances’ trip logs could be stored for up to a year. Within the designated area, any location where vehicles had passed by multiple times and stopped was a suspicious target – after all, ordinary people don’t usually call for ambulances frequently.
The result was even smoother than Cheng Feng had anticipated.
She had initially worried that the hospital might have used other vehicles for transport or carefully deleted relevant records after each operation. But presumably, considering that they had no technical support and were all newcomers, San Yao had simply handed them the answer outright.
Several red dots on the map overlapped heavily in front of a tech company.
Song Zheng leaned in, observed Cheng Feng’s expression, and pointed at the screen. “Is it here?”
Cheng Feng nodded. Shen Dan added, “My search results point to the same place.”
The senior perked up instantly and called out, “Then let’s move! We only have two and a half hours!”
As they got back into the armored vehicle, everyone’s mindset was completely different from before. Driving along the road, the driver even found himself humming unconsciously.
After a couple of lines, he suddenly stopped and reflected solemnly, “We shouldn’t be like this!”
“Right,” Cheng Feng agreed. “You sing terribly.”
The driver was displeased and shot her a couple of glances through the rearview mirror. “That’s pure slander. My vocals are top-tier across low, mid, and high ranges – what do you mean, terrible?”
Cheng Feng responded flatly, “Hah.”
The vehicle executed a cool drift and came to a stop right in front the coordinates, perfectly aligned within the parking space lines.
The company’s main gate was locked. As a law-abiding citizen, the driver turned off the engine, got out, walked up to the door, and gave it a push. It didn’t budge.
“Blow it open,” Cheng Feng said. “Even if someone’s inside, they’re not going to willingly open the door for us.”
One of the seniors pulled a grenade out of his bag. Cheng Feng helped him pick a suitable spot based on its blast radius, and they shielded the sides with blast-resistant metal plates.
After a loud bang, a hole was blown through the entrance.
The building was fairly well-constructed; despite the impact, the structure remained steady. The hole was also on the smaller side, suggesting the place had been specially reinforced.
“I’ll take point.”
The senior raised his gun and headed inside without hesitation.
The interior was pitch black, the curtains tightly drawn, allowing only faint slivers of light to seep through. It was so quiet there wasn’t a single sound of human presence.
He remained on alert for a while, but the detection scanner showed no signs of danger. Assuming the situation was similar to the hospital, he reached around to his lower back for a high-powered flashlight to illuminate the area.
The moment Cheng Feng saw his posture, she knew he had let his guard down. Before she could warn him, two faint red dots glowed in the depths of the room.
The sight was all too familiar – those who saw it reacted instantly.
The senior dove to the side, but he couldn’t outrun the speed of gunfire. Taking the opportunity, Cheng Feng and another team member beside her raised their weapons and fired back.
After a few short bursts of gunfire, the air fell silent once more.
They waited patiently for a moment longer, then advanced cautiously in small increments. Only after confirming there was no second wave of ambushes did they straighten up.
Lying on the ground were two illegally modified security robots, crude in design, clearly meant only for guarding the entrance.
The group gathered around the prone “body” on the floor and let out a long sigh.
How could kids these days be so sharp?
Would a place storing important data or vaccine-related materials really have no security? Wasn’t the military unit that intercepted them on the road obvious enough?
Someone – they weren’t sure who – let out a whistle, breaking the tense atmosphere and shifting it toward the absurd.
One of the seniors said gleefully, “What do you say – should we do the honors and give him a proper burial?”
Cheng Feng replied flatly, “If we have time.”
Li Qing looked at the person on the ground and said with full hypocrisy, “Come on now, this is a full simulation, and the seniors and instructors are watching. We should stick to the real process, otherwise the haters will come after us.”
“Are you kidding? Me, afraid of haters?!” Song Zheng declared loudly and fearlessly. “From the day I became a military cadet, dealing with haters became my side job!”
The seniors were deeply gratified and patted him on the shoulder in approval. “Young man, you’ve got the right mindset!”
Li Qing tilted his chin toward the guy who first made the suggestion and said, “Then how about you start us off with a cry?”
The guy tried to work up some emotion for a moment, but in the end, he couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing. “Hahahaha, sorry, but I really can’t cry!”
Although the senior had “died,” he hadn’t logged out yet. Listening to this group laughing wildly right in front of him, he pressed exit with immense heartache.
A moment later, feeling unwilling to let it go, he switched to spectator mode to watch from above.
Who knows, maybe there’d be a third round? These guys deserved it!
“Learn from the fallen.” Cheng Feng raised her hand in a crisp, standard salute, then turned around expressionlessly. “Everyone stay sharp – things ahead might get even more dangerous.”
