"I'm just an ordinary person... This time, I really might die in here."
Lin Chuyi was on the verge of breaking down. When he glanced at Ye Shu and the others, the resentment in his eyes only grew. His ability—nothing more than a paltry bit of mind reading—hardly compared to the powers of the usual espers.
Lin Chuyi, in a fit of rage, let out a short burst of anger.
"Well, aren't we in now? Shouldn't you be thanking me for that?" Ye Shu regarded Lin Chuyi with a calm indifference, showing not even a hint of embarrassment.
"You can thank your whole family instead," he snapped.
The man's eyes were practically spitting fire.
"No need."
"Still, we're in without even buying a ticket," Ye Shu continued, utterly unfazed by being locked in the lab, as relaxed as if she were strolling through her own backyard.
Lin Chuyi could only stare, aghast.
No tickets, but it could cost us our lives!!
Her way of thinking was alien—how could she not realize the implications of being captured here? Did she really believe the inhabitants of this game world were philanthropists?
"Wait a minute... Why are you fine? We... all of us..."
Before entering the Ark, everyone had been injected with some kind of drug—so why was this woman unaffected?
"Just a bit of knockout gas. The shop sells fakes, you know?"
Lin Chuyi fell silent. The shop's tools were outrageously expensive. He could barely survive in the real world, scraping together just enough points to purchase a resurrection card. Never did he imagine the survival game would invade reality. For the sake of staying alive, he had to buy special food just to keep his HP up.
"So this is how we ended up here—it's completely different from what I imagined."
Su Bai mumbled, rising calmly to her feet and casting the occasional glance at the specimens lining the lab.
"You're all right?"
"Of course. Uncle, you should worry more about yourself. Shushu and I will be out of here soon enough. The lab experiments on living people. As for their eagerness to catch players like us—if I had to guess, I’d say... their supply of lab rats ran dry, and now they need new ones.
She recalled Shushu mentioning that this man’s ability was mind reading, wasn’t it?
Such special abilities were rare in the survival game world.
Wasn’t it supposed to be mind reading? He should be able to hear what she’s thinking, right?
The man suddenly said he’d already guessed her next move.
Su Bai smiled—a brilliant, sunflower-bright smile that somehow sent an icy chill down everyone’s spine.
Lin Chuyi stiffened.
It was clear; he heard Su Bai’s thoughts.
She genuinely wanted him gone...
A wave of heat seemed to brush his cheek. Lin Chuyi suddenly began to babble, desperately pleading, "Heroine, I don't mean anything bad... I just wanted to be friends—why else would I reveal my power? Right?"
"Fine, I admit it. I noticed you were an esper—I just wanted to find strength in numbers..."
His tearful confession was cut short by a sudden yowling from a little black cat, which darted out and meowed anxiously at Ye Shu and Su Bai.
Where did this cat come from? Was it her pet?
"Are we going or not? Someone’ll be here any second—Pang Pangzi's already made it out." Ye Shu gave Su Bai a sideways glance, then jabbed a syringe of antidote into Lin Chuyi’s arm.
In no time at all, the two women slipped away from his sight.
"Beep—beep—beep—beep—"
An alarm blared overhead.
Lin Chuyi cursed under his breath.
Even after awakening the gift of mind reading, here he was—played like a fool by two girls who looked barely out of their teens.
Su Bai's power was formidable.
A twenty-year-old esper of the third level in fire abilities was a rarity.
Not to mention, this girl had cleared at least five games; she ranked among the elite players.
As for him, aside from mind reading, his first card draw had granted him the ability to identify espers through an identification screen. He could see people's stats—chat, toolbars, attributes—at will.
Only Su Bai's companion, Ye Shu, remained a mysterious blank.
His original plan had been to win them over slowly. Yet against all reason, he’d gone and blurted out his own ability.
"A new batch just escaped from the lab!"
"There are still some the boss wants—do not let them get away!"
"Seal all exits. Find them—no matter what!"
Even through a closed door, he could hear the furious shouts and the frantic pounding of footsteps.
The antidote worked quickly—within minutes, Lin Chuyi regained seventy percent of his stamina. He scrambled to his feet and crawled into the ventilation shaft.
If he'd survived the hell of the survival game, it wasn't because of fancy tricks.
……
Ye Shu and Su Bai, clad in invisibility cloaks, swaggered right past the crowds.
Once the trio regrouped, they used game items to weather several quiet days on the Ark.
The twentieth day of the game.
The temperature had plummeted to minus eighty degrees, starting two days prior.
From above, the planet looked wrapped in deathly white, devoid of any sign of life. Yet inside the Ark’s hold, the temperature stayed temperate—no need for even a cotton coat.
The search parties soon began to withdraw, one by one.
When the Ark took to the sky, Ye Shu once again heard that familiar, mechanical voice.
[Ding! Congratulations, player Ye Shu, on completing your survival quest.]