At the time, Yan Ao had thought it was just a prank and casually picked the first option. As for Tan Qingya and the others, they should have received the choices as well, but their picks had not been the same.
Those who chose to participate in the game and become the gods' toys survived. As for those who chose to die, naturally, they perished.
Thinking of this, Yan Ao couldn't help feeling a lingering sense of fear. If he had chosen the latter back then, would he have ended up like Tan Qingya and the others, dying on the spot with his head blown apart?
"Although I used to not believe that gods exist in this world, judging from our experiences yesterday, there are still some unknown things in this world, and it... seems to be the source of this disaster," Ma Xingyou said with a solemn expression.
"If I find out who is manipulating all this behind the scenes, I'm going to beat them to a pulp," Mo Dongqiang roared in a rough voice. At the same time, his eyes were bloodshot—it was clear that he had experienced the pain of losing loved ones yesterday.
"We all hope to find the mastermind, but unfortunately, based on our current clues, it's too difficult," Ma Xingyou sighed.
"Brother Ma, is there really no way for us to contact other people besides the phone?" Yan Ao thought for a moment and asked again.
Ma Xingyou shook his head directly. "The phones simply don't work, as I'm sure you know. As for other methods, like radio equipment, Ziyu and I used them long before leaving the hospital."
"And the result?" Yan Ao asked nervously.
"Just like the phones, there's zero signal at all. It feels as if we're trapped in an isolated space where any signal we send out just sinks to the bottom of the sea like a stone," Yan Ziyu took over the conversation with a wry smile.
Hearing this answer, a trace of disappointment showed on Yan Ao's face. He raised his head slightly, his gaze falling upon the blue sky above. The clear sky looked so charming, bathed in bright sunshine with an occasional gentle breeze drifting past—it was utterly impossible to imagine that this was no longer the world he used to know.
Where on earth had things gone wrong? The question had just flashed through Yan Ao's mind when Ouyang Zhi's lazy voice drifted into his ears: "Time's almost up, we'd better get on the bus quickly."
Get on the bus? Yan Ao looked over in confusion. Not far away, a bus was parked by the side of the road at a bus stop, next to which stood a friendly reminder sign bearing shocking bloody characters:
○: Board Bus No. 44.
X: Stay put and wait for death.
Reminder: Please make your choice within 4 hours and 44 minutes. Exceeding the time limit will be regarded as abstaining, and those who abstain shall die.
The nightmare was continuing after all...
Yan Ao was dumbfounded, and after a long while, he asked, "When did this option appear?"
Ma Xingyou gave a bitter smile. "Just last night shortly after we arrived here. We ran into these options right as we got out of the ambulance. At first, we even discussed whether we should flee this bus stop immediately, but after considering the consequences of ignoring these options, we decided to stay."
The consequence of ignoring the options was getting your head blown apart on the spot. Hearing this, Yan Ao wore an understanding expression, then muttered with some worry: "Does this mean these Death Options are going to keep going even after leaving the shopping mall?"
For a moment, Yan Ao felt somewhat lost.
At this point, Ma Xingyou and the others, who had been sitting there, stood up one after another.
"The options on that sign by the station appeared last night. Although we had a little over four hours, there's less than an hour left now, so we'd better make our choice quickly," Ma Xingyou reminded them.
"Pick—which one do we pick?" Mo Dongqiang asked.
"Nonsense, of course we pick '○'. Do we have any other choice?" Xie Renjie said expressionlessly.
"I'm going first," Ouyang Zhi dropped those words and walked toward the bus ahead of the others.
This bus looked no different from an ordinary bus. Yan Ao walked up with the rest of them and casually found a seat.
He had expected something bad to happen after getting on the bus, and his mood was quite tense. Unexpectedly, however, after all of them sat down, nothing else happened.
"Just like that?" Ma Xingyou wore a peculiar expression. After thinking for a moment, he stood up and walked toward the bus door, only to quickly discover that although the bus door wasn't closed, an invisible "wall" had appeared to block the exit.
This situation was identical to when Yan Ao had been trapped in the shopping mall. Yan Ao said in surprise, "Are we trapped again?"
"It seems so..." Ma Xingyou nodded with a wry smile.
"Damn it." Ouyang Zhi refused to accept it and kicked out, actually striking an invisible wall and producing a muffled "thud."
Yan Ao couldn't sit still either. He stood up and cast his gaze toward the bus window next to him. After a long moment, he picked up an emergency hammer from beside the window, raised it according to the instructions, and struck the window glass.
Logically speaking, bus windows are specially treated, and their four corners—about 5 centimeters away from the window frame—are very vulnerable and will shatter when struck hard with an emergency hammer. Yet, though Yan Ao struck it hard a few times, not a single crack appeared.
"How is it? Does it work?" Yan Ziyu saw what Yan Ao was trying to do and hurriedly asked.
Yan Ao struck it a dozen more times with all his might, and finally put down the emergency hammer, saying, "No good. It's completely sealed off by some kind of force; we can't smash this window."
"Damn it, we've been tricked again." Ouyang Zhi failed to kick through that invisible "wall" on his side as well. Returning empty-handed, he cursed as he sat back down.
"Save your energy and see if there are any other options coming up," Ma Xingyou said calmly to everyone, having already been through a disaster brought by a Death Option once and thus taking things much more lightly.
Suddenly trapped, the atmosphere inside the bus instantly turned heavy. Except for Ouyang Zhi, who was still swearing over there, everyone else quieted down, though their complexions didn't look too good. Yan Ao sat there numbly as well, scenes from the shopping mall flashing through his mind from time to time, the tragic sights of Lan Zhijie and the others dying still vivid in his memory.
Amidst this atmosphere, time ticked away bit by bit. Without realizing it, about twenty minutes later, a group of people suddenly walked up from afar.
Ever since they were trapped in the bus, Yan Ao and the others seemed to have been isolated; that group outside didn't seem able to see the people inside the bus either, and when Ma Xingyou tried talking to them, the others completely ignored him.
A few minutes later, that group also noticed the bloody characters on the sign next to the bus. The outcome was the same, of course; faced with a choice between two options, they also chose to board the bus.
"There are actually people here already?" As soon as that group came aboard and saw Yan Ao and the others already sitting inside, they froze in shock. Encountering each other unexpectedly, they stared blankly for a moment, unsure of what to say.
"Hello, I am Ma Xingyou. May I ask if you guys came out of Hengzhou City?" In the end, Ma Xingyou broke the silence, speaking to the person leading the other group.
That group consisted of both men and women, numbering eight in total—more than Yan Ao's side. Their leader was a middle-aged man with honest features, wearing glasses and a white collared shirt.
The other man looked Ma Xingyou up and down, then said in a deep voice, "We did indeed escape from Hengzhou City... Let me ask, have you guys seen those options?"