Chapter 863: Friendship Lasts Forever

[Dungeon Task: Obtain friendship.]

[Dungeon Duration: Seven days.]

[Note: Only pure friendship can be called friendship.]

After reading the contents on the game panel, Xu Huo observed the situation inside the carriage.

Besides him, the female player who had come on the same carriage and Xiao Xianglin were also there, one in front and one behind.

However, there were still three more carriages behind them. The exteriors of those vehicles had special coloring, making it impossible to see inside from the outside, but like this carriage, they were all full.

Xu Huo's gaze swept across the carriage. Aside from players, there were also some people who were clearly ordinary civilians. Unlike the players, these people looked nervous, their expressions mixed with fear and worry. Three or four of them even had panic-stricken eyes, constantly wiping away tears.

The woman beside him was crying.

He held out a handkerchief and said, "Are you alright?"

The woman covered her mouth and shook her head, refusing to take it.

Xu Huo didn't insist. He took out a bottle of water and placed it on the small table in front of her before leaning back against his seat to rest.

Up ahead, Xiao Xianglin was asking the other passengers about the situation. Someone told him that they were going to participate in a reality show, and as long as they passed the show, they could become residents of Sea World, openly receive resource benefits, and never worry about being expelled.

"Is it really that good?" Xiao Xianglin didn't believe it. "Then wouldn't everyone want to go?"

"You think just anyone can sign up?" The person speaking looked smug. "Ordinary people need connections just to get a spot."

Player dungeons definitely wouldn't be easy to clear. For ordinary people, it would only be more dangerous. He hadn't expected that there would actually be people in Sea World who would voluntarily sign up to participate.

"You're a player, right?" The person said to Xiao Xianglin again: "To be honest, this show is a bit dangerous for you players."

Xiao Xianglin wanted to pry for more details, but the person refused to say anything more, building suspense: "You'll know when you get there."

Just from looking at the game task, one could tell this dungeon's difficulty wasn't low. Previous dungeons' tasks tended to be concrete and basically had nothing to do with other people, but this dungeon's task was to "obtain friendship." Friendship could only be directed at others.

Add in the dungeon's note, and it hit with the overwhelming sensation of a certain-death scenario.

"We will arrive at Friendship Garden in three hours." A broadcast announced inside the carriage.

Xu Huo felt the person beside him tremble, and then she suddenly stood up, rushed out of her seat, and shouted: "I'm not going! I want to get off!"

This was a driverless vehicle. There were mobile cameras at both the front and back of the carriage. Before the woman even stood up, two cameras had already swiftly moved to positions in front of and behind her. The woman had also shouted directly at the cameras.

But the person behind the cameras didn't respond to her. Instead, another long-haired woman sitting behind her came out and embraced her, persuading: "Xiaoxiao, don't make a scene. Once you're on the bus, you can't take it back."

The woman called Xiaoxiao hugged her back. "But I'm scared. I don't want to die..."

The long-haired woman held Xiaoxiao's face in her hands and comforted her: "Trust me. As long as we get through this, we can live good lives from now on!"

"What if we can't get through it..." Xiaoxiao choked on her words.

"If we can't get through it, we'll die together!" The long-haired woman said firmly. "I'll be with you, and you'll be with me!"

Xiaoxiao gradually calmed down. When the two walked back to their seats hand in hand, Xu Huo had already automatically moved to the back row.

"Thank you." The long-haired woman nodded at him, then sat down in front with her partner.

"Women and women, no wonder they can't survive and have to come to Sea World!" The man who had been talking to Xiao Xianglin earlier mocked. "If you ask me, people should do what they're supposed to do..."

"We're all here to take a gamble because we can't survive anymore," a man with a buzz cut interrupted him. "If you could survive, why would you get on this bus?"

The man in front stood up. "I'm not the same as you lot. I'm going to start a new life!"

The buzz-cut man scoffed. "Survive first, then talk!"

The man wanted to say more, but his companion beside him tugged at him. The man paused, then issued a threat: "I'd like to see how you die!"

No one spoke after that. Under the cameras, the closer they got to the destination, the more visibly nervous everyone in the carriage became. By the time the vehicle drove into a dark tunnel, two people in the carriage had burst into tears.

Three minutes later, the vehicle stopped. There was the sound of machinery operating outside, and then the entire carriage's shell was split into two halves. Blazing spotlight poured in, followed immediately by thunderous applause and shouting.

"The final batch of guests for this show has arrived, four fully loaded carriages, totaling one hundred and twenty people!" A voice came from above. The spotlight then moved away, and a person's projection appeared in the air. The figure wore a dazzling silver formal attire and politely nodded in greeting to everyone from above.

Xu Huo looked around and realized that the carriage had delivered him to a massive indoor plaza. The floor and the curved dome ceiling were both composed of silver cubes, and the cubes on the dome weren't merely for lighting. Some cubes had changing numbers floating on them. At a rough glance, there were at least a hundred such cubes.

The floor looked much simpler by comparison, with only a single enormous glass screen standing at the center.

As for the earlier cheers and applause, they seemed to have come from the dome, but there was no one outside the dome, so the show's audience wasn't near this plaza.

"So many people." Xiao Xianglin leaned toward Xu Huo.

Xu Huo nodded slightly. Besides the one hundred and twenty people who had just arrived, there were already at least two hundred people here. Old and young, men and women alike, and he noticed that some of them, like those in the carriage earlier, had come in pairs.

Clearly, these people had chosen their "friendship" targets from the very beginning. It was just unclear whether this dungeon would separate players from ordinary evolved people.

"I heard someone say earlier that this show seems to allow two-person cooperation." Xiao Xianglin smiled. "We rode the same carriage and entered the same dungeon. That's quite a deep connection. How about we team up?"

Xu Huo had also gathered some information from the fragmented discussions of the people around him, though what these people said wasn't very clear either. It was possible they themselves didn't know the inside story, but one thing was very clear, this game required two-person cooperation, and partners could be freely chosen.

But before he could agree, the host above began speaking:

"Today is Sea World's annual Friendship Day. As everyone knows, since the promulgation of the Friendship Law, this is already the twentieth Friendship Day. On this special occasion, coinciding with the Double Tenth Celebration, I am truly honored and especially thrilled to host today's 'You're Well, I'm Well'!"

"I believe the viewers watching the program are just like me, able to see that today's Friendship Garden has been specially renovated, and the number of participants has reached an unprecedented three hundred and eighty-one. To celebrate this special day and to let our viewers witness the birth of friendship, we have made some good-natured modifications to the rules of this 'You're Well, I'm Well'!"