Players, Please Board the Train-Chapter 186: Empty Elevator Shaft

After passing through this area, the front opened into a spacious office space measuring over fifty meters in both length and width. The place was already crowded with people, both players and ordinary civilians, numbering over a hundred.
"What is this place? How did I get here?"
"I don't know either! I was just walking normally on the street when suddenly this thick fog appeared, and when I opened my eyes again, I was here!"
"Could it be those players from other districts again? Are they going to kill us?"
"I don't want to die!!!"
"...I think this looks like those dungeons people talk about online..." someone said with a trembling voice. "Didn't people say that besides players, ordinary people like us can also get pulled into dungeons? And they're those random dungeons with extremely high death rates!"
"We're finished! We're done for..."
"Ah!!! There's a human head here!" a woman screamed, kicking out a skull.
The surrounding people scattered as if afraid of catching a virus, clearing a path through the middle.
The skull rolled toward the distant wall, bumping right into the rear of a small car.
"Why is there a car here?"
Zheng Liang, who had been thrown aside earlier, shook his head and climbed up, quickly walking to the car and pulling open the door to help Gu Yu out. Blood was streaming down her forehead.
Gu Yu had originally intended to leave the fog zone at full speed, so when the car crashed into the wall at close range, she had no time to react. Fortunately, although the front of the car was smashed in, she only suffered a cut on her forehead from the glass.
Just then, several other players who had entered with them also approached. The young man wearing the skull-print short-sleeve went to support Gu Yu. "Sister Gu Yu, are you okay? Do you need to drink some potion?"
Gu Yu shook her head and asked, "How many of our people made it in?"
Several more people gradually made their way through the crowd. All dozen or so players who had come out of the bar chasing Xu Huo were gathered here.
"Damn it, we got completely screwed by that bastard Xu this time!" a stubble-faced player said angrily while scanning the crowd. "Did that kid come in?"
"He must be here. Anyway, once you're in a dungeon, no one can escape. Let's beat him up first and see where he can run this time!" Zheng Liang looked around and, with sharp eyes, spotted Xu Huo standing at the back of the crowd. He pushed through the people and headed toward him, accompanied by the other players.
The others hastily backed away, instantly clearing the central area. Zheng Liang and the others surrounded Xu Huo, sneering, "Got the guts to run now!"
Xu Huo played with his lighter, glancing at Zheng Liang. "If I were you, I'd be thinking about my own situation first."
"Plenty of time to think after we beat you up!" Zheng Liang rolled up his sleeves.
"Click!" Xu Huo lit his lighter, and a table about three meters away from him suddenly burst into flames.
Zheng Liang jumped in fright, reflexively stepping back.
"This entire floor is within my arson range. I don't mind killing a few people before we solve this dungeon—just depends on who ends up dead."
The dozen or so players looked at each other. Most of them had no personal grudge against Xu Huo; they were just after the white bills. No one wanted to be the first to stick their neck out.
"What are you all doing!" Gu Yu pushed Zheng Liang. "Didn't you check the dungeon information before coming in? This is a D-grade dungeon with high risks. If we start killing each other right from the beginning, who can guarantee they'll survive until the end?"
"I've already checked—there's no danger here at all," the stubble-faced player said, cracking his knuckles. "The dungeon introduction just hints that there might be fierce mutated animals and plants here, right?"
"But look at this floor—you can see everything at a glance. Where would mutated animals come from?"
"The game description says this place has been abandoned for a long time. Maybe those animals starved to death long ago!"
"Brother Tie is right," another player with a mole at the corner of his mouth chimed in. "Besides, there are over ten of us, and this dungeon only requires ninety hours. Even if we encounter some mutated animals, can't we handle them with our numbers?"
Compared to the random dungeons that Gu Yu and other organization players had encountered before, the "Little Flower Red Red Building" dungeon provided a specific time limit instead of just "unlimited." So theoretically, they just needed to survive for ninety hours.
Compared to blindly seeking opportunities to solve the dungeon, passively defending for ninety hours seemed more reliable.
"But that's still no reason for us to fight among ourselves," Gu Yu paused before continuing. "Mutual destruction benefits no one."
"How would it be mutual destruction?" the stubble-faced player said. "We just need to beat him until he can't take care of himself."
His words made the other players restless. Just then, Xu Huo pointed toward the window shrouded in thick fog. "Do you know how high up we are?"
"Probably less than fifty meters," Gu Yu said, glancing back at the elevator not far away. All the elevators facing the office area were stopped at the fifteenth floor.
"If this were a normal building, that would be about right. But buildings in dungeons might be different."
Xu Huo lit a cigarette for himself. "Based on this floor's ceiling height, the fifteenth floor is at least close to a hundred meters up."
"The elevator doors won't open, all the window glass is broken, and there's blood everywhere. This doesn't look like people killing each other."
"The elevator doors won't open?" Zheng Liang was taken aback and quickly walked over to press the elevator buttons. After trying several elevators with no movement, he was about to force the doors open when the skull-print short-sleeve player quickly stopped him. "Don't! Can't you see the blood is coming from inside the elevator? The danger might be in there!"
"Let's test it and see," Xu Huo said, picking up a stapler and throwing it hard at the elevator door. After a loud "thump," what seemed like an echo came from behind the elevator.
Zheng Liang's expression changed. "Something's wrong. Behind the elevator... it seems empty."
Xu Huo listened carefully for a moment. "There shouldn't be anything alive in the elevator shaft, but we can't rule out mutated plants."
"So what?" the mole-faced player said. "At worst, we'll just stay on the fifteenth floor and not go down!"
"Are you stupid!" another bespectacled player slapped him. "Look at the glass fragments on this floor—they're all scattered inward into the room. That means the attack came from outside!"
"Something attacking from outside at a hundred meters high—think about what kind of thing that would be!"
This made the people near the windows panic and push inward toward the center.
"There are no stairs here. We'll need to use the elevators at some point during the next ninety hours," Xu Huo scanned the crowd. "If you don't want to fight, maybe we should first check if the elevators work."
Zheng Liang's anger had noticeably subsided. He gave a meaningful look to the stubble-faced player who still wanted to continue the fight. "Let's deal with this after we get out."
Brother Tie stroked his stubble and made a "tsk" sound. Despite his dissatisfaction, he walked over to the elevator and produced something like a thin iron sheet, inserting it into the door gap. Then he shook it left and right, and the tightly closed elevator doors opened to reveal a gap about two palms wide side by side.
He leaned his head in to look. "It's pitch black—can't see anything. Give me something for light."
The skull-print short-sleeve player beside him took out a lighting item. Just as he shone the light inside, a flesh-colored suction-cup-like object suddenly appeared in the dark elevator shaft, splitting open to grab Brother Tie's head!