242: Chapter 242 Gu Dadingliu walks the red carpet with his feet turned outwards!

The engine roared, and the vehicle lunged forward.

The first level had officially begun.

The scene shifted.

Back in the country, in the TikTok Global live broadcast room.

The broadcasting mechanism for this "Petroleum Championship" was extremely insane; apart from an official master control room with a god's-eye view, each of the nine hundred and thirty contestants had their own exclusive first-person live broadcast room. Viewers could switch between them at will or even open several small windows simultaneously to watch and compare.

Shen Jue was sprawled out on the leather sofa in his living room, a giant projector screen set up in front of him, holding a bucket of popcorn. He had started his own live stream, jokingly calling it "getting paid to watch the show," and was online eating melons with netizens.

By now, the number of viewers in his live broadcast room had already exceeded five million and was still skyrocketing.

However, the direction of the comments didn't follow the script Shen Jue had anticipated at all.

"Little Jue, look at Gu Zeyan! Then look at yourself!"

"You claim to lift weights in the gym every day, yet he placed second in the physical fitness test, and you didn't even make it into the top ten."

"Gu Zeyan went to bring glory to the country, while you can only sit here eating popcorn. You're just bad, one word."

"Retire from the internet, Shen the Simpleton, you can't even beat a talent show idol!"

The screen was filled with mockery.

Shen Jue sat up straight abruptly, spilling popcorn all over the floor. He grabbed the iced cola on the table and took a huge gulp, his face turning bright red. He pointed at the screen and ranted, "What do you guys know! That kid is a hellish overachiever! What kind of decent person goes to the equipment room to practice squats at three in the morning? I have strong yang energy and a regular schedule! I'm not comparing myself to a night owl like him!"

The comments didn't buy it at all.

"He's panicking, he's panicking, he's overheating."

"Is it that hard to admit others are excellent?"

"Stop talking nonsense, switch the camera quickly, we want to see the front-line battle situation!"

Shen Jue was so angry he slammed the cola can onto the coffee table.

"Fine! You want to see the battle situation, right? I'll show you what true hardcore survival is!"

He grabbed the remote and decisively entered the room number: 930.

Jiang Rumu's exclusive live broadcast room.

"Let me tell you, Sister Jiang is a ruthless person who broke the record for the female soldier weighted cross-country race. Watching her perspective is absolutely textbook-level tactical advancement..."

Before Shen Jue could finish speaking, the image on the large projector screen lit up.

There was no murderous, battle-ready atmosphere.

Jiang Rumu's first-person camera was locked tightly onto a broad back in front of her, with an extremely arrogant [001] printed on the left chest.

Li Li was leaning against the metal cabinet of the carriage, tossing a strawberry-flavored gummy candy with one hand.

"The shock absorption system in this carriage is too rough," Li Li's voice came from off-screen, sounding laid-back. "The design of the ventilation is also unreasonable. If someone throws tear gas in, everyone in this car will be down within ten seconds."

Jiang Rumu's camera didn't look at the vents at all; the frame was aimed straight at Li Li's side profile. As the carriage jolted, the lens precisely captured the canine tooth that appeared and disappeared as Li Li chewed the gummy.

Then, a hand reached into the frame—Jiang Rumu's hand.

Palm open, facing upward.

Li Li didn't even turn his head, naturally fishing another gummy out of his pocket, unwrapping it, and patting it into Jiang Rumu's palm.

He even used his thumb to brush a bit of dust off the back of her hand.

"Eat it, replenish some sugar."

Jiang Rumu popped the candy into her mouth, and the camera bobbed up and down twice.

Her cold yet clearly smiling voice came through the screen: "Strawberry flavor."

Shen Jue's live broadcast room fell into a deathly silence.

Three seconds later, the comments exploded.

"??????"

"Did I click into the wrong channel? Is this a special project for 'Travel Date'?"

"They are analyzing poison gas warfare, and you are looking at his canine tooth?!"

"Queen Jiang, where is your tactical literacy! Where is your cold, aloof persona! Can you move the camera away from Dean Li's collarbone!"

"I'm here to watch a battle royale! Not to be fed dog food!"

Shen Jue covered his face in agony, his teeth aching.

"What a sin... Why did I click on this room? Are these two treating this like a company-sponsored vacation!"

He couldn't take it anymore, grabbing the remote and frantically pressing the backspace key.

"I'm not watching, I'm not watching! Watching these two gives me a heart attack." Shen Jue's fingers tapped rapidly on the number keys. "Brothers, let's change the channel! I have to find a flaw in Gu Zeyan today! This kid usually acts all decent and proper in front of the camera, but when he gets to a real, cutthroat arena, he's bound to show his weakness!"

The screen flashed.

The image split in two.

On the left was the perspective of No. 113 Gu Zeyan, and on the right was the perspective of No. 154 Yin Ruoying.

The bus came to a stop.

The pitch-black door popped open outward.

The ghastly white light inside the carriage met the darkness outside.

Gu Zeyan was the first to stand up. He lowered his head, meticulously straightening the collar of his sportswear, and ran a hand through his hair, somehow managing to wear the prison-like uniform with the air of someone about to walk the red carpet.

He strode out of the carriage with his long legs.

Outside was an endless concrete tunnel.

The air was damp and cold, and a row of mercury lamps hung on the walls, emitting a buzzing electrical sound. Every three meters, there stood a gun-wielding NPC in red. The geometric patterns on their masks appeared eerie and oppressive in the dim light.

Gu Zeyan walked in the front.

His pace was steady, his back straight, and when passing an NPC in red, he even managed to slightly nod at the camera with ease, flashing his signature eight-tooth professional smile.

Shen Jue sneered in front of the screen: "Fake! Keep faking! This kid knows too well how to build a persona; he can walk through the underworld like he's at Paris Fashion Week."

"Shen Jue, you're just jealous! Our Yan-Yan is what they call calm even when Mount Tai collapses before him!"

"This psychological quality is amazing! Deservedly the second-place overachiever in physical fitness!"

"Too handsome! This aura completely crushes those contestants from small countries!"

Shen Jue didn't pay any attention to the comments. He tapped a few times on his tablet, bringing up a hidden data point provided by the tournament organizers—real-time heart rate. To increase the entertainment value, the organizers had synchronized the heart rate data from each contestant's watch and displayed it in the top right corner of the live broadcast room.

Shen Jue pointed at the string of red numbers in the top right corner of Gu Zeyan's screen and slapped his thigh, laughing wildly.

"Hahahaha! See for yourselves! This is what they call calm even when Mount Tai collapses before him?!"

[125] [132] [138]

"A normal person's heart rate while walking is at most eighty or ninety," Shen Jue laughed so hard he swayed back and forth. "This kid's heart rate is almost catching up to clubbing at a nightclub! And he's still keeping a straight face! Does he think that just because he's controlling his expression, we don't know his legs are jelly?"

In the screen on the right, Yin Ruoying was stepping in the sneakers provided to her, following Gu Zeyan unhurriedly.

As the queen of short dramas who had played the role of a vicious female antagonist for years, Yin Ruoying's psychological defenses had long been tempered to the hardness of steel during that battle at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

Not only was she not panicked, but she even had the leisure to observe her teammate in front. Her first-person camera precisely locked onto Gu Zeyan's back. In the frame, Gu Zeyan's shoulders were extremely tense, and the swinging amplitude of his arms was somewhat unnatural.

Yin Ruoying tapped her bright red nails against her pant leg and suddenly unmuted her mic. "Top Traffic Gu." Yin Ruoying's voice echoed in the empty tunnel, carrying undisguised mockery. "Don't shake your legs. People who don't know might think you stepped on an electric fence. Also, you're walking with a weird gait."

Gu Zeyan, walking in front, stiffened abruptly. His left hand and left leg were both suspended in mid-air. The situation was incredibly awkward for a moment.

He quickly adjusted his pace, turned his head with extreme stiffness, and squeezed out that standard professional smile at Yin Ruoying's camera again. "The ground is too slippery." Gu Zeyan's voice was very tight, the end of his sentence even wavering a bit. "And these soles are too hard, they're rubbing my feet. I'm just adapting to the grip of the shoes."

The heart rate in the top right corner soared directly to [145]. Shen Jue rolled on the sofa, laughing, and slapped the coffee table repeatedly.

"What the hell, 'adapting to the grip'! This excuse is even stiffer than me reciting lines! He's panicking, he's panicking!"

"Yin Ruoying's mouth is truly toxic! Directly attacking him to his face!"

"Gu Zeyan: I am strong my whole life, I will never admit I'm scared."

"A tough guy with a heart rate of 145! This contrast is amazing!"

As the contestants ventured deeper, a patch of blinding daylight appeared at the end of the tunnel. The heavy, all-metal door emitted a deafening mechanical roar as it slowly slid open to both sides. The intense light crashed in, instantly swallowing the chill inside the tunnel.

Gu Zeyan's chest heaved; he held his back straight and stepped out of the door.

The next second, Yin Ruoying's camera poked out of the door. Three billion viewers across the internet, including Shen Jue who had been laughing wildly, gasped in unison.

There were no flowers, no red carpet, and not even a starting line for a conventional race. What presented itself before everyone was a massive yellow earth pit, larger than three standard football fields put together. Surrounding it were concrete cliffs up to thirty meters high. There were no climbing points whatsoever.

At the top of the cliffs, rows of dark, automatic anesthetic gun barrels were densely packed. The sunlight hit the metal lacquer of the barrels, refracting a cold, murderous intent.

And at the far end, four hundred meters away, stood a twenty-meter-tall giant statue. It was a girl with twin tails wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt and an orange suspender skirt. The colors were so vibrant that she appeared extremely eerie in this gray-yellow pit.

"My goodness..." The popcorn bucket in Shen Jue's hands dropped completely to the floor.

This was the first level.

Squid Game: Red Light, Green Light.

The broadcast in the arena suddenly sounded. After the piercing sound of static, a Korean nursery rhyme that was cheerful to the point of being hair-raising played. "The Mugunghwa... has blossomed..."

Accompanied by the sound of mechanical gears grinding, the giant girl statue in the distance turned its huge head one hundred and eighty degrees. Its oversized, inorganic eyeballs, equipped with the most advanced motion-capture cameras, locked onto all nine hundred and thirty contestants in the arena without discrimination.

Silence.

A deathly silence.

Even Hunter from the American team, who was the most arrogant, stopped chewing his gum at this moment.

Yin Ruoying's camera was aimed steadily at Gu Zeyan. In the frame, Gu Zeyan still maintained that posture, standing as straight as a pine.

His chin was slightly raised, his hands hung naturally at his sides, and the jawline of his profile was perfectly taut. The styling was perfect.

But Shen Jue shifted his gaze, staring fixedly at the top right corner of the screen. Gu Zeyan's real-time heart rate monitor showed the numbers jumping frantically. [160] [168] [175]!