246: Chapter 246 Someone's Map Bug Gone Wild!

Shen Jue was pressed against the projection screen, wishing he could crawl into the pixels to pick out the people.

On the screen, Number 001's exclusive livestream was pitch black.

It wasn't that the signal was cut.

It was that the lens had been smeared with a glob of black mud, and not even a sliver of light could get through.

The red numbers in the top right corner were still ticking away peacefully.

[60].

[59].

The chat flooded with question marks.

[Is Dean Li hibernating on the spot?]

[What the hell, 59! This heart rate is steadier than mine when I'm lying in bed scrolling through my phone!]

[The NPC didn't shoot, which means he's alive and hasn't broken any rules. But what the hell is this invisibility technique?]

The camera cut back to Number 930.

Jiang Rumu stood firmly on the yellow earth, not even a single strand of hair out of place.

She didn't look back at all.

She didn't even glance at the mud pit behind her.

Li Li had said, "Don't worry about me, keep moving forward."

She was following that through to the end.

Her style was blind trust and extreme ruthlessness.

"The Hibiscus… has bloomed…"

The nursery rhyme rang out across the arena once again.

Jiang Rumu strode forward, diving headlong into the mist zone fifty meters ahead.

Pale yellow mist mixed with white dry ice sprayed out.

The temperature plummeted.

Jiang Rumu remained clean; the dry ice hit her sportswear, and aside from the cold, it caused no hindrance.

She brushed the water droplets off her shoulder with a look of distaste, her pace not slowing.

On the screen to the right, Marcus of Team USA had just pulled his leg out of the mud pit.

This human tyrannosaurus had literally become a Terracotta Warrior.

Covered in thick black mud, every step he took slammed a mud pit into the ground.

He rushed into the mist zone.

The high-energy solidifying agent encountered the low temperature of the dry ice, instantly triggering a chemical reaction with the clay.

As soon as Marcus stepped out with his right leg, the mud hardened instantly.

"Fuck!" Marcus violently clawed at the mud on his thigh.

The more he picked at it, the harder it got.

The mud clumps stuck to the fabric and his body hair; this attempt to pick it off ripped out a patch of leg hair.

The pain made him grimace on the spot.

His teammate Sarah, who had just crawled out of the mud pit behind him, shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Don't move! Wait until it's completely dry before you break it off! If you pick at it now, you'll tear your skin off!"

Marcus froze in place.

Beside him, Ivan from Russia was even worse off.

This guy was huge and had the most mud on him.

Now, he was frozen into an irregular cement block, able to move forward like a penguin only by relying on the tiny range of motion in his calves.

The entire internet was laughing hysterically.

[Hahahaha! What kind of battle royale is this? It's a Terracotta Warrior assembly line!]

[Marcus: I came to win the championship. Competition Committee: No, you came to be a sculpture.]

[The solidifying agent is too diabolical! No wonder Li Li refused to touch the mud earlier!]

Looking at Number 113, Gu Zeyan.

This top-tier idol couldn't even force a professional smile now.

A moment ago, to avoid being trampled by the large group, he was forced to jump into the mud pit.

As a result, North Korean contestant Kim Chol and South Korean contestant Park Ji-hoon were fighting nearby and used him as a stepping stone.

Half of Gu Zeyan's body was trampled into the sludge.

After finally crawling out, the tuft of carefully styled Korean-style hair on his head had turned into a hard, black hedgehog style.

As soon as he walked into the mist zone, the solidifying agent taught him a lesson.

His pant legs turned into sheet metal.

Gu Zeyan tried to maintain his dignity, forcing himself to move forward with a splayed gait.

As a result, his foot slipped, and he fell face-first into the yellow earth in a standard dog-eating-mud pose.

The heart rate in the top right corner went off the charts.

[198]!

Shen Jue pounded the sofa in laughter in the livestream room.

"Gu the top-tier idol's look is amazing! Tomorrow's Weibo trending search is set: #Gu Zeyan, the escaped Terracotta Warrior artifact#!"

"With this heart rate, he's about to ascend to heaven on the spot!"

In comparison, Jiang Rumu was practically taking a stroll.

She nimbly wove between the water pipes.

One hundred fifty meters.

One hundred eighty meters.

Out of the nine hundred thirty people in the arena, except for the three hundred or so eliminated in the first stage, the rest were stuck in the mud pit and mist zone like turtles.

Only she was leaving everyone else in the dust.

Just as the global audience was frantically taking screenshots of Jiang Rumu's back.

In the director's panoramic god's-eye view, a violent black shadow suddenly burst in.

At the edge of the thirty-meter sheer cliff on the far right of the deep pit.

A silhouette that was completely unrecognizable as human was racing wildly along the base of the wall.

Covered in black mud from head to toe, even his number tag couldn't be found.

He looked just like Venom from Marvel.

This mud-man's speed was absurd.

His legs moved so fast they were a blur, sending yellow earth flying everywhere.

Shen Jue sprayed a mouthful of cola onto the coffee table.

"What the hell is that?! Where did this wild monster come from?!"

The chat boiled over.

[Holy crap! This speed! Is Bolt possessing him?!]

[He's covered in mud, why wasn't he frozen into a cement pillar?!]

In Lin Shuyin's exclusive livestream room.

The genius girl from Tsinghua University was struggling to pull herself up the edge of the mud pit, her rimless glasses covered in mud spots.

She looked up, staring at the black shadow racing along the wall, her brain working at high speed.

"Sprinkler heads… angle settings…" Lin Shuyin gritted her teeth and reached a conclusion.

"All the sprinkler heads in the mist zone, in order to cover the maximum area, are all set to spray at a forty-five-degree angle toward the center of the field!"

"The base of the wall at the very edge only has a dead zone of less than half a meter!"

"The dry ice concentration there isn't enough to make the solidifying agent react!"

The entire internet audience suddenly realized.

[Blind student, you've discovered the crux of the matter!]

[This is fucking exploiting a map bug!]

[But who is this mud-man? He's running too crazily!]

The mud-man didn't care about anyone else's life or death.

His movements were wild.

No tactics, just raw stats.

While running, he even casually shoved aside the unlucky people blocking the base of the wall.

[This stamina, this explosive power, you can't find a second person in the whole arena like this, right?]

[Wait, don't you guys think this mud-man's running posture looks a bit familiar?]

[Don't guess blindly, Number 001 is still AFK at the mud pit starting point, his heart rate is only 60!]

"The Hibiscus… has bloomed…"

The music stopped.

The mud-man braked hard, freezing against the base of the wall, forcing two deep furrows into the yellow earth.

The music started.

The mud-man launched himself forward again.

In just a few rounds like this, he had forced his way from the zero-meter line to a position level with Jiang Rumu.

In the center of the arena.

The huge electronic countdown board flashed red.

[15:00].

Five minutes had passed.

In the short one hundred meters from the starting line to the mud pit, over three hundred contestants were already lying scattered about, fast asleep.

Jiang Rumu stopped in front of the two-hundred-meter line.

Her path was cut off again.

Ahead was a row of suspended rollers fifteen meters long.

Made of pure metal, the surface was coated with lubricating oil.

One meter below the rollers was a huge rectangular pool.

The water was murky and gave off a pungent smell of disinfectant.

At the end of the pool was a metal staircase, connecting to the opposite shore.

The rules were clear.

Either step on the slippery rollers and dash straight across.

Or fall into the water, swim across, and then climb the stairs.

Getting in the water was definitely the worst of all options.

Once clothes absorbed water, the weight would increase drastically.

Not to mention those people with shoe soles covered in cement; if they fell in, they would instantly become iron anchors, unable to even swim.

Jiang Rumu stared at the metal rollers that were still rotating from inertia.

She had no mud on her, and her shoe soles were clean.

This was her only advantage.

"The Hibiscus… has bloomed…"

The cheerful nursery rhyme rang out right on time.

Jiang Rumu didn't hesitate.

She kicked off the ground hard with her right foot, and her whole body leaped lightly onto the first roller.

The metal cylinder took the force and spun backward frantically.

Jiang Rumu tightened her core, not giving the roller a chance to throw off her center of gravity, and her left foot was already stepping onto the second one.

Her speed was extremely fast.

Her steps were as precise as if she were stepping on plum blossom piles.

Fifteen meters.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

The last step.

Jiang Rumu exerted force with both legs simultaneously, leaping into the air from the last roller.

Her posture was extended, and she landed steadily on the yellow earth on the opposite shore.

At the exact same millisecond she landed.

"The Hibiscus… has bloomed…"

The nursery rhyme stopped abruptly!

Jiang Rumu bent her knees slightly, absorbing the impact, and froze in place.

A perfect pass through the rollers.

However.

In this very second, while the whole arena was absolutely silent.

Behind Jiang Rumu, a dull, splashing sound echoed loudly.

"Splash!"