Li Li’s face flushed red!

Damn! What did that mean?! He was at least a PhD, yet she was having a kid explain things to him!

Too disrespectful!

Pan Xiaoxin also felt awkward and a bit embarrassed.

But Tan Xiao loved stirring up trouble. He patted Xiaoxin’s shoulder and said, “Xiaoxin! Teach this bookworm a good lesson!”

“Hey! You’re all going too far!” Li Li suddenly stood up, his face ugly. “I’m just thinking about safety! After all, no one knows what kind of game this is!”

“Alright…” Yan Qingwen patted his shoulder. “Sit down. The possibility of it being competitive really is low. This type of reward-based game instance is usually tackled by a team alliance—it’s different from previous games.”

Previous games—the Tortoise and Hare Race, Lucky Quiz—were all player versus player killings.

Li Li sat down, still looking somewhat resentful, but said nothing more.

Yan Qingwen looked at everyone and said, “To show good faith, I’ll start. I’m sure everyone knows my name—Yan Qingwen, 30 years old. I used to be a special forces soldier. I was injured during a mission and later retired, doing some private security work.”

He glanced at Li Li and continued, “About half a month ago, I took on a job from the Li Family. The Li Family’s only son, Li Li, is a researcher at SCO. During evacuation, he got separated from his team and was said to have very likely fallen into the mist. They hoped we’d do our best to rescue him.”

Shen Mo asked, “You still do business in this situation?”

Yan Qingwen smiled. “Old Master Li helped me before. I owe him a debt of gratitude.”

The hardest debt to repay is a debt of gratitude.

Shen Mo nodded lightly and said, “I’ve introduced my situation before—National Security Bureau, Special Operations Coordination Supervisor. But now it’s all in name only. All my team members sacrificed themselves, and the organization I was responsible for also exists in name only. If I can escort Li Li to Shanghai with you all, I hope to see the research progress—about these games, these mazes, what exactly they are.”

“Were your team members sacrificed because of the games?” Yan Qingwen asked.

“Should be.” Shen Mo frowned slightly, his face somber as water. “On the road searching for the SCO research team, they turned into dolls.”

“Probably the same as what happened to us last time…” Li Li spoke up. “During Lucky Quiz, we all entered the game—only Su Man was left outside.”

Shen Mo nodded. “Doll games do indeed have certain requirements for the number of people. After the incident, I tried contacting my superiors—phones wouldn’t connect, network communications also had problems. I suspect something very likely happened on their end. Later I met Weiwei, and when leaving the city, I also got to know Tan Xiao and Teacher Cheng. We all narrowly escaped death in the same game, so we’ve traveled together until now.”

“Actually your situation is quite similar to ours.” Yan Qingwen said, then looked at Lü Ang beside him.

Lü Ang also nodded and introduced himself: “Yan Qingwen and I were teammates. He retired after being injured, but I got discharged because I made some mistakes… uh, after getting out I had no work, so I partnered with him in the security business.”

He paused, then added stiffly: “35 years old. That’s all.”

Next was Li Li. His expression was conflicted. After mulling it over for a while, he finally said:

“So… what I’m about to say was originally classified… but now there aren’t many people left in the world anyway, so telling you doesn’t matter.”

Everyone looked at him questioningly.

Li Li said, “Our original research institute studied high-energy physics, also called elementary particle physics. In May this year, that incident happened… the news about dolls suddenly appearing on the streets. Shortly after that, we received notice requiring us to merge with two other research institutes to form a new organization called SCO, specifically researching the doll anomaly phenomenon… and then, we really did discover something.”