81: Chapter 81 He got his kidneys cut

"I was careless... These NPCs actually play dirty!"

Accompanied by a series of system notification tones, Mudslide felt his mental connection being forcibly disconnected.

He took off his helmet and sat in his room in reality, slapping his thighs in frustration.

Unwilling to give up, he put the helmet back on and tried to reconnect.

But the system kept prompting: [Character is in an abnormal comatose state, cannot connect].

It wasn't until two hours later that the connection finally succeeded!

As soon as Mudslide opened his eyes, he found his perspective locked tight; he couldn't move his body at all.

He felt his hands and feet fixed to an iron bed by cold metal rings.

At the same time, waves of stinging pain from pulled nerves came from his waist and several other parts of his body.

Gritting his teeth, he desperately tried to pull his perspective downward and finally managed to see the situation below.

On his character's lower back, there were two huge, freshly stitched scars that were still oozing bloody fluid!

"This is bad!"

Mudslide turned pale with fright, roaring frantically in his mind,

"This wasn't some friendly invitation for drinks! My kidneys have been harvested!"

Then, a man wearing a filthy white lab coat walked into the room.

Seeing that Mudslide was awake, the man didn't panic; instead, he let out the classic villainous 'jie jie jie' laughter.

He pressed a button on the wall, and the iron bed beneath Mudslide was slowly lifted by machinery, tilting to an angle convenient for cutting.

The man in the lab coat took out a cold, gleaming scalpel and began gesturing across Mudslide's chest, seemingly looking for a place to make an incision.

Just then, another man walked in.

Holding some kind of cold metal clamp, he forcibly fixed Mudslide's head in place, then picked up a buzzing pair of clippers and began shaving his hair close to the scalp.

The numbing sensation of the clippers vibrating against his scalp was very clear.

Mudslide felt his skin crawl and his scalp go numb with horror.

"Damn it! I'm playing a Warhammer game, how did this suddenly turn into a horror escape game?!"

Mudslide struggled desperately, but his body was firmly fixed.

Then, the scalpel descended. He felt his vision go dark and was once again forcibly kicked out of the game.

Back in reality, Mudslide was covered in a cold sweat.

He waited another two hours and tried to connect again.

Mudslide thought that this time he would directly see the 'Character Deceased, Respawn Countdown' interface.

But to his surprise, he didn't receive a death notification and instead successfully connected!

However...

There was only a deep, deathly silence and darkness in his field of vision.

He couldn't feel anything.

He couldn't hear any sound, touch anything, or see any light.

Even the sense of pain had completely disappeared.

It was as if he were locked in an absolutely void black box.

Mudslide decisively logged off.

He immediately rushed to the game forum and posted a help thread in bold red text:

[Urgent! Brothers, I explored the map and found a big southern city! But I was drugged and had my kidneys harvested by NPCs! And now it seems I've been turned into a human block, the screen is black, and I can't feel anything! How do I fix this?!]

However, at this time, most of the combat players in the forum had just logged off and were excitedly discussing the epic battle in the Northern Territory and the handsome figure of Boss Li Ming soloing the greenskin boss.

No one paid any attention to his post about his miserable experience.

Mudslide wanted to cry but had no tears, so he could only miserably bump his own post over and over again on the forum.

...

Meanwhile, in the Fire Seed Shelter, second basement level.

Lin Li, shirtless, crawled out of the new cultivation pod.

The pale green repair fluid in the cultivation pod slid down his firm muscle lines.

He moved his left arm; the bones that had been shattered by the Warboss's power axe had actually been restored to their original state under the treatment of this high-tech machine.

"This thing is really useful; it's practically a life-saving divine tool on the wasteland." Lin Li put on his clothes with satisfaction.

He took the elevator back to the No. 1 main control room on the first basement level, preparing to take stock of the gains from this battle.

As soon as he turned on the computer, he saw the lonely help post from the player Mudslide on the forum.

After reading Mudslide's description of his encounter, Lin Li couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Hahaha! This kid is really something. Do you think this wasteland is like a civilized world with a sound legal system on Earth? You dare to go for drinks just because some random person on the street asks you? Now you've done it—you've been disassembled by local organ traffickers."

But when Lin Li saw the description of that eerie black-screen, sensationless state at the end of the post, his brow couldn't help but furrow.

"73, what exactly is his situation? Was his account forcibly deleted, or is his equipment malfunctioning?"

73's optical lens flickered with red light, activating its daily sharp-tongued mode:

"Creator, this player's level of stupidity has refreshed the Shelter's lower limit for IQ. Based on the analysis of the sensory deprivation state he described, his equipment has not malfunctioned."

73 provided a professional explanation:

"In certain underground black markets on the wasteland, a certain technology exists. Judging from his symptoms, his brain is likely still alive and even remains conscious, but all his bodily functions and sensory nerves have been completely severed or stripped away. Currently, he might just be a living brain in a jar."

Lin Li felt a chill run down his spine.

What exactly was going on with that settlement to the south?

How did it sound like some Southeast Asian scam compound from his description? Even those compounds weren't this perverted, right? Digging out a brain to keep it alive.

He really couldn't imagine how much psychological trauma a player would have to endure in that state.

Just as Lin Li was about to leave this unlucky fellow aside for a moment to handle urgent matters.

A brand new, golden-glowing mission window suddenly popped up on the main control screen!

[Unknown information access detected!]

[Challenge Mission Triggered: Save the Stone Men!]

[Mission Description: Unknown.]

[Mission Objective: Rescue the imprisoned Stone Men.]

[Mission Reward: 6,000 Core Points!]

Lin Li stared fixedly at the screen and took a sharp breath.

"Six thousand points?!"

Lin Li was greatly shocked.

Today, he had fought desperately in Power Armor in the north and even killed an Orc Warboss, yet he had only earned less than two thousand points.

This one nonsensical mission actually rewarded six thousand directly?!

Just how terrifying was the weight of this mission?

"73, do you have more information about this mission?" Lin Li asked urgently.

"Database permissions insufficient."

73 answered coldly,

"But judging from the timing of the mission trigger, it should be directly related to what happened to the player named Mudslide of the Merchant World in the southern town."

"No kidding!" Lin Li rolled his eyes, "Anyone could figure out there's a connection."

Lin Li leaned back in his chair, feeling a bit of a headache.

There were almost no clues.

And the mission objective was to save Stone Men.

In the background setting of the Warhammer universe, Stone Men were semi-cyborgs created by Golden Age humans. They had no emotions, and their soul projections were almost invisible in the Warp, cold like stone, hence the name Stone Men.

Stone Men inherited almost all the knowledge of Golden Age humans, especially regarding genes and genetics; they were even more advanced than the Golden Men.

After the Men of Iron rebellion broke out, the Stone Men had once created a large number of genetically modified biological weapons to fight against the Men of Iron.

Many sub-human races in the universe today are descendants of those biological weapons, such as the famous Imperial sniper race, the Ratlings.

But what did the Stone Men in the mission specifically refer to?

Were they Golden Age Stone Men?

Or just a code name for some kind of stone sculpture? There was no way to know.

"Forget it, there's too little intelligence; going there blindly would be suicide. Suicidal tasks should still be left to the players; it's just a matter of adding one more mission." Lin Li sighed and put the mission interface in the background.

Now there was something more important and more exciting for him to do.

"Those greenskins today weren't fought in vain."

Lin Li clicked on his attribute panel and looked at the experience bar that had already reached 100%.

After today's bloody battle, especially the direct, limit-pushing confrontation with the Orc Warboss, the development progress of the human genes in his body had finally broken through the 20% bottleneck.

His level had risen to Level 20!

This meant that the highest authority for the fourth basement level (B4) of the Shelter had finally opened its doors to him.

Furthermore, with the 2,000 points rewarded for completing the 'Protecting the Herdsmen' challenge mission plus his previous points, he was currently very well-off.

Lin Li rubbed his hands: "We'll see what good things are on the B4 level in a bit, but I definitely have to do the gacha draw first!"

"Going all-in is an art! I must go all-in!"