Chapter 1 Something to Replace

Jiang Cheng turned his head, met the old man's gaze for a moment, then deliberately looked away. "Grab the camera," he said to the other man, "let's go."

Just as everyone was about to step out of the courtyard...

"Wait."

Everyone paused and turned to look.

The old man hobbled over, leaning on his cane, holding a black bag in his hands.

"Since your camera is broken, you can use this one for now," before the man from 406 could react, the old man stuffed the black bag into his arms.

The man didn't understand what the old man meant and instinctively wanted to push the bag away.

But the old man didn't give him the chance, turned around, and hobbled back into the courtyard, closing the door with a "creak."

The bag contained a black camera.

It was a very old model, and some of the corners were severely worn, revealing the original metal color underneath.

But fortunately, it still worked.

Looking at the camera from an unknown source, Fatty couldn't help but feel a little resistant and muttered, "What's this? A reward for accidentally triggering a side quest?"

"No," Jiang Cheng said, staring at the tightly closed courtyard door, shaking his head, "this isn't a side quest."

After all, the introduction to the mission background at the beginning already mentioned that the equipment they needed had been delivered to the equipment room in advance.

So they were definitely going to come here.

And the damage to the camera earlier was also arranged.

In other words, everything that had happened from the moment they entered the courtyard until now had been rehearsed.

Like the guiding woman, the old man was also an NPC (non-player character).

His purpose was to deliver this camera to the players.

This was a proper main quest.

After listening to Jiang Cheng's analysis, the man holding the camera became very frightened.

His body trembled, as if he was about to drop the camera on the ground at any moment.

As if there was a ghost hidden inside the camera.

No one came forward to comfort him.

In nightmares, comfort is the cheapest thing besides kindness, and it changes nothing except to expose your stupidity.

Here, stupidity is the original sin.

At this time, Jiang Cheng walked up. He first took the camera, carefully examined it, and then put it back into the black backpack.

Then he hung the bag around the man's neck, patted him on the shoulder, and comforted him, "Don't be afraid, always think positively. I think you'll be fine."

The man was stunned for a second. Since coming to this strange, bizarre space called the Dream World, this was the first time he had felt warmth between people.

And... he also saw sincerity in the eyes of the delicate-looking man in front of him.

"Thank you..." the man said, his lips trembling.

Just as the man was about to say something else, he saw Jiang Cheng waving his hand and saying, "No need to thank me. I just think you can survive, but the final result depends on how tough your life is."

"After all, in the last mission, I also thought two people could survive, but one had his neck broken by a ghost, and the other almost had his head torn off."

Man: "???"

Everyone: "???"

Fatty: "... Basic operation, no need to be amazed."

"Alright, alright," Fatty said, worried that Jiang Cheng would be ostracized by everyone as an abnormal person, so he quickly changed the subject, "Now that we have a camera, what's the next step?"

The ponytail woman thought for a moment and said, "Let's just randomly find a few people on campus and take pictures to see if there's anything wrong with the camera."

This was undoubtedly a smart move, after all, no one knew whether the camera would be one of the conditions for triggering a fierce ghost killing, and it was best to use students to test it.

Coincidentally, just as they walked out of the equipment center, several female students walked over from the side, dressed very fashionably.

The man took out the camera, knelt on one knee, and was about to take a picture of them.

"This isn't good..." a voice came from behind, weak and small, with a pitiable flavor.

Everyone looked back.

It was the pajama girl.

She slightly lowered her chin, put her toes together, as if she also knew that her suggestion might not be accepted, but she still mustered up the courage to continue, "After all, they are innocent, and we who came to this world are the outsiders."

The second half of her sentence was even softer, requiring careful listening to hear clearly.

Just as Fatty was secretly scolding this white lotus for her good acting skills in his heart, the middle-aged man in the vest, who was hiding at the edge of the crowd, jumped out. Fatty vaguely remembered that his name was Zhou Taifu.

He came up and pointed at the pajama girl's nose and cursed, his body movements as aggressive as a monkey who had lost its banana.

Repeating over and over again was nothing more than "if you want to die, just die, don't implicate others" and things like that.

It could be seen that the man taking pictures was also very upset after being interrupted.

But his attention was focused more on the ponytail woman.

It seemed that she was the one who could ultimately give orders.

But the ponytail woman was not in a hurry to speak. Her gaze gradually extended to the pajama girl, and the meaning of scrutiny in her eyes flashed by, but it was still seen by Jiang Cheng, who was watching from the sidelines.

The doubts in his heart were also slowly resolved.

"Gentlemen," the suit man's voice sounded, still with that refined look, and a bit of nonchalance in his eyes, "now is not the time to argue."

He walked out of the woods along a small path, with the baseball cap man following behind him with a gloomy face.

Jiang Cheng looked in the direction the suit man came from.

The woods on this side were quite dense, and the small path was hidden in the woods, so it could be said to be very concealed.

"We agreed to meet here at noon," Fatty started firing first, "where did you guys go?"

The baseball cap man sneered, and just as he was about to retort, he was interrupted by the suit man.

He turned his head and replied with a smile, "Thank you for your concern, Brother Fatty. We encountered some things, and we just finished dealing with them and came over. Did we delay the original plan?"

"Not really," Jiang Cheng replied, "it's just that you didn't show up on time, and we thought..." He paused, and said with a shy look, "Guardian God, you also understand, after all, this is the Dream World, anything can happen. As soon as you were late, we thought you were dead."

The smile on the suit man's face froze.

"Don't you fucking push your luck!"

The baseball cap man didn't know what he had experienced, and his face wasn't very good-looking when he came. Now, hearing Jiang Cheng say this, he immediately rolled up his sleeves and was about to go berserk.

"Don't misunderstand," Jiang Cheng quickly waved his hand, immediately hid behind the ponytail woman, looking very scared, and stretched his neck and shouted, "I didn't mean to insult you, I just suspect you're not human!"

"You son of a bitch..."

At this time, the ponytail woman saw that the situation was developing in an uncontrollable direction, and had no choice but to stand up.

But to everyone's surprise, she actually chose to stand on Jiang Cheng's side.

She said to the suit man and the baseball cap man who stepped forward, "I think his suspicion is reasonable. You need to prove that you are not ghosts, but people."