The Earth is Online

Chapter 25

Four days later, Shanghai, Jingan Park.

A fat little youth walked as fast as lightning into the convenience store. The food and drinking water in the convenience store had been taken by others. The fat youth didn’t give up and ran into the store’s warehouse. He entered the room where half-day employees slept and found three boxes of biscuits and a case of drinking water.

Few people survived but food had a shelf life. These days, there were fewer things that could be eaten. After finally finding food and water, the fat youth quickly ran back to a tall and thin boy.

The bamboo-pole like boy immediately took a big sip. “I can live. Zhao Ziang, you said that food is hard to find now. Let’s leave Shanghai quickly. There are too many people in Shanghai. If we keep eating like this, there will be no food left.

The fat youth ate two cookies in one go, stuffing his mouth. “I will eat less…less than you.”

The tall youth turned red. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.” The fat youth swallowed the biscuit. “I’m not hungry every day. You are a reserve player and your physique isn’t as good as mine. I feel like I am eating less every day but I don’t feel hungry at all. You are also eating less. Maybe it is lie what Shanshan said before. Our bodies are becoming better after the earth went online. Just like plants, we are gaining energy through unknown methods other than eating…eh, is that what she said?”

The bamboo thin youth twitched. “How can I remember? We have been separated for several days.”

The fat youth recalled this matter and became depressed. “Once we are stronger, we will go together! See who will dare trouble us!”

The two of them put food and water in the backpacks and started walking.

The fat youth changed the topic. “You said that there is someone with a big match attacking people in the middle of the night. Is it Brother Tang?”

“Probably not. Why does Brother Tang need to sneak up on others? He is a good poerson and powerful. There is no need.”

“Yes, it is certainly not Brother Tang.”

The two youths left Jingan Park and went west.

The ‘person with a big match’ was now hiding on the second floor of a jewelry store on Nanjing Road.

The jewelry store faced north and sunlight shone from the south, unable to illuminate the store. The match man shrank back against the wall, moving his hand lightly as he looked at the people downstairs.

If someone looked closely, they would find that reconstructed binoculars was the strange thing in his hand. The two mirror tubes were removed and the bottom of the barrel pierced through. A similar sized cylinder was used to connected the two barrels in a ‘Z’ shape. A flat mirror was placed on the two corners of the ‘Z’ character, creating a simple reflective telescope.

The match man aimed one end of the Z shaped telescope to the pedestrians on the road while the other end was in front of him. He intently observed every person passing downstairs from morning to afternoon.

In the evening, a strong middle-aged man in a black leather jacket and a cigarette strutted down the road.

The match man put down his telescope, picked up his bag and ran downstairs at a fast pace, following the middle-aged man.

Tang Mo hid in a dark alley, his eyes locked on the man. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was a flash of light once he opened his eyes again. In his vision, three big characters floated above the man’s head.

[Stowaway]

Tang Mo bit his lip and quietly followed the man.

As night fell, the man in the leather jacket placed his hands in his pockets, kicked open a door and walked into a specialty store. A middle-aged woman was lying in the store. Once the door opened, the woman shrank back and slammed into a cabinet.

“What are you looking at? Get lost!”

The middle-aged woman opened her mouth to say something. However, the man raised his foot and kicked the woman’s stomach. The woman grunted painfully and ran out of the store, not even taking her bag.

The man in the leather jacket smiled arrogantly and lay on the bed that the woman had been sleeping in.

The clock ticked on the wall of the specialty store. The man in the leather jacket closed his eyes and snoring was heard after a while, drowning out the sound of the clock.

In the darkness, a thin shadow flashed passed the door of the specialty store. In the next second, a huge match fell from the sky and hit the man’s right leg.

Snap.

There was the sound of bone breaking and the man howled.

Tang Mo didn’t give the other person a chance to breathe. The big match aimed at the man’s belly, thigh and buttocks. Hitting the meaty places would cause the person pain but they wouldn’t die. The brawny man was very big and the internal organs couldn’t be hit. Therefore, he continued to howl with pain.

“I will kill you!!”

Crash.

A huge table suddenly appeared in front of Tang Mo.

Tang Mo wielded the match and it fell towards the table, instantly smashing it and scattering sawdust. Surprise flashed in Tang Mo’s eyes and he sped up his hits. The strong man saw that his ability was smashed by the big match and cried out desperately for mercy.

Tang Mo leaned down and grabbed the leather jacket. “This is mine, understood?”

The strong man took off the leather jacket. He hugged his chest and kept nodding. “I understand, I understand! It is yours, yours!”

The white and fat flesh burned Tang Mo’s eyes and he turned away with the leather jacket.

After he left, the middle-aged woman who had been driven away quietly came back. She saw that the brawny man had been beaten and angrily threw him out of the store. She kicked him several times before running away with her bag.

Tang Mo walked into an alley, threw away the leather jacket and took out his abilities book.

[Ability: You hit me, hit me.]

[Owner: Zhao Longfeng (Stowaway)

[Type: Four Dimensional]

[Function: Use a nearby object as a shield. The interval time is 0 seconds.]

[Level: 1]

[Restrictions: The object itself must be able to be moved. The object can’t be more than 10 metres away and the cooldown time is five minutes.]

[Note: Zhao Longfeng, “You come to hit me, hit me!”
Tang Mo: I will beat this tortoise to death!]

[Tang Mo version usage instructions: The shield area of the object won’t exceed 0.5㎡ and the object can’t be more than three metres away. The cooldown time is 10 minutes…Hey, kill Tang Mo this little goblin!]

Tang Mo became accustomed to the cheap mouth of this book from the moment he opened his abilities book. This cheap book belonged to Tang Mo. Sometimes it scolded him and scraped a layer of skin off Tang Mo.

Originally, Tang Mo thought he had become completely immune to it. But once he saw the phrase ‘little goblin’, he couldn’t stop his eyelids from twitching. He forcible closed the book and endured the urge to throw it.

His ability, it should comply with him…

With him! This absolutely wasn’t complying with him!

Tang Mo gritted his teeth and stepped into a nearby house, waiting for the night to pass.

From the day when the black tower told him that ‘there are 10 days to prepare to attack the tower,’ Tang Mo started his ambushes near Nanjing Road.

Of Tang Mo’s six abilities, only the fire breathing and wind blowing ability were offensive. He was lacking abilities.

Other people’s abilities might not be useful but there were no restrictions on the use. Tang Mo’s abilities could only be used once a day. They wouldn’t work if he encountered a strong opponent and had to fight for a long time. Now he was going to take part in the tower attack game.

Four days ago, Tang Mo used Qiao Feifei’s ability to find a stowaway across the road.

Tang Mo thought the little girl’s ability was useless until this time.

Players with awakened abilities were almost exclusively official players and stowaways. There was almost nothing special about their appearance. Tang Mo had met many players with different abilities. Apart from Jack in the Attack Organization who obviously looked ‘strong enough to have an ability’, the difference between official players and reserve players was very small.

It was easier to find a stowaway.

The stowaways were all murderers before the game official began.

Some murderers were deeply hidden and didn’t look any different from ordinary people on the surface. However, some murderers looked cruel and ferocious, like an evil spirit lingering on their forehead. Tang Mo’s abilities could only be used once a day so he couldn’t use them easily. He only used the ability on someone who 90% looked like a stowaway.

All stowaways had different abilities and he didn’t dare take them lightly. He observed them closely every time and then attacked from behind. Finally, he ate without giving money and copied the other person’s ability.

Tang Mo lay in this house’s bed and thought about where to go tomorrow to find the stowaways.

He selected Nanjing Road because there were many stores with a large number of players passing by every time. It was easier to find a stowaway. Unfortunately, the four consecutive days of sneak attacks made people vigilant and the nickname of ‘strange match person’ became louder. The players coming to Nanhjing Road for resources were reducing at a visible speed.

Tang Mo touched his chin and thought for a moment.

“It seems that there is a supermarket not far away. I can set up an ambush there.”

It was deep in the night. It wasn’t game time and China was silent.

The next morning, Tang Mo quickly left Nanjing Road and went to the supermarket.

Three days later, a shopping mall in Pudong.

A strong foreign man stepped out of the underground garage and left the man. He was fierce and the ground shook slightly with every step. The other players were careful to avoid the place where he was walking. The blond, brawny man scratched his head and headed eastward.

Once he left the mall, Tang Mo opened his eyes from where he had been waiting for over an hour.

He wanted for Jack to walk for three minutes before quietly following.

After 20 minutes of stalking, Tang Mo saw Jack walked into a factory. He bypassed the old factory building and went to the iron fence. But just as he was about to leave the factor, he stopped and stood in front of an old manhole beside the gate. Jack stepped on the manhole cover and his body disappeared.

Tang Mo exited the factory building and walked to the rusted manhole cover. He didn’t hesitate to step on the manhole.

A loud voice was immediately heard in his mind.

“Ding dong! The single person instance game ‘Kill Bill’ has been triggered. At 11:26 on November 30th, 2017, player Tang Mo has safely entered the game.”

“Sandbox loadig…”

“Data loading complete…”

Tang Mo’s body fell rapidly. The fall came very suddenly and Tang Mo didn’t react for a moment. However, he wouldn’t be caught off guard like last time. This feeling was the same as when he met the big mole. Tang Mo opened his hands and placed his both on both sides of the tunnel as support, stabilizing his body.

After a long fall, Tang Mo landed on soft ground.

He was surrounded by darkness so Tang Mo took out a flashlight from his backpack and illuminated the surroundings. The cave was exactly the same as the mole uncle. The soil was wet and it was much more humid than the mole’s cave. Tang Mo stepped on the ground and left a clear footprint. This wasn’t a closed cave. On one side of the cave, a dark underground tunnel stretched out to a point where the flashlight couldn’t reach.

Tang Mo pricked his ears and watched for movements around him. At the same time, he quickly looked around the cave before returning to the tunnel

This tunnel was around 1.8 metres high. Tang Mo had to stoop slightly if it walked in it, otherwise the wet soil would touch his hair. Once he determined that there was nothing in the underground cave, he thought carefully before entering the tunnel.

As he moved deeper into the cave, the humidity increased. Tang Mo focused and paid attention to movement around him.

Suddenly, a hurried running sound was heard from the depths of the tunnel. Tang Mo’s eyes tightened as he turned off the flashlight and stuck himself to the tunnel wall.

The soil in the tunnel was very damp and Tang Mo’s shoes were covered with mud. The extremely wet soil made it easy for Tang Mo to grab a lot of soil. He didn’t care about being dirty as he covered himself in it and stuck to the wall. The mud all over his body allowed Tang Mo to integrate with the tunnel wall.

The footstep neared as Tang Mo held his breath and tried to erase his presence.

He couldn’t see the thing running over but he wasn’t going to confront it directly.

However, it didn’t matter if Tang Mo turned off the flashlight and covered himself with mud. The footsteps ran past Tang Mo before running back.

Tang Mo’s body tightened. He heard the footsteps stop in front of him. He tightened his lips and his right hand prepared to grab the match and attack.

Then a surprised but weak voice was heard. “My god, are you the coworker sent to take over?”

A faint light shone on Tang Mo’s face.

There was a young foreign man with reddish-brown hair in front of him. He wore a red and white uniform (it looked exactly the same as Uncle McDonald’s clothes, except that one had a horizontal stripe while the other was a vertical stripe). An old-fashioned kerosene lamp was held in his hand. It had obviously been dark in the tunnel while he was running, with no kerosene light. Now he pulled this old-fashioned kerosene lamp out of thin air and shone it on Tang Mo.

After hearing his words, Tang Mo stopped trying to take out the match. He thought for a moment and nodded silently.

“Oh god, it is really unlucky that you came. Bill is crazy! Do you see the wounds on me? They were caused by Bill.”

“You…”

Tang Mo barely said anything before there was a strange hissing sound from the depths of the tunnel. It was similar to a snake but different. There there was the sound of something great hitting the tunnel.

Bang bang!

The tunnel was hit by an unknown creature and shook like there was an earthquake. Tang Mo and the red-haired man’s bodies swayed. They relied on the wall to stand upright.

The red-haired man was terrified. “That is the voice of the monster! Crazy, it is crazy!” The fearful man took three steps back and almost sat directly on the ground. At the same time, his light flashed over Tang Mo’s face that was covered in mud. He placed the kerosene lamp in Tang Mo’s hand extremely quickly. “Partner, it is your turn to be on duty. Check what the situation is. I am going out to find someone.” The red-haired man said this before turning and running away.

“Check what’s going on. Don’t let that monster out! I will come back, I’ll be back!”

He said this but his body was very honest as he ran away.

Tang Mo held the kerosene lamp and resisted the urge to yell at the man.

A crisp, childish voice sounded in his mind.

“Ding dong! Main mission has been triggered. Kill Bill in 20 minutes!”

The author has something to say:
Tang Tang: Follow your sister!

Major Fu: …I thought I would get to play today.