Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

The hotel's proactive intervention to deal with the aura of that high-ranking individual can be considered a warning—not directed at me, but at the hospital. In the following actions, there's no need to worry about the hospital pulling similar maneuvers again. However, caution is still necessary. Since the other party has proactively revealed this, they might be hiding other methods. We must proceed with utmost care.

Alright, alright, it's time to get back to work. It's far too early to relax. This avatar of mine can't last much longer; it'll probably dissipate in about 10 minutes. So these next 10 minutes are crucial. Let's try to take care of all the surrounding nodes in one go.

In the end, Gao Hai, who had concealed a lot of information, simply smiled and said to the two girls.

As intelligent as Maki and Kaguya are, they could naturally sense that Takami was hiding something. However, both chose to trust Takami and didn't press him for details. Well... mainly because Maki was certain that Takami had a reason for not telling, so she stopped Kaguya's instinctive questioning and dragged her away.

Compared to Maki, who is used to following Takami's lead, Kaguya, whose relationship with Takami is relatively recent, still occasionally has the urge to yawn. However, Takami is very understanding about this, saying that as long as Kaguya dresses up as a catgirl in front of him a few more times afterward, it will be fine.

hum-

A new message appeared at this moment.

The messages came from the "Slacking Off Gang," Xiong Mi's group, the lawyer's group, and Shao Ye's group almost simultaneously, indicating that they had completed marking the three core obsessions with their symbolic objects. Gao Hai could indeed sense the aura of the three Red Moon-level core obsession objects and could detonate them at any time using this connection.

In this way, the progress reaches 3/30, which is one-tenth.

It's really tough. It's taken so long to finally achieve one-tenth of the goal. Can this operation really succeed?

A slightly pessimistic thought arose in Gao Hai's heart.

Ok?

Wait, is there a second message?

This message came from Cat Brother, another member of the "Slacking Off Gang" who had been supporting the operation until just now.

The other party unexpectedly encountered a [doctor] and luckily escaped. Then Gao Haigang told him about how he helped others complete the marking of obsession objects while he was fishing, and soon new information also came from his side.

And the content of this intelligence is...

Information about four couples?!

Here are the pictures, which can be viewed after the updated version.

Chapter 43 Deliberate and Suspicious Intelligence and Positioning Process 4/30

[Report on Transferred Patients: Four Items]

[Destination of transferred patients: ■■■■■■■■]

Patient ID: ■■■■■

[Preliminary Diagnosis:]

[They believe themselves to be happy and wonderful, are stubborn and unwilling to accept true happiness]

They love their family and dote on their daughter; in their eyes, all that matters is that their children grow up healthy and happy.

[Extremely stubborn resistance to true happiness, refusing to accept the cave that belongs to them]

Having undergone a certain degree of physical and spiritual enhancement, they are difficult to completely control, but also relatively difficult to kill. Relatively aggressive methods can be used to deal with them.

They cannot escape our grasp.

Current Diagnosis:

Let them go, let them think they've gotten rid of us.

They are ultimately just ordinary people; they cannot realize how great we are, nor can they resist true happiness.

They will become our spreaders; they will bring the key to happiness to the ignorant fools, and they will bring those fools to us.

They will attract the anchor points under the false gods, and we will hunt them down; we will kill them.

Ultimately, their great sacrifice will pave the way for our triumphant victory over the false gods, and from then on, we will truly save the world.

[Follow-up Diagnostic Opinion:]

They have already realized the value they were meant to achieve.

It's no longer worth wasting any more effort on them; it's not worth investing any more time or energy.

They're nothing but scrap now, nothing but garbage.

Trash should go where trash stays.

Discard them, destroy them, take them to factories, and exploit their last remaining value.

Treatment priority: Lowest

The receipt wasn't very long and could be read quickly, but the contents, especially the surname "Si Tiao," made it hard not to pay attention.

The shelter swallowed by the black void, the four couples who happened to be sent to this shelter, and now this report have been discovered—many things can be confirmed. Although Gao Hai had a general idea of ​​what had happened from the beginning, now that the evidence has been obtained and the matter has been completely confirmed, he still felt a sense of感慨 (gan3kai3, mixed feelings) in his heart.

It's absolutely disgusting in every sense of the word.

Unable to win in a direct confrontation, they resort to all sorts of underhanded tactics, and now they're even using Zhenfei's family to cause trouble. Especially this report; it was definitely placed here on purpose. The reason the [Doctor] appeared in the instance but didn't kill the player Cat Bro they encountered was probably because of this.

[Fake God Gao Hai, you don't want your girlfriend's parents to get into trouble, do you?]

It was as if the embodiment of the hospital had truly appeared before him and spoken to him in this way.

Hmm, not just seems.

Instead, Alice was right beside him, deliberately changing her voice and speaking in a muffled tone in Gao Hai's ear.

What are you doing?

Gao Hai turned to look at Alice with great displeasure.

[Hehehe, Alice was just expressing what the teacher was thinking~ How was it? Did you imitate it well? Was it what the teacher imagined?]

As expected, even though Gao Hai's gaze was full of reproach, Alice showed no sign of admitting her mistake; instead, she became even more arrogant.

Forget it, I don't have time to deal with this guy right now.

Once this current trouble is over, we'll slowly teach this arrogant brat a lesson.

[Hehehe, is the teacher giving up already? Are you going to comfort yourself with "we'll talk about it later"? What a pathetic thought! But even such a pathetic teacher is incredibly cute, Alice can't help but admire her!]

I absolutely have to—this brat—

When I turned my gaze back, Alice was no longer there; she had disappeared somewhere.

After carefully sensing her current condition, hmm... she has returned outside to continue assisting with the evacuation of survivors and the protection of shelters in various areas.

【…】

Never mind, I'll just write it down for now. It's never too late to settle scores later.

Thinking this, Gao Hai forced himself to turn his attention back elsewhere. It was at this moment that good news finally came from Miko Kita's side: several important nodes in the edge space had been basically destroyed. Not only that, but Yurikawa Hana, whom Gao Hai had thought wouldn't be of much use, seemed to have somehow managed to create a fragment of a blood-red domain with extremely high strength within the instance, which was gradually reaching its energy capacity limit.

If I can send my avatar over using this fragment whose intensity is inexplicably increasing, I should be able to destroy the factory that seems to originate from the [hotel] in one fell swoop, and completely shatter the [hospital]'s layout in the residential area. I wonder if the other side will send out [doctors] to try to salvage the situation. If they do, then I'll have to get something back this time.

As for how to rescue Maki's parents, hmm... we need to find a way to confirm whether they're actually at the factory. If they are, it would be best to rescue them all at once, but if they're not at the factory, or if the factory mentioned in the information refers to something else, then things will become much more complicated. Tsk, well, for now we can only take it one step at a time. However, we can't tell Maki about this situation yet; such obviously problematic information shouldn't be revealed to her before further verification. But regardless, we still need to find someone to continue investigating this lead. But who should we ask?

While pondering, Gao Hai was also using his increasingly adept multi-threaded thinking to keep an eye on the situation in other places.

Xiong Mi, Jian Bing, the lawyer, Shao Ye, Lin Bu Jian Tai, and Qi Chuan Lian, the six players, had successfully reunited in an area outside the hospital under Gao Hai's guidance. Cat Brother, however, had not yet completely escaped the second floor of the hospital. It seemed that due to the appearance of the [Doctor], the spatial structure of the area where Cat Brother was located had undergone strange changes, making it temporarily impossible for him to find a spatial node to escape. Gao Hai was currently trying to find a way to get him out.

In addition to the three core obsessions that the Fishing Gang and the Red Society worked together to resolve, there is still one core obsession that has not been resolved.

The node that was originally supposed to be Cat Bro's responsibility, but had to be temporarily abandoned because of the need to distract the monitors at the [Hospital], is the lingering problem that the six players who have gathered together are now planning to solve.

Although he had already arranged to resolve that problem.

"Hello, four of you are from the 'Slacking Off Gang,' and two of you are from the 'Red Knot Society.'"

Xiaoheshu, who looked as old as seventy or eighty, but was actually only in his twenties, slowly stepped out of the shadows with a cane before Xiongmi and the others discussed their plan of action. He nodded and greeted the six players.

"Mr. Xiaohe from the Market, what brings you here? The area the Market is responsible for shouldn't be here, right? Or did you receive some information before coming here? Did you manage to find out the coordinates of that obsessive object we missed?"

When Xiong Mi turned around and saw Xiao Heshu appear, she quickly realized what might have happened and asked a question with a frown.

"That's right. After confirming the situation on your side, Mr. Gao asked me to temporarily put aside my own goals and come to assist you, who already had clear targets and a clear area of ​​investigation, and whose clues were relatively more complete. After arriving, under Mr. Gao's guidance, I quickly found the relevant clues and key items of patient A-1107, which you couldn't spare the energy to deal with at the moment. I successfully entered the patient's [hole] and completed the location of the core obsession object."

Little River Tree laughed again. Although the skin on his face twitched from time to time, and it was impossible to tell how many insects were hiding underneath, Little River Tree's smile was not disgusting at all. On the contrary, it gave people the feeling of a very friendly seventy or eighty-year-old man.

He didn't recount his past experiences in detail, but instead kept praising the "Slacker Gang" for their preliminary investigation and intelligence gathering, saying that he was able to locate the core obsession object entirely thanks to the information they had gathered beforehand, maintaining a humble attitude throughout.

However, what even Xiaoheshu himself didn't realize was that the person he was most respectful to in his words was actually Gao Hai himself.

"I know that my actions essentially stole the prey from the Fishing Gang and the Red Knot Society, and I regret that. I believe that even without my intervention, with your formidable strength, you could easily resolve the issue. However, our mission is of paramount importance; the sooner we succeed, the less damage will be done to human civilization, and the fewer people will sacrifice their lives. Therefore, after Mr. Gao raised this issue with me, I immediately chose to join in, precisely to save time."

"As for the progress on the [Market] side, I'm quite ashamed to say that the reason I was able to come over so quickly to help is ultimately because the exploration process on the [Market] side is not going smoothly. My team members and I have not been able to find the core obsession and have not been able to complete the positioning smoothly. It is precisely because of this progress problem that I was able to temporarily leave the team. Of course, I don't think there is anything wrong with this. After all, this is Mr. Gao's order, and his will is everything."

"Now that things are settled here, I'm heading back to my team. I hope they won't run into any trouble while I'm gone. So, this collaborative operation is pretty much over. I hope that when we meet again, everyone will be safe and sound under Mr. Gao's protection."

After that, Xiaoheshu quickly took his leave and turned to leave the area.

"Although you've always spoken in a similar style, it feels like you're being even more cloying now. Try to be a little more normal."

Xiong Mi spoke up at this moment, shaking her head and saying in a complicated tone.

"In that case, we're at 4/30 now. We still need to locate the objects of 26 core obsessions, and these 26 core obsessions should theoretically be located in 6 different instances. So what we need to do next is to find the core areas of the 6 instances in this distorted space."

The lawyer nodded slightly, his face expressionless as he spoke.

Yes, that's true.

Although he didn't quite understand what the two members of the "Slacking Off Gang" were trying to say, seeing that they were both talking to him, Xiaoheshu stopped in his tracks and looked at them, wanting to figure out what they meant.

"The Moyu Gang has taken care of two people, so it's fair to give them two points, right? As for the research institute, there are two members of the Red Society there, while the Moyu Gang only has Shao Ye, so I'll give the Red Society one point. Finally, Xiao He, your market share will get another one point, so it's now 2 to 1 to 1."

Then, as soon as Xiong Mi uttered those words, Xiao He Shu realized what the other party was planning.

Not far away, Nanakawa Ren was startled and instinctively wanted to come over and say that the two of them didn't deserve this one point, but after a slight hesitation, Hayashibe Kenta realized what Xiong Mi meant, and immediately covered Nanakawa Ren's mouth and expressed his gratitude to Xiong Mi.

Xiong Mi grinned again, raised his hand and made a fist, and said, "Let's have a competition and see who completes the most positioning in the end." Then, he casually gestured for Lawyer Jianbing and the others to leave with him.

[Xiong Mi, Jian Bing, the lawyer, Shao Ye, and a rescue team member have successfully escaped and have now returned to the intersection area of ​​the instance to begin exploring the new area.]

[Kawaki, Hayashibe Kenta, and Nanakawa Ren have successfully separated and are now heading to the area they were investigating in the market. Unfortunately, in the few tens of minutes that Kawaki was away, the rest of the market staff didn't make any real progress. Hopefully, the arrival of the two from the Red Knot Society will change things.]

So, now you're the only one left here. When do you plan to leave?

After watching the players bid farewell amicably and leave one by one, Gao Hai turned his attention to the last one who had not yet left, Cat Brother, who was still in the hospital area.

"After all, I've been touched by the [doctor], so just in case, I'd better not leave with everyone else. Now that everyone else has left, it's my turn."

Standing amidst the chaotic, ruined hospital, Cat Brother finally nodded and spoke, then walked straight to the edge of a collapsed wall, looking out at the dark, disordered space beyond, its destination unknown.

He didn't intend to follow the same path as other players. To be on the safe side, Cat decided to go straight into the spatial turbulence to see where he would be swept away.

Anyway, there's no need to worry about being swept away and killed. He's protected by Gao Hai's power now, so he won't die unless he's thrown into an environment like Jupiter.