Chapter 132 The Terrible Ice Cream

"Never mind, then. If you don’t have it here, there’s bound to be some other ice cream cart around this park that’s out of it too, knowing our luck."

Lin Yun wasn’t buying the red vest’s act for a second. She could tell this whole exchange was deliberate, and that the staff’s constant, oddly insistent pushing for them to eat was almost certainly some kind of trap in disguise.

The man in the red vest stiffened at that, lowered his eyes, and something distinctly gloomy stirred behind them.

Not every girl in a red vest is like her, apparently.

"Sigh, well, we really are out of the original flavor. We do still have taro, though. Would that work for you two instead?" She looked back up, the smile returning easily to her face.

The two of them exchanged a quick glance and agreed.

A little red flower was torn from their card, and they walked off with their ice cream in hand.

The moment Lin Yun turned around, she noticed the item’s detailed description pop up above the cone.

Taro-Flavored Ice Cream: Tastes absolutely terrible, not good in the slightest. Might I suggest the Lingtai ice cream instead?

Note: This is awful! Whoever invented taro flavor should be reported!

"Is that... accurate?" Song Xizheng had spotted the same warning hovering over his own cone.

Lin Yun, however, had a strong feeling the description wasn’t quite right, so she went ahead and took a bite anyway, curious to see for herself.

The cold hit her tongue immediately, making her squint reflexively against the chill.

"Wait, it can’t seriously taste that bad, can it?!" Song Xizheng startled at her reaction, unsure whether to toss the thing or keep eating it.

Lin Yun rolled her eyes at him, mildly annoyed. "It’s not bad at all. I think this description was probably written to match the local natives’ taste preferences, not ours."

Aside from the cold, there was genuinely nothing wrong with the ice cream she’d just eaten.

Song Xizheng tried a bite himself right after and found himself agreeing with her assessment completely.

Just as they turned to walk away, a girl in a green vest approached them from the side. The moment she spotted the ice cream cones in their hands, her expression froze visibly for a beat before quickly smoothing itself back over into a pleasant smile.

"Why don’t you two go grab some proper food instead? Ice cream alone won’t fill you up, you know."

"No, no, honestly, I’m not even hungry. If you all hadn’t kept pushing me to eat something, I wouldn’t have bought this terrible ice cream in the first place." Lin Yun shook her head firmly in refusal, then took another deliberate bite.

With things having reached that point, the green vest had little left to say.

"Fair enough, then. I won’t keep bothering you two any further."

The man offered a smile and slipped away quickly.

Still, as they continued along their way, several of the green-vested staff members they passed didn’t look particularly pleased to see the two of them strolling by.

A few of the red vests running the nearby food stalls were even less subtle about it — their eyes carried open accusation, bordering dangerously close to outright anger.

Lin Yun, once again: "..."

Song Xizheng noticed the same hostile looks and felt the urge to curse rise up in him, though he held it back, only muttering his complaints quietly to Lin Yun instead.

It felt, somehow, as though they’d broken some unspoken cardinal rule simply by refusing to eat the park’s food.

Just then, a small group approached from not far off.

Song Zhenzhen’s eyes lit up at once, and she stepped forward quickly. "Come on, this way — follow me."

She grabbed Lin Yun and pulled her along, calling back over her shoulder for Song Xizheng to keep up.

George and Xiong Qi exchanged a puzzled glance between themselves, genuinely unsure why Song Zhenzhen had suddenly hauled someone off without a word of explanation.

These weren’t ordinary tourists in the slightest, though, and she clearly wasn’t the least bit worried about causing any trouble by dragging them off like that.

The two men hurried to catch up all the same, quickening their pace.

They eventually reached a quiet, deserted corner away from the crowds.

Song Zhenzhen wasted no time. "You two didn’t actually eat anything sold here, did you?"

"I did." Lin Yun nodded honestly, without hesitation.

"What?! How could you?! Ugh, this is my fault — I should’ve warned you sooner. We were on the drop tower, and the second we got off, those green vests kept pushing food on us nonstop."

"Finally managed to shake them off, only to run straight into another batch of green vests right after."

Song Xizheng chimed in helpfully, "We just had some taro ice cream, nothing weirder than that."

Hearing that, Song Zhenzhen let out a relieved breath. "Oh, thank goodness. Good thing it wasn’t anything else."

"I already figured their food was strange somehow, but why the big reaction?" Lin Yun asked, still a little curious about the fuss.

By then, Xiong Qi and George had caught up as well, and by this point had already figured out who the pair actually were. Hearing the question, they answered casually, "Because one of the other survivors already ate something here."

"After eating it, he went completely glassy-eyed and just started shoveling down food nonstop."

Recalling what he’d personally witnessed just moments earlier, Xiong Qi’s expression darkened noticeably, a faint wave of nausea washing over him at the sheer memory of it.

George let out a heavy sigh. "The guy didn’t even want to eat anything at first, honestly — he just grabbed the plainest, most unassuming-looking sausage he could find off the stall. Turned out to be the so-called ’assassin’s sausage,’ of all things."

Lin Yun paused briefly. "Didn’t he check the item description first?"

"He did." Xiong Qi scratched his head. "I checked it too, actually, just to be safe. Description said plain pork sausage, tastes great. Nothing suspicious at all."

"So how’d you two manage to dodge it, then?" Song Xizheng asked, curious.

At that, Song Zhenzhen laughed. "I shot George a look, and the two of us pretended to be a couple having a fight to get out of there. Xiong Qi tagged along playing peacemaker between us, and we argued our way straight out the whole time."

Lin Yun and Song Xizheng both stared, genuinely stunned. Could something that simple actually work?

Before either of them could say much more, Xiong Qi cut in, pointing toward a spot nearby. "Look — that’s the guy who ate the food."

Lin Yun glanced over and noticed his eyes looked distinctly glassy and unfocused. Then, as though some sudden realization had struck him, he abruptly shouted, "Why are you still standing there? Why aren’t you eating?! Go eat something!"

"Hurry up already! Go eat!"

The sight immediately reminded her of that earlier tourist she and Song Xizheng had encountered, caught in the exact same strange state.

"I think we should just wait it out a bit longer. Didn’t that green vest mention mealtime runs until 7:30? We’ve only got about five minutes left." George glanced down at the watch on his wrist.

Everyone agreed the plan made sense.

Since there wasn’t really any good way to observe what might actually happen right at 7:30 from where they were currently standing, they simply started making their way back toward the main road instead, deciding to wait things out from a safer distance.

As they passed by, the green vests kept casting glances their way, though thanks to the group’s earlier behavior, they mostly managed to keep their irritation in check. The red vests showed far less restraint, openly glaring at them with unmistakable hostility.

7:30.

The survivor who’d been shouting moments earlier suddenly fell completely silent.

Lin Yun could feel the hostile stares around them vanish almost instantly.

Glancing back, she found the vested staff no longer paying them any mind at all, their expressions back to perfectly normal.

It was as though all that earlier hostility and accusation had simply never happened at all.

"This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder," Song Zhenzhen muttered under her breath, clearly grateful she hadn’t touched any of the food herself.

Everything around him had returned to normal, yet the affected survivor simply rubbed at his head, turned, and walked off without another word.

After talking it over for a bit, the group decided to skip any further sightseeing and head straight back to the shelter instead, hoping to avoid running into anything else unsettling.

The five of them split up casually and strolled toward the shelter as though they were simply out for an evening walk.

The road back, however, wouldn’t turn out to be quite that simple.

The number of tourists around them had suddenly swelled, and Lin Yun frowned at the unexpected crowd now gathering ahead of them.