What were they doing? Looting corpses?

Everyone was utterly astounded.

Five hundred trillion!

What did that number even signify?

For the locals of Cangshan City, they had been aimlessly mired in an endless cycle of confusion. The only way out was to redeem themselves with ghost energy to be precise. 

In this loop, every time they regained consciousness, the Mist System would grant them 10,000 units of this energy, sufficient only for a mere half-hour. 

Within that timeframe, any energy harvested from killed participants would be seized by the slayer. Note, however, that this energy could not be converted to stored reserves. 

So, even if someone discovered Alexander's identity as a participant and killed him, they would only gain his nearly 200,000 energy units and not the reserves.

When the seized energy balanced out with one's own, redemption was at hand. You could liberate yourself from the cycle, becoming something akin to an NPC like Alistair—free and aware.