The white-haired young man imperceptibly jolted.
Was it intentional?
Zong Jiu silently affirmed this thought in his mind.
Wise men would never say anything superfluous. Furthermore, Zhuge An was a man who’d never say anything more than strictly necessary when speaking with actions would suffice.
In that case, was this information true, or false?
If it were true, it would be too uncharacteristic for Zong Jiu not to respond.
If Zhuge An was intentionally altering a few pieces of information to bait him to the hook and Zong Jiu responded, others would find out who the mole was. After all, the tasks that the mole card and the normal card received were different. Responding would be swimming straight into the net.
[Huh? Why is Master Zhuge suddenly talking about moles? It feels very deliberate that he is bringing it up now.]
[Yeah, I keep feeling it’s a little fishy. Maybe he’s trying to sound out the Magician or something?]
[Ah… speaking of which, I was so sure that Master Zhuge was a mole in the previous instance, sobs. I won’t get face-slapped again this time!]
[About that, actually, when in such a scenario wherein the moles are hard to find, it isn’t a bad move to mindlessly suspect Master Zhuge of being one… Back in the S-rank instance, the Cursed Mask, he alone had played for three different teams, leaving a deep psychological shadow on countless people.]
[Hear hear. I remember that after that, Master Zhuge turned into the top pick for “if I can’t find who the mole is then it’s got to be him.” /candle.jpg]
If it weren’t for that the trainees couldn’t see the contents of the bullet chat, it would most certainly become a common consensus.
They couldn’t be blamed for their paranoia. Rather, Zhuge An had truly done too many underhanded tricks, so many that practically everyone was on eggshells around him. It wasn’t an overstatement to say that they’d preemptively attribute whatever dipshit labels to him first to be safe.
Raising his eyes to meet those abstruse black eyes hidden in depth, Zong Jiu gave an apologetic smile. “Ah, I was lost in thought earlier and didn’t quite catch you. However, I still don’t have any particular candidates in mind for the time being.”
“It is ill-advised to baselessly cast suspicion on others. Without conclusive evidence that indicates if someone is a mole, I won’t give my opinion on this matter.”
The holier-than-thou quotes of Messiah were really handy, as anyone who had used them would know.
Zhuge An equivocated, “We would be deducted marks for getting it wrong; it is indeed better to exercise prudence first.”
Zong Jiu couldn’t tell if these words were meant for his ears, or for the other trainees to hear.
Though, to his surprise, Zhuge An actually turned out to be telling the truth. In spite of Zong Jiu’s reluctance to believe it, the information Zhuge An dished out made it seem especially as if he were gift-wrapping intelligence for him.
Truth be told, before the other had mentioned that moles could be caught and killed, Zong Jiu’s mentality was still stuck in the previous instance, whereby they simply had to write the names of the moles on a paper to reap the rewards. He never expected that the system would actually be so incredible as to do away with the ironclad law of no killing between trainees, straight-up raising the difficulty of this instance.
Good lord. The system had dug such a huge pit for the mole to jump into. He knocked it right on its head; how could the task of the mole be that easy?
In all fairness, it was really a deliberate move to have brought up this topic in such a situation, not to mention that Zhuge An had even directly revealed the task of the normal cards. It was so deliberate that each and every one of those on Anthony’s side had swept their eyes over suspiciously, boring holes into No. 3.
By now, Zong Jiu was finally able to be completely certain that this guy was basically here to send intelligence his way.
Not only was he here to send intelligence, he even steadily pulled a wave of aggro. After all, thinking more closely into it, if the mole really was Zhuge An, even if the opposing side knew about it, they wouldn’t dare to identify it. They really didn’t think that they could beat this long-established, highly-renowned S-rank.
At this point, Zong Jiu felt a little complicated.
This wasn’t Zhuge An’s first time helping him.
If they called the first instance a mutually-profitable exchange for both parties, then the Las Vegas special scene definitely counted as a favor. Although, the way Zong Jiu saw it, what Zhuge An said in the washroom then was with the intent to drive a wedge and heighten the dissent between him and No. 1. But he had to confess, without the clues that Zhuge An had sent him regarding the Devil’s abilities, Zong Jiu would never have been able to deduce those three key pieces of information so quickly, let alone gain such momentum at the middlemost gambling table, threaten the Devil with the knowledge and crazily rake in a million chips.
Those two times, the other still could be said to have had an agenda. But this time, it was really a case of serving intelligence up for free on a platter.
Based on Zhuge An’s behavior, he’d most probably had his suspicions on him. Even if there was a penalty for guessing wrongly, this wouldn’t mean much to an S-rank with deep pockets. This meant that if Zhuge An wanted to, he could make his suspicions public at any moment and instantly make Zong Jiu a public enemy.
But he didn’t. Instead, he even took it upon himself to play a scapegoat.
Zong Jiu really couldn’t understand why Zhuge An was acting in this manner.
Turning it over, his motives could really only be explained by those words that he had in the washroom, that Zong Jiu could rest assured that he would never stand against him.
During this period of contemplation, the crowd of them had walked up to the temple entrance.
This temple was out of place amidst the weathered mud-brick houses.
The main body was vermillion red, with a shrine for burning incense sticks erected outside. Tendrils of smoke were curling up in the air into a fog thick enough to evidence the number of people offering incense. Inside, a translucent veil was draped around its perimeter, obscuring the sight and enshrouding it in a layer of surreality. Carved wooden beams decorated the higher vantages of the temple, and at the center of it all, was a lifelike clay bodhisattva holding a vase of glossy white nephrite.
Aside from these, there was also a spirit tablet placed at the foot of the clay bodhisattva, with some dried fruit offered in tribute before it.
This bodhisattva should be the one earlier mentioned by the villagers, who had successfully gathered enough merits, attaining Buddhahood at this place.
And that was the queerest thing of it all. The villagers could never fill their stomachs, so how were there still people tending to the spirit tablet and offering tributes?
While the white-haired young man pretended to carefully inspect the overhead, he was in fact furtively using his cuffs to wrap the items in his pockets.
Mbgaecjafis, jr atf batfgr kfgf regnfslcu atf jgfj, cb bcf cbalmfv Ibcu Ale’r wlceaf wbnfwfcar.
Ktf wbwfca tf rfa obba lcab atf afwqif, Ibcu Ale mbeiv mifjgis offi atja atgbeut atf atlmx jcv mbjgrf ojyglm, atf Vbei Gfnbeglcu Dfii tjv rajgafv ab yegc lc tlr qbmxfa.
Qjr la qbrrlyif atja atf “qfgofma mbgqrf” atf mbgqrf mtjrfg kjr lc rfjgmt bo jr vlmajafv ys atf wjlc ajrx kjr ibmjafv lc atlr afwqif?
Zong Jiu’s eyes darted around as he pondered over it.
When his gaze turned to a certain spot, he locked eyes with the little boy who was hiding behind Wang Shou.
The Magician smiled at the little boy. After wavering for a while, the other responded in kind with a timid smile.
It was at this time that the village head took a step forward, knocking the ground with his cane.
“Grandma Yin, Grandma Yin, what you foretold that day has come true!”
In his anxiety, the heavy raps that his cane made when knocked against the slate were so loud that it agitated the hearts of those who heard it.
After knocking for a good several minutes, someone slowly walked out from the inky darkness behind the clay bodhisattva.
This person was covered from head to toe in a particularly wide black robe. The large hood over her head cloaked her features, but an uncomfortable and chilly aura densely enveloped her body.
Though the others had yet to show any reaction, Black-Robed Azan’s brows furrowed deeply.
Grandma Yin’s voice was shrill. “What are you doing, making such a ruckus this early in the morning? Aren’t you afraid the bodhisattva would condemn you for it?!”
“Good gracious, can you not!”
The village head anxiously clutched his chest. “People died last night! If it wasn’t because you shut the temple at night, we would already have come last night.”
“How many died?”
“Two. One hung on the old locust tree, the other in my water tank.”
Two?!
The trainees were petrified.
In light of safety, neither group had gone scouting last night. Under the tremendous pressure of this high-difficulty instance, everyone had made the same decision, intending to hold out until the last two days to step up and intensify their protective efforts.
But what they had never expected was that their intel actually lagged behind so badly, that they weren’t even aware when a second person died.
[Mummy, I feel so anxious thinking that there are only thirty-something people in the whole village, but two have already died last night.]
[Pfft, I wouldn’t have realized it if the guy upstairs didn’t point it out. The number of the villagers here are one-to-one with the number of trainees.]
[Isn’t this arrangement convenient then? The trainees can just protect the safety of one villager each, heuheu.]
[Hang on, didn’t only one die last night? How did one more end up dead?]
But it wasn’t surprising that they wouldn’t have known of this. That second villager accidentally drowned when he got up in the night and had been submerged for a whole night before being discovered. His face was already festered to the extent that his original features couldn’t be made out.
The village head who had remained composed last night was so spooked when receiving this news in the morning that he rushed over without delay.
His voice was trembling and his wrinkled face was full of trepidation.
“Do you think that she… she has really returned?”
Grandma Yin lowly uttered a Dharma name under her breath. “Have the two bodies been moved to the mourning hall at the rear of the temple?”
“Yes they have, they have.” The village head nodded, bowing slightly.
The woman in the wide black robe nodded, motioning for him to follow her. They were swallowed in the inky darkness at the rear of the temple, leaving everyone to gaze at each other in blank dismay.
Just then, a villager carrying a hoe rushed over from outside. “Shou-ge, we have caught that bitch.”
“What? You caught her?”
Wang Shou, who was grunting as he bandaged his arm on one side of the temple, instantly jumped up at this. “Hurry, bring me there!”
With undisguised joy on his face, after a word to the trainees, he swept off with a group of villagers in a great hurry.
At this moment, Black-Robed Azan, who had remained taciturn all this while, spoke up. “That woman, Grandma Yin, is a Yin walker.”
[What’s a Yin walker? /puzzled cat.jpg]
[I was curious as well, I’ve opened up my search engine, ahaha.]
As the term suggested, Yin walkers, otherwise known as Yin witches, referred to people who could freely walk between the nether world and the mortal world.
Yin walkers accepted commissions from the living on a regular basis. They would traverse into the nether world to look for the souls of the deceased and invite the ghosts to take possession of their body, allowing those in the nether and mortal worlds to meet. Alternatively, similar to the famous Taoist ritual, Guan Luo Yin, they would bring the living down, providing a brief window of opportunity for them to meet in the underworld.
Yin walking was an extremely niche occult profession with rare lines of succession. It was only in horror instances like this that they could encounter a practitioner.
They were similar to Black-Robed Azan.
Black-Robed Azan was No. 4’s nickname, not his real name. It was only that he had received this heritage from a certain S-rank instance, inheriting this alias. Over time, this was what everyone called him.
It was common knowledge that when it came to the various branches of evil occult arts, Southeast Asia was definitely a region that couldn’t be left out.
Azan was the honorific title of a Thai monk. They were categorized as either White-Robed Azans or Black-Robed Azans.
The White-Robed cultivated the righteous path, whereas the Black-Robed cultivated the demonic path. The Black-Robed hailed as Azans had to be beings of supreme evil.
For example, the instance that Black-Robed Azan had gained his heritage from contained countless strange and sinister arts.
Ghost-rearing arts, dark necromantic arts, Yin charms, Kuman Thong, and so forth.
The dark necromantic arts and Kuman Thong both used exceedingly vile methods to increase their luck. The latter was extremely cruel, based around the desiccated fetuses of children, whereas the dark necromantic arts consisted of techniques specifically designed to bring harm to people.
Each of these evil practices was more sinister than the last, practically the kind that would down a thousand enemies by felling eight hundred of your own men. Only, people were always unable to resist such temptations. Countless dignitaries had been entrenched in them for the sake of glory and wealth.
Although he was trapped in the infinite loop, Black-Robed Azan also held these practices that would damage his virtue in great contempt. So, despite receiving the heritage of a Black-Robed, he had only studied ghost-rearing in earnest.
The art of rearing ghosts was a rare double-edged sword amongst these sinister techniques. Those who did not have good intentions would rear savage ghosts and malicious spirits to amass even more power. There were also those who reared souls abandoned between the mortal and immortal plane in a mutually beneficial cooperation. Black-Robed Azan belonged to the latter category. Although it wasn’t as powerful as the former, it was still an advanced heritage brought out from an S-rank instance, not inferior to the capabilities of a top-notch psychic, and that sufficed for him.
The Black-Robed had a fearsome reputation. Black-Robed Azan was also a part of the Curse Team and regularly kept his head shaved bald. He was also swathed in a chilly aura, making it difficult for people to approach. Not many people were on friendly terms with him; the Exorcist, someone who played nice with everyone, was one of the few.
It was for this reason that Black-Robed Azan was able to sense that the Yin energy emanating from Grandma Yin shared the same source as his.
He deliberately didn’t keep his voice down. All the trainees in the temple were able to hear this clue, falling into deep thought.
But it was apparent that Black-Robed Azan had no intention of working together with anyone. After saying this, he took out the Spirit Summoning Streamer from his backpack, walking out of the temple.
At this, the trainees in Anthony’s group followed behind.
Only a day had passed, yet in this short time frame, two people had died. At this rate, there was a strong possibility that they would end up failing the main task, let alone that the veterans were still thinking of ways to tackle dangerous challenges and improve their ratings. All they could do now was to go where the villagers were and do their best to protect them.
Xu Sen was riddled with anxiety. “What should we do now?”
The group of newcomers simultaneously turned towards the white-haired young man standing in front of them.
Zong Jiu pondered. “How about this, we split up for now. Xu Sen, you take someone to Wang Shou and check out what’s happening there. From the plot introduction, they likely intend to capture that woman and sell her to the human traffickers. Since she’s a widow who married into the village, this means that she wasn’t previously from the village. Perhaps this could be a starting point for us to find some clues. But try not to get into a conflict with the villagers.”
“Xu Su, head over to the bodhisattva soil at the back of the village and think of a way to carry some with you. Otherwise, head to the market they mentioned and take a look; probe around for some information.”
“As for me, I’ll go with Zhuge An to the mourning hall at the rear of the temple to have a look at the other corpse and try to uncover clues from there. We’ll convene again at the temple at noon.”
This was a relatively conservative and logical arrangement. Everyone was able to go along with it.
Gradually, following what Zong Jiu had arranged, everyone else dispersed from the temple, leaving only himself and Zhuge An.
Zong Jiu had no intention to further communicate with Zhuge An. He didn’t even spare the other more than a glance, walking straight towards the rear of the temple, making apparent his intention for them to act alone.
The bullet chat was entirely taken aback by this.
[WTF, alone? The Magician’s really got the guts.]
[Actually, that’s pretty understandable; acting alone will increase the rating coefficient. Didn’t you see Black-Robed Azan also move off alone just now?]
[QAQ, please don’t let anything happen, I’m counting on the Magician to get the universal wish ticket and bring us all out of here.]
What Zong Jiu could never have imagined was that his declaration in the deep of the night was screenshotted by the bullet chat audience and shared on the forums of the infinite loop. It caused a ferocious uproar the next day, gaining him a huge horde of fans and propelling his popularity to rival those in the S-ranks.
After all, the melon seed-eating audience had no personal stake with the other C-ranks. Wouldn’t it be nice if Zong Jiu could really rise up to the top and get everyone out of this hellhole?
At this moment, Zong Jiu had to explore the mourning hall and find out if the corpse was really the prop for his main task.
While the probability wasn’t high, the Soul Devouring Bell had been heating up this whole time. Zong Jiu believed that the objective of his main task was highly likely to be in the vicinity of this temple, so he quickened his pace.
There was an uninviting, pitch-black passageway towards the rear.
He couldn’t see the end of the passageway, nor even his fingers if he stretched his hand out. There wasn’t a single light, making the chilly gloom of the rear of the temple even heavier.
No one else was walking this way. Only Zong Jiu needed to go to the mourning hall.
He paused in his steps. One hand cautiously palmed the Soul Devouring Bell in his pocket while the other hand clipped five or six poker cards. He slowly moved again with his back pressed against the wall, walking further into the darkness.
There were too many mysteries surrounding this village.
First, the myth of the Sacred Herb. Most people would brush it to the back of their minds after hearing it and would certainly not take it seriously. Yet the people of this village had not only taken it to heart, they’d even swallowed it down. They clearly weren’t even able to fill their stomachs, but they still had the leisure to offer incense and worship in this temple, building and decorating it so gorgeously. A single glance was sufficient to tell that therein lay a serious contradiction.
When others experienced famine, they’d be dying to tear apart the clay bodhisattva, and wouldn’t be in the mood to care about such things.
Further, it was strange that it wasn’t a witch doctor who stood vigil over a temple of this size, but a Yin witch. Moreover, Grandma Yin had high renown. All of the villagers greatly looked up to and relied on her, which was not congruent with reason.
Next, the calmness with which the village head responded when he saw the corpse last night, yet his utter terror when he asked if “she had returned”, as if long aware that a murder was going to happen.
The villagers must have known something. When he associated it with their illicit activities of selling women to traffickers, Zong Jiu felt that he was slowly getting close to the answer.
As he mulled over these, he walked in the passageway in the dark, the fall of his footsteps featherlight.
After enhancing his eyes to the highest state, Zong Jiu’s eyesight had reached a range that was unattainable by ordinary people, which included heightened night vision. Such as now, he could see a fork appear in the path before him.
When in doubt, draw a card. It so happened that Zong Jiu had finished the cooldown for another two Tarot readings.
The left fork was Judgment, upright.
The right fork was the Moon, upright.
Judgment in the upright orientation indicated a squaring of accounts between right and wrong, merits and demerits; a new start or a resurrection. On the other hand, the Moon was a frightening and disturbing draw, brimming with strangeness and deception.
Zong Jiu weighed it and still chose the right fork.
After all, one couldn’t catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s lair.
After walking down the right fork for about two minutes, a conversation faintly carried over from a short distance away in the darkness.
The shrill, raspy voice was distinctly recognizable, belonging to Grandma Yin.
“It must have been an unusual death for his corpse to be in such a wretched condition. Cough it up, what really happened?”
A frail voice sighed. “Three years ago, that elderly woman couldn’t withstand the hunger and hung herself in the mud house behind the old locust tree. She was old and a widow with no children, so she couldn’t enjoy any sort of glory and wealth by following the human traffickers to the city. I reckon that she hated our villagers for not bringing her food, and turned into a ghost after her death to bring harm upon us.”
“Fancy that, us villagers treated her so well, letting her tend to the bodhisattva soil and even spending money to make a spirit tablet for her…”
Zong Jiu’s thoughts spun. When he heard the sound of voices in front of him gradually stop, he immediately lengthened his stride and retreated the way he came so that he wouldn’t run into them.
Sure enough, there was something wrong with the old locust tree behind the mud house.
However, based on what he heard from the village head, if the elderly woman had hung herself to death in the mud house because she couldn’t withstand her hunger, then where did those deep scratch marks on the wall come from? Could she really be claiming lives as a malicious spirit after her death, simply because she had died of hunger and the villagers didn’t do anything to help her?
Besides, if they really hadn’t done anything wrong, then why would they go to the trouble of setting up a spirit tablet in front of the clay bodhisattva?
Hah, wasn’t that the reaction of people who knew they had done wrong?
The Moon was a sure indicator that the village head had to be telling falsehoods.
As Zong Jiu retreated, the glimmerings of an idea slowly began to form in his mind.
He retreated to the starting point of the fork, this time walking down the path on the left.
Just when he reached the depths and saw kerosene lamps in the distance illuminating the mourning hall, a change abruptly occurred.
Without the slightest warning, the white-haired young man suddenly dodged backwards, neatly evading the attack that came out of the darkness.
Having failed in his first attack, his opponent gnashed his teeth, quickly launching a second wave of attacks.
Zong Jiu swiftly turned his head back, his pale pink eyes razor-sharp in the darkness. His fingertips flashed, and a few poker cards shot into the darkness with the unerring accuracy of an arrow from a bow.
It was apparent that his opponent never expected Zong Jiu to actually maintain such high visibility in the darkness. He was forced to dart back, yet in his carelessness, a poker card cut into his palm, nailing it to the wall, also causing him to lose his grip on the yellowish-brown talisman he held in his hand. It fell to the ground.
“AH—”
The poker card didn’t fully penetrate through his hand. Only a tip jutted out from the flesh and bone, deeply burying into a crack on the stone wall. He was unable to move his hand an inch.
This wasn’t the same force that Zong Jiu had previously used when slicing through a person’s aorta. After the enhancements, his wrist and finger strength from before was like the difference between night and day.
Yi Ruisi straightened his body, glaring at him venomously.
He had held a grudge after being faceslapped by a newcomer in front of everyone at Las Vegas. Having been assigned to the same instance this time, and seeing Zong Jiu split up from the rest at the temple, Yi Ruisi sneakily followed behind him, intending to call out this newcomer’s bluff.
The talisman he had just held in his hand was an extremely sinister talisman called the Yin Gathering Talisman. Its original function was to gather Yin energy to use, but in a horror instance like this, unclean existences would flock to it. By which, they could kill with a borrowed knife, without the trainee having to lift a hand.
At first, Yi Ruisi had intended to slap the talisman paper on Zong Jiu’s back and then quickly make his escape. He didn’t expect that he would not only be unsuccessful, but also be counterattacked, losing him a chess piece.
Not admitting to the inadequacy of his skill, he could only fume in rage.
“You are definitely one of those moles!”
In any case, there was the ironclad rule that trainees couldn’t kill each other, so even if Yi Ruisi was on the losing end, he didn’t panic, but instead made a declaration in provocation.
However, what neither of them noticed was that the talisman that landed by their feet had jerked, bursting into a deep blue flame before slowly charring black, crumpling into a ball.
The white-haired young man imperceptibly jolted.
Was it intentional?
Zong Jiu silently affirmed this thought in his mind.
Wise men would never say anything superfluous. Furthermore, Zhuge An was a man who’d never say anything more than strictly necessary when speaking with actions would suffice.
In that case, was this information true, or false?
If it were true, it would be too uncharacteristic for Zong Jiu not to respond.
If Zhuge An was intentionally altering a few pieces of information to bait him to the hook and Zong Jiu responded, others would find out who the mole was. After all, the tasks that the mole card and the normal card received were different. Responding would be swimming straight into the net.
[Huh? Why is Master Zhuge suddenly talking about moles? It feels very deliberate that he is bringing it up now.]
[Yeah, I keep feeling it’s a little fishy. Maybe he’s trying to sound out the Magician or something?]
[Ah… speaking of which, I was so sure that Master Zhuge was a mole in the previous instance, sobs. I won’t get face-slapped again this time!]
[About that, actually, when in such a scenario wherein the moles are hard to find, it isn’t a bad move to mindlessly suspect Master Zhuge of being one… Back in the S-rank instance, the Cursed Mask, he alone had played for three different teams, leaving a deep psychological shadow on countless people.]
[Hear hear. I remember that after that, Master Zhuge turned into the top pick for “if I can’t find who the mole is then it’s got to be him.” /candle.jpg]
If it weren’t for that the trainees couldn’t see the contents of the bullet chat, it would most certainly become a common consensus.
They couldn’t be blamed for their paranoia. Rather, Zhuge An had truly done too many underhanded tricks, so many that practically everyone was on eggshells around him. It wasn’t an overstatement to say that they’d preemptively attribute whatever dipshit labels to him first to be safe.
Raising his eyes to meet those abstruse black eyes hidden in depth, Zong Jiu gave an apologetic smile. “Ah, I was lost in thought earlier and didn’t quite catch you. However, I still don’t have any particular candidates in mind for the time being.”
“It is ill-advised to baselessly cast suspicion on others. Without conclusive evidence that indicates if someone is a mole, I won’t give my opinion on this matter.”
The holier-than-thou quotes of Messiah were really handy, as anyone who had used them would know.
Zhuge An equivocated, “We would be deducted marks for getting it wrong; it is indeed better to exercise prudence first.”
Zong Jiu couldn’t tell if these words were meant for his ears, or for the other trainees to hear.
Though, to his surprise, Zhuge An actually turned out to be telling the truth. In spite of Zong Jiu’s reluctance to believe it, the information Zhuge An dished out made it seem especially as if he were gift-wrapping intelligence for him.
Truth be told, before the other had mentioned that moles could be caught and killed, Zong Jiu’s mentality was still stuck in the previous instance, whereby they simply had to write the names of the moles on a paper to reap the rewards. He never expected that the system would actually be so incredible as to do away with the ironclad law of no killing between trainees, straight-up raising the difficulty of this instance.
Good lord. The system had dug such a huge pit for the mole to jump into. He knocked it right on its head; how could the task of the mole be that easy?
In all fairness, it was really a deliberate move to have brought up this topic in such a situation, not to mention that Zhuge An had even directly revealed the task of the normal cards. It was so deliberate that each and every one of those on Anthony’s side had swept their eyes over suspiciously, boring holes into No. 3.
By now, Zong Jiu was finally able to be completely certain that this guy was basically here to send intelligence his way.
Not only was he here to send intelligence, he even steadily pulled a wave of aggro. After all, thinking more closely into it, if the mole really was Zhuge An, even if the opposing side knew about it, they wouldn’t dare to identify it. They really didn’t think that they could beat this long-established, highly-renowned S-rank.
At this point, Zong Jiu felt a little complicated.
This wasn’t Zhuge An’s first time helping him.
If they called the first instance a mutually-profitable exchange for both parties, then the Las Vegas special scene definitely counted as a favor. Although, the way Zong Jiu saw it, what Zhuge An said in the washroom then was with the intent to drive a wedge and heighten the dissent between him and No. 1. But he had to confess, without the clues that Zhuge An had sent him regarding the Devil’s abilities, Zong Jiu would never have been able to deduce those three key pieces of information so quickly, let alone gain such momentum at the middlemost gambling table, threaten the Devil with the knowledge and crazily rake in a million chips.
Those two times, the other still could be said to have had an agenda. But this time, it was really a case of serving intelligence up for free on a platter.
Based on Zhuge An’s behavior, he’d most probably had his suspicions on him. Even if there was a penalty for guessing wrongly, this wouldn’t mean much to an S-rank with deep pockets. This meant that if Zhuge An wanted to, he could make his suspicions public at any moment and instantly make Zong Jiu a public enemy.
But he didn’t. Instead, he even took it upon himself to play a scapegoat.
Zong Jiu really couldn’t understand why Zhuge An was acting in this manner.
Turning it over, his motives could really only be explained by those words that he had in the washroom, that Zong Jiu could rest assured that he would never stand against him.
During this period of contemplation, the crowd of them had walked up to the temple entrance.
This temple was out of place amidst the weathered mud-brick houses.
The main body was vermillion red, with a shrine for burning incense sticks erected outside. Tendrils of smoke were curling up in the air into a fog thick enough to evidence the number of people offering incense. Inside, a translucent veil was draped around its perimeter, obscuring the sight and enshrouding it in a layer of surreality. Carved wooden beams decorated the higher vantages of the temple, and at the center of it all, was a lifelike clay bodhisattva holding a vase of glossy white nephrite.
Aside from these, there was also a spirit tablet placed at the foot of the clay bodhisattva, with some dried fruit offered in tribute before it.
This bodhisattva should be the one earlier mentioned by the villagers, who had successfully gathered enough merits, attaining Buddhahood at this place.
And that was the queerest thing of it all. The villagers could never fill their stomachs, so how were there still people tending to the spirit tablet and offering tributes?
While the white-haired young man pretended to carefully inspect the overhead, he was in fact furtively using his cuffs to wrap the items in his pockets.
Mbgaecjafis, jr atf batfgr kfgf regnfslcu atf jgfj, cb bcf cbalmfv Ibcu Ale’r wlceaf wbnfwfcar.
Ktf wbwfca tf rfa obba lcab atf afwqif, Ibcu Ale mbeiv mifjgis offi atja atgbeut atf atlmx jcv mbjgrf ojyglm, atf Vbei Gfnbeglcu Dfii tjv rajgafv ab yegc lc tlr qbmxfa.
Qjr la qbrrlyif atja atf “qfgofma mbgqrf” atf mbgqrf mtjrfg kjr lc rfjgmt bo jr vlmajafv ys atf wjlc ajrx kjr ibmjafv lc atlr afwqif?
Zong Jiu’s eyes darted around as he pondered over it.
When his gaze turned to a certain spot, he locked eyes with the little boy who was hiding behind Wang Shou.
The Magician smiled at the little boy. After wavering for a while, the other responded in kind with a timid smile.
It was at this time that the village head took a step forward, knocking the ground with his cane.
“Grandma Yin, Grandma Yin, what you foretold that day has come true!”
In his anxiety, the heavy raps that his cane made when knocked against the slate were so loud that it agitated the hearts of those who heard it.
After knocking for a good several minutes, someone slowly walked out from the inky darkness behind the clay bodhisattva.
This person was covered from head to toe in a particularly wide black robe. The large hood over her head cloaked her features, but an uncomfortable and chilly aura densely enveloped her body.
Though the others had yet to show any reaction, Black-Robed Azan’s brows furrowed deeply.
Grandma Yin’s voice was shrill. “What are you doing, making such a ruckus this early in the morning? Aren’t you afraid the bodhisattva would condemn you for it?!”
“Good gracious, can you not!”
The village head anxiously clutched his chest. “People died last night! If it wasn’t because you shut the temple at night, we would already have come last night.”
“How many died?”
“Two. One hung on the old locust tree, the other in my water tank.”
Two?!
The trainees were petrified.
In light of safety, neither group had gone scouting last night. Under the tremendous pressure of this high-difficulty instance, everyone had made the same decision, intending to hold out until the last two days to step up and intensify their protective efforts.
But what they had never expected was that their intel actually lagged behind so badly, that they weren’t even aware when a second person died.
[Mummy, I feel so anxious thinking that there are only thirty-something people in the whole village, but two have already died last night.]
[Pfft, I wouldn’t have realized it if the guy upstairs didn’t point it out. The number of the villagers here are one-to-one with the number of trainees.]
[Isn’t this arrangement convenient then? The trainees can just protect the safety of one villager each, heuheu.]
[Hang on, didn’t only one die last night? How did one more end up dead?]
But it wasn’t surprising that they wouldn’t have known of this. That second villager accidentally drowned when he got up in the night and had been submerged for a whole night before being discovered. His face was already festered to the extent that his original features couldn’t be made out.
The village head who had remained composed last night was so spooked when receiving this news in the morning that he rushed over without delay.
His voice was trembling and his wrinkled face was full of trepidation.
“Do you think that she… she has really returned?”
Grandma Yin lowly uttered a Dharma name under her breath. “Have the two bodies been moved to the mourning hall at the rear of the temple?”
“Yes they have, they have.” The village head nodded, bowing slightly.
The woman in the wide black robe nodded, motioning for him to follow her. They were swallowed in the inky darkness at the rear of the temple, leaving everyone to gaze at each other in blank dismay.
Just then, a villager carrying a hoe rushed over from outside. “Shou-ge, we have caught that bitch.”
“What? You caught her?”
Wang Shou, who was grunting as he bandaged his arm on one side of the temple, instantly jumped up at this. “Hurry, bring me there!”
With undisguised joy on his face, after a word to the trainees, he swept off with a group of villagers in a great hurry.
At this moment, Black-Robed Azan, who had remained taciturn all this while, spoke up. “That woman, Grandma Yin, is a Yin walker.”
[What’s a Yin walker? /puzzled cat.jpg]
[I was curious as well, I’ve opened up my search engine, ahaha.]
As the term suggested, Yin walkers, otherwise known as Yin witches, referred to people who could freely walk between the nether world and the mortal world.
Yin walkers accepted commissions from the living on a regular basis. They would traverse into the nether world to look for the souls of the deceased and invite the ghosts to take possession of their body, allowing those in the nether and mortal worlds to meet. Alternatively, similar to the famous Taoist ritual, Guan Luo Yin, they would bring the living down, providing a brief window of opportunity for them to meet in the underworld.
Yin walking was an extremely niche occult profession with rare lines of succession. It was only in horror instances like this that they could encounter a practitioner.
They were similar to Black-Robed Azan.
Black-Robed Azan was No. 4’s nickname, not his real name. It was only that he had received this heritage from a certain S-rank instance, inheriting this alias. Over time, this was what everyone called him.
It was common knowledge that when it came to the various branches of evil occult arts, Southeast Asia was definitely a region that couldn’t be left out.
Azan was the honorific title of a Thai monk. They were categorized as either White-Robed Azans or Black-Robed Azans.
The White-Robed cultivated the righteous path, whereas the Black-Robed cultivated the demonic path. The Black-Robed hailed as Azans had to be beings of supreme evil.
For example, the instance that Black-Robed Azan had gained his heritage from contained countless strange and sinister arts.
Ghost-rearing arts, dark necromantic arts, Yin charms, Kuman Thong, and so forth.
The dark necromantic arts and Kuman Thong both used exceedingly vile methods to increase their luck. The latter was extremely cruel, based around the desiccated fetuses of children, whereas the dark necromantic arts consisted of techniques specifically designed to bring harm to people.
Each of these evil practices was more sinister than the last, practically the kind that would down a thousand enemies by felling eight hundred of your own men. Only, people were always unable to resist such temptations. Countless dignitaries had been entrenched in them for the sake of glory and wealth.
Although he was trapped in the infinite loop, Black-Robed Azan also held these practices that would damage his virtue in great contempt. So, despite receiving the heritage of a Black-Robed, he had only studied ghost-rearing in earnest.
The art of rearing ghosts was a rare double-edged sword amongst these sinister techniques. Those who did not have good intentions would rear savage ghosts and malicious spirits to amass even more power. There were also those who reared souls abandoned between the mortal and immortal plane in a mutually beneficial cooperation. Black-Robed Azan belonged to the latter category. Although it wasn’t as powerful as the former, it was still an advanced heritage brought out from an S-rank instance, not inferior to the capabilities of a top-notch psychic, and that sufficed for him.
The Black-Robed had a fearsome reputation. Black-Robed Azan was also a part of the Curse Team and regularly kept his head shaved bald. He was also swathed in a chilly aura, making it difficult for people to approach. Not many people were on friendly terms with him; the Exorcist, someone who played nice with everyone, was one of the few.
It was for this reason that Black-Robed Azan was able to sense that the Yin energy emanating from Grandma Yin shared the same source as his.
He deliberately didn’t keep his voice down. All the trainees in the temple were able to hear this clue, falling into deep thought.
But it was apparent that Black-Robed Azan had no intention of working together with anyone. After saying this, he took out the Spirit Summoning Streamer from his backpack, walking out of the temple.
At this, the trainees in Anthony’s group followed behind.
Only a day had passed, yet in this short time frame, two people had died. At this rate, there was a strong possibility that they would end up failing the main task, let alone that the veterans were still thinking of ways to tackle dangerous challenges and improve their ratings. All they could do now was to go where the villagers were and do their best to protect them.
Xu Sen was riddled with anxiety. “What should we do now?”
The group of newcomers simultaneously turned towards the white-haired young man standing in front of them.
Zong Jiu pondered. “How about this, we split up for now. Xu Sen, you take someone to Wang Shou and check out what’s happening there. From the plot introduction, they likely intend to capture that woman and sell her to the human traffickers. Since she’s a widow who married into the village, this means that she wasn’t previously from the village. Perhaps this could be a starting point for us to find some clues. But try not to get into a conflict with the villagers.”
“Xu Su, head over to the bodhisattva soil at the back of the village and think of a way to carry some with you. Otherwise, head to the market they mentioned and take a look; probe around for some information.”
“As for me, I’ll go with Zhuge An to the mourning hall at the rear of the temple to have a look at the other corpse and try to uncover clues from there. We’ll convene again at the temple at noon.”
This was a relatively conservative and logical arrangement. Everyone was able to go along with it.
Gradually, following what Zong Jiu had arranged, everyone else dispersed from the temple, leaving only himself and Zhuge An.
Zong Jiu had no intention to further communicate with Zhuge An. He didn’t even spare the other more than a glance, walking straight towards the rear of the temple, making apparent his intention for them to act alone.
The bullet chat was entirely taken aback by this.
[WTF, alone? The Magician’s really got the guts.]
[Actually, that’s pretty understandable; acting alone will increase the rating coefficient. Didn’t you see Black-Robed Azan also move off alone just now?]
[QAQ, please don’t let anything happen, I’m counting on the Magician to get the universal wish ticket and bring us all out of here.]
What Zong Jiu could never have imagined was that his declaration in the deep of the night was screenshotted by the bullet chat audience and shared on the forums of the infinite loop. It caused a ferocious uproar the next day, gaining him a huge horde of fans and propelling his popularity to rival those in the S-ranks.
After all, the melon seed-eating audience had no personal stake with the other C-ranks. Wouldn’t it be nice if Zong Jiu could really rise up to the top and get everyone out of this hellhole?
At this moment, Zong Jiu had to explore the mourning hall and find out if the corpse was really the prop for his main task.
While the probability wasn’t high, the Soul Devouring Bell had been heating up this whole time. Zong Jiu believed that the objective of his main task was highly likely to be in the vicinity of this temple, so he quickened his pace.
There was an uninviting, pitch-black passageway towards the rear.
He couldn’t see the end of the passageway, nor even his fingers if he stretched his hand out. There wasn’t a single light, making the chilly gloom of the rear of the temple even heavier.
No one else was walking this way. Only Zong Jiu needed to go to the mourning hall.
He paused in his steps. One hand cautiously palmed the Soul Devouring Bell in his pocket while the other hand clipped five or six poker cards. He slowly moved again with his back pressed against the wall, walking further into the darkness.
There were too many mysteries surrounding this village.
First, the myth of the Sacred Herb. Most people would brush it to the back of their minds after hearing it and would certainly not take it seriously. Yet the people of this village had not only taken it to heart, they’d even swallowed it down. They clearly weren’t even able to fill their stomachs, but they still had the leisure to offer incense and worship in this temple, building and decorating it so gorgeously. A single glance was sufficient to tell that therein lay a serious contradiction.
When others experienced famine, they’d be dying to tear apart the clay bodhisattva, and wouldn’t be in the mood to care about such things.
Further, it was strange that it wasn’t a witch doctor who stood vigil over a temple of this size, but a Yin witch. Moreover, Grandma Yin had high renown. All of the villagers greatly looked up to and relied on her, which was not congruent with reason.
Next, the calmness with which the village head responded when he saw the corpse last night, yet his utter terror when he asked if “she had returned”, as if long aware that a murder was going to happen.
The villagers must have known something. When he associated it with their illicit activities of selling women to traffickers, Zong Jiu felt that he was slowly getting close to the answer.
As he mulled over these, he walked in the passageway in the dark, the fall of his footsteps featherlight.
After enhancing his eyes to the highest state, Zong Jiu’s eyesight had reached a range that was unattainable by ordinary people, which included heightened night vision. Such as now, he could see a fork appear in the path before him.
When in doubt, draw a card. It so happened that Zong Jiu had finished the cooldown for another two Tarot readings.
The left fork was Judgment, upright.
The right fork was the Moon, upright.
Judgment in the upright orientation indicated a squaring of accounts between right and wrong, merits and demerits; a new start or a resurrection. On the other hand, the Moon was a frightening and disturbing draw, brimming with strangeness and deception.
Zong Jiu weighed it and still chose the right fork.
After all, one couldn’t catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s lair.
After walking down the right fork for about two minutes, a conversation faintly carried over from a short distance away in the darkness.
The shrill, raspy voice was distinctly recognizable, belonging to Grandma Yin.
“It must have been an unusual death for his corpse to be in such a wretched condition. Cough it up, what really happened?”
A frail voice sighed. “Three years ago, that elderly woman couldn’t withstand the hunger and hung herself in the mud house behind the old locust tree. She was old and a widow with no children, so she couldn’t enjoy any sort of glory and wealth by following the human traffickers to the city. I reckon that she hated our villagers for not bringing her food, and turned into a ghost after her death to bring harm upon us.”
“Fancy that, us villagers treated her so well, letting her tend to the bodhisattva soil and even spending money to make a spirit tablet for her…”
Zong Jiu’s thoughts spun. When he heard the sound of voices in front of him gradually stop, he immediately lengthened his stride and retreated the way he came so that he wouldn’t run into them.
Sure enough, there was something wrong with the old locust tree behind the mud house.
However, based on what he heard from the village head, if the elderly woman had hung herself to death in the mud house because she couldn’t withstand her hunger, then where did those deep scratch marks on the wall come from? Could she really be claiming lives as a malicious spirit after her death, simply because she had died of hunger and the villagers didn’t do anything to help her?
Besides, if they really hadn’t done anything wrong, then why would they go to the trouble of setting up a spirit tablet in front of the clay bodhisattva?
Hah, wasn’t that the reaction of people who knew they had done wrong?
The Moon was a sure indicator that the village head had to be telling falsehoods.
As Zong Jiu retreated, the glimmerings of an idea slowly began to form in his mind.
He retreated to the starting point of the fork, this time walking down the path on the left.
Just when he reached the depths and saw kerosene lamps in the distance illuminating the mourning hall, a change abruptly occurred.
Without the slightest warning, the white-haired young man suddenly dodged backwards, neatly evading the attack that came out of the darkness.
Having failed in his first attack, his opponent gnashed his teeth, quickly launching a second wave of attacks.
Zong Jiu swiftly turned his head back, his pale pink eyes razor-sharp in the darkness. His fingertips flashed, and a few poker cards shot into the darkness with the unerring accuracy of an arrow from a bow.
It was apparent that his opponent never expected Zong Jiu to actually maintain such high visibility in the darkness. He was forced to dart back, yet in his carelessness, a poker card cut into his palm, nailing it to the wall, also causing him to lose his grip on the yellowish-brown talisman he held in his hand. It fell to the ground.
“AH—”
The poker card didn’t fully penetrate through his hand. Only a tip jutted out from the flesh and bone, deeply burying into a crack on the stone wall. He was unable to move his hand an inch.
This wasn’t the same force that Zong Jiu had previously used when slicing through a person’s aorta. After the enhancements, his wrist and finger strength from before was like the difference between night and day.
Yi Ruisi straightened his body, glaring at him venomously.
He had held a grudge after being faceslapped by a newcomer in front of everyone at Las Vegas. Having been assigned to the same instance this time, and seeing Zong Jiu split up from the rest at the temple, Yi Ruisi sneakily followed behind him, intending to call out this newcomer’s bluff.
The talisman he had just held in his hand was an extremely sinister talisman called the Yin Gathering Talisman. Its original function was to gather Yin energy to use, but in a horror instance like this, unclean existences would flock to it. By which, they could kill with a borrowed knife, without the trainee having to lift a hand.
At first, Yi Ruisi had intended to slap the talisman paper on Zong Jiu’s back and then quickly make his escape. He didn’t expect that he would not only be unsuccessful, but also be counterattacked, losing him a chess piece.
Not admitting to the inadequacy of his skill, he could only fume in rage.
“You are definitely one of those moles!”
In any case, there was the ironclad rule that trainees couldn’t kill each other, so even if Yi Ruisi was on the losing end, he didn’t panic, but instead made a declaration in provocation.
However, what neither of them noticed was that the talisman that landed by their feet had jerked, bursting into a deep blue flame before slowly charring black, crumpling into a ball.
