Chapter 35 - Mastermo Is Being Stalked By A Snake

"How is that considered as forgiving them?" Kaoru asked

"How can it not be considered as her being generous? She's a goddess and her son is also naturally one by birth, so isn't it considered an unforgivable sin to eat a God? But she left them a way out with only six sacrifices." Li Ling responded

"..." Zhihao had an indecipherable expression on his face as he suddenly seemed to realize something else, "Why six? Why that number in particular?"

Zhou XinYi also seemed to ponder over the question for a bit, "Maybe just a random number."

Zhihao shook his head, "Can't be."

"Why?" Andy questioned back.

"If she wanted to make the preposition hard for the beasts to fill, she should have chosen a much larger number and if she wanted it to be easy, she should've chosen a number that was too low, such as one or two, but she asked for six sacrifices." Zhihao answered logically, "When you think about it, it is also weird that the souls work for her as her eyes and ears in this land.."

"What is weird with that?" Kaoru asked, clearly confused by the sudden turn of events, "Don't gods normally test mortals by giving them instructions that show their devotion?"

"Not really." Li Ling spoke up, "Now that A-Zhi has pointed it out, I also find this very weird. She's a god, aren't gods omnipresent? Why would she need them as her eyes and ears?"

Wang GuiYing and Aunt Su, who were uninterested in joining the discussion, were standing by the side—tracing the carvings with their hands as they were very much dying from boredom after being forced to go through all this extra trouble. Suddenly Wang GuiYing found an area on top—different from the others, he immediately called Aunt Su and the two tinkered around with it—pushing and poking it around, somehow getting it to react back to them. 

The cave started shaking uncontrollably and the players reached out to the wall, trying to hold onto it as they desperately tried to stabilize themselves. 

"Who did that?" Zhihao glared at BBtrash, who had already given up trying to stand up and was pathetically sprawled on the floor.

"System, what is happening?" Kaoru cried out.

[Answering player's question: The cave has started changing and is in the first stage of disintegration. Please hurry up before the cave enters the 4th stage. Once it enters the 4th stage, the walls would completely break down and the players would be buried along with it.]

"Shit." Zhihao cursed, wanting to turn around and leave, but the door behind them was already closed shut by the heavy stone shutter that fell. 

"This seems a bit familiar." Li Ling spoke. 

"It is." Zhihao nodded, "Remember RoRo's cave, the shutter fell behind us, I think it was somehow triggered by us."

"So that cave was also starting to kill us?"

"Hmm." Zhihao affirmed, "We didn't ask the system for an explanation at the time and so it didn't inform us. We saved RoRo and the shutter had been blown away by the other team."

"That makes sense." Li Ling nodded as he finally understood a part of the mystery behind the caves. 

"What are you two on about?" Zhou XinYi asked as he tried to help Wang GuiYing stand up. 

"Nothing." Zhihao didn't find the situation suitable enough to have a cup of tea and give a patient explanation, he would rather say everything in the end, after they had completed the level and finished their missions, "Let's move further."

"Are you crazy?! If we go deeper, we are only asking to get killed." Aunt Su scolded the man.

"Follow me if you want to." Zhihao answered, not wanting to argue with the woman. 

Shockingly enough, this time, even Wang GuiYing supported Zhihao's decision, "We should continue moving. If we blow up that shutter, we don't know what else that may trigger."

What he said was logical but it was not the real reason why he didn't want to go back—the real reason was much simpler and pathetic; he just didn't want to go back and face that huge snake ghost again. If the other players heard his real reason—they would certainly laugh at him and say it was nonsense; but it would not be totally unexpected coming from his mouth, however, In Wang GuiYing's mind, he still held somewhat of a dignity. To say that he was afraid of a snake in a game was preposterous for him—he would never want to be portrayed like that in front of his fans—sadly enough, unknown to him, his fans had already not held any high expectations from him. 

"But we don't know what lies ahead." Aunt Su responded

"...."

Suddenly the team remembered that the other five caves were unsealed by everybody except for Aunt Su, Andy, and Wang GuiYing—this shameless group of three ran away at the mere sight of a treasure beast—They were seriously hopeless or so, Zhihao thought. 

Now that he thought about it, maybe even letting them tag along as bait was pointless—useless even as a bait—he really wanted to ditch them somewhere in a ditch, from where they could not return; but he would not go that far—luckily he didn't hate them that much to go through with such trouble. He had only disliked them from the bottom of his heart. 

Kaoru, "Let's move fast. I think the walls have started to cave in."

"Let's go!"

The team sprinted across the cave, going deeper and deeper. Zhihao was suddenly reminded of a movie he had seen as a child about a magician who moved across a cave that contained a huge snakeskin around which they traced it to the entrance of the real lair of the snake, the only difference, in this case, was that they seemed to be walking inside that snake. A cave shaped exactly like the snake that it was home to. 

"There is a..." Andy could no longer speak as he looked behind them and found the cursed snake following them closely behind, he screamed in shock, "Arggggggg..."

"Don't scream, it might cause..." Zhihao also glanced back and stopped speaking, changing his sentence, "Run faster!"

By this time, the other players had also noticed that something was not right and as they all looked back and discovered the snake slithering closer and closer to them, they started screaming one by one and their feet automatically increased their speed. 

"Don't panic, we are almost there." Li Ling reassured and Zhihao thought that the man had just said that in order to show them a ray of inspiration, so he didn't ponder over the question of how the man knew this small detail. 

The squad ran together in unity, one trying to beat the other—almost making it look like a race for life where the last one was punished to become food for the snake, and at the moment, the one who was unluckily running in the last place, praying for his life as he ran—was Andy. 

The panic was almost useless as even if the players were devoured by that snake, the snake was incapable of killing them—this, Zhihao would know the best since he was the one with the first-hand experience. However, being swallowed by it still meant being covered in its sticky mucus and looking like its unborn child inside its stomach; thoroughly embarrassing yourself in front of everybody. Becoming a joke was not the worst punishment for coming last in the race, but just because it wasn't the worst didn't mean that anybody was looking forward to receiving it. 

"There is an opening!" Zhihao exclaimed out happily as he saw the blinding light coming from the end of the cave in front of them. 

When they finally reached the spot that was lit up, they jumped down and landed in the deeper cave—bigger in size with no other passages leading them anywhere else. 

This was both a good thing and a bad. 

They had reached their destination and only needed to break the seal, but along with them, arrived the cursed snake that was stuck up on killing them. 

The team moved towards the other side of the wall and stuck together as they wondered 'what to do next?' 

"The stone plate!" Zhihao reminded and Li Ling looked at the item situated in the middle of the cave room. 

Even the stone plate was different than the rest as above it was not a picture of the map but carved on it was an image of a snake being impelled with a sword.

Zhihao could not understand what was happening and his brain wasn't fast enough to comprehend or analyze it any deeper, when he saw the image on top of the stone plate and then looked back at the snake that attacked them, he could only think of one solution which was that the answer to this one was killing the snake—destroying its soul. 

Li Ling reacted first, "A-Zhi, use Shuang."

Zhihao nodded, already having planned to do just that. 

Shuang sprang forward and aimed for the snake but the snake was fast enough to avoid being hit by it, the sword received its next instructions and instead of hitting the wall behind the snake, it turned midair re-aiming at the snake and attacking it from behind. The attack was once again avoided by the snake but it stilled managed to scratch it. 

As the fight went on, Zhou XinYi stepped in front of Wang GuiYing, making sure that the man would not get hurt—acting as a living shield in front of him. Aunt Su on the other hand, pulled the other two players, Andy and Kaoru, to stand in front of her and shield her, screaming as she did—at this point, it was hard to tell if the woman was actually scared or was she just putting on a good show for the fans that were watching this live stream. 

Li Ling moved around the snake and traced along the walls as he desperately tried to find something. A minute or two passed and he finally found what he looking for—A sword. A carving of a sword or at least it seemed like one, it was in reality, not just a carving but an actual sword that was buried in the wall—waiting for someone to break it out from there—this someone was Li Ling who used a small explosive to destroy the stone on top of it. When the debris was cleared off, what was left behind, was a shining silver sword that looked much alike the sword that was illustrated on top of the stone table. 

Zhihao was completely focused on attacking the snake and didn't realize where Li Ling had gone off to or what the other player was doing, in fact, none of the other players noticed Li Ling moving away from them, the only thing that caught their attention was the sudden explosion. 

Zhihao didn't have enough time to think about where the sword was from or how Li Ling knew about it, all he saw was that they received a sudden aid and was beyond overjoyed. He glanced back at the image carved on top of the stone plate and found the sword to be too similar to the sword that killed the beast in the image. 

"Good job, Li Ling!" Zhihao yelled out in mid-fight, acknowledging the man's efforts. 

Li Ling smiled at him and threw the sword towards him—this shocked Zhihao who struggled to catch the sword which was suddenly thrown at him. 

"Aim for its head. Show us what a unicorn snake looks like." Li Ling instructed as he chuckled, "I don't have enough energy to do that."

Zhihao nodded, somehow understanding how much Li Ling should be exhausted by this point in time since they had been playing for nonstop hours—without even knowing if it was still night time or had it become morning already. 

"I got it." Zhihao reassured as he caught hold of the sword, "Let me give you a good show to watch."