CH 63

Chapter 63: Seed of Slaughter (II)

When he returned home, Qi Leren was already very tired. He hadn’t have a good rest during the mission. The accumulated fatigue finally broke out after returning home. He simply washed and plunged into the bed and slept for 12 hours.

When he woke up, it was still fully sunset outside, and Qi Leren wore messy hair, confused by time and space.

After waking up, Qi Leren finally has the strength to think about what had happened in the instance world. Apart from Ning Zhou, there were still many things worth pondering about with this world, such as Isabel’s hidden quest, and that their final completion was only 50%.

The name of this task was “Dusty Past”. Qi Leren always thought it meant Isabel’s lost memory. However, when the task was completed, Isabel’s memory had been recovered, but the completion degree was still only half, which meant that they had missed a lot of clues. To put it another way, they did not achieve the TRUE END.

So what was the problem?

Qi Leren leaned against the bed and thought for a moment. He felt that the problem was Isabel.

The most doubtful point was that Isabel’s memory couldn’t be proven by anyone, but came from her own description. The people involved in her memory, Ye Xia (not even the “Ye Xia” who had the ability to transfer souls, but the poor player who was destined to have her body taken from her, her magpie nest occupied by cuckoo eggs), the Devil of Fraud, and her sister, these people were either dead without witnesses or couldn’t be contacted, and no one could confirm her memory.

Her story was an isolated testimony.

After finishing this task, Qi Leren could now look at this task more comprehensively. The Witchcraft Sacrifice task should have existed since more than 20 years ago, and had continued till now. The former witches served the Old Devil, but three years ago, for some unknown reason, the Devil of Fraud received the sacrifice and participated in it with great enthusiasm.

This was also the key cause that led to the witch sacrifice tragedy three years ago.

The Devil of Fraud who liked to see human betrayal, depravity, and despair played with this group of poor witch candidates with her bewitching power. Even Ye Xia, who won in the end, was just a chess piece crazy for her, just like that infatuated witch. Ye Xia said that she followed the Lord’s will and returned to the underground palace, continuing the task of sacrificing witches… Wait a minute.

Qi Leren caught a flash of thoughts in his mind.

This Devil of Fraud undoubtedly has the power of bewitching, so will Isabel…

Did she really go to the altar voluntarily because she couldn’t go back, because she wanted to see her sister again? This may be just a lie she used to persuade them.

“My heart has never changed.”

Recalling Isabel’s last words before leaving, the original ordinary answer seems to have been endowed with countless undercurrents and became meaningful.

At that time, the Devil of Fraud appeared in the altar’s beam of light, but because of the distance, Qi Leren didn’t know if she had said anything. He only remembered Isabel walking to the light and never looking back.

Maybe three years ago, she was bewitched like those poor witches, but she just forgot because she lost her memory. When the memory came back, the irresistible longing for the devil came back again, and finally she was tempted to become a witch of the devil herself.

The clues given on the wall of the underground palace were actually ambiguous. Now thinking about some of them, for example, “One of you has betrayed” and “one of us left and came back”. Do both sentences refer to Ye Xia? Then wouldn’t these two clues have been a repetition? What was the point of that? What’s more, since Ye Xia didn’t stand with them from the beginning, could her behavior really be regarded as “betrayal”? From the beginning to the end, she was just loyal to herself, loyal to the Devil of Fraud.

If “one of you has betrayed” didn’t mean Ye Xia, then… who was it talking about?

This “betrayal” must have been a factor that could be foreseen by the “system” or the “devil”. It must have been rooted among them early, just waiting for… the moment of betrayal to come.

Betrayal doesn’t have to be bloody, it can happen silently. The betrayer wins with a humble attitude, and the betrayed don’t even know that they’ve been used.

Could it be what he thought? But whether it was or not, it was meaningless, and everything was over. Qi Leren leaned against the bed, silently watching the sunset outside the window, and was lost in thought.

Underground palace… Witch… Devil of Fraud…

Qi Leren’s thoughts jumped back, until they got stuck in the witch in the hot metal.

He sat up straight with the quilt rolled up, and a question came to his mind: according to the prompt given by the system, every time a witch candidate was killed in the underground palace, the killer could get an increase in ability. Why didn’t he get an increase in ability when he committed suicide with the witch in the hot metal?

First of all, it could be confirmed that death with the S/L skill was also counted as killing witch candidates, which Ning Zhou proved. By killing witch candidates before the system gave a hint, you could gain an increase in ability, which Ye Xia proved. The increase in stats was not physical. Ye Xia changed her body several times, but the stats increase still existed.

That is to say, the power gained by killing witch candidates was bound to the illusory thing called the “soul”.

Then why didn’t he get an increase in stats when he killed himself?

Qi Leren buried his face in his hand, and he suddenly thought of a possibility.

Maybe at the moment of suicide, he did get the ability increase, but in that short instant, he had already killed the one who got the ability.

This thought made Qi Leren go cold, and it took him a long time to calm down.

It was also possible that he was just thinking too much, and he couldn’t get the stats increase just because the “he” at the time of loading overwrote the one who died within 30 seconds and got the ability increase, while he couldn’t get the extra strength bonus.

He originally thought that the S/L skill was just a perfect restoration plus teleportation, which ensured that he was resurrected in full and teleported back to the archive point at the moment of death, without involving the reversal of time or some other forces that made people afraid to think about, but now it seemed that it was not as simple as he thought.

This skill probably involved something at the soul level, otherwise there’s no explanation for why he couldn’t get the ability increase bound in the “soul” by killing himself.

A knock came on the door.

Qi Leren quickly got out of bed, put on his coat and opened the door. Chen Baiqi’s sister stood outside the door and smiled and handed him a piece of paper: “Come sign it, my sister gave it to you.”

Qi Leren glanced at it. The survival days of the contract book transfer were 8 hours. He sighed: “When your sister charged me, it was three whole days. Now I’m only given eight hours for providing her with information. It’s literally Zhou Bapi*.”

{*E/N: 周扒皮, an nickname for 周春富, a real life figure but was immortalised through the short story, 半夜鸡叫 (Chicken screaming in the night), and now this nickname is associated with an evil landlord.}

“Who is Zhou Bapi?” the little girl cocked her head a little and asked.

“…Well, a black-hearted landlord, don’t you know?” Qi Leren asked curiously.

The little girl shook her head. “This is someone from the outside world. I was born here and I have never been to the outside world.”

Qi Leren looked at her in astonishment. Chen Baiqi’s sister looked like an easterner, so he never thought she would be an NPC: “Didn’t you come in with Chen Baiqi?”

“No, my mom and dad are just like you. They gave birth to me and then died. It’s said that my mother gave birth to me during the mandatory monthly task, and it was even a premature birth. My sister said that she must love me very much to be willing to give birth to me, but I can’t remember how she looked.” The little girl stuck out her tongue.

Players could still give birth to children in the game? What was the child who was born? An NPC in the game?

“Do you have limited days to live?” Qi Leren asked again.

The little girl shook her head: “I don’t have them, and I don’t need to do quests like you, but my sister said that I‘ll be like you after I turn eighteen.”

This game also had such a law for protecting minors? Qi Leren was even more surprised.

“Don’t just ask me questions. Is that Su He still in the Village of Dusk? My sister said that he went back to the Town of Dawn, so I won’t see him in the future?” asked the little girl.

She turned out to be a small fan of Su He. They only met once on the airship. At such a young age, she already loved people with good looks. Qi Leren looked at her with emotion and said: “He has gone back, I don’t know if he’ll come back. Probably not.”

The little girl kicked the ground unhappily: “Yes, people in the Town of Dawn rarely come here, forget it, I’m going home, goodbye.”

Seeing her run away, Qi Leren glanced at his 55 days and 14 hours of survival time and decided to have a good meal.

&&&

Qi Leren, who filled his stomach in the busy commercial district, also went to the quest centre nearby. The task types in the Nightmare World were really varied, and the difficulty ratings ranged from D to S, so the more difficult tasks would not appear in the quest centre.

Some quests might even deprive players of all skills and props - just like in the witch’s dreamworld - but the difficulty of such quests will be relatively low, which was actually beneficial to novices. Some quests simply sealed part of the players’ memories temporarily, so that they forgot their identities and only retained the memories from before entering the Nightmare World, and would not recover them until they returned to the Nightmare World after completing the quests.

Some players could earn enough living days in the Village of Dusk, such as Chen Baiqi, but they also needed to do quests. The mandatory monthly quest was a nightmare that no player could get rid of, and its difficulty would gradually increase. At about the third year or so, every quest will be a cruel death adventure.

Therefore, if you wanted to make a living by earning survival days outside the task and neglecting your own exercise, it was basically equivalent to gradual suicide.

After leaving the quest centre, Qi Leren looked up at the sky.

Bathed in the setting sun in the Village of Dusk all day long, the beautiful scenery would become depressing after a long time. A closer look to the west revealed a pale moon that, though not as bright as at night, still hung in the sky.

This picture was a little familiar.

Recalling the pictures in the game, Qi Leren suddenly thought it was time to trigger the pre-plot of the main quest.

On the way to the airship port after leaving the centre, Qi Leren once again came to the steel bridge.

It was still lively here. Some people came and went in groups, some were alone, just like him. The setting sun was infected with unspeakable loneliness for this ordinary scene.

Just more than ten hours ago, he was so warm and longing to go here, and now once again on the arch bridge full of mechanical steam, but he couldn’t help a burst of dismay.

Standing at the top of the arch bridge, Qi Leren looked back, sensing something. In the boundless huge crowd, Ning Zhou walked with his back to him. Among so many strangers, Qi Leren saw him at a glance.

Even if he only met Ning Zhou as a male once, he could easily find him, just as he could see at a glance the “she” possessing a strange witch in a dreamworld.

There was always someone who was the most special in his heart.

Ning Zhou had disappeared into the crowd long ago. Qi Leren took a deep breath, cast aside everything about Ning Zhou, and continued to set foot on his own path.