CH 123

Chapter 123: The Dream of the Holy Nun (XIII)

Su He’s words made Qi Leren realize what the strangeness he’d vaguely felt all day was. There were no minors in the city, from guards to ordinary residents, and the youngest was over twenty years old. Connecting that to the history of the city being closed for more than twenty years… Were there no children born since then?

But then… where had the mysterious blonde girl come from?

It seemed that she really wasn’t a human being, but a demon?

With such doubts, the group asked the servants in the castle, and some of them admitted that no babies had been born since the Holy City was closed more than 20 years ago, but because the Lord had forbidden them to discuss this matter, they hadn’t mentioned it before; but there were several servants, and their reaction gave them a strange feeling.

“Maybe I’m being arrogant and should stop talking, but hey, there must be something more to this, right?” asked Dr. Lu, who had just returned from speaking with a maid.

That was indeed the case. The group asked the Lord the next morning, and the Lord’s reaction was equally intriguing. When asked why it was forbidden to discuss the matter of there being no newborns, the Lord and his wife turned pale but refused to answer.

The group who couldn’t get clues from the Lord had to continue searching for needles in a haystack, while discussing how to deal with the upcoming night of the new moon. Qi Leren tried to insist on using Demon Etiquette to disguise himself as a demon and find out, but Ning Zhou and Su He both rejected it.

“No way,” Ning Zhou simply refused. “We’ll go together.”

Su He’s reason was more sufficient: “If you’re worried about our safety, there’s no need at all. The main world tasks have fewer restrictions on fields. I can let my field interfere with the real world and completely prevent you from being discovered.”

With this, Su He snapped his fingers, and Qi Leren vaguely felt that he seemed to be covered with something invisible. He looked at himself and found that, strangely, nothing had changed.

A maid came from the other end of the corridor, coming towards the four people who saw that she was about to hit Qi Leren, but she looked ahead as if she didn’t see him and Qi Leren quickly took a step back. She didn’t look at him and went straight on, further into the corridor.

“She really didn’t notice me. Are we invisible to other people?” Dr. Lu asked, poking his arm curiously.

“Yes. When a person’s field interferes with reality, it will have a certain impact on reality. Hiding yourself is only one of the functions, but this degree of disguise is useless against others with fields,” Su He explained.

“No wonder you said that only field levels can compete with field levels,” Dr. Lu nodded and said happily. “That’s good. We can wait for the night of the new moon, then go out and investigate. Maybe we can finish the task in a single night.”

Although Qi Leren wasn’t so blindly optimistic, with Ning Zhou and Su He around, he was quite confident that this task wouldn’t result in the same end he’d had with the “Nightmare Game”.

The next few days were calm, and the group looked for clues and waited for the night of the new moon to come. Finally, this day arrived.

Qi Leren woke up and looked at his watch. It was 20:15 in the evening, with nearly four hours left before the zero hour. He’d been sleeping from noon until now so that he now had full energy. He didn’t think he would feel sleepy again during the night. Ning Zhou wasn’t in the room. He didn’t know where he’d gone. The quilt on his bed was neatly folded, so it didn’t seem like he’d napped during the afternoon.

After getting up and washing up, Qi Leren sorted out his skill cards. The S/L skills and Rain-Day Laundry skills had cooled down, the Primary Fighting skills could be used at any time, and  Demon Etiquette wasn’t equipped, as there were only three card slots.

Out of the room, the corridor was quiet. Every night of the new moon, the castle’s servants would finish the day’s work early and drink the draught that would let them sleep through the night, so the Lord’s castle was a little scary at this moment, and this strange atmosphere made Qi Leren feel uncomfortable. He didn’t know where everyone else was, so he went outside of Dr. Lu and Su He’s room and raised his hand to knock.

“Hey, Leren, here!” Dr. Lu emerged from the end of the corridor and greeted him briskly.

“You’re up. Where’s Su He?” Qi Leren walked towards him as he spoke.

“I don’t know, maybe in the library?” Dr. Lu said with lack of interest.

“Did you see Ning Zhou?” Qi Leren asked again.

Dr. Lu shook his head, then suddenly remembered something and said, “By the way, I just thought that that memento brooch might be useful. Show me.”

With an “oh”, Qi Leren took out the brooch from the item bar. The brooch was still slightly hot, but it seemed to be hotter than before…

Holding the brooch, his hand reached out to Dr. Lu’s open palm and Qi Leren’s eyes followed the brooch carelessly. Just as he was about to hand it over, he saw Dr. Lu’s eyes.

That was a pair of familiar eyes - round and always shining when they saw something delicious - but at this time, strange greed and excitement flowed in those eyes, which were by no means Dr. Lu’s eyes!

Who was he? Who was this man?!

Qi Leren suddenly clenched the brooch and put it back in his item bar. He stepped back and pointed his dagger at the other: “Who are you?”

“Dr. Lu” gave a loud cry and looked at him with his head tilted crossly: “I really despise you, you…”

The door behind the Qi Leren suddenly opened and Dr. Lu yawned as he came out of it. He saw Qi Leren, who was standing at the door, and muttered, “What time is it? Did I oversleep… What?”

Dr. Lu looked at the person who looked like him a few meters away: “I must have not woken up…”

He pinched his thigh and cried out in pain: “It’s not a dream! What’s going on here! Who are you!”

The fake “Dr. Lu” snorted testily, turned around, and ran to the end of the corridor and out of sight. Qi Leren didn’t catch up after two steps, so he had to give up and come back.

Dr. Lu stood at the door looking distraught: “There’s a monster pretending to be me… God, if it pretends to be you I’ll be fooled! It’s terrible, it’s terrible.”

“It shouldn’t be interested in you, it just wants the memento brooch,” Qi Leren inferred. The monster pretending to be Dr. Lu just now was obviously aiming for the brooch in his hand. It had been vivid in both appearance and tone. If he hadn’t seen that the monster’s eyes were wrong…

What was worse was that this monster didn’t even trigger the “Rain-Day Laundry” skill. He didn’t know whether it was the error probability of this skill or if its malice wasn’t enough to trigger the skill’s sensor. At present, it seemed that this skill only warned of fatal dangers. Maybe this monster only wanted to get the memento, not kill him.

“Let’s go and find Ning Zhou and Su He. This thing isn’t safe with me.” They didn’t know that something was coveting this brooch before so the keepsake had always been kept by Qi Leren, but now that he knew it, he couldn’t take the risk and should give it to a more reliable person.

The two quickly left the corridor, headed for the library as the most likely place. Oil lamps were burning in the castle along their way, which should be from the special instructions given by the Lord when he’d learned they were going to go out on the night of the new moon.

The main world of the Nightmare World was still set in the Middle Ages, and there was no power equipment for sustainable power generation. Only the Twilight Township had skewed the science and technology tree because of the demon crystallization energy, entering the electrical age ahead of time.

Qi Leren took Dr. Lu to the library. As soon as the door opened, he saw the back of Su He, who was picking books off the shelf. “What happened? You look anxious.”

Seeing Su He and his calm figure in the candlelight, their hanging hearts finally relaxed, and Dr. Lu said first, “You’d never guess, just now Leren met a monster that had taken my appearance!”

Su He pushed the newly taken book back onto the shelf and motioned for the two to sit down. He poured two cups of tea for the two, and the two who were still afraid drank the hot tea and began to feel calmer.

Qi Leren told the story once again, emphasizing its ability to transform: “…It was really very similar. If it wasn’t for his eyes when he saw the brooch, I definitely wouldn’t have seen it. Even my perception skills didn’t give an alarm. It should want this brooch.”

“There is a possibility, arguably, that since holding the field memento allows one to freely enter and exit the field, it may want to escape? It’s likely that it’s been eyeing you, you must be careful,” Su He guessed.

“Let’s leave it with you for safekeeping. It seems that this thing is a key item.” Qi Leren insisted on giving it to Su He.

“Yes, it’s not so easy for it to deceive me,” Sue said with a smile, coming to stand before Qi Leren and holding out his hand.

“Yes, it can’t fool you.” Qi Leren felt better at the thought of handing over this burden.

Once again, he took out the memento brooch from the item bar. It was still hot, hotter than before, and it seemed to burn his palm…

Qi Leren suddenly seemed to have pressed the pause button, and the hand holding the memento brooch also paused.

It was not easy for one to deceive Su He, but it was not difficult for one to be deceived.

So how could he prove that the Su He in front of him was really Su He himself?