Xiao Tangqiu’s heart trembled violently. He stared at the familiar face in front of him, his lips quivering as he almost blurted out the name Meng Xinghe. But after looking at those eyes that were devoid of any emotional fluctuations, he swallowed down his words again, lowered his eyes and felt a bitterness on his tongue.

“It’s really troublesome to have so many newbies……” The strange voice rang out again, filled with malice, “It’s really such a bother – too many people dragging our feet. We should just kill them all.”

The voice that was full of harsh mockery had shocked Xiao Tangqiu. He couldn’t help looking at the person who was speaking. It was a man wearing a white windbreaker. The man was very handsome; the gentle kind of handsome. He also wore a pair of exquisite gold-rimmed glasses, quite like an elegant scholar just out of the university. But there was a scar on his brow bone, which added a roguish look to his originally gentle, refined face.

However, what made Xiao Tangqiu most surprised was the knife that the man was fiddling with. Such a sharp weapon looked like a mere toy in his hands. He stared at the knife for a moment before suddenly realizing that it was a scalpel.

The man stood beside Shen Yuan; he must be one of Shen Yuan’s teammates. In addition to him, there were also two women. Before Xiao Tangqiu could continue to size up his surroundings, the new rookies regained consciousness. One after another, their frightened voices interrupted Xiao Tangqiu thoughts.

“Who are you?!”

“Did you kidnap me? Let me go at once!”

“Do you know who I am? If you know, then, let me go!”

Xiao Tangqiu suddenly understood the man’s prejudice towards the newbies. He was just about to stretch out his hand to rub his slightly swollen temple when a familiar voice rang, “Qiuqiu? Great! We actually entered the same instance!”

He turned around. It was Tang Mianmian, which made him feel a little relieved. Although the S-level difficulty of this instance made him despair, he had to admit that he felt much better after he saw this familiar face.

Even though he thought that way, he couldn’t resist laughing bitterly, “What’s so good about that? Didn’t you hear? This is an S-level mission….. “

Tang Mianmian rubbed his nose, “……Yeah, our luck is really terrible.”

On the other side, one of the women next to Shen Yuan had just finished counting the number of players and calmly reported, “There are 20 people in all, more than half of them are rookies.”

Shen Yuan gaze was calm; he only nodded slightly.

“So many rookies just means more trouble. Ai, they’re so damn noisy!” the man in the white windbreaker stuck out his tongue, “Should we just get rid of them, Captain…..”

When the newbies who were still making a din heard this, they immediately felt frightened. A middle-aged man in a suit shouted, “Who are you? What gives you the right to kill us? This is a legal society! Killing people is against the law!”

A middle-aged woman also cried out, “Don’t you just want money? I won’t give you any! Let me out! A group of social trash! Trash who want to take advantage of us! I’m calling the police to arrest you! “

Others also shouted loudly, while a girl with low psychological endurance burst into tears.

“It’s so fucking noisy!” The man in the white windbreaker lost his temper. Without waiting for a reply from Shen Yuan, his fingers moved as the scalpel shot towards the noisiest one – the middle-aged man in the suit. The unique metal of the scalpel glinted with a cold light, flashing across the air like lightning as it flew towards the middle-aged man.

Within the next second, the scalpel grazed the man’s scalp and stabbed the tree trunk behind him.

The crowd couldn’t hold back their laughter as well. The heavy atmosphere relaxed a little. The man in the suit only reacted then. He stretched out his hand and touched his cool forehead. His face turned red as he got up to retrieve his wig in a fluster.

But even though the man in the suit used all his strength to pull out the scalpel, it was still firmly nailed to the tree, not budging at all.

“I’m going to give it to you straight. In short, you’re now in a dangerous world, and you must complete the assigned mission if you want to leave here,” the woman said again, her voice was faint. “I checked earlier and found that this is a forest, and the only way out is the trail that we’re currently on. Following this trail out should get us to the end of the trail where the location of our mission is this time.”

Xiao Tangqiu was puzzled. Did she look around earlier? When was that? She clearly hadn’t left at all from start till now!

“Why should we believe what you say?” The middle-aged woman asked angrily.

“You can choose not to,” the woman said indifferently. “I said it for the people who want to live. It’s up to you whether you want to believe it or not. Those who want to live can follow us, but don’t blame us for not warning you in advance – you can choose to follow us, but in the case of danger, we won’t save you.”

“Anyway, it has happened many times before. Even if we don’t allow others to follow, there will always be someone following us. We might as well allow you to follow. As for whether you live or die, that all depends on you. We won’t help you or save you.”

“Captain, let’s go.”

After the woman finished speaking, she completely ignored the newbies’ doubts and protests and turned to leave with Shen Yuan. Windbreaker Man looked around, his gaze landing on all of the newbies’ faces, revealing a hint of mockery before he left.

Soon enough, Windbreaker Man met Xiao Tangqiu’s gaze as well. His heart skipped a beat; he wanted to turn away at once. Windbreaker Man merely licked his lips, revealing a look of interest.

……The feeling of being targeted by the BOSS immediately welled up in his heart. Xiao Tangqiu turned away but from the corner of his eye, he saw Windbreaker Man snap his fingers, then the scalpel returned to his hand as if it had a consciousness.

Windbreaker Man slowly followed Shen Yuan’s group, fiddling with the scalpel as he walked.

Xiao Tangqiu and Tang Mianmian gave each other a look before quickly following after them. No matter what, they had to hold onto this group of great gods’ thighs, even if the great gods were unwilling themselves.

The forest was eerie and silent. Apart from the occasional sound of bats flapping their wings, there seemed to be no other movement. The strange stillness aroused terror in their hearts. The others didn’t dare to stay behind and quickly followed as well.

As the woman had said earlier, the only path in the forest was the trail under their feet. They walked all the way down this trail without encountering any forks in the path.

As they approached the end of the trail, they could see a tall, shawdowy building looming in the distance. They got closer and closer until the building gradually emerged – it was a Gothic, medieval castle that stood tall and narrow, looking both beautiful and grotesque……. It felt even more eerie than the forest that they had just exited.

It was definitely a haunted castle.

As one of the most common elements in horror games, castles were indeed indispensable.

Xiao Tangqiu was staring at the castle when an old voice suddenly sounded, causing him to stumble a step backwards in shock.

“Welcome, faraway tourists. The host is waiting for you. Please follow me.”

This was an elderly old woman, who not only had a head full of white hair, but also a face filled with deep vertical and horizontal wrinkles, cloudy eyes, and a dry and aged voice. She was obviously very old and was dressed in a butler’s uniform.

Her appearance was so out of the ordinary that even the newbies had lost the courage to open their mouths. They stared at her with vigilance and seemed to suspect that Shen Yuan’s gang was in cahoots with her….. But looking at the huge, towering castle, they thought to themselves, who would bother to come up with such an elaborate lie to cheat them?

After a long time, the woman finally broke the silence. She nodded to the old woman who appeared to be the housekeeper and said faintly, “Yes, please lead the way.”

The housekeeper turned around to show them the way. She swayed as she walked, so much so that Xiao Tangqiu wondered whether she would fall to the ground….. However, she walked very steadily, and very fast; incredibly fast. They could only quicken their pace to catch up with her.

In the blink of an eye, they arrived at the castle-front. Right then, a statue in the front of the castle attracted their attention. It was a statue of a naked woman with a lifelike face, especially the eyes, which looked down in pity at mankind.

Xiao Tangqiu walked forwards, keeping his gaze on the statue, only to find that the statue’s eyes seemed to have moved. Its line of sight seemed to follow him as he walked, just like…… just like it was observing him.

Aside from Xiao Tangqiu, the others had also noticed the naked female statue. After all such a pure and holy statue that resembled the Holy Mother looked out of place in such a creepy castle.

However, Xiao Tangqiu couldn’t feel the sanctity of the statue at all. On the contrary, his hair stood up on end, especially because he perceived that the statue seemed to be looking at him. A shiver ran down his spine and he felt uncomfortable all over.

“……It’s so beautiful,” Tang Mianmian stared at the statue for a moment, his expression appearing a little obsessed. “It’s so beautiful, I’ve never seen such a beautiful person…….”

Xiao Tangqiu paused. Didn’t Tang Mianmian sense something off about the statue?

Several other newbies couldn’t help but chime in. Although they had been strongly resistant to this gloomy castle before, their eyes shone with fascination as they looked at that alluring statue, “Yes, it’s so beautiful. I’ve never seen such a beautiful statue in my life!”

“If this statue was a living person, how beautiful that person must be! She would be even more beautiful than those female stars in the entertainment circle!”

Xiao Tangqiu keenly sensed that something was wrong. He turned to look at Shen Yuan and others, but he saw that their expressions were calm, devoid of any fluctuations. Instead, Windbreaker Man noticed his gaze and grinned at him while he played with his scalpel.

He gritted his teeth, turned around, and pretended to accidentally bump into Tang Mianmian violently. Tang Mianmian was slammed so hard, he staggered and almost fell to the ground, “What are you doing? Watch where you’re going!”

Xiao Tangqiu glared at Tang Mianmian and pretended to be angry. “Why are you staring at the statue like a fool? It’s a statue! No matter how much you stare at it, it’s only a statue! Stop fantasizing! How obscene! “

“Statue?” Tang Mianmian paused. Then, as if he had just regained his senses, he answered in a daze, “……Yeah, it’s just a statue. Why am I so intoxicated by a statue?”

The others also appeared as though they had woken up from a dream, “How strange…. Why were we staring at the statue for so long?”

Tang Mianmian couldn’t make any sense of it and muttered to himself, “I’ve been single for too long. Even a statue looks attractive to me….”

Xiao Tangqiu’s heart sank. He quickly realized that Tang Mianmian and the others were had been confused by the statue earlier. If he hadn’t opened his mouth to break them out of their trance, God knows what would’ve happened next…… They hadn’t even set foot in the castle yet!

In the previous D-level mission, it wasn’t until evening that an accident had occurred, but now, they hadn’t even officially arrived at their destination, and something had already happened… Should he admit that this mission really deserves to be classified as S-level?

At that moment, the old housekeeper lady smiled and introduced the statue, “This statue is called the Virgin Spring to commemorate our Saintess…..”

“Saintess?” Xiao Tangqiu froze.

“……It is said that many years ago, a demon in the nearby town of Daemon had rained disaster onto the town. Using his ability to manipulate fire, he plunged Daemon Town into a burning hell. The fire had burned for three days and three nights but still hadn’t died down because no water on earth could put out the fire of a demon. But just before everything turned into ashes, a Saintess stepped forward-“

“The Saintess threw herself into the fire using herself as a blood sacrifice. After her death, from her body gushed out a clear spring, and everywhere the spring flowed, the demon’s flame went out….. After many years, when my master heard the story of the Saintess, he got someone to carve out a statue for her and named it the Virgin Spring.”

When the housekeeper finished speaking, everyone had different thoughts about the story she had just told.

“Virgin Spring? Why is it called this? It feels rather….. vulgar.” It was Tang Mianmian who had noticed the oddity in the matter.

“Demon? Is there really a demon in this place?!” came the frightened shouts of a newbie.

“Daemon Town? Is there a town nearby?” This was an experienced old player speaking.

Instead, the housekeeper smiled and dropped the topic. “The Master is still waiting for you, come with me.” With that, she turned and walked towards the castle doors.

~~~

P.S. Sorry I missed yesterday’s release. I’m down with a really high fever, so updates these next few days might not be on time. Bear with me as I drown myself in chicken soup and Advil.