Chapter 125
“Could it be that we alerted the enemy?”
Tang Rui paced around the room, unable to fathom how a living person could just vanish into thin air. Not far from him, Jiang Liu stood alone by the window, fiddling with the System Ring in her hand, her expression not showing much anxiety. He had no choice but to raise his voice slightly. “Sister Jiang, say something.”
Urged on by him, Jiang Liu finally reacted. She first calmed the anxious Tang Rui with a look but didn’t answer his question. Instead, she changed the subject. “How are your sister and the others?”
After yesterday’s probing, they had already confirmed that ‘Zhao Ziming’ was not the real deal. Jiang Liu didn’t act rashly; instead, she continued to use him as a workhorse, searching for their target outside for a whole day without noticing any unusual movements from him. As for Tang Rui, he acted as her inside man at the hotel, trying to avoid ‘Zhao Ziming’s’ notice and prevent Xu Meng and the others from eating.
But just this morning—’Zhao Ziming’ had disappeared. The first person to discover it was Jiang Liu. As usual, she went to wake him before dawn, but after knocking for a long time with no response, she kicked the door down to find the room empty. He was nowhere to be found. The neatly made bed proved that the person hadn’t rested at all last night.
Tang Rui couldn’t figure out what he had done to alert him. Hearing Jiang Liu’s question, he temporarily stopped thinking about it and reported the situation. “They all look normal now, but their faces are a bit pale from not eating. They’re probably still resting.”
He had checked on Xu Meng and the others last night. Apart from their haggard faces, they had no major physical problems. At first, he was worried he would starve to death, but seeing Jiang Liu still full of energy after days without food, he was finally relieved, guessing it was a specific mechanic of the Instance.
Jiang Liu was somewhat reassured by his words. She then looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you have any memory of what you did these past few days?”
Tang Rui shook his head like a rattle drum. “None at all. I can’t describe it, but after starving for two meals, I felt suddenly enlightened. I can’t understand why I would say such things.”
He tried to describe the feeling to Jiang Liu, but after gesturing for a long time, he could only stammer, finally attributing it to a muddled state of mind. “You’ve read cultivation novels, right? It’s like Possession in those. The body is your own, but your mind is shrouded.”
Jiang Liu raised an eyebrow slightly, wondering if she should tell him that she, in fact, had not. But it didn’t stop her from understanding Tang Rui’s meaning.
She pulled over a chair and sat down, dipping her finger in water and slowly drawing a dish on the table. She tapped her knuckles on it, lost in thought.
“Assuming the food clouds your minds, as the one who administered the poison, could he sense whether the poison had taken effect?”
Tang Rui’s eyes shifted, and he instantly understood what she meant.
“So he ran away on his own?”
Jiang Liu shrugged, her tone light. “That’s just one possibility.”
But there was a part she left unsaid. Whether they had alerted the enemy or the fake Zhao Ziming had realized something was wrong himself, his first choice was to leave. Assuming this person was a guide NPC, based on past Instance experiences, their convenience within the System was far greater than that of players, so they naturally wouldn’t be afraid of players harming them. But this imposter’s first reaction was to flee. Did that mean he wasn’t very confident he could escape unscathed in a confrontation with them, so he was trying his best to ensure his own safety?
Could this person be Qiao Ke? Jiang Liu went through everyone she had met in her mind and finally settled on his identity.
If that was the case, his choice of Zhao Ziming was also logical. The Tang siblings were too familiar with Xu Meng, so discrepancies would be easily discovered. As for Jiang He, although he had also appeared by her side later, the matter with Zhang Xiaochen had made the two of them quite familiar as well. After all was said and done, only Zhao Ziming was an easy target.
As she thought, she subconsciously took out her phone and looked at her message list. At first, Xiao Si and the others would reply with a sentence or two, but as time went on, her messages went unanswered, making Jiang Liu wonder if the person she was talking to was even real.
As she was deep in thought, there was a sudden knock on the door. Tang Rui went to open it and saw that Xu Meng and the other two were awake.
Seeing them, Jiang Liu stopped thinking and stood up, first sizing them up. “Are you feeling unwell?”
They all shook their heads. Xu Meng touched her stomach, looking rather embarrassed. “Just a little hungry.”
“That’s normal. You’ll get used to it after a while.”
Jiang Liu pointed to herself, indicating that it was no big deal. Xu Meng smiled shyly and nodded to show she understood. “My attitude these past few days was bad. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s a small matter. The most important thing now is how to leave.”
Jiang Liu shook her head to show it didn’t matter and patiently explained the current situation to them. The first and foremost issue was the monster in Xiao Si’s room. When she told everyone about the knocking frequency in the mall, Tang Ruo’s heart stirred.
“You think that was Yang Caisi?” she couldn’t help but ask Jiang Liu.
The latter was blunt. “I used to think so, but now…”
Her tone hesitated for a moment, as if she was trying to find the right word to describe it. She spoke slowly, “If it were her, she would have come to me directly.”
So the monster’s identity was questionable. For now, their goal was to find it and then decide on the next step.
“Understood.” Jiang He nodded quickly. Noticing that Jiang Liu seemed to have more to say, he couldn’t help but ask, “Is there anything else?”
The young man was a bit eager. Ever since he woke up and found out he had wasted so much time in the hotel, Jiang He had felt a little embarrassed. Besides, this was all that Qiao Ke’s doing. For Zhang Xiaochen’s sake, he had to get out as soon as possible.
Jiang Liu shook her head, thinking to herself that he was too impatient. Not wanting to waste any more of their time, she quickly said, “Keep an eye out for whether Xiao Zhao is here.”
Tang Rui asked in confusion, “The real one or the fake one?”
To this, Jiang Liu’s answer was, “Either.”
Finding the real one would be their good luck. If they ran into the fake one, they could also capture him and ask about the situation.
***
The five of them split into two groups, doing their best to explore this besieged public area. Thanks to the weapons and equipment they had brought back, the risk of going out in a group was not high. But that didn’t mean there was no danger.
Jiang Liu had just entered a house to search. Before she could even look around, she heard a scream from outside. It was as if someone was being strangled, their voice sharp and shrill, growing weaker toward the end. Her expression turned cold, and she quickly rushed back out to see a group of black-faced Zombies that had surrounded them from nowhere, their faces so gaunt they no longer looked human.
Jiang He was surrounded, a pale, withered arm clamped around his neck. Its nails were a good dozen centimeters long, and their color clearly indicated they were venomous.
“Sis…”
With his neck being squeezed, his face had already turned purple from lack of air. He stared at Jiang Liu with wide eyes, his hands and feet still struggling.
Jiang Liu didn’t dare to delay. Ignoring the Female Ghost pouncing at her, she quickly rushed in and kicked the Zombie in the chest. The creature lost its strength, and Jiang He was thrown to the ground, clutching his neck and coughing continuously. He didn’t forget to shout at Jiang Liu, “Sis, they can’t be killed!”
He had already tried several times. The knife just slid off their bodies without drawing blood. If it weren’t for that, he wouldn’t have been caught.
Jiang He’s intention was to warn Jiang Liu, but he never expected that before he could even finish his sentence, he would see Jiang Liu swiftly move forward, plunge her dagger into the Zombie’s forehead with her bare hands, and with a twist of her wrist, dig out a palm-sized stone.
“I know.”
Jiang Liu replied faintly. As her voice fell, the Zombie with its skull cracked open died on the spot, never to get up again.
Jiang He was speechless.
He struggled to his feet and watched in shock as Jiang Liu cut them down like vegetables. “Why are you so good at this?”
They shouldn’t have seen this kind of thing before, right? Why did it seem like Jiang Liu was already used to fighting them?
Jiang Liu casually tossed the Crystal Core aside and looked down in silence. She had originally intended to attack the head first, but as she approached the Zombie, a fragmented memory suddenly popped into her head. The clothes in the memory were already outdated, looking like they were from many years ago. She had also been surrounded by a horde of Zombies, and by using this method to take them down one by one, she had managed to crawl out alive.
“Probably muscle memory,” she answered softly after a long silence.
It was unclear if Jiang He heard her clearly. In any case, after he recovered, he continued to charge forward, completely unaware of the dazed Jiang Liu behind him.
Jiang He was right. She was a little too skilled at dealing with these monsters. Jiang Liu closed her eyes slightly, feeling that the course of events was becoming more and more wrong.
She stopped following Jiang He and instead casually grabbed a Skeleton, using its head as a foothold to flip onto a roof, looking down at the nearby monsters from above. Zombies needed their heads dug out, Skeletons just needed their leg bones broken, flying bats needed their eyes poked, and then there were the floating Female Ghosts. These were more troublesome. If you didn’t loosen their internal organs, these things would just keep regenerating.
Jiang Liu looked out and found the monsters strangely familiar. Piece by piece, memories surfaced from the depths of her heart, all of them scenes of her fighting alone in Instances in the past. These monsters—she had seen them all before.
There were thousands of Instances, with tens of thousands of ghosts and monsters in them. If Qiao Ke wanted to target her, he didn’t need to find so many that she could handle. After all, in this game, her own memories were fragmented and incomplete. Only Qiao Ke knew her entire experience from a hundred years ago. Was he deliberately finding these things to annoy her, or did he have another purpose?
Or perhaps… he could only find these things.
Jiang Liu took a deep breath, feeling a headache coming on. Just then, her phone suddenly vibrated. Before she could answer, she heard Jiang He below, waving his arms and shouting at her, “Sister Jiang, we found the target!”
He happily pointed to the phone by his ear and said loudly, “Xu Meng and the others are chasing it. Should we go after them too?”
His words stopped Jiang Liu’s chaotic thoughts. She quickly jumped off the roof and strode toward Jiang He.
“Location?”
“They’re almost at the NPC Area.”
A light flashed in Jiang Liu’s eyes, and a faint smile gradually appeared on her face.
“Let’s go. It’s time for this to end.”
As soon as she finished speaking, she quickly charged into the horde of monsters, her steps firm and without a trace of hesitation. Jiang Liu had a premonition. What was really going on here—once she saw that monster again, everything would come to light.