Chapter 136: [Harboring a Ghostly Secret] Instance Concluded
Grandmother deeply regretted that she hadn’t discovered all of this sooner.
Heartbroken for her granddaughter, she had decided to throw her a wedding and invite all her former classmates over! Those classmates had to stay behind too! Only then could her granddaughter be truly fulfilled!
“Xiaolan, Grandma did all of this for your own good! Grandma did so much for you hoping you could have both your lover by your side and your friends to talk to!”
Grandmother’s body seemed to swell and expand.
As the players engaged in a fierce struggle with the villagers, the dodder vines surged forward at a breakneck speed, coiling around Shao Lei and driving deep into his flesh.
Lacking any combat experience, Xu Shengsheng looked frantically left and right before finally locking her eyes on Grandmother.
Skill: Careless and Clueless.
Target: Granny Ji.
Grandmother, whose body was just on the verge of undergoing a gruesome mutation, suddenly froze solid.
As if struck by sudden amnesia, she scratched her head, staring blankly at the scene before her, thoroughly confused about what she was doing.
What had she been trying to do again?
Xu Shengsheng let out a breath of relief, but her passive skill immediately triggered alongside it.
“Whoa! Dance-Fight Angel!” she called out excitedly, looking over at Bai Cha.
Bai Cha had no time to spare for her silly younger sister. She swiftly tightened her vines to strangle Shao Lei.
Seeing Shao Lei’s demise, Ji Xiaolan—whose remaining power had not yet fully dissipated—shed two lines of bloody tears.
“Stop my grandmother…”
With those final words, Ji Xiaolan’s body crumbled completely into ash. Within the dense, crisscrossing layers of dodder vines, right where her heart had once been, a single flower remained.
It was an ink orchid.
Its roots were attached underneath, intertwining into a shape that resembled a human fetus.
[Congratulations! You have obtained an Ink Orchid. Plant it in any instance to summon the Water Ghost · Ji Xiaolan to fight for you once. She will perish as soon as the battle ends.]
[Ding—Key figure death detected. The instance is closing. Teleporting players out in 30 seconds.]
“I remember now!” Grandmother let out a low roar.
“You dare kill my granddaughter? I’ll have your life!”
Her body ballooned once again as two horns gradually sprouted from her head, her skin rapidly shifting into a dark, blood-red hue.
Catching sight of that familiar red color, Bai Cha’s expression darkened.
Sure enough, the prompt chimed in her mind the very next second.
[System detected that you previously received ‘The Receptionist’s Admiration’ and ‘Li Xi-yao’s Blessing.’ Equipping tags for you now.]
Above Bai Cha’s head, two massive blood-red phrases flared into existence once again:
Target for Execution and Torn into Ten Thousand Pieces.
Grandmother looked increasingly frantic as her form morphed rapidly toward that monstrous state.
Dozens of pale yellow vines swept across the air like a net, wrapping Grandmother up entirely.
A butcher knife snuck out from the center of the bundle, slicing off the horns atop Grandmother’s head in a single stroke.
Unlike the two complete monsters like Li Xi-yao, Grandmother had not yet fully transformed—she could still be killed.
Ji Xiaolan had asked her to stop her grandmother. Killing Grandmother stopped her, didn’t it? Fair enough! Besides, whether it was fair or not, she had to die. Bai Cha didn’t want to rack up yet another red status tag.
Even though it had already come to this anyway.
“Whoa! Dazzling Flash Dance!” Xu Shengsheng kept cheering enthusiastically from the side.
While the other players were desperately fending off the villagers and the three dead players, Xu Shengsheng was busy calling them Black Magic Fairies.
[10]
Bai Cha plunged the blade straight into Grandmother’s heart once more.
The dodder vines followed closely, piercing straight through.
The old woman finally collapsed, completely powerless.
A massive swarm of blood-red butterflies burst forth from her body.
Bai Cha controlled the dodder vines to weave a dragnet, trapping all the butterflies at once. As the insects gnawed furiously at the vines, Bai Cha actually felt a sharp spike of pain.
It was as if they weren’t biting the tendrils, but her actual body.
Bai Cha tightened her grip with force, crushing the butterflies to pieces.
More memory fragments flooded into her mind.
It was Grandmother kneeling before a divine statue, begging the deity for power.
“I hate them! I hate them so much! My poor, pitiful granddaughter…”
“She was so brilliant, so sweet…”
“On the day she left for college, her smile was so radiant…”
“I want to kill them all! I’ll skin them, rip out their sinews, and strip their bones clean!”
Resentment escalated to a fever pitch.
A blood-red butterfly landed softly on her shoulder and merged into her body.
In that instant, Bai Cha seemed to hear countless shrieks of hatred and roaring fury.
[1]
[Teleportation successful!]
It was only when she was pulled into the settlement interface that Bai Cha finally snapped back to her senses.
She knitted her brows tight.
What on earth was that?
An obsession? An accumulation of malice?
[Congratulations to player for clearing the B1-rank instance “Hidden Motives”! Your final evaluation is S-rank. You uncovered all the clues and deduced the full plot. Reward: 1,600 Points.]
[Since the instance has been destroyed, your ‘Bane of Ghosts’ title has been upgraded to LV3. Boohoo, do you hear that? Those are the wails of the ghosts! You really are cold-hearted, aren’t you!]
Bai Cha: “…”
Distracted by the mechanical yet emotionally dramatic voice coming from the pixelated ghost face, she completely regained her composure.
[Congratulations! You have obtained the B-rank item “Grandmother’s Medium Tome.” Upon use, you will unlock the skill: Spirit Medium.]
Bai Cha was taken aback.
“You can actually gain skills as rewards?”
[Of course! But if you gain a skill this way, you’ll need to be careful not to let it influence you. After all, only a person of a certain nature can birth a corresponding skill.]
No wonder.
If acquiring skills came with no side effects, the abilities of the players she had encountered in the instances wouldn’t have been limited to just those.
[Congratulations! You have obtained a Human-Skin Lantern. Other than providing light, it serves no other purpose. Oh, by the way, a little boy lives inside it. If he doesn’t get any candy, he’ll cry.]
Bai Cha: “…”
Was this karma?
[Congratulations! You have received a sincere blessing. Shao Lei and Ji Xiaolan wish for you to find true love and spend a lifetime together.]
[Congratulations! You have obtained a new title: Demon Hunter lv.0.5. Even though you only killed an incomplete demon, you’ve still been noticed.]
Bai Cha: “…”
As if she hadn’t been noticed already.
[System detected that you previously received ‘The Receptionist’s Admiration’ and ‘Li Xi-yao’s Blessing.’ Merging with the ‘Demon Hunter’ title.]
[Fusion successful! Congratulations, you have obtained the combined title: [Torn into Ten Thousand Pieces] [Target for Execution] Demon Hunter lv.0.5. Tag order is ranked according to the intensity of malice.]
Right. Fantastic.
[Settlement complete! Congratulations on successfully advancing to C1! Your leveling speed is astonishingly fast—becoming Number One is no longer a dream!]
[Does dear player have any more questions?]
“No.”
[Alright! Teleporting you to the Game Lobby now~]
When Bai Cha materialized in the Game Lobby, she realized it was far more bustling than usual.
She scanned her surroundings and didn’t spot Xu Shengsheng, but since the settlement phase had already begun, there was no need to worry too much.
Bai Cha pulled up the forum to take a look.
Sure enough, there was a reason behind the commotion.
The S8 powerhouse, Shen Qingchen, had successfully advanced to S9.
Yet prior to this, she hadn’t entered the game for an entire year.
Her rank advancement had brought this topic back into heated discussion.
Aside from that, there was another reason.
And it made Bai Cha’s brows furrow deeper and deeper.
Xu Ming-wang was lost in an instance.
Lost?
Bai Cha tapped into the thread.
Sure enough, someone in the comments section had voiced the exact question she had in mind.
[I don’t get it. What does “lost in an instance” mean? His avatar and name are already grayed out, doesn’t that mean he’s dead?]
[Replying to above: Being lost and being dead are similar, but the difference is that he isn’t dead yet. If he were dead, he would have disappeared from the leaderboard entirely. He just failed to clear the game, but because of his high strength, he didn’t die when the instance closed.]
[Does that mean he can still be saved?]
[No. He’s beyond saving.]
