Chapter 178: [Transplantation] The Butterfly Dream Guild
Bai Cha shook her head weakly.
“I don’t know…”
As she spoke, she looked as if she were about to pass out, presenting a complete contrast to how she had grinned with her mouth split wide open at Wen Xing moments ago while claiming she was merely flaring with internal heat.
Zhang Jia-ning raised her head to cast a glance at the chaotic scene in the middle of the area.
She then looked back at Bai Cha, letting out a sigh.
“Alright…”
She looked around at the surrounding patches of flowers still blooming in silence.
“It would be such a pity for such lovely patches of flowers to have no butterflies around.”
As she uttered those words, an insect suddenly began crawling out from her pupil.
An expression of agonizing pain surfaced across her face as well.
In the process of crawling outward, that insect underwent a rapid metamorphosis, skipping the pupa stage entirely as a pair of wings burst directly from its body.
An eerie, crimson butterfly fluttered straight out into the air.
Zhang Jia-ning sat on the ground, visibly weakened.
Meanwhile, that single butterfly flew straight toward the flower patches.
Bai Cha immediately controlled her dodder vines, whipping them forward.
Yet that butterfly shattered into pieces at the lightest touch.
Bai Cha saw it with utmost clarity, however—after the butterfly shattered, egg sacs likely spilled onto the ground, fusing straight into the soil.
Wen Xing’s brows knitted tightly into a knot.
“A Butterfly Chaser?” She examined Zhang Jia-ning up and down.
Zhang Jia-ning let out a soft, mocking laugh.
“Utterly foolish!” Wen Xing snapped irritably.
Meanwhile, Bai Cha had already sat back up, sizing Zhang Jia-ning up expressionlessly.
She patted the ground gently.
“This big sister is a bad person—she’s in cahoots with your daddies.”
As Bai Cha uttered those words, an infant immediately clamped its hand onto the arm Zhang Jia-ning had resting on the ground.
The smile on Zhang Jia-ning’s face vanished in an instant.
Her expression contorted slightly as she stared at Bai Cha in utter disbelief.
“You…”
“She lied to us before, and your daddies lied to you too—so they’re the exact same kind of people!”
Logic like this was more than sufficient for young children.
Zhang Jia-ning had no choice but to push herself up and begin fighting back.
“She’s a liar too! She’s lying to you guys!”
A few young children looked over, whereupon Bai Cha pulled out the little Golden Boy’s human-skin lantern once again.
“See this? I made it.”
The eyes of those female children lit up in an instant.
“Wanna learn? I can teach you—just help me defeat this bad big sister first!”
The girl ghosts let out sharp, piercing shrieks, launching themselves at Zhang Jia-ning in pure euphoria.
Zhang Jia-ning cast a breakdown-bordering glare at Bai Cha.
“You’re courting death! Do you have any idea which guild I belong to?!”
“Let me tell you, people from our guild are watching this livestream right now—they will definitely avenge me for this grudge!”
Knitting her brows, Wen Xing stepped forward, helping Bai Cha to her feet.
“Butterfly Chasers usually belong to the Butterfly Dream Guild. There are solo Butterfly Chasers, but any who belong to a guild are guaranteed to be from the Butterfly Dream Guild.”
She looked at Bai Cha with a grave, serious expression.
“The people in their guild are all lunatics. Their entire ideology revolves around planting butterfly eggs in every single instance—that way, the game will be thrown into complete disarray by these butterflies, collapsing on its own without needing to be attacked, allowing the players to gain their freedom.”
Bai Cha raised an eyebrow.
“People actually believe bullshit like that?”
“I’m speaking to you with utmost seriousness!” Wen Xing gritted her teeth.
“Alright, alright, I got it. I’m a Demon Hunter, so I’m bound to be enemies with them anyway—there’s no need to worry about whether they target me or not.”
Bai Cha patted Wen Xing’s shoulder, offering her comfort.
Wen Xing froze briefly.
“You… you became a Demon Hunter after clearing only a few instances?!”
“Wait, no…”
Wen Xing closed her eyes.
“It seems your strength is indeed quite impressive; I was worried over nothing. You can kill demons directly in your early stages.”
Having said that, she turned with an expressionless face, preparing to walk away.
“Hey, Sister!” Bai Cha hurriedly stepped forward, extending a hand to loop around her arm.
“I haven’t even thanked you properly for telling me all this, Sister. No matter how you look at it, I’m still just a newcomer, so I know next to nothing about these guilds.”
Wen Xing shot a side-glance at her.
“Heh, a ‘newcomer’ who can twist those ghosts and monsters around her little finger so effortlessly?”
Bai Cha blinked her eyes innocently.
“Thank you for the compliment, Sister!”
Wen Xing: “…”
Tsk!
The other players didn’t enjoy nearly as comfortable a time over on their end. The female players fared relatively better—as long as they hid away, they wouldn’t suffer direct harm, with only a ghost child or two popping over to harass them occasionally at most.
The male players, however, were a completely different story—every single one of them was targeted as raw material for making decorative lanterns.
Noticing that the two of them were carrying on their conversation as if no one else were around, with zero ghosts stepping forward to bother them, An Xiang was bordering on a total mental breakdown.
“Which is why I said, don’t fucking favor men over women!”
The girls suffered a tragedy, and now the retribution had landed straight onto the men’s side.
“We’re just poor college students visiting from the city—can you please not harm the innocent?!”
How could these children care about any of that?
Having been buried underground and suppressed for so many years, they had finally found an outlet for venting their grievances today, causing the power coursing through their bodies to grow stronger and stronger instead.
These little girls gradually twisted and tangled together once again.
They transformed into a colossal, towering monstrosity.
“Decorative lanterns!”
“Decorative lanterns!”
“I want decorative lanterns!”
Unleashing sharp, unified shrieks, they raised a hand and crushed an NPC to death on the spot.
The instance was descending into utter chaos.
Meanwhile, Bai Cha could feel that the dodder vines she had planted earlier had now grown to cover the entire instance.
As long as she willed it, every single vine would pour forth like a surging tide.
She held her move for the time being, however, sensing the precise locations of the demon butterfly eggs.
Those egg sacs appeared to have attached themselves firmly to the roots of the wood sorrel.
As these egg sacs grew, the giant monstrosity composed of young girls outside began to gradually take on a crimson, blood-like hue across its body.
Bai Cha knitted her brows immediately, controlling her dodder vines to launch an all-out attack toward them.
Over on the other side, Zhang Jia-ning unleashed a piercing shriek.
She glared at this side with eyes dripping with venomous hatred.
“How could you do this?! You’re not allowed to do this!”
As she spoke, more and more butterflies began surfacing within her eyes—dense, swarming insects crawling out from her pupils, a scene that thoroughly destroyed one’s sanity to look at.
Simultaneously, Mu Qian-xin—who was hiding alongside Gao Yue and the others—suddenly felt an intense itch across her body.
She reached out to scratch it lightly.
Then, she felt her skin split open.
Mu Qian-xin looked down to find a dark-red and black caterpillar crawling outward from her arm.
Mu Qian-xin unleashed a sound-shattering, horrified scream.
The two female players beside her were startled out of their wits by the sight, immediately backing far away from her.
Noticing the commotion on that side, a flash of deep disgust crossed Wen Xing’s face.
“This group of Butterfly Chasers is getting more and more disgusting by the day—they’ve even started planting insects directly onto players.”
Having been parasitized by egg sacs, Mu Qian-xin instinctively flung the caterpillar away.
Yet that unbearable, itching sensation lingered across her arm nonetheless.
Her face deathly pale, she looked toward Zhang Jia-ning over there in utter disbelief.
She had assumed Zhang Jia-ning was a newcomer, which was why she had patiently explained things to her earlier.
Only to have insect eggs planted inside her by the girl without her even noticing when it happened.
No—thinking back carefully, it wasn’t hard to deduce that it must have happened this afternoon.
When they were strolling through the village earlier, Zhang Jia-ning had been holding her arm the entire time.
She had felt a subtle itch across her arm back then, but since it lasted for merely a brief second, she hadn’t paid it any mind.
“What are you standing there frozen for?! Cut your whole arm off!” Wen Xing tossed a knife over with deep impatience.
“If you can’t bring yourself to do it, stick it out and I’ll chop it off for you!”
Mu Qian-xin possessed a naturally delicate and fragile temperament; her face pale as paper, she caught the knife with trembling hands.
Seeing her state, Wen Xing stepped straight forward, her blade descending in a clean, swift arc.
Mu Qian-xin unleashed a wail of agonizing pain.
From the severed arm that fell onto the ground, more insects quickly crawled outward, rapidly metamorphosing into butterflies.
Yet the moment these butterflies took flight, they were entangled completely by dodder vines sprouting up from the earth.
Wen Xing examined the bleeding stump of Mu Qian-xin’s arm with furrowed brows.
“Should be fine now… In any case, be careful from now on—I really despise people with weak personalities like you!”
Mu Qian-xin bit her lip, a trace of deep embarrassment flashing across her face.
As Bai Cha shredded the butterflies into nonexistence, she noticed the commotion on this side.
“Sister, do you really despise us that much? Then why did you step up to save her?”
Wen Xing cast an annoyed glare at her.
Only then did Mu Qian-xin snap back to her senses, offering a soft word of thanks to Wen Xing before clutching her wound with a deathly pale face, shrinking back into the corner.
