Chapter 121: Ghost Wall
They stood along the outer boundary of the trial realm, still an immense distance from the colossal rift that scarred the sky.
Even from so far away, the crimson tear radiated an invisible, suffocating pressure that weighed heavily on every breath.
The ground beneath their boots was cracked, scorched earth, completely devoid of life. Deep within the jagged fissures, dark red magma writhed slowly like thick blood, occasionally bubbling to the surface before popping with a soft hiss, releasing the sharp stench of sulfur and burning rock.
Not far ahead, a cluster of vicious ghouls glared at them with bared fangs.
“Keep your spacing tight, everyone. Don’t spread out too much!”
Lin Huai threw out a quick warning. Stepping forward, she swung her war scythe in a sweeping arc. A crescent blade of purple energy spun through the air, instantly slicing through the first pack of charging imps.
Yet the moment those fiends dissolved into crimson mist, Lin Huai realized something was horribly wrong.
Her teammates were gone.
Across the vast, barren expanse of burning stone, she was entirely alone.
“Brother Long!”
“Sister Cai?!”
“Milk Tea! Young Miss!”
No matter how loudly she shouted, only silence answered her. Underground fissures cracked open, coughing up endless streams of low-tier ghouls. Her desperate calls drifted across the desolate wasteland, slamming into the jagged stone crags before echoing back in twisted, warped tones that sounded eerily like weeping phantoms.
It was an illusionary trap—a spectral maze that deceived the senses. Despite her constant vigilance, she had stepped right into it.
In her previous life, getting caught in an illusion never rattled Lin Huai. Back then, her teammates had been random strangers whose lives meant nothing to her. Being split up merely gave her the freedom to hunt alone, farm survival points, and grow stronger without dead weight holding her back.
This time was different. Remembering that she hadn’t thoroughly explained the mechanics of this specific labyrinth to the group, a surge of sharp panic gripped her chest. She was terrified she would be too late to pull them out.
Slashing through the encroaching imps with quick, economical strokes, Lin Huai sprinted toward the towering cliff that marked the edge of the wasteland map. Out there, along the physical boundary of the zone, she knew she would find the structural seams of the illusion’s barrier.
Victory in the Monsters Brawl trial was determined by total performance, and the most direct metric was raw monster kill count. Every beast yielded score points based on its rank, and higher scores translated directly into superior end-game loot.
In the past, Lin Huai had focused obsessively on accumulating points. Yet right now, blinded by the urgent need to find her companions, she didn’t even notice that she was ducking around charging fiends instead of cutting them down, throwing away easy points simply to shave seconds off her run.
When she was still dozens of meters from the cliff face, the unmistakable clamor of battle reached her ears.
Rounding a jagged crag of black stone, she stopped short.
They were all there.
Seeing every member of the squad standing alive and unharmed, a massive wave of relief washed through Lin Huai’s chest. She let out a breath, silently laughing at herself for letting her worry cloud her judgment.
The Elite Squad had no weak links. Even Cute and Sparkling and Milk Tea could grip a submachine gun and spray lead into a horde without blinking an eye.
She hurried out from behind the boulder, helping the line finish off the remaining imps before turning to them with a reproving look. “Didn’t I tell everyone to stick together? How did you all end up scattered behind this ridge the second I turned around?”
Sister Cai shook her head, her brow furrowed in a mix of annoyance and cold irritation. “We have no idea. We looked up and you were gone, running off to chase down a few stray monsters on your own.”
Old Wang chimed in, his voice rough and bitter: “Exactly! You barked at us to stay tight, and then you bolted without saying a word! We triggered a whole ambush trying to track you down, you know!”
Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar looked at her with open disapproval. “Sister Bone Ash, you’re supposed to be our squad leader. Shouldn’t you show some basic discipline?”
Lin Huai froze in her tracks.
She stared at the faces around her. Every single one of them was throwing words of blame at her, scolding her for lacking teamwork, condemning her for acting reckless, and holding her responsible for the danger they had faced.
A chilling sense of unreality settled over her heart.
Could it be that this second chance at life was merely a beautiful, dying dream she had dreamed while bleeding out in the snow?
Had there never been a fresh start? Had she never truly earned a team that fought alongside her with absolute trust? Were those brave souls who had driven thousands of miles across the wasteland to pull her out of that canyon nothing more than a desperate delusion?
The scene before her blurred, overlapping with countless painful betrayals and petty arguments from her past life. Clinging to one final thread of hope, Lin Huai turned toward Dragon Emerging from the Sea.
Yes… Brother Long was still here!
Across both lifetimes, Dragon Emerging from the Sea had been an honorable, steadfast soldier to his core. He lived by duty, loyalty, and mutual respect. He was the kind of leader who would gladly lay down his life for a squadmate; he would never point fingers or tear down an ally.
Lin Huai looked at him, her voice trembling with quiet vulnerability: “Brother Long… do you also think this was all my fault?”
Dragon Emerging from the Sea glared at her with cold, rigid contempt, his chin lifted in open defiance. “Whether you’re in the wrong or not, you know the answer in your own heart, Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice. If you don’t have what it takes to lead this squad, step down right now and hand the command to me!”
Hearing those cruel, venomous words fall from his mouth, Lin Huai lowered her head.
A quiet, breathless laugh broke from her throat.
“I wouldn’t mind handing the squad over to Brother Long,” she murmured softly. “The only problem is… you have to be the real Brother Long first!”
Before the sentence finished, the violet war scythe in her hands snapped upward like striking lightning.
Slash!
The head of the fake “Dragon Emerging from the Sea” tumbled from his shoulders, dissolving into a cloud of swirling red mist before it even hit the scorched earth.
Seeing their ringleader cut down, the surrounding phantoms didn’t scatter. Instead, their sneering faces twisted with theatrical outrage as they redoubled their shouts.
The fake young heiress pointed a shaking finger at Lin Huai, shrieking, “Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice! You actually butchered your own teammate! You aren’t fit to call yourself our leader!”
The phantom of Yellow Knight nodded eagerly. “She’s right! A traitor like you deserves to be exiled from Zone 444 and hunted across the entire server!”
Having seen clean through the deception, Lin Huai couldn’t be bothered to listen to another word of their fabricated venom.
She lunged forward, her scythe dancing in two sweeping, fluid circles. Within seconds, every single imp wearing the face of her friends was sliced to ribbons, bursting into harmless puffs of red smoke.
Without casting a single backward glance, she turned on her heel and sprinted toward the cliff.
Her real companions would never speak to her like that.
Even if this entire lifetime was just a dream, she would fight with everything she had to carve this dream into an unbreakable reality!
At that very moment, the real Dragon Emerging from the Sea was trapped in the exact same predicament.
The second he realized his teammates had vanished into thin air, he halted his advance immediately, sweeping his surroundings with sharp, tactical precision.
Ghouls crawled from the fissures in endless lines, but he didn’t waste ammunition trying to wipe them out. Instead, he retraced his steps to the exact patch of scorched stone where the squad had been standing, searching for physical clues.
Dropping to one knee, he inspected the ground where Lin Huai had been positioned. The hardened lava showed no scuffs, no disturbed dust, and not a single boot print.
It made zero physical sense.
Then again, the survival game had abandoned logic a long time ago.
Dragon Emerging from the Sea tightened his grip on his rifle, his brow furrowed with grim resolve. Just as he was calculating how to breach the spatial anomaly, a graceful, slender figure stepped casually from behind a nearby rock.
It was Lin Huai.
