Chapter 80: Midnight
“Can the familiars come with me?”
If she had to enter the Midnight alone, Xu Zhi felt a bit uneasy.
[As long as they stay within the range of the lantern’s light.]
“Then here’s the question—how big is the light’s range?”
[With your current core, it only provides a radius of one meter.]
…That’s it??
Looks like she couldn’t bring Gouzi or Zhen. She could only take the little Aberration and Yi.
After all, Gouzi’s body alone exceeded one meter, and Zhen flying in the sky wouldn’t even get touched by the lantern’s glow. Better to let those two stay at home quietly.
“You two stay here and keep an eye on them.”
As night fell, Xu Zhi decided, for the first time, not to stay home.
After giving her familiars instructions, she reluctantly took out ten [Lamp]-attribute high-grade cores from her storage.
The lantern had a small compartment at its base that fit the cores perfectly. All she had to do was pull it out, insert a core, close it—and the lantern would light up.
Just before she was about to head out, the narrator appeared with a serious warning:
[Important: Do not use the Eye of Secrets in the Midnight. You will see things you’re not meant to. At best, you’ll go blind—at worst, you’ll die!]
[No matter what happens, do not panic. Do not speak to anything. Do not respond to any voices. And absolutely do not wander. Remember the path you took. Return the same way before the lantern runs out of power!]
“Got it.”
Seeing how serious the narrator was, Xu Zhi didn’t joke around either. She responded earnestly.
[Alright. Go.]
From those words, Xu Zhi oddly felt a parental tone. Her expression twisted slightly as she tucked the game console into her coat and loaded ten high-grade [Lamp] attribute cores into the lantern. As the light came on, she didn’t feel any obvious changes or buffs—maybe those would only become apparent if something happened later.
She opened the door slightly. Black mist crept through the gap into the unlit room but stayed clear of the lantern’s glow. Xu Zhi stepped outside.
Before this, she had imagined many things about the Midnight streets—the dangers, the horrors. After all, even during the day this city was gloomy. At night, with no light sources, she expected pitch-black nothingness, or perhaps strange lights—like glowing eyes of massive creatures, or unknown beasts wandering the streets.
All her assumptions had been based on common tropes from fantasy works.
But the real Midnight was not what she expected.
The first thing she noticed was the smell of earth. But there was only concrete beneath her feet—where would dirt come from?
Then she saw something strange: just by stepping through a door, it felt like she had gone from the city into a bizarre forest.
A pale white moon hung high in the sky. Countless tall, pitch-black, perfectly straight trees shot upwards like blades. They had no branches—only sharp trunks that gave off a suffocating, oppressive aura. She instinctively avoided looking at them.
The light from the moon was unnaturally white. A thin fog covered the ground, and the tree shadows were darker than the trees themselves—thick like ink spilled across the floor. Xu Zhi couldn’t shake the feeling that this place was familiar, but it was overpowered by a deeper sense of unease and dread.
She felt danger—but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was as if every corner, every crevice was dangerous. She had no idea where it might strike from.
This place gave her a distorted, dreamlike sense of déjà vu—like she had been here before, yet not this exact place.
Turning back, she saw that Cloud City had vanished. All that remained behind her was the door—floating in the air.
The door still being there eased her nerves a bit. But just as she turned back, she thought she caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye—something like a tree shadow… moving.
But how?
There was no wind here. These trees were like iron statues—utterly still.
Xu Zhi looked around, wary. Everything was quiet as before, save for the fog drifting over the ground. But that oppressive feeling still lingered—like a needle against her back.
Suddenly, she heard a soft rustle in the woods.
She instantly turned toward the sound, eyes alert, one hand on the blade strapped to her back. She remembered the narrator’s warning and didn’t activate the Eye of Secrets—but this kind of passiveness wasn’t ideal.
After a few faint noises, Xu Zhi was braced for some monster to appear.
Instead, a pure black cat stepped out from behind a tree.
It looked perfectly normal—small, maybe the size of a three-month-old kitten.
It stared at her curiously with bright jade-green eyes, then leapt forward.
The moment it jumped, its body turned into a puff of smoke—and reformed into a black cat as it landed. The motion was light and graceful—dreamlike, almost unreal.
Xu Zhi stared at it, but soon began to feel dizzy. She quickly looked away, fighting the wave of nausea. She stayed standing, refusing to fall—barely able to keep her balance.
The dizziness was overwhelming. She had to pour every ounce of energy into resisting it, unable to think of anything else. Thankfully, the feeling gradually faded.
She guessed the lantern helped. Without it, she might not have made it.
“Hmm?”
A crisp, curious voice echoed in her mind. Her skin prickled, hairs standing on end.
Where did that voice come from?
Why was it directly in her mind?
She couldn’t tell the speaker’s age—or even their gender.
“A living person?”
“How did a living person come here?”
Two questions echoed uninvited in her head.
Xu Zhi had a bold guess—was it the black cat speaking?
She remembered the narrator’s warning: Do not respond to any voices.
So, obediently, she said nothing.
Seeing she didn’t answer, the voice didn’t grow angry. In fact, it sounded amused:
“How did you get in here?”
“Can’t speak?”
“Do you know what this place is?”
“Human… how long has it been since I last saw a human?”
“You look delicious. Why haven’t you been eaten yet?”
“Well, better that you haven’t. Now you can keep me company for a while.”
Rambling on and on. Chatty footsteps circled around her.
So… it was a chatterbox too?
Why not use the branches of the adherent to tie yourself to the falcon, then you can fly.