Chapter 280: [Unswerving Devotion] What the Heart Thinks
“I’ll do it!” The male player beside Zhang Wanxi swiftly shoved his jade pendant into her hand and snatched her hairpin.
He moved so fast that he didn’t give anyone else a chance to react.
The remaining male player then held out his jade pendant toward Bai Cha.
Lan Yan-xi’s expression instantly turned rather sour.
Seeing Bai Cha stand there as if in a daze, she acted with quick hands and sharp eyes, snatching the jade pendant away. She yanked an earring off her own ear and shoved it into the man’s hand.
With the pairing successfully formed, Lan Yan-xi let out a breath of relief, though her eyes flickered slightly as she stole a glance at Bai Cha.
“Sorry about that.”
She couldn’t be blamed for snatching the opportunity. Biyi Tower was named after the Biyi birds, and hearing the name alone made it clear that it required paired lovers flying wing to wing.
Besides, Biyi birds naturally needed a male and a female to fly together in the first place.
Bai Cha smiled with an easygoing, good-natured demeanor, saying nothing.
Truth be told, she hadn’t planned on pairing up with anyone to begin with.
This instance had thrust the concept of so-called love into the open right from the start, making it difficult for anyone to foster good feelings toward teaming up now.
If a single person was bound to die, then so be it.
Besides, was pairing up a guarantee against death?
Since everyone was going to die either way, why bother binding one’s life to a stranger’s?
The game only mentioned that an unpaired player would suffer consequences, but it never specified what those consequences actually were.
Given the choice, she still preferred fighting solo.
Her personality dictated that trusting others was a rare thing. Even under a teaming mode where two lives were seemingly tied together and ought to foster mutual trust, what if one party realized they couldn’t survive and intentionally dragged the other down with them?
So, adopting a delicate and weak demeanor, she said, “Let’s go inside and take a look.”
With that, she stepped inside alone ahead of the others.
The remaining players exchanged glances and split up into their respective pairs.
No one shared an unbreakable bond of cooperation here to begin with.
Biyi Tower occupied a massive footprint.
After separating from the others, Bai Cha turned around, only to find their figures nowhere in sight.
It felt as if even their voices had completely vanished.
Bai Cha walked up to a wall.
Carved upon it were images of Biyi birds flying side by side.
This instance…
Bai Cha knitted her brows.
The entire setup was far too absurd.
Although this instance wasn’t a real-world setting, real-world instances at least followed a basic underlying logic.
She didn’t believe that with the game’s capabilities, along with the length of time it had existed, it would be incapable of constructing a fully fleshed-out historical setting.
Even though she didn’t know how long the game had been around.
Yet this current instance revolved entirely around the concept of love.
The transformation of those NPCs outside had driven them into this building.
And what then? Were the paired lovers supposed to face dangers together, spark romance, and deepen their feelings?
Was that the core of this instance?
It felt extraordinarily bizarre.
This instance gave her a feeling much like the previous one—the antique restoration shop.
The shop existed independently and constituted the entire instance.
It needed no overarching logic; every NPC inside possessed their own story.
The sole purpose of its existence was to house those NPCs.
As for this instance, the entire city was like an enlarged version of that restoration shop.
Its purpose was to house a form of love whose nature remained unclear.
The restoration shop had a shopkeeper, and this city boundly possessed its own city lord.
After locating the staircase, Bai Cha began climbing up.
This skirt was thoroughly inconvenient.
To be fair, she quite liked Hanfu, but it was entirely unsuitable for a game like this. The skirt draped all the way over her insteps, making climbing stairs exceedingly difficult.
This was merely walking up stairs; what if she encountered danger?
Bai Cha lowered her head, looking at the beautiful hem of her skirt.
It was embroidered with a pattern of flowers and birds, with fresh, elegant orchids occupying the main portion of the embroidery.
Bai Cha let out a sigh.
Then, she unfastened her outer skirt.
Beneath the outermost layer of her skirt were trousers—two layers, in fact—so she didn’t have to worry about exposing anything.
The outer pair of trousers was rather wide and loose, but because of the cold weather, the pant legs were securely bound into her socks, making them perfectly fine for walking.
She casually took off her loose outer robe as well, tore off a few strips of cloth, and tied the sleeves of her remaining clothes tight against her arms.
Only then did she resume climbing the stairs.
She was done pretending.
This wasn’t a genuine historical setting, nor was she an ancient person. She liked skirts, but she didn’t like wearing one under these conditions.
She could maintain a disguise, but this outfit was genuinely annoying, yet a character with this background couldn’t possibly go without it.
Well, there was no helping it—let the character persona collapse then.
For a pitiable single person like her, abandoning self-restraint was entirely natural.
She reached the second floor.
It was pitch-black here.
The only illumination came from oil lamps placed at set intervals along the wall by the stairs.
Bai Cha stared into the dark space for a moment, sensing a subtle feeling of being watched, as if someone were fixating a glare on her.
She continued up the stairs.
The third floor was the same.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth floors were all identical.
Oil lamps set at identical distances, and the exact same pitch-black space.
It almost instantly pulled one into an illusion of climbing a staircase that would never end.
Bai Cha kept walking up.
The seventh floor remained unchanged.
And ahead lay yet another flight of stairs.
It seemed she had truly fallen into a ghost wall, walking endlessly along a single flight of stairs.
Bai Cha stared at the extra flight of stairs in silence, then abruptly reached out and lifted one of the oil lamps.
The flame flickered faintly.
The oil lamp was crafted with exquisite detail, featuring a copper pillar shaped like a Biyi bird.
It was lifelike, almost as if it could move.
Oh, it actually did move.
It pecked violently at Bai Cha’s hand.
Pain shot through Bai Cha’s hand, yet she didn’t let go.
Instead, a subtle smile broke across her face.
“It’s all fake. Perhaps I should think of something else—for instance, the lights on the seventh floor turning on.”
The moment the words fell, the previously pitch-black space lit up, brightly illuminated.
Yet it was completely empty, and entirely enclosed.
Bai Cha looked at the wall in the distance, feeling that a window and an open-air terrace ought to be over there.
Sure enough, a terrace materialized right then.
Holding the lamp in one hand, the bird on the lamp had returned to its original state, remaining motionless, while her hand looked as though it had never been bitten at all.
Bai Cha walked over, standing squarely in the center of the space.
The staircase had vanished—perhaps because she had subconsciously willed it so, though perhaps it wasn’t just her thoughts at play.
Perhaps, right from the start, all of them had fallen under a spell, and there was no zombie siege outside at all.
In truth, people instinctively felt that beneath something as beautiful as fireworks, hideous occurrences ought to transpire—after all, this was a horror instance.
An NPC riot, for example. No telling who had imagined it, but it had manifested regardless—perhaps even the person who imagined it hadn’t realized it.
Then they entered Biyi Tower, feeling that this place ought to count as a safe zone, and sure enough, those NPCs behind them stopped moving.
Yet this building had given everyone the impression right from the beginning that something was bound to happen here.
Hence, upon stepping inside, the place appeared both dark and enclosed.
“Perhaps the city lord is here as well?” she said with a half-smile.
A figure, thereupon, slowly materialized before her eyes.
