Chapter 158
Chapter 158 The Ship Will Naturally Straighten When It Gets to the Bridge
Murong Yue grinned wickedly, “Looks like they’re pretty harmonious on the inside…”
Xia Xinyan raised an eyebrow.
With a guy like that in the team, it would be strange if they actually got along.
If it weren’t for that guy Yan’s big background, given his temperament, he would’ve probably been beaten to death several times by now.
But that wasn’t her concern; they weren’t in the same circle at all, and apart from this dungeon, they probably wouldn’t have any further interactions in this lifetime.
Putting those thoughts aside, she followed towards the bedroom: “Let’s go in and see what’s up.”
The girl on the princess bed looked beautiful, seeming to have fallen into a deep sleep earlier, but she awakened as soon as the group entered.
Seeing so many strangers in the room, she had a dazed expression: “Are you here to rescue me?”
“You’re the… girl who accidentally entered the castle?” Cheng Yu asked.
The girl nodded: “Yes, my name is Liliya.”
“That’s great! We’re here to get you out,” Cheng Yu said with some excitement.
He was probably the first one to find the girl, right? After all, he opened the door first—that should count as completing his reward task, right?
Although the system hadn’t given any hints yet, it seemed like reward tasks wouldn’t have any notifications until the main quest refreshes; their current main quest was to find and rescue the girl, so the rewards would only be calculated once they got her out of the castle. Thinking about it, it makes sense there’s no notification now.
He didn’t feel that anything was off.
Xia Xinyan, however, scrutinized Liliya for a moment with some suspicion.
This girl… seems a bit too calm?
“Why do I feel like there’s something off about her?” Murong Yue chimed in, leaning in closer.
Ling Mo hadn’t thought much of it at first, but upon hearing her say that, he instinctively asked, “What’s off?”
Could it be that this girl isn’t real?
“Just…,” Murong Yue pondered, confused, “why does this girl, with an Eastern face, have a Western name? It feels so odd.”
Ling Mo: “…I think you’re a bit off.”
“Me? What’s off about me?”
“Your brain.”
“??? ”
Ling Mo didn’t bother with her further but noticed the confusion on Xia Xinyan’s face. He paused and leaned closer to Xia Xinyan, whispering, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Xia Xinyan collected her emotions and returned to normal.
She couldn’t tell what the situation was. Even with Tianji’s vaccine making her suspicious of this girl, it wasn’t the time to discuss it among such a crowd.
Besides, if this girl were fake, they had no other routes to explore anyway. From past experiences, this dungeon seemed to be a linear process, and anything they encountered would not be missed by the game. So, there was no rush to figure out the truth.
However, she kept her guard up.
Apart from the girl, there was nothing else noteworthy in the room, and after the group checked the entire room, they decided to leave.
As they stepped out, the door behind them slammed shut with a bang. Haonan pushed against the door, but it didn’t budge: “It won’t open.”
“Normal,” Wen said, now noticing, “Didn’t you see that this dungeon has been forcing us to move forward from the start? Now that we’ve rescued someone, it’s pushing us back.”
Haonan furrowed his brow: “Really? But that doesn’t make sense.”
“How does it not make sense?”
“What’s the castle after? Forcing us to save people and then forcing us to leave?”
“How would I know?! Don’t ask, it’s just plot necessity.”
“I still feel like something’s not right.” Haonan looked at the closed door, deep in thought.
Wen had nothing to say: “So what can we do? You can’t pry open the door, can you?”
Even Haonan could see the problem; he definitely could too, but his thoughts were clearer than Haonan’s—can this problem be solved now? No? Then let it be!
So, thinking about a problem that can’t be solved right now is just torturing oneself, isn’t it?
Things will work themselves out when the bridge is reached, right?
Ling Mo agreed with Wen’s thought: “When the game wants us to discover the truth, we’ll find it eventually—besides, is it so bad that the castle is forcing us out? As long as we can complete the task, that’s what matters.”
“…True.” Haonan nodded.
Murong Yue then looked towards Cheng Yu, who stood in the front with Liliya: “Alright, enough dawdling, let’s head back.”
Cheng Yu nodded, preparing to lead Liliya back the way they came when Ling Mo called out to him: “Wait, let Liliya walk in the middle. She’s the one we need to protect; it’s too dangerous to have her in the front.”
Cheng Yu faced him, no longer acting timid as he did with Yan Zigui: “She came in by herself; why can’t we get her out with us?”
“And if she dies, are you going to bear the loss of failing our task?” Ling Mo’s face remained unchanged.
Cheng Yu wanted to say something else, but Yan Zigui laughed mockingly: “Indeed, making him bear the loss of a task failure is a good idea.”
Cheng Yu paused, his bravado immediately deflating.
But before he could speak, all the lights in the hall went out, plunging everyone into darkness.
Some, like Haonan, Wen, and Murong Yue, let out startled cries, although Murong Yue’s was overshadowed by the other two.
In the next moment, a white light suddenly illuminated ahead, and beneath that light was… a purple-clad ghost.
The ghost had disheveled hair, no lower body, and was dragging a tattered purple dress as it crawled toward them, emitting a hoarse wail that brimmed with pain.
But before everyone could react, the white light vanished again, and the ghost’s cries abruptly stopped. At the same time, the ground beneath them suddenly collapsed, causing everyone to plummet.
This time, many more people gasped.
Xia Xinyan had night vision and could barely see her surroundings in the dark. After the hall’s floor collapsed, she saw a bottomless giant black hole below. However, many suspended corridors extended from the walls of the hole. If they could land on one of these corridors, they might survive.
Xia Xinyan immediately flicked her tail, adjusting her body as she aimed for the nearest corridor, landing deftly. Then, she quickly dashed towards the falling Ling Mo, grabbing his hand and pulling him up just in time to stop him from falling further down.
The others also landed on different corridors. Xia Xinyan couldn’t see further down, but given the sheer density of these corridors, if anyone fell all the way down, that’d require some pretty awful luck—of the negative kind.
It seemed the dungeon had entered its later phase…
