Chapter 73
Chapter 073 Child’s Urine
Upon hearing the voice, both of them momentarily froze in confusion.
However, they quickly regained their composure and heightened their vigilance.
That voice must belong to Barbara.
Successfully communicating with her was already the most important first step; all they needed now was for her to say a couple more sentences, and their major task would be complete.
Ling Mo pondered for a moment and tried to keep his tone calm. “We mean you no harm.”
“Leave this place,” Barbara’s second response soon echoed from the Spirit Communication Device, still devoid of any emotion, cold as synthetic speech.
Ling Mo immediately took advantage of the moment: “Alright, we’ll go, but can you restore the spatial anomaly here? We can’t find a way out.”
However, this time, there was no response from the Spirit Communication Device.
The scene fell silent for nearly a minute, and Ling Mo finally spoke up again, “Barbara Johnson? Are you still there?”
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, the flashlights suddenly went dark, and the temperature in the room started to plummet. Xia Xinyan quickly whispered, “Be careful!”
Ling Mo simultaneously raised the copper coin he had prepared earlier, readying himself for anything.
In the next instant, the lights flickered back on, and a white figure suddenly appeared where there had been nothing before.
She was almost standing right next to Ling Mo, her body radiating a bone-chilling cold that felt as though it could freeze a person’s soul, causing Ling Mo to momentarily halt his thoughts.
Just like the first time he had seen her.
However, this time, Ling Mo quickly recovered, and instead of fear, a surge of anger welled up inside him.
—Did she want to make him look foolish in front of Xia Xinyan again?!
“Die, you—!!”
Gritting his teeth, he grasped the copper coin tightly, clenched his right fist, and threw a punch at the figure before him.
The sensation of his fist hitting her felt like striking a fluffy block of ice; golden light burst from the copper coin between his fingers, nearly illuminating the entire room, causing the ghostly woman to let out a shrill scream before dissipating into a cloud of white mist.
Ling Mo didn’t bother with anything else and grabbed Xia Xinyan, rushing toward the door. “Let’s go!”
Even without knowing the exact reason, he could tell this ghost was there to hunt them; staying any longer would just mean waiting to die.
“Old Ling! You’re level 10 now! You guys—oh, it dropped again,” Brother Hao Nan’s message came through belatedly. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Ling Mo shook his head. “I just managed to communicate with her, but she really didn’t like us. After saying two sentences, she attacked us.”
“Did you provoke her?” the fat guy chimed in.
“Impossible. I was very careful,” Ling Mo denied instinctively without a second thought. “Absolutely not my fault.”
Brother Hao Nan then remarked, “I saw it too; I recorded two sentences from the spirit, just one more and we get the final conclusion… what’s going on?”
“Just one more sentence… I think we can afford to put that on hold for now and focus on how to escape,” the fat guy mumbled. “I think right now… holy crap! What was that?!”
“What happened?” Wen’s voice came through the intercom.
The fat guy sounded a bit uncertain: “Was there a monster standing at the corner just now?”
“Not really? Did you see it wrong?”
“Really not? It stood there for several seconds, and my flashlight even shone on it.”
“Well, I didn’t see anything.”
“Hiss… could there be something else here?” The fat guy sounded increasingly suspicious.
Hearing this, Ling Mo suddenly had a thought and asked, “By the way, how much sanity do you guys have left?”
As he spoke, he also glanced at his own number—59.
The others reported their sanity values too: Brother Hao Nan had 65, Wen had 48, the fat guy was the lowest with only 27, while Xia Xinyan had the highest at 78.
Upon receiving this information, Ling Mo couldn’t help but make a guess: “Could it be that when sanity drops too low, we start hallucinating or something?”
“Please don’t… don’t scare me,” the fat guy replied, sounding even stranger. “I feel like this dungeon is targeting me… I can’t take it anymore, please hurry and think of a way to find an exit. We can worry about that last sentence later; even if we get it now, what good is it if we can’t get out?”
“But if we can’t find a way, what can we do? That ghost just sealed off our exit; it’s totally infuriating,” Brother Hao Nan sighed. “I just saw that I’ve gotten stuck in the storage room. All the doors outside are locked, and we can’t chop through them with an axe—it’s useless.”
“Alright, enough of that. If we keep talking about this dungeon, there’s no way to play anymore.” Wen cut off the topic. “Let’s just wander around; I don’t believe we can’t find a way to clear this dungeon.”
“Sure, let me know if you find anything. I’m going silent,” the fat guy retreated into his shell.
Ling Mo also ended the communication, pondering for a moment, his expression heavy.
What the fat guy said was indeed correct; at this stage, the last sentence was irrelevant. They couldn’t even find a way out and were utterly like trapped beasts waiting to die.
Was this the biggest challenge of the dungeon…?
Where was the breakthrough point?
While lost in thought, his peripheral vision suddenly caught sight of Xia Xinyan, who seemed to be dazed.
It only now dawned on Ling Mo that Xia Xinyan had been acting strangely since just now.
Could it be… she was scared?
“Xinyan, are you okay?” He turned to her and asked with concern.
Xia Xinyan snapped back to reality, her gaze meeting his for a few seconds before she slightly pressed her lips together. “I’m a little scared.”
What she really wanted to say was, “You better act normal; I’m scared.”
Unfortunately, she couldn’t voice the first half of that sentence.
Ling Mo’s response had genuinely surprised her.
Did he really just punch that ghost?!
He punched it?!
Had his fear transformed into violence?!
Was this really the same person she used to know?!
Was this truly the coward who couldn’t sleep for several nights after watching a horror movie?!
He had definitely been possessed, right?!
She was truly afraid.
Not of the suddenly violent Ling Mo, but of losing control herself.
The situation was not only unlike what she had imagined, but it was also heading in a wildly opposite direction.
She couldn’t help but question for the Nth time whether her initial decision had been correct.
But from Ling Mo’s perspective, her fears were much simpler, and it even made him chuckle as he naturally pulled her into his embrace. “I told you I’d protect you; there’s nothing to fear.”
The scene he had imagined before finally came to fruition.
Feeling the warmth of Ling Mo’s chest, Xia Xinyan fell silent for a few seconds, but eventually accepted his gesture.
Oh well, at least her goal was achieved.
Yet the moment this ambiguous atmosphere continued for too long, it was shattered by Brother Hao Nan’s excited voice: “Brothers! I’ve made a breakthrough! That task might not require us to record three sentences; confirming the type of ghost should also count toward completing the task—probably! So, I just combined all the obtained info and excluded all the unsuitable options, leaving just two choices!”
“What are the two?!” The fat guy was the first to respond, likely more excited than Brother Hao Nan, given his currently precarious situation.
Brother Hao Nan quickly provided an answer: “One is a Qing Ghost, and the other is a Malevolent Spirit. Their weaknesses are completely different, and we can use the process of elimination to give it a try.”
“Then let’s try! No more nonsense! What does a Qing Ghost fear?!”
“Uh… child’s urine.”
“……Huh?”
