In the backyard of the blacksmith shop stood two large buildings. The room on the right was the blacksmith's living quarters, while to the right lay the warehouse where ironware was stored.
The emaciated middle-aged man led Li Xianzong and the others to the warehouse piled with ironware. Pushing open the long-sealed doors, a stale, rusty odor wafted out to meet them.
Li Xianzong stepped over the threshold into the warehouse, his calm gaze sweeping across the room.
Various kinds of torture instruments were laid out inside—straight razors, steel needles, finger-squeezers, branding irons, standing cages, tiger benches, and more.
Li Xianzong narrowed his eyes. These were nothing like the "torture tools" of that perverted woman Yichuan Mei; the items here were meant to torment human beings—genuine instruments of torture.
Most were covered in dust and mottled with rust, yet some were brand-new, looking as though they had been forged only recently.
"Why would a blacksmith have so many torture instruments in his warehouse?"
The speaker was a burly young man with ordinary features but a rebellious, pugnacious air. One glance was enough to tell he was no pushover—the sort of aggressive youth who loved violence and brawling.
Yet such an attitude was entirely run-of-the-mill among evil professions. The youth's only notable feature was his missing left ear, which seemed to have been lopped off by a sharp blade.
The emaciated middle-aged man said, "Not only that, look closely. Some of these torture tools are new, some are old. That Blacksmith Wang kept forging them without stopping."
Saying so, the emaciated middle-aged man picked up two razors: one heavily rusted, the other gleaming snow-bright.
"He was forging torture instruments in a repetitive, meaningless cycle!" Li Xianzong declared with finality.
The youth missing his left ear frowned. "What's the behavioral logic behind this NPC? Or is it just a meaningless design element we can ignore?"
Just then, a man in a sharp suit said in pleasant surprise, "Look what I found."
Everyone turned to look. In his hand was a dark-red steel nail about two inches long; the dark red was dried blood.
Li Xianzong's eyes flickered slightly. Taking the steel nail from him, an information prompt surfaced after a few seconds:
[Name: Nail of Curse]
[Type: Consumable]
[Function: Spirit Corroding]
[Description: This steel nail once pierced the heart of a powerhouse. Before her death, her resentment wrapped around the nail to form a curse. The soul of anyone injured by this steel nail will be cursed and perish.]
[Remark: I curse you. I curse you to die an unnatural death just like me.]
"A very powerful consumable." Li Xianzong let out a low laugh. "Quite reasonable, isn't it? After taking down a powerful elite monster, it's only right that we get replenished with some strong items."
He glanced around at the others. "I'll be keeping this consumable. Any objections?"
His teammates shrugged.
Evil professions believed in martial might, where the strong ruled supreme. Once someone's status was established, their dominance was absolute. Anyone dissatisfied could issue a challenge, but they had to be prepared to pay with their life.
In orthodox professions, by contrast, things inevitably came down to voting or discussion, and required the consent of the person who made the discovery.
Li Xianzong and his group then thoroughly searched every torture tool and piece of ironware, but found no further items or consumables.
Afterward, the party left the warehouse and headed toward the house where Blacksmith Wang lived.
*Creak.*
Li Xianzong pushed open the wooden door and carefully inspected the room's interior.
By the window stood a bed constructed from stacked green bricks. In the center was a square table, and opposite the bed was a wardrobe.
After rummaging through the room, they discovered an account book inside a wooden chest used for storing clothes.
As the team captain, Li Xianzong flipped open the thread-bound booklet. Taking a quick look, he turned to his teammates and asked, "Does anyone read traditional Chinese characters?"
The ledger was written in traditional characters, and the handwriting was atrocious. Li Xianzong realized his literacy was insufficient to make sense of it.
Traditional characters... The evil professionals looked at each other, falling momentarily silent.
The suited man stepped forward and said, "Let me have a look."
Li Xianzong breathed a subtle sigh of relief and handed him the booklet.
The suited man scrutinized it back and forth for quite some time, then smiled. "These are the blacksmith shop's income and expense records. I know who those torture tools were sold to—someone named Squire Zhao."
He immediately followed up, "However, the numbers in the ledger don't match what we saw. There are far too many torture tools in the warehouse, far exceeding the quantity Squire Zhao ordered."
The counts didn't match... Li Xianzong frowned.
He vaguely sensed this was a piece of information—clues the dungeon was feeding to the Spirit Realm walkers.
Li Xianzong had cleared an A-tier dungeon before; otherwise, how could he be worthy of the title of genius? The higher the difficulty of a dungeon, the more it tested a Spirit Realm walker's abilities.
Much of the information had to be dug up on one's own.
Li Xianzong shared his thoughts with his teammates. After pondering for a moment, the emaciated middle-aged man ventured uncertainly, "I have a guess, though I can't be sure. That Blacksmith Wang seemed to be cursed. I caught a faint scent of a curse on him."
The emaciated middle-aged man explained, "Curses are an ability of Witch Doctors at the Saint stage. I haven't reached that level yet, so I can't say for sure. Besides, this is a faction confrontation dungeon, so the presence of curses is perfectly normal and unsurprising."
"A curse..." Li Xianzong sorted through the details and concluded, "Cursing him to forge torture tools without stopping?"
He didn't dwell on it for long and announced, "Let's leave this place and find Squire Zhao. He should be our next objective. We need to clear the side quest before the orthodox faction does."
***
"Xiu'er! Xiu'er!"
Zhang Yuanqing walked down the street on the west side of town, hollering at the top of his lungs, "My Xiu'er, where are you?!"
Guan Ya, Queen, and the others followed silently behind him.
While watching their surroundings, Queen asked the mixed-race beauty beside her in a low voice, "Has he always been this socially fearless?"
She had always harbored immense curiosity toward the legendary Yuanshi Tianzun.
After spending a brief time together, she realized that this renowned figure possessed neither the arrogant aloofness of a favored child of heaven nor meek humility.
He talked a lot, was lively, could chat about anything, and shoot the breeze with anyone.
And she didn't dislike that kind of personality.
Guan Ya gave a soft chuckle. "Less than a week after joining the Five Elements Alliance, he was already chummy with the colleagues on our team. You know Fu Qingyang, right?"
"Of course I do. Now that's a true favored child of heaven." Queen touched the silver hoops on her earlobes and smiled. "Supposedly he's very handsome, but aloof and difficult to get along with. He doesn't have as many female admirers as Taiyi Sect's Ling Jun, but the ones he has are diehards."
Guan Ya tilted her head, glanced at her radiant, striking female colleague, and said, "Even that Fu Qingyang likes him a lot. Whenever Yuanshi is around, Fu Qingyang speaks more."
Queen was astonished and clicked her tongue in admiration. "Is that what they call geniuses recognizing fellow geniuses?"
"No, Fu Qingyang just likes hearing Yuanshi flatter him."
"..."
Just then, Huode Xingjun said irritably, "Does Widow Xu really live nearby? Could Granny Wang have lied to us?"
They had been searching for half an hour, and Zhang Yuanqing's throat was nearly raw from shouting, yet there was still no sign of the legendary Widow Xu.
If they couldn't find her, it meant the quest couldn't progress.
At this point, the sun beat down mercilessly, baking the ancient town. After walking for half an hour, everyone was drenched in sweat and forced to take a brief rest in a shaded alleyway.
Leaning against an ancient white wall, Li Chunfeng fanned himself with his hand. "Did we miss some information?"
Missed information? Zhang Yuanqing lowered his head in thought, running through the details in his mind, but found nothing missing.
*Well, just because I don't sense anything doesn't mean there's nothing. If I trigger my old condition, I could probably recall every detail, but that's not worth it...*
Standing close beside Zhang Yuanqing, Guan Ya pondered for a few seconds before saying, "No, we haven't missed any crucial clues. Information about Widow Xu has only appeared twice: once when Granny Wang mentioned her address, and the other time on that straw doll. But neither has anything to do with our present predicament."
Frowning, the round-faced youth Chi'ou said, "It's so hot, it's making me irritable. I'm thirsty. What about you guys?"
*I'm thirsty too...* Zhang Yuanqing immediately turned to Queen and grinned. "Your Majesty, Queen, how about bestowing some juice on us?"
"What juice? That sounds so weird coming from you," Queen muttered.
*If you were Guan Ya, I'd have stared right at your chest while saying that!* Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself.
Cracking dirty jokes with Guan Ya was just playing along with her preferences—an experienced female driver like her loved that sort of banter. But doing it with other girls would just make him look sleazy.
From her appearance alone, this Queen was a textbook cool, mature beauty—large earrings, smoky makeup, and beneath her summer blouse and cropped pants was a curvaceous, mature figure.
Yet unlike Guan Ya, who enjoyed suggestive banter, she was rather clumsy in that department.
"It's true that Water Ghosts can manipulate water, but we can't conjure water out of thin air."
Seeing how agonizing the heat was for her teammates, she thought for a moment and said, "I'll go to the river and 'carry' some water back for you. No matter how dirty the water is, once purified by a Water Ghost, it's safe to drink directly."
Guan Ya cautioned, "Don't wander too far."
Queen replied without looking back, "Don't worry. Before finishing the side quest, we won't run into the evil faction."
Zhang Yuanqing watched her graceful figure walk away into the distance, then pulled his gaze back and said, "I think finding Xu Xiu'er requires a specific trigger condition. But right now, the information provided is too scarce to deduce the method."
Guan Ya suggested, "Why not start from her background?"
"Start from her background..." Li Chunfeng mused. "She's a widow, suspected of having cursed Granny Wang's son, and very likely a Witch Doctor. Granny Wang's son must have harmed her in some way—most likely sneaking into a widow's house at night. But there's a logical bug here: if she's a Witch Doctor, how could she be harmed by an ordinary man? Of course, we can't be certain whether Granny Wang's son was truly an ordinary man, and that doesn't have much to do with our present predicament anyway."
"What are you even saying? You analyzed all that, but none of it had any point. You Scholars just love overthinking things," Huode Xingjun complained. "The matter is simple: Granny Wang's son slept with her, she cursed Granny Wang's son, and so she hates men."
"Hates men, so she's avoiding us? Makes sense..." The slightly chubby Chi'ou nodded repeatedly.
"Makes sense my ass!" Lili Yuanshangcao said flatly. "Did previous Spirit Realm walkers never take this storyline? Were there no men among them?"
"Well..." The round-faced Chi'ou had no comeback.
Guan Ya pondered and said, "No, Huode Xingjun's guess has merit. I have a hypothesis: what if... what if this stage requires a female walker to trigger it?"
Her words made everyone's expressions change instantly.
Queen had left the group!
Chapter 130