When the man beside her suddenly leaned close to her ear and spoke, Jiang Yu'er instinctively pulled back. But before she could lose her temper, that unfamiliar voice uttered words she knew all too well. She froze. In the darkness, her sweet, round face suddenly lit up with pure delight, and her exhausted eyes sparkled.
"Y-Yuanzi?" She tilted her head, staring intently at the young man's face as if she couldn't believe it.
"It's me," Zhang Yuanqing whispered. "I'm here to save you. For special reasons, my physical body can't enter this place, so I could only project my consciousness and possess this young man."
Before he even finished speaking, Jiang Yu'er let out a cheer and threw herself at him.
"I knew you'd come save me! You're in the Dragon Group, so of course you'd come!" She was as ecstatic as a little girl.
*The Dragon Group... The more I hear it, the more chuunibyou it sounds. If I'd known, I would've made up a cooler name. Whatever, it's not like she knows any better...* Zhang Yuanqing reached out, caught her by the shoulders, and kept her from throwing herself into his arms.
"Calm down. I have some questions for you."
Jiang Yu'er gave a dissatisfied humph, then suddenly winced in pain, baring her teeth. With tears of grievance pooling in her eyes, she whimpered, "Yuanzi, what took you so long? Your aunt's leg is injured! What if it leaves a scar?"
As she spoke, her eyes brimmed with tears, and she looked ready to burst into sobs.
*Where did all that calm and grit from earlier go?* Zhang Yuanqing murmured soothingly, "Don't worry. Once I get you out of here, I'll find a way to heal your wound. It definitely won't leave a scar."
An injury of this degree would have self-healed in no time for a Spirit Realm walker, even a squishy Swordsman. But for an ordinary person, it was a genuinely severe wound—it might even lead to tetanus.
"What are you two whispering about? I can't understand a word," a rather burly woman ventured.
The other four people nearby turned their heads to look over as well.
Zhang Yuanqing patted his aunt's hand to signal her to stay quiet, then turned to the five survivors and said in a deep voice, "I'm a member of the Songhai Special Operations Team. I'm here to rescue you."
As he spoke, he drew a hand across his face. Instantly, a flash of gold paint lit up between his brows and rapidly spread across his entire countenance, forming an operatic face mask with a golden base interwoven with black and red patterns around the eye sockets, forehead, and lips.
The mask was majestic and dignified, inspiring awe and dread.
He had neither the time nor the energy or patience to explain everything to these ordinary folks. Using an item to intimidate them was the most efficient approach.
In an instant, an unspeakable dread surged through the hearts of the civilians inside the cabin. The person before them felt like a deity, an exalted monarch.
Submission was the only emotion left in them. All doubts, complaints, and fear dissipated into nothingness.
Zhang Yuanqing swept an imposing gaze across the group, taking in their bowed heads and his aunt's dumbstruck, secretly worshipful expression.
A strange wave of satisfaction washed over him. It wasn't the superiority of a Transcendent looking down on ordinary people, but rather the sheer thrill of showing off in front of his aunt.
"Tell me everything that happened after you entered this place," Zhang Yuanqing commanded in a low, authoritative voice.
None dared to disobey. They immediately began speaking over one another, recounting step-by-step everything they had experienced since arriving in this world.
After being sucked into this realm, they were relentlessly hunted by a terrifying monster. It resembled a wolf, stood three to four meters tall, walked upright, and slaughtered anyone it saw.
The elderly, the physically weak, and the children had all been caught and torn to shreds.
The seven of them had fled for their lives until they spotted this wooden cabin and scrambled inside to hide.
When the monster pursued them here, it couldn't bash through the wooden door and was forced to leave.
That was how they had managed to survive.
"That monster comes roughly once an hour," a burly middle-aged man said, his face pale with terror. "It mimics a baby's crying to trick us into opening the door. When that fails, it starts ramming it. The whole cabin feels like it's about to collapse, but it just can't get in."
*A three- to four-meter-tall werewolf can't smash through a wooden door? Unless there's something extraordinary about the door, which would fit the sealing properties of the Eternal Night profession... But Eternal Night shouldn't involve werewolf elements...*
As Zhang Yuanqing listened, he suddenly felt as though something was missing.
After a moment of thought, it hit him. Where was the little girl in the red triangular hat?
"You saw a little girl in a red hat in the tunnel before you mysteriously ended up here. But from start to finish, that red-hatted girl hasn't shown up," Zhang Yuanqing said. "Did anyone see her after coming here?"
Jiang Yu'er shook her head. "We only saw the monster. Yuanzi, is there a problem?"
The others shook their heads in turn, indicating they hadn't seen her either.
*Strange. Did the little girl turn into the werewolf?* Pondering the question, Zhang Yuanqing surveyed the cabin.
It was fairly spacious. On the left were a fireplace, a wooden dining table, a water vat, and other items—which was where they currently were. On the right was a crude wooden bed, with a small desk beside the window.
The fireplace connected to a chimney, and atop it sat a large iron pot. Zhang Yuanqing lifted the lid, and a sour, foul stench wafted out.
Inside were rotting beans.
On the dining table lay wooden bowls, wooden spoons, and a blackened, rock-hard half-loaf of bread.
Numerous details in the cabin indicated that its owner had been a foreigner, and a medieval foreigner at that.
Zhang Yuanqing paced around the fireplace and dining table. Finding nothing of value, he walked toward the wooden bed.
Jiang Yu'er followed closely behind her nephew.
Zhang Yuanqing had no choice but to support her, carefully steering her around obstacles so she wouldn't bump her wound and worsen the injury.
"Yuanzi, tell me secretly," she whispered. "Which evil villain is behind this? Doctor Octopus, or a mad scientist riding a skateboard?"
With her nephew by her side, Jiang Yu'er wasn't frightened at all. Instead, she displayed intense curiosity toward supernatural phenomena.
"This was a sudden incident. I haven't figured out what the enemy is yet either," Zhang Yuanqing answered half-truthfully.
"Is that mask your superpower? Isn't your power turning invisible? Can you take it off? It's kind of scary," she said, both curious and timid.
"No," Zhang Yuanqing refused.
"Why not?"
*Because taking off the mask means ending its activation, and then I'd have to pay the price of a drastic personality shift. You wouldn't want to see me being all sweet to you one second and giving you a savage backhand the next, would you?* Unable to explain, Zhang Yuanqing stayed silent.
He guided his aunt around the bed and found nothing, but on the desk by the window, he spotted a sheet of parchment.
A few lines were written on it in a foreign language. By the moonlight, nephew and aunt leaned down to read.
*"That little slut will definitely come back for revenge. She definitely will... She is a mongrel, a mongrel born from her mother mating with a beast, so she is a monster too.
"Those fools only burned her mother to death, but they didn't burn her. Now that she's grown up, she will return to kill me for revenge... The priest laid a barrier over my cabin, so she cannot enter. But I have to leave the cabin eventually. I need help... There is an old hunter in this forest. He fancied me when he was young.
"Damn it, that old bastard agreed to protect me, but he demands to sleep in the cabin every night. I loathe the stench on him. He never bathes... But I have no choice but to yield, because his shotgun can kill that little slut.
"I told him that if he knocks four times on the door outside every night, the barrier will dissipate, and he can enter. Oh, I truly loathe him, because he never bathes..."*
The text ended there.
*Something's off. Why does this feel like I'm running a dungeon?* Zhang Yuanqing silently griped.
Judging by the contents of the parchment, the cabin's owner had an enemy.
Her certainty that this enemy would seek vengeance indicated that the burning of the "little slut's" mother was closely tied to the cabin's owner.
"So the cabin has a barrier! No wonder the monster couldn't get in," his aunt whispered. "Yuanzi, does this mean that werewolf is the little girl in the red hat?"
Their heads were close together. As she spoke, her breath was fragrant, and a faint, pleasant scent drifted from her.
"What makes you say that?" Zhang Yuanqing asked.
"Doesn't it say right there? The little slut was born from her mother mating with a monster. And after we arrived here, we only saw the monster, not the little girl in the red hat." Jiang Yu'er's logic was remarkably clear.
"No, I think that monster is the hunter," Zhang Yuanqing countered.
"The hunter?" Jiang Yu'er's eyes widened in surprise. "Isn't the hunter supposed to protect the cabin's owner? How could he turn into a monster?"
"I don't know about that. But I just heard those people say that the monster knocks on the door once every hour. You've been missing for a little over three hours, which means it has knocked three times, right? It only needs one last time to get in," Zhang Yuanqing explained. "The monster knows how to enter the cabin... Why are you pulling away?"
Jiang Yu'er wore a look of utter disgust. "Your breath stinks! Did you forget to brush your teeth?"
Zhang Yuanqing snapped, "Our lives are on the line, and you're fussing about bad breath? Besides, this isn't even my body! You want me to just pack up and leave?"
Jiang Yu'er knew when to back down. "Yuanzi still smells great! But your analysis is way too hasty. Couldn't the little slut have captured the hunter and threatened him into revealing how to enter the cabin?"
"That possibility can't be ruled out." Zhang Yuanqing nodded.
Jiang Yu'er tilted her head and pondered seriously for a moment before saying, "Yuanzi, I keep feeling like this is oddly familiar... The little girl in the red hat, the cabin's owner, what's written on the parchment... It feels so familiar, but I can't put my finger on it."
*Familiar?* Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself. *You're an ordinary mortal. How could you find an item belonging to a Spirit Realm walker familiar?*
Yet hearing his aunt mention it, Zhang Yuanqing thought about it carefully and realized he felt a powerful sense of déjà vu as well.
Setting aside the bizarre, terrifying reality of their situation, if one only looked at the keywords—a little girl in a red hat, a forest, a hunter, a wooden cabin, a werewolf... Put together, it was as though he had seen these elements somewhere before.
*Never mind, don't think about that for now. The cabin's owner was likely killed by the red-hatted girl, and the hunter she hired was probably killed as well.* Zhang Yuanqing scanned the parchment once more, gradually piecing the entire narrative together in his mind.
The mother of the red-hatted girl had mated with a monster and given birth to her. When the cabin's owner found out, she rallied the villagers to burn the mother alive, but the young girl escaped.
The grandmother knew the girl was a half-human, half-wolf monster and feared she would seek revenge once she grew up, so she hid inside a cabin blessed by a priest.
Even so, she didn't feel safe. Thus, the grandmother struck a deal with a hunter in the forest: he could sleep in the cabin every night in exchange for helping her kill the wolf child.
*What kind of twisted, dark fairy tale is this?!*
Besides, why would an item contain such a pocket space and such a backstory?
This was already enough to constitute an entire dungeon.
Or could it be that this had originally been part of a dungeon? Had an overseas Spirit Realm walker cleared the dungeon, subdued an item, and severed it from the main dungeon?
Was this space they had entered not only a pocket realm created by an Eternal Night item, but also once part of a dungeon?
That would explain his overwhelming sense of running a dungeon.
*There's no point dwelling on this now. Once I get my hands on that item, the truth will come to light...* Zhang Yuanqing muttered inwardly.
"Auntie, when was the last time the monster knocked on the door?"
"A long time ago," Jiang Yu'er replied.
"How long is a long time?"
"Let me ask..." Jiang Yu'er called out softly toward the companions huddled by the fireplace, "Sister Li, what time is it?"
The rather burly middle-aged woman pulled out her phone, glanced at it, and whispered back, "It's ten-thirty."
*A phone? Uh, I almost forgot. This isn't a dungeon, so phones can be brought in. No wonder they could accurately calculate that the monster knocks once every hour.* Zhang Yuanqing had blinked in surprise upon seeing the phone, only then recalling that this was an item's pocket space.
"Yuanzi, it's been exactly four hours!" Panic washed over Jiang Yu'er's face.
She had entered this place at six-thirty in the evening. It was now ten-thirty at night—precisely four hours.
The monster knocked once every hour. The fourth time was about to arrive.
Right on cue, heavy footsteps thudded outside the wooden cabin. Through the darkness of the night, a colossal monster was approaching.
Chapter 366