Chapter 52
Chapter 52
“Hey, Yu! You want a wife or not?”
The booming shout echoed across the town and naturally reached the palace.
After a burst of commotion, an enormous foot dressed in magnificent brocade robes came hopping frantically out of the palace.
“Where? Where is my wife?”
One glance was enough for Qin Lan to confirm that the lavishly dressed foot was the Northeast Bro Yu he had been looking for.
“Your Highness! Wait…”
“Your Highness, watch out! It could be dangerous!”
Several guards and ministers hopped anxiously after him, making the scene look especially ridiculous.
Qin Lan observed Northeast Bro Yu for a long moment.
His strength was exactly as Qin Lan had expected–slightly above Matchstick Bro, the Glass Slipper, and the Magic Dong Genie, and approaching the middle of the 3-Star tier.
His raw stats, however, were still somewhat lower than Qin Lan’s current values.
“Since you’ve asked so sincerely…” Qin Lan smiled and took out a bracelet. “I will be merciful enough to give you an answer.”
He released something stored inside it.
A huge, limp, golden dong fell to the ground with a wet splat.
Qin Lan fell silent.
Northeast Bro Yu fell silent.
The guards and ministers behind him fell silent as well.
What was this supposed to mean?
“Sorry…” Qin Lan quietly put the Magic Dong Genie back into the bracelet. “This is my first time using one of these. I’m not familiar with it yet…”
“Wrong corpse. Let me try again.”
Qin Lan reconnected his consciousness to the bracelet and released another corpse.
With a loud cascade of clattering shards, a heap of crystal fragments poured out and formed a small hill before the gathered crowd–or rather, before the gathered feet.
Northeast Bro Yu stared at the fragments in shock. He quickly recognized their owner.
“It… It was my partner from that night…”
Qin Lan nodded with a smile. “Yes, Your Highness. Your dance partner.”
“You probably don’t know this, but it was still calling your name before it died… Perhaps it hoped its prince would come save it.”
Boom!
A violent wave of curse energy erupted from Northeast Bro Yu and swept outward like a storm.
An incredibly dense stench spread with it.
The odor resembled cheap polyester socks sealed inside a pair of faded basketball shoes that had been worn for an entire year without washing. After two hours of basketball beneath the summer sun, followed by a full afternoon of classes and an evening study session, removing those shoes in a dormitory would unleash a biochemical weapon.
Northeast Bro Yu smelled exactly like that.
[Abnormal Status: Fungal Erosion. Ten points of curse energy applied.]
[Abnormal Status negated.]
As the final boss of the instance, Northeast Bro Yu possessed the greatest reserve of curse energy among all the anomalies here.
Without Qin Lan’s seventeen points of Curse Resistance, Fungal Erosion would have had a devastating effect on him.
Mushrooms would have grown inside his lungs.
Difficulty breathing in the middle of a fight could easily prove fatal. Anyone facing an anomaly like Northeast Bro Yu either had to hold their breath and win quickly or possess a way to heal themselves.
Qin Lan’s high resistance directly negated the abnormal status, leaving him entirely unaffected by the curse.
Strictly speaking, however, he was not completely unaffected.
The curse had vanished, but the stench was real, and it had launched a vicious assault on his sense of smell.
“That’s disgusting…”
Qin Lan cursed under his breath and once again abandoned the idea of dying to grind attributes.
Against the Magic Dong Genie, he had refused because the death would have been too humiliating. This time, the thought was simply too revolting.
He might have to make intimate contact with that reeking, sweaty foot. Worse, his high Constitution might keep him alive through the first stomp, forcing him to endure several more.
The thought filled him with despair.
Qin Lan attacked first. He surged forward and struck Northeast Bro Yu squarely with his stick.
The prince recoiled in pain, then flew into a rage.
“Wild Stomp!”
Northeast Bro Yu slammed down with tremendous force, but Qin Lan twisted aside and avoided the blow.
Qin Lan immediately counterattacked. His stick landed once more, drawing a stream of dark blood.
Northeast Bro Yu entered a berserk state. His Speed and Strength rose sharply, while his defenses fell.
He launched a furious counterattack and finally struck Qin Lan, injuring him.
At that moment, a 3-Star Wailing Spirit joined the battle under Luo Yue’s command.
The Wailing Spirit released a Mournful Wail. Northeast Bro Yu froze, his mind thrown into confusion.
Qin Lan seized the opening.
“Baton Secret Art: Three Strikes, Three Guards!”
His stick crashed into Northeast Bro Yu again.
Several exchanges later, Northeast Bro Yu collapsed and died.
The Wailing Spirit left the battlefield.
Qin Lan had won.
Northeast Bro Yu’s corpse lay motionless on the ground, leaking curse energy into the air.
Bruises covered him. Several toe bones had snapped, his skin had caved inward, and thick black blood seeped from the wounds.
Qin Lan panted heavily, his face twisted into a grimace.
Every breath brought another mouthful of the stench.
It caused no physical harm, but the psychological damage was severe. The smell might haunt Qin Lan long after he left the instance.
“Couldn’t you have washed your feet…? That stench could have come from the burial shroud of a corpse dug up in some mountain village…”
Qin Lan released a despairing howl.
At least he had won.
With the help of Luo Yue’s final 3-Star cursed artifact, Qin Lan had found an opening to inflict a serious injury on Northeast Bro Yu, then ground down the last of his endurance.
Luo Yue had possessed only enough strength to summon the Wailing Spirit for five seconds.
For the current Qin Lan, five seconds was enough to decide a battle.
[All town residents are dead.]
[Instance cleared.]
The two notifications made Luo Yue relax in the distance.
“We finally won…”
“This job was far more exhausting than I expected.”
Every anomaly inside the instance had been eliminated, so the previous rules no longer existed.
With a single thought, Luo Yue could now leave this unsettling instance.
But Qin Lan remained motionless ahead of her, and an ominous feeling stirred in her heart.
Rumble…
The palace shook violently. Its walls cracked and collapsed, followed by the pillars and beams supporting the structure.
Amid a deafening roar, the entire palace came crashing down, burying all the other twisted things within it.
The palace had contained more than enormous talking feet. Many giant “shoes” had lived there as well.
They came in numerous styles, each one exquisitely made.
But a shriveled human corpse had been impaled on the heel of every shoe.
Qin Lan understood.
The male figures in the palace were represented by feet, while the female figures were shoes. That was why most of those shoes had long, needle-thin heels.
Just as Ah Hui had described, the giant shoes wore “humans” beneath them. Their heels entered through the throat and emerged from the abdomen.
They had even coordinated outfits for their “human shoes,” much as humans selected different accessories and colors for footwear.
All blood had long since drained from the corpses. Only desiccated remains hung from the heels, draped in bloodstained clothing and ornaments so the giant shoes could compete with one another.
It was hell made real.
Fortunately, the collapse buried everything. Qin Lan would not have to eliminate the horrors one by one.
But then…
Qin Lan stared solemnly at the rift stretching a full hundred meters across the ground. An aura of extreme evil washed over him.
The rift plunged deep underground toward an unknown destination.
Even with Qin Lan’s eyesight, he could see nothing but endless darkness and an unsettling dark-green glow.
Evil. Pure evil, stripped of emotion and reason.
That was the only sensation the rift inspired in him.
[Enter the Abyss and explore the secrets of Abyss Town.]
A new notification appeared.
Then came another whisper.
[You’ve come all this way. Won’t you come in and sit for a while?]
An ethereal chuckle sounded beside Qin Lan’s ear.
It seemed close enough to touch, yet he could sense that it came from deep within the Abyss.
Luo Yue’s expression changed drastically, and she immediately shouted a warning.
“Don’t go, Qin Lan!”
“Don’t listen to it! Stay away from that rift!”
She wanted to rush forward and stop him, but the pressure emanating from the rift was so overwhelming that she did not dare move recklessly.
[You broke so many of my toys, yet you lack the courage to meet me?]
[How disappointing.]
The unknown existence sighed regretfully.
Qin Lan did not move.
He could sense that if he truly stepped into the Abyss, he might never return.
Beyond its evil aura, the curse fluctuations emanating from the rift had unquestionably reached the 4-Star level or higher.
“Even the Embroidered Shoes didn’t feel this terrifying… Compared with this, they could almost be called weak.”
“What kind of place lies on the other side of that rift…?”
Qin Lan struggled to breathe.
The whisper continued, now carrying a note of provocation.
[What happened to all that anger you felt before?]
[Seeing your own kind tortured and slaughtered, their corpses desecrated at will–didn’t that infuriate you?]
The whisper released a cold laugh.
[Once you leave, I will need only a little time to rebuild this place into a new paradise…]
[You thought you could save those people, but everything you did was futile.]
[Or… would you like to try getting rid of me?]