Chapter 5
Chapter 5
As for why she would come back later, there were still plenty of people in the village waiting for her to see them off.
They were all from the same village, and Yu Lingling didn’t think it would be right to play favorites. After all, her brother had always told her to treat everyone equally.
After finishing her conversation with the woman, Yu Lingling slipped into the kitchen.
Before long, she emerged with a cleaver in one hand and a hatchet tucked into her waistband.
Not long after Yu Lingling left the courtyard, the four children who should have been locked in the cellar appeared outside the chicken coop. Their supposedly innocent faces were filled with an indifference far beyond their years.
Inside the coop, the emaciated woman’s grin stretched wider and wider until her entire face twisted out of shape. Her stomach looked as if something had torn it open, and blood kept pouring from the wound.
Under the Blood Moon, they stared in the direction Yu Lingling had gone as the flesh on their faces and bodies began falling off in chunks.
Yu Lingling considered herself a fair person, so she started with the nearest target and slipped into the neighboring courtyard.
The viewers watching the screen soon discovered that with more suitable weapons in hand, Yu Lingling had become even more efficient at killing. She even chopped a passing rat clean in half.
“She favors her right hand and is more proficient with bladed weapons.”
“No skills acquired so far.”
“Gather intelligence on Auspicious Village. Analyze new clear strategies and assess their feasibility.”
“Based on her behavioral patterns and the nature of this first instance, there’s a seventy percent chance she’s a player from Hua Nation.”
“Judging by the way she operates, she doesn’t appear to have any government affiliation. She’s more likely from an underground organization.”
Yu Lingling ran into trouble when she reached the fourth household. There was a dog in the courtyard.
When the dog spotted Yu Lingling holding a blade, it didn’t bark right away. Instead, a deep, muffled growl rumbled in its throat.
It was different from the dogs Yu Lingling had seen before. Too much of the whites of its eyes showed, and rather than merely staring at her, it seemed to be sizing her up. Its gaze remained fixed mostly on her throat. When it caught the scent of blood on her, its ears twitched faintly.
In the darkness, the dog’s eyes glowed a murky red. It looked at Yu Lingling as though she were a fresh meal.
“That dog has killed players in the double digits by now, hasn’t it?”
“It’s gotten so picky that it only eats human organs.”
“That newbie doesn’t even look like enough for one meal.”
The corners of Yu Lingling’s lips curled upward. She silently mouthed, “Come on, little doggy. Let’s play.”
Just when the viewers thought she was about to fight the huge dog head-on, she grabbed a fistful of some unknown powder and flung it straight into the charging animal’s face.
Standing upright, the dog was both taller and larger than her. She might have been mentally ill, but she wasn’t stupid.
The dog tried to dodge, but it was already too late. The mixture of salt, pepper, and chili powder flooded its eyes and nasal passages. It crashed heavily to the ground with an agonized howl, thrashing its head wildly as its sharp claws raked frantically at its eyes and nose, reducing them to a bloody mess.
“She’s more of a dog than the actual dog.”
“Was that chili powder? Salt, and what else? Don’t tell me she took all that from the kitchens in the previous houses.”
“I think there was pepper too.”
An irritated shout came from inside the house. A light flicked on immediately afterward, accompanied by the faint sound of someone climbing out of bed while cursing under their breath.
Yu Lingling didn’t move to finish off the incapacitated dog. Instead, she hid beside the doorway.
When the door opened, she didn’t strike immediately. Keeping her body concealed in the darkness, she waited until the man stepped outside.
The cleaver in Yu Lingling’s hand had been replaced by a dagger. She drove it toward the man’s lower back.
The man let out a bloodcurdling scream. Before he could even turn around, a vicious kick struck the back of his knee, sending him crashing to the ground.
Yu Lingling immediately pinned him beneath her. She plunged the dagger back into the wound in his lower back, but this time, she didn’t pull it out right away. Instead, she twisted it viciously and slashed it sideways. Then she pulled out the cleaver and hacked at the back of his head.
The man’s struggles grew weaker and weaker until he finally stopped moving altogether.
“That split his skull open, right?”
Yu Lingling stood there panting. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she rose and carried the cleaver into the house.
Once she had dealt with everyone inside, Yu Lingling came back out and put the dog out of its misery.
The viewers on the other side of the screen stared at the trail of bloody footprints she had left behind.
“At her pace, she’ll have killed them all before dawn, won’t she?”
What made this instance difficult was that if a player violated a taboo, the villagers would hunt them down.
Even if the player broke no taboos, once the sun rose, the four children and the pregnant woman in the chicken coop would become corrupted and indiscriminately attack both the villagers and the player.
Previously, the only known way to clear the instance was to hide until sunset, when the instance ended.
In truth, this instance wasn’t particularly complicated. Many players had already pieced together its story.
Despite being called Auspicious Village, the village made its living from human trafficking. Every baby girl born there was sold off, and whenever one of the men needed a wife, they would abduct a woman from somewhere else.
The pregnant woman in the chicken coop had been trafficked into the village. The children in the cellar had also been abducted from elsewhere and were being held as merchandise until they could be sold.
No one knew exactly what had happened in the village, but in the end, the four children had been suffocated to death in the cellar. As for the pregnant woman, before she could give birth, she found a stone and used it to brutally cut open her own belly.
Players had tried to find other ways to clear the instance.
Some attempted to rescue the pregnant woman. Some tried to escape with the four children. Others even chose to cooperate with the villagers after daybreak.
Every one of those attempts ended in failure.
After all, anyone who entered the instance was reduced to the body of a six- or seven-year-old child, and it was a single-player instance. Before they could rescue anyone, the people in the house would discover and kill them.
If they tried to flee with the children, the village dogs would catch up to them. Death was still the only possible outcome.
As for cooperating with the villagers, that was even less feasible.
If the villagers found a child roaming outside at night, they would simply break the child’s legs and lock them back in the cellar.
Once dawn came, the player would then be killed by the other children in the cellar.
Even if the player waited until dawn before siding with the villagers, the children would see it as a betrayal, resulting in an even more gruesome death.
Some players had even killed the four children and the pregnant woman before dawn. The only result was that the victims became corrupted ahead of schedule and began their slaughter early.
Players had also considered killing all the villagers to avenge the children and the pregnant woman. But Auspicious Village was a beginner-level instance. The players who could enter it didn’t have any items, and with their abilities restricted by a child’s body, it was simply impossible.
No one had expected Auspicious Village to become a newbie instance, much less that a newbie would accomplish what even beginner players couldn’t.
The village wasn’t large, with only eight households in total. The dog had been the most difficult obstacle, but unfortunately for it, the seasoning had taken it down before it even got the chance to fight.
After emerging from the final house, Yu Lingling returned to the home where the pregnant woman had been imprisoned in the chicken coop. She found a key on the man’s corpse, then searched out a relatively clean bedsheet. After unlocking the chains binding the woman, she draped the sheet over her.
“Your belly is so big that an abortion would be dangerous. If you don’t want the baby, give birth to it first. I can help you get rid of it afterward.”