Chapter 72
Chapter 72
Those words made Sun Jian jerk his head up toward Yu Lingling. His face twisted into a savage grimace, and desperate hope flared in his eyes.
He blurted out anxiously, “I can’t die. I don’t want to die.”
Yu Lingling took a piece of candy from her pocket and held it out to him. “Calm down first. You may still have a chance.”
Ever since entering the instance, Sun Jian had been enduring hunger and thirst. After learning what the instance was like, he understood just how precious food was.
Sun Jian stared at the hard candy for a long moment before finally accepting it. He tried to tear open the wrapper, but his palms were slick with sweat, so he simply ripped it open with his teeth, crunched up the candy, and swallowed it.
Now that they had agreed to cooperate, Yu Lingling got straight to the point. “Before entering the instance, the strategy your guild gave you said that you couldn’t kill your own animals, but you could feed them meat from other animals. Is that right?”
After realizing the instance had changed, Zhao Peng already knew their previous strategy for clearing it was useless. “That’s right.”
Yu Lingling continued, “Animals in better condition are more likely to last until the instance ends and help you clear it. During performances, if you want to receive flowers from the supernatural beings in the audience, you can’t harm your own animal, but you can use it to attack other animals. Correct?”
Xu Chao and Zhao Peng were now certain that, without Wang Hao even realizing it, Yu Lingling had already uncovered every last detail of the information he had kept hidden as his trump card.
Zhao Peng had only ever met one other person like Yu Lingling before.
“Correct.”
The dim oil lamp illuminated Yu Lingling’s face, casting a long shadow behind her.
“Liu Qian’s ability is healing-related. Zhou Ming’s is combat-oriented, while yours, Xu Chao, has to do with eavesdropping. As for Zhao Peng…”
Yu Lingling was the shortest among them. Standing so close, she had to tilt her head up slightly to look at them.
“You can conceal both your energy fluctuations and your presence. You can make players and supernatural beings overlook you entirely.”
In the Livestream Room, the viewers watching Yu Lingling and the others were dumbfounded.
The Abyss Guild’s Vice Guild Leader shot to his feet and planted both hands on the table. Although he had been surprised when Yu Lingling revealed the earlier information, it hadn’t been enough to make him lose his composure. But after she exposed the abilities of the guild members, he suddenly felt as though all the arrangements he had taken such pride in were nothing more than a joke.
Xu Chao asked instinctively, “Do you know us?”
But before Yu Lingling could answer, he denied the possibility himself. “No. That’s impossible.”
Yu Lingling remained perfectly calm. “I inferred it from the Abyss Guild’s arrangements for your team.”
With her current lack of combat power, Yu Lingling naturally had to demonstrate some ability if she wanted these people to follow her orders.
After witnessing what Yu Lingling could do, much of the aggression surrounding Sun Jian faded. If she was really this capable, perhaps there truly was hope that she could save him.
Yu Lingling looked at Zhao Peng. “You must have realized it too. The moment Wang Hao and the others fed elephant meat to their animals, it became impossible for them to clear the instance. The instance has changed. The information your guild obtained before is no longer valid.”
She paused and watched the flame flickering inside the oil lamp.
“No, that’s not right. No one from your guild has actually cleared this instance, have they? What you discovered was merely the strategy that came closest to succeeding. But can that method really clear the instance?”
Her words made Zhao Peng and the others’ hearts pound. Just as Yu Lingling had said, the Abyss Guild only had members who had come close to clearing the instance. None had ever truly succeeded.
Xu Chao frowned. “But the player who came closest had already become a member of the Circus. They learned that the Circus would remain in this place for five days. They successfully survived until the fifth day, and they even…”
Before Zhao Peng could finish, Xu Chao understood what he meant.
Zhao Peng fell silent for a moment. “Once someone becomes a member of Happy Circus, they naturally leave with the Circus. The guild hasn’t managed to gather any information about clearing this instance, either.”
Perhaps someone had cleared it, or perhaps no one had. Even those who succeeded could choose to keep the information hidden.
Sun Jian had already chewed up and swallowed the hard candy. “You said I still have a chance to make it out alive. What do you need me to do?”
“No instance can be completely unwinnable. We just haven’t found the clues yet.” Yu Lingling lowered her gaze to Sun Jian, who was sitting on the ground. “Sun Yao said we couldn’t communicate with the animals. None of our animals reacted when you killed the elephant, or during any of the animal trainers’ performances afterward.”
Sun Jian looked thoughtful.
Yu Lingling had no intention of being deliberately cryptic. “Even humans react when they see one of their own kind being hurt.
“Suppose the animals in those performances were players who failed in the past after abusing their own animals. The trainers are now doing to them exactly what they once did to their animals in order to clear the instance and please the monsters in the audience. But if those spectators are animals themselves, then they have thoughts and emotions of their own. They wouldn’t want to watch players abuse their kind.”
Even Zhao Peng had never heard anyone suggest that monsters possessed thoughts and emotions of their own.
To Xu Chao, the things Yu Lingling – an F-rank player – was saying sounded utterly absurd. “But monsters devour each other too.”
“What they do among themselves is one thing,” Zhao Peng said, following Yu Lingling’s train of thought. “What happens between players and monsters is another.”
The monsters might not sympathize with other monsters, but they certainly wouldn’t want to watch players abuse them.
Zhao Peng’s heart pounded. “The monsters in the audience get excited because the animals we have now are nothing but shells – or rather, shells prepared for us.”
Sun Jian instinctively released the goat in his arms. Xu Chao stared at the monkey he was holding, his entire body turning cold.
Tongyu hugged the puppy in his arms. He felt that his puppy was different. Not only his puppy, but also the kitten in Yu Lingling’s arms.
But when had they become different?
Tongyu thought it had started the moment he picked the puppy up inside the tent. Back then, it had shown only the faintest spark of life. After they applied medicine and bandaged its wounds, it had seemed to come alive little by little.
As if it could sense Tongyu’s thoughts, the puppy he had been cradling so carefully stirred and licked his hand.
Yu Lingling sensed that something about Zhao Peng’s conclusion wasn’t quite right, but she knew her kitten didn’t belong to this instance, so she couldn’t pinpoint the flaw.
“That’s not it,” Tongyu said softly from where he had been standing silently behind Yu Lingling. “Love makes little animals grow flesh and blood like crazy. Before you hurt your companions, they never abandoned you.”
Yu Lingling realized what she had overlooked. Just as she had said at the beginning, the instance could never be a hopeless death trap. It had given them a path to survival from the very start.
Tongyu had never been someone who could only survive by relying on others.
“Don’t hurt your companions. Treat them as equals.”
Xu Chao gritted his teeth. “Then what are we supposed to do for the later performances?”
Yu Lingling looked around at everyone. “Humans are animals too.”
If they couldn’t hurt the animals, they could simply hurt themselves instead.
Yu Lingling added, “Besides, isn’t that what the monsters in the audience want to see? Players getting hurt?”
Only then did Zhao Peng understand why Yu Lingling had made a deal with Wang Hao. She had already thought of a way to clear the instance – she simply hadn’t wanted to get hurt herself.