chapter 124

The thick white silk strands were being drawn out of the shattered Cocoon on the floor.

As the silk shackled the girl and the Players, the Cocoon itself slowly vanished, finally turning into an ashy white powder that scattered over the ground.

The already dim room turned even colder and more oppressive.

The silk wrapped around their necks lifted while tightening, forcing Lu Li and the other three to straighten up bit by bit as the strands hauled them higher.

Lu Li grabbed the strand in front of him and exchanged for a knife to cut it.

A notch broke out along the blade’s edge, but the silk didn’t show so much as a hairline crack.

Above the strand, a familiar line of red text appeared:

[Item Durability: 99.9%]

Same as the way they broke the cage lock in the last stage-the method was still destruction.

“What the hell is this made of!? I spent several hundred Points on an attack Item and it only knocked off 0.2% Durability, the problem is-cough, cough, cough…” Luo Jia Bai dipped his head and the strand cinched tight around his jaw, almost choking off his air. He quickly raised his head again and glared at the line of red text.

“How many Items would it take to grind that Durability down to zero! And time-we don’t have enough time!”

In the nearly frozen space-where only the strands were still moving-a crisp gnawing sound suddenly rang out:

“Crunch, crunch.”

Lu Li turned his head toward the source of the noise.

It was a mouth. Just a mouth, existing on its own.

Lips opened and closed, and from between them jutted two long, white front teeth.

Very close on their left was a bed wrapped in silk. The mouth hovered in the air above that bed.

The big front teeth worked quickly, chewing away the white silk membrane covering the bed. A blood-red tongue slipped out, paused for two seconds as if tasting, then the mouth twisted and spat the silk aside.

Then it pushed into the hole it had just chewed open and pulled several long blades of grass out from the bed.

It didn’t spit the grass out.

The mouth happily began to munch.

Luo Jia Bai stared at the two big front teeth for a moment, then touched the long ears on top of his own head and forced himself to calm down and analyze. “It looks like a Rabbit’s mouth.”

His own lips trembled. “But it’s just a mouth.”

A facial feature severed from the rest of the face like this was seriously creepy.

“Where did the other senses go? Are they somewhere in this room too?”

“It can bite through the silk.” Maintaining his head-tilted-back posture, Lu Li took two steps forward.

He reached into the hole beside the mouth that was focused on eating and grabbed a handful of grass, then cautiously held it out in front of the mouth.

After finishing the grass it already had, the mouth stretched its tongue out to lick the grass in Lu Li’s hand.

It nudged forward, then nudged again.

Finally, guided by Lu Li, it came to the strands wrapped around them.

Lu Li let the grass go.

The mouth started hunting for grass along the strands, gnawing randomly as it searched.

“It’s working, it’s working!” Luo Jia Bai pointed excitedly at the holes the mouth had chewed in the silk around Lu Li-only to be doused with cold water a second later. “Wait, why did those holes close up again so fast?”

Following the strand around his neck, Lu Li looked up at the girl hanging from the ceiling.

Her head was now completely concealed by four thick strands of silk.

The strands on the Players were branches extending from those four.

Lu Li thought for a moment. “The ones on the girl are the main body. If we want to sever them completely, we have to find a way to lure this mouth over to her.”

“It eats grass…” Luo Jia Bai tugged at the silk around his neck and, with difficulty, walked to the bed. He also reached into the hole and grabbed a big handful of grass, then hurled it with all his might toward the girl.

The falling grass just ended up draped all over his own head. “Too light. I can’t throw it that far at all.”

The mouth bounced onto Luo Jia Bai’s face in excitement, chewing grass everywhere it could reach.

“Hey, don’t get all up in my face!” The wide-open mouth and its front teeth were pressed right up against Luo Jia Bai’s nose.
The thing was so close his ears practically bristled. He frantically slapped the grass on his own face. “Stop licking! Bro! I’m begging you! Get on the floor!”

Mirella also grabbed a handful of grass. After a moment’s thought, she used both hands to twist it into a clump. The blades were stiff; the moment she loosened her fingers, it scattered.

She squeezed harder, but it was still useless. Her shoulder suddenly dipped as Fenny, done with his work, quietly slipped into Game Day.

Mirella pointed at the mouth currently pressed up close and personal against Luo Jia Bai. “Take this grass, wave it in front of that mouth, then fly up to the girl on the roof.”

Fenny clamped a large bunch of grass in his beak and had just flapped over to Luo Jia Bai’s side when another Cocoon dropped from the ceiling.

A strand of white silk shot out from the split Cocoon and wrapped around Fenny. It sensed he wasn’t a Player but an object associated with Mirella.

The silk flared with anger and lunged at Mirella instead, speeding up her suspension progress until it was twice that of the other Players.

Mirella’s neck was yanked hard. She hurried a few steps, climbed up onto the bed to raise her height.

“Don’t move around.” Lu Li stopped Fenny, who clearly wanted to attack the silk. “The only thing higher than the bed is the desk. You’re not a Player-if you keep provoking the silk, it’ll only move faster.”

Gu Yu Chu walked to Lu Li’s side and shoved something into his palm. “Throw it up. My luck’s awful-I’ll definitely miss. You do it.”

Lu Li opened his hand.

A woven Grass Ball.

Gu Yu Chu’s hands moved so fast it was absurd. In just a few minutes, he’d woven a ball from three or four blades of grass.

Lu Li didn’t know what he’d stuffed inside the core, but the Grass Ball had real weight to it-enough to reach the roof.

Lu Li shook the Grass Ball in front of the mouth, drawing its attention, then lobbed it upward.

The Grass Ball landed perfectly on one of the strands binding the girl.

The mouth crouched a few times as if preparing to jump.

It leaped from the bed to the desk, then from the desk onto the girl’s silk.

Chasing the Grass Ball, it bit through one strand.

“Snap.”

The silk on Mirella and Fenny snapped at the same time.

They’d found the right method.

Gu Yu Chu kept his head down, focused on crafting, while Lu Li controlled the angles. One by one, the remaining strands broke.

When every strand had been gnawed through-

The girl plummeted from the roof, crashing down hard. She exhaled from inside the Cocoon, raised a hand, and clamped down on that mouth that never stopped moving.

Lu Li watched her as a layer of silk and dead twigs rustled and fell away.

The Cocoon on the girl’s head split open, revealing a pair of stagnant, lifeless eyes.

For the first time, they heard the girl’s voice. It came from the crack in the Cocoon, muffled and hollow.

“Stupid Rabbit, you chewed through my ropes.”

“I was planning to die today.”

“Thanks to you, I have to wait until next time I go out and buy new ones…”

Four Grass Balls rolled to a stop at the Players’ feet.

Lu Li bent down to pick them up-and the entire space suddenly shook and warped. From above the Nightmare came the sound of a breakdown, a sobbing scream on the verge of collapse.

The Evil Spirit Bracelet vibrated. A mechanical, electronic voice directly broadcast a message:

“Instance ‘Seeking the Crown of Happiness’ has detected abnormal clear values. The following adjustment will now take effect: all Players in this Instance are now in Triple Points Mode. Points will be settled upon successful clearance.”

The pointed ears atop Lu Li’s head twitched. He looked up.

That direction.

Was it the Nightmare Holder of this floor thrashing in their own dream, or a voice coming from a higher level?

He had caught a single word in the sobbing.

-Liar.

Who was speaking?

And who were they calling a liar?