Chapter 89

Chapter 89

Ning Shuo had been unconscious for four days. It was already the fifth day of the Script.

During that time, Lolita had used a prediction related to Father Sun’s belongings to track down the whereabouts of Willow’s “mother.” After finding that “mother,” they discovered the person was Ah Shu. Ah Shu had already regrouped with her teammates and, with year’s help, successfully completed a Murder Case. The Murderer on the opposing team had been exposed.

But their own team was not much better off. Although Zhuang Yao had completed her Murder Case with Lolita’s help, just as Zone F had deduced, because of the extremely unequal gender status in this Script and Ah Shu’s own conditions for murder, the other side had also narrowed the Murderer down to Zhuang Yao and Lolita. Once they discovered the body had appeared at the Tian Family, the Murderer’s identity was very quickly locked onto Zhuang Yao.

Both sides’ mission progress was more or less the same now. It all depended on who found the Notary Office first.

Ning Shuo praised them. “Beautifully done. As expected of this King’s teammates.”

Ning Wang paused, then said, “Ge, I protected you for days too. I drove off several wild beasts, and I even caught snakes and mosquitoes for you.”

Ning Shuo praised him too. “Well done, Ningning. As expected of this King’s first-class Knight.”

Ning Wang was satisfied. Then he heard Ning Shuo ask, “Why are we in the middle of this deep, old forest…?”

Ning Wang said, “You suddenly wouldn’t wake up, and the NPC wanted to dig out your heart to see if you were really dead. It just so happened that my character setting has a grudge against the Sun Family, and on top of that, that Guard saw me kiss you before, so it made perfect sense for me to break out with you.”

In short, the NPCs would turn into monsters as soon as they saw Ning Shuo, so Ning Wang had taken him and hidden in the depths of the forest. Which meant that now, the NPCs would also turn into monsters when they saw Ning Wang.

Seeing his brother look thoughtful, Ning Wang stepped closer and asked, “So, gege, what happened to you? I kept watch over you the whole time. You didn’t talk to me for so long.”

He even sounded a little aggrieved.

Ning Shuo perfunctorily kissed the corner of his mouth twice, then got to the point. “That day in the ancestral hall, I fought the female ghost, Mingzhi, and then I entered Spirit Tracing.”

He briefly recounted what had happened inside the Spirit Tracing, including the fact that he had met the Ning Wang of the past.

After thinking about it, Ning Shuo left out the matter of the form of address.

Nothing else mattered, but…

The nickname “Ningning” somehow made whoever said it sound a little more like the top.

So Ning Shuo thought.

Since he was destined to lose to his dear little brother in a fight, he had to find the illusion of being the top somewhere else.

As soon as he finished, the faintly guilty Ning Shuo saw Ning Wang look thoughtful. “You saw me and gege get married?”

Ning Shuo nodded and tried to coax him. “Yes. And you were wearing the bridal robes.”

Ning Wang said, “…I don’t think that’s likely, ge.”

“That’s how it was,” Ning Shuo said with a serious face. “You don’t believe me?”

Ning Wang was very honest. “I don’t. Your expression says you’re deceiving me in a subtle way. Gege, I can tell.”

The coaxing failed.

Just as Ning Shuo was about to say something, an arm hooked around his neck. Ning Wang asked beside his ear, “So, gege, we were already together that long ago.”

Ning Shuo insisted, “That’s right. I even married you.”

“…” Ning Wang responded, “Oh.”

He stared at Ning Shuo’s face, then suddenly snapped out of the “getting married” deception. Frowning, he asked, “Would Spirit Tracing really make you pass out for that long? Ge, you don’t look well.”

Almost naturally, Ning Wang deduced, “You changed Mingzhi’s Spirit Tracing experience?”

Ning Shuo rubbed his nose and said guiltily, “How could that be? Do I look like the kind of person who doesn’t care about his life?”

“You’re not?”

“…” Ning Shuo hurriedly leaned in to kiss Ning Wang’s face, only for the latter to dodge straight back.

Ningning was angry.

Ning Shuo suddenly went, “Ow. Ah, my head. Why am I so dizzy?”

Ning Wang held that smooth wooden club in his arms. “It’s no use, ge. You already tried that move when you were Ming Zhuang.”

“…” This kid-how did he even remember something from that long ago?

When coaxing other people, Ning Shuo had his own system.

When coaxing himself, Ning Shuo only knew how to be stubborn.

After all, he had truly never coaxed himself before. He was too smart; he did not even know where to start. Ning Shuo thought this with smug satisfaction.

All he could do was stubbornly rub his temple. “Sigh. It’s real this time. My spiritual essence was damaged. A headache is perfectly normal.”

Actually, it was fake. Ning Shuo had rested for so many days that although his head still felt a little swollen, it had not reached the point of hurting.

Speaking of which, it was strange. Once something like spiritual essence was damaged, it was very difficult to repair. Yet Ning Shuo discovered that his spiritual essence seemed to be repairing itself.

Even Ning Shuo himself did not believe his own words. After all, he had been perfectly lively just now.
In the end, Ning Wang glanced at him a couple of times. Though he had clearly seen through what Ning Shuo was thinking, he still came over and helped massage his temples.

It felt rather nice. Ning Shuo enjoyed it and said, “Ningning, I saw something else in Mingzhi’s memories.”

From this angle, Ning Shuo’s face flickered in and out of the firelight.

Ning Wang asked, “The Notary Office?”

In Mingzhi’s memories, Mingzhi, as an NPC, could not see it, but Ning Shuo, who was using Spirit Tracing, could genuinely see the Players from the Notary Office.

He saw that in the mass grave where women’s corpses were casually discarded, an empty coffin sat quietly, as if no NPC could see it at all.

Ning Shuo said, “Right. In the information Willow sent, did anyone go to the mass grave?”

…

Outside the head of the Sun Family’s room, two servants listened to the crashes and bangs coming from inside and could not help sighing. “That woman is making a scene again.”

“She’s been at it for so many years. I really don’t know why the master doesn’t just kill her.”

“Hah, maybe that woman is especially good in bed.”

The noise inside stopped. The door opened, and Father Sun pointed at the person on the floor, whose life or death was unknown, and gave a cold snort. “Drag her to the mass grave.”

The servants were puzzled as to why he had so decisively killed a woman he had kept alive for more than twenty years, but the master’s words were not something they had any right to question.

The two lowered their heads, silently grabbed the woman’s feet, and dragged her to the mass grave.

They looked at the woman’s face and swallowed. One of them asked, “She’s already dead. How about the two of us have some fun…”

“Fun? There are so many living ones around and you insist on doing a corpse?”

The other rubbed his arms and urged, “Come on, let’s go. This mass grave is full of yin energy. At night, it’s creepy as hell…”

The two left. On the desolate ground, only countless corpses remained.

Almost all of these corpses were female, women who had been bought home through the trafficking of women but had been given no status.

Without status, they could not enter the ancestral hall, and the people of Aotianli would not bother suppressing them.

To them, even if such women died, they had no name and no status, so there was no way they could come after them.

It was precisely because of this stupid way of thinking that, even after people died over the years, they only assumed it was because the ones in the ancestral hall had not been suppressed properly.

At the same time, this was also a suspicious point. After all, although her identity in the Script was Rao Lin’s mother, the main branch had never given her the status of madam. She was still only a woman kept by the main branch, yet Rao Lin, whom she had “given birth” to, was very favored in the Sun Family.

Perhaps this was a loophole the Script had left in her identity, allowing her to use a fake death to get to the mass grave.

Looked at this way, the Notary Office was very likely to be in the mass grave.

The night was silent, with only a few crows calling from the branches.

A rustling suddenly sounded among the corpses, and a figure crawled up.

Her leg seemed to be injured, and it took a great deal of effort before she could barely stand.

Pale-faced, Ah Shu used the bandages she had exchanged for to wrap the wounds on her body.

Fortunately, that NPC had been stupid enough to only check her breathing before assuming she was dead.

Ah Shu’s vision was blurry. She forced herself to keep going and search for the Notary Office.

The Notary Office had to be a special place. Over the past few days, she had had her teammates check the ancestral hall and the place where women were bought and sold, but it had not been in either location.

Adding in the suspicious point of so-called “status,” the Notary Office was extremely likely to be in the mass grave.

This was not a place people could easily visit on ordinary days, and they would run into NPCs on the only route here. She could not let her teammates take that risk.

In that case, she could only become a “corpse” and be brought openly to the mass grave.

Ah Shu had only taken two steps when two shadows suddenly fell in front of her.

Her steps halted. She raised her head and saw two identical faces.

The moment their eyes met, Ah Shu confirmed that the two people before her were Players.

They were… the two Players on the other side whom she had not met yet.

She had heard that one of them had inexplicably fallen into a coma, while the other, in order to protect him, had not hesitated to oppose the NPCs and had even risked going OOC to rescue him.

He had gone OOC in front of NPCs and was actually still alive.

Outnumbered, Ah Shu moved her hand behind her back and quietly took out a syringe. “What are you two doing at the mass grave?”

One of the men had long hair. Though his face was pale, his brows and eyes were gentle. “Whatever you came here to do is what we came here to do.”

Ah Shu’s pupils contracted. She instantly made her move, trying to inject them with the anesthetic, but someone seized her wrist.

That person leaned closer, carefully studying her face, and said thoughtfully, “Miss, I feel as though I’ve seen you somewhere before.”