Chapter 330
Chapter 330
“Is everyone all right?”
Lu Jing was the first to recover. After climbing up from the floor, he began checking on the others.
As he asked, he helped Qin Weiyi and several others to their feet one by one.
Mu Xin and Lin Junruo supported each other as they stood.
“That was heart-stopping,” Mu Xin said with a smile. “This time was truly too close.”
They had all been together. If they died, they died; there would have been no other chance at all.
Naturally, everyone was delighted to have survived, but they still had many questions.
Qin Weiyi had been surprised at first, but by now he had connected everything. Even so, he still needed Jian Fan to confirm a few points.
“Leqing Town existed to let the Zhao girl grow. The weddings were actually sacrifices. The Grooms were sacrificed to the Zhao girl so she could draw power from them and grow up. Is that right?” Qin Weiyi asked.
Jian Fan gave a hum of agreement.
Qin Weiyi continued, “The bridal chamber wasn’t prepared for Miss Xie. She was merely carrying out the plan. The sacrificed Grooms all ended up trapped on that coffin-like bed. The more names carved into the coffin, the stronger the Zhao girl became, while the wooden carving had been placed in the bridal chamber specifically to restrain her. As for the stone statue at the entrance, it was like a large formation restraining both the Zhao girl and the ghosts. But the Zhao girl’s power was too great, so it could only weaken her rather than bring her completely under control.”
Although they had duplicated the stone statue, the most crucial component, the wooden carving, was still missing, so the Zhao girl had remained perfectly fine.
“That day, after we took the wooden carving, it affected only the Zhao girl. Once it left its original position and her power grew stronger, did the Zhao girl, who originally had no memories, recover them?” Qin Nan joined in.
When he tested the Zhao girl that day, she truly should not have known about the red lanterns. Yet as the central link in everything, how could she possibly know nothing?
The only explanation was that the Zhao girl genuinely had not known at first.
The wooden carving had suppressed her, including her memories, leaving her unaware that any of it was connected to her.
Once the carving was moved, her power returned and her memories awakened, leading to everything the Zhao girl did afterward.
As for Miss Xie, she had clearly been working for the Zhao girl.
The Zhao girl was Miss Xie’s master.
Seen in that light, everything the Zhao girl had told Jian Fan at the time had indeed been true.
“Then there was the human blood.” Yellow Hair eagerly joined the analysis. “When the ghosts attended the wedding, they had to soak their clothes in their own blood. But during the latter half of the wedding, their clothes returned to normal, which means their blood must have remained in the Xie Residence. That was part of the sacrifice too. Was that blood what formed the web in Miss Xie’s hands and allowed her to control the sacrificed Grooms? Or did it also affect the control left within the stone statue? The more blood sacrificed and the more times it happened, the weaker the statue’s restraint on the ghosts became!”
“They didn’t make us outsiders soak the clothes in our blood because they didn’t dare use our blood at all!” Lin Junruo’s eyes shone brightly.
That was why Jian Fan had taken a gamble at the time.
His blood was not inherently powerful. It simply was not the blood required for the sacrifice. It was like throwing an impurity into a pot of something pure, ruining the entire batch.
That was why the web of blood had collapsed.
Jian Fan nodded at each point.
The group sat there, voicing their theories one after another as they slowly reconstructed what had happened in that world.
“There were thirty-seven Grooms, which means the faceless one didn’t count. Then the people from the remaining times…” Qin Nan remembered something else and spoke in surprise. “So the small worlds in the Realm of Death are recycled?”
“That’s very possible,” Jian Fan finally said.
Qin Nan laughed. “The Realm of Death sure knows how to conserve resources.”
“A world that has been cleared should cease to exist,” Jian Fan added.
Now that they had cleared it, the repeating wedding was over, all the central figures were dead, and that small world had reached its end.
At Jian Fan’s words, Qin Nan suddenly frowned again. “Don’t the numbers seem off?”
“Each world has twelve Players. If a world ceases to exist once it’s cleared, then before we arrived there were thirty-five Grooms, which should represent three worlds. But three worlds should mean thirty-six people, while there were only thirty-five. That means one person is missing.” Danger entered Yang Zhen’s eyes.
One person was missing. Where had that Player gone?
When this occurred to Yang Zhen, she glanced at Xia Zeqin.
Whenever they paid no attention to Xia Zeqin, his presence dwindled almost to nothing. Now that they had returned to the Realm of Death, the group sat on the floor reconstructing the world they had just left, while Xia Zeqin had already selected a room.
By the time Yang Zhen looked over, Xia Zeqin had made his choice. The next second, he disappeared.
Yang Zhen felt that the answer to the missing person might be found through Xia Zeqin.
“The Realm of Death replaces Players,” Qin Nan said when he saw Yang Zhen watching Xia Zeqin.
Yang Zhen paused, then asked in disbelief, “What?”
Qin Nan told Yang Zhen what had happened with Xu Tian.
Although they suspected Xia Zeqin, they still could not be certain. With Xu Tian, however, the truth had been obvious.
After hearing the whole story, Yang Zhen said, “So the missing Player was probably replaced by the Realm of Death and sent in to make trouble. After getting everyone killed, they simply walked away, and might even have gone to other worlds to prey on other Players?”
Qin Nan nodded.
“That’s seriously fucked up,” Yang Zhen said.
“All right. Everyone should go back and rest,” Jian Fan said.
Their reconstruction was finished, and this world had indeed been exceptionally exhausting. Everyone needed a good rest. As for everything else, Jian Fan thought there would still be time to discuss it later. The experience had been dangerous, but they had ultimately emerged unharmed, and he now had a general sense of the situation.
The others truly were exhausted.
At Jian Fan’s words, they all nodded.
Zhou Jingying, however, was somewhat hesitant.
When she saw Jian Fan walking away, she hurried after him.
“Jian Fan,” Zhou Jingying called.
Jian Fan turned to look at her. “The Realm of Death doesn’t want us to leave this place.”
Zhou Jingying paused.
That much was plainly obvious.
“It’s targeting the strong,” Jian Fan said as he looked at Zhou Jingying. Then he turned and left.
But Zhou Jingying understood.
The Realm of Death could not constantly watch every small world, so its method for identifying strong Players was simple.
Points.
When a Player accumulated a high number of Points, the Realm of Death began targeting them. Against those who were even stronger, such as Qi Shuping, whom they had just mentioned, it would send in a Player it had replaced to blend into the group and wait for a chance to act.
Their group had a strange person too.
Had Xia Zeqin come to target Jian Fan?
But surely he had exposed himself far too blatantly.