It's all coming to an end.

The Fifth Elder's flying artifact resembled an enlarged fishing boat. Mingmei stood at the bow, recalling the meaning conveyed by Mu Chen's lips, and felt somewhat uneasy.

"What are you thinking about?" Mei Jiu moved closer to Mingmei, watching her gaze at the churning clouds and the mountains and rivers that appeared and disappeared below them, and asked, "Are you scared?"

"I'm not afraid." Mingmei shook her head. She only answered the last question, but still didn't answer the previous one.

With a quick glance, Mingmei knew Mei Jiu was about to launch into another relentless interrogation. Just as she was pondering how to avoid it, Lu Xiaoyao suddenly let out a deafening scream from inside the cabin—

"Hey hey hey! Gotcha! Oh my god!!"

Even the Fifth Elder, who had been sitting on the top of the boat with his eyes closed, suddenly opened his eyes and came down to see what had happened.

Everyone entered the cabin together. The communication talisman in Lu Xiaoyao's hand was still glowing. Seeing everyone looking at her, Lu Xiaoyao's face flushed with excitement, and she shouted, "We caught it! We caught the evil cultivator!!"

Lu Xiaoyao was incredibly excited. Capturing the evil cultivator was practically the same as capturing the Zerg!

"Holy crap! Where? Where?" Zhen Po was also excited and quickly asked Lu Xiaoyao for more details. Lu Xiaoyao replied, "He's in the City Lord's Mansion in Linjing City. He's been captured and thrown into the dungeon!"

Looking at Lu Xiaoyao's excited appearance, Mingmei felt a little more puzzled about Mu Chen's earlier lip-reading of "almost finished".

Is Mu Chen a prophet? Why did the game end so soon afterward?

If the Zerg are indeed captured, then the game is indeed nearing its end.

But she always felt that something was wrong.

"I don't know either." Ghost truly didn't know, but one thing puzzled it greatly: "How was that Zerg captured?"

"Hmm..." Mingmei naturally wanted to ask the same question as Guigui, but compared to her speed, someone was actually a step ahead of her.

Mingmei noticed that the Fifth Elder was actually concerned about this matter: "How were you caught?"

Lu Xiaoyao didn't hide anything from this, and told him about Mu Chen's method of destroying the teleportation array and then searching in sections, which he had shared with Bu Tianmen. Although it still sounded a bit time-consuming, it was still better than the current method.

As it happened, Lu Xiaoyao shared this news with Lu Gui, who then shared it with his friends, including Lou Jia, who happened to be the one who had been relentlessly hunting down that Zerg player recently.

no way.

The protector of Hehuan Palace, a high-level worker—when something happens, Loujia is truly ready to step in!

If he didn't go, it would be a disservice to his early Nascent Soul cultivation!

While many other players were already practicing Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment, he was so fast that he reached the Nascent Soul stage, far surpassing all other players.

However, his identity as a demonic cultivator meant that he was not as safe as players who were righteous cultivators.

As the protector of Hehuan Palace, he was practically the number one fighter. With the Zerg kiting him like this, and the players he knew dying tragically along the way, Lou Jia had been holding his breath for a long time.

Upon receiving Lu Gui's message, he pursued and destroyed the insectoid creature as he went, and his efforts were rewarded; he actually managed to capture it!

However, he didn't know what to do after he caught him.

A turn-based palace game?

Or should we hand it over to someone else?

Just as he was troubled, Julian told him to hand it over to the Lord of Linjing City.

Because the other party is the law enforcement NPC in the game who helps players capture the Zerg.

...

"Look, this bug isn't anything special."

At this moment, several groups of players in Linjing City had gathered around to watch what this Zerg, who had been hiding from them for so long and had previously caused trouble and plotted against them in other games, was really like.

"Emmm, he's also disfigured. He really doesn't look good."

"Huh! Wasn't he supposed to be a tough fighter? He got caught so easily?"

Feng Xun's veins were practically bulging on his forehead. Hearing these words, he felt utterly humiliated.

Mo Wenshu actually locked him in a special cage and placed him on a high platform outside the city lord's mansion. With all his abilities restricted, he was now just a clown for everyone to watch.

The players are just chattering away and not really going too far, but some of the ordinary NPCs in the game are reacting much more strongly!

"Smack!" Qianqian Xiaoshou

A rotten egg hit Feng Xun on the head before he could dodge it, the foul-smelling egg slurry dripping onto his forehead. Before he could react, a pile of rotten vegetable leaves came flying at him.

"It's you, you heretical cultivator!!"

An elderly woman with white hair stood on the platform, supported by a young woman with her hair styled in a bun. At a glance, they were ordinary people living in Linjing City.

However, at this time, the other party's order was incredibly large.

"It's you, you evil cultivator! Give me back my grandson and son's lives, come back here!" The old man cried out hoarsely, saying that his only grandson had just embarked on the path of cultivation, but died without a complete body. When his son went to look for him, what returned was an evil spirit wearing his son's skin.

The old woman recalled how terrifying it was when her son suddenly burst open his body in the street, revealing a hideous evil spirit that then attacked her!

"That old lady is the most famous braised chicken vendor on the main street, but she hasn't set up her stall for several months..." A player who had transmigrated to Linjing City was explaining this to Merita and Seven Sea Anemone, who had just arrived.

Besides the old woman, many other NPCs then angrily smashed vegetable leaves at Feng Xun.

"These people... are like those whose homes were destroyed by the Zerg."

Lou Jia, who had captured Feng Xun, did not leave but stayed there, witnessing the scene unfold.

The hatred burning in these people's eyes was just like the look in his eyes when he was finally rescued, when he looked at the bodies of his dead parents and grandfathers, and then turned his gaze to the dead insectoid corpses on the ground.

Grief and indignation!

Yet powerless to do anything about it, they could only vent their frustrations on things that posed no threat whatsoever.

“Ah…” Merita was startled by Lou Jia’s words. She turned to look at the mad hatred in those people’s eyes, lost in thought.

She has always lived in a very peaceful environment.

Merita seemed to have seen those people's gazes in her own mother's eyes.

After her father died, her mother was in a very bad mood for a long time.

My mother, whom my grandfather always considered a lady from a distinguished family, once acted like a shrew, scolding the person who returned my father's belongings. Although it was out of anger, no one blamed a woman who had just lost her husband.

She also angrily cursed the federal high command in front of her grandfather, but in the end, at her father's funeral, she returned to her most dignified self, standing in the mourning hall with her back straight, looking at all the people who came to pay their respects, her eyes losing their light.

Both movement and stillness have gone to extremes.

It wasn't until she heard that the Zerg army that had launched the sneak attack had been completely wiped out that her mother gradually returned to normal.

If the world in the game keeps moving forward, how long will it take for these NPCs to get over their grief?