Chapter 173 is of increased difficulty.

Shu Feng looked up and cautiously glanced at Xie Shiyuan.

Then I realized that he seemed a little different from usual.

His clothes seemed to have changed, and his hair was also a little different, but he had never dared to look closely at the terrifying warden before.

Even after racking my brains, I still can't see any specific changes.

So Shu Feng could only give a dry reply: "No problem, very handsome."

After racking his brains for a while, he couldn't come up with any more words of praise.

No, nobody ever told him before that he had to learn how to flatter his superiors!

Xie Shiyuan remained expressionless, simply gazing at Shu Feng without uttering a word.

The air seemed to fall silent for a moment. Shu Feng felt Xie Shiyuan's gaze, and as if struck by a sudden inspiration, he continued, "Miss Jiang will definitely like it."

Xie Shiyuan finally slowly curled the corners of his lips and said unhurriedly, "Of course."

After all, Yueyue was immediately attracted to his face and even took the initiative to ask him his name.

Recalling their first meeting, and confirming that Jiang Liyue didn't have a husband who died young, and that he wasn't a substitute, Xie Shiyuan felt sweeter and sweeter the more he thought about it.

He glanced at Shu Feng with satisfaction, then went off to find Jiang Liyue, beaming with pride.

Yueyue likes him, so of course he should fulfill her wish to see him as soon as possible.

Jiang Liyue, on the other side, hadn't yet seen Xie Shiyuan when she heard a commotion outside the prison cell.

Hearing that there was some excitement, Jiang Liyue naturally wouldn't miss it and immediately went out of the cell.

That's when they realized the noise was coming from downstairs.

Following the sound, she jogged down and discovered several strange prisoners being escorted to their cells by prison guards.

The head prison guard was Mo Xi, whom she knew.

"Sister Mo Xi!" Jiang Liyue waved to her in a low voice.

Mo Xi followed the voice and found it was her. She gave a few instructions to the other prison guards before walking up to her: "Miss Jiang, what are you doing here?"

"I heard noises from inside the cell and that's when I came down," Jiang Liyue answered truthfully, then peeked behind her to show what was going on. "What's going on here?"

Mo Xi's expression was not good: "Who knows what happened to these prisoners? They suddenly went berserk and started fighting, even setting off the alarm, so we arrested them."

Jiang Liyue then realized that the sound she had just heard might have been an alarm. She looked at Mo Xi with concern and asked, "Sister Mo Xi, are you alright?"

"What could have happened? These prisoners are weak; they just accidentally triggered the alarm." Mo Xi sighed as she spoke, "And it scared so many of us into coming here."

After all, what if these prisoners are just not very bright and want to provoke the warden?

As she spoke, Mo Xi glanced at the prisoners being held captive and hurriedly said, "I have to work overtime to interrogate them first. Miss Jiang, if you don't have anything else to do, please hurry back to your cell to avoid any danger."

"Okay, thank you, Sister Moxi." Jiang Liyue said goodbye sweetly, but her smile vanished the moment she turned around.

She had a gut feeling that things weren't going to be that simple tonight.

But there was nothing exciting to do for the time being, so she prepared to go back to her cell. She wondered if the scoundrel would go crazy if he came looking for her and found her not there.

But as soon as Jiang Liyue reached the corner on the ninth floor, she heard faint footsteps and voices coming from downstairs.

The voice sounded somewhat familiar.

With a playful expression, she took the opportunity to hide in the darkness of a corner and secretly observe.

Three people crept up the stairs quietly. She glanced over casually and realized that they were Jiang Zhou and Jiang Lingxue, the brother and sister, and the male lead, Huo Heng.

They clearly hadn't expected anyone to be listening in the corner. Noticing that no one was following behind, Jiang Lingxue breathed a sigh of relief: "I heard that the warden's office is on the tenth floor, and there are no prisoners on the ninth floor. We should be safe now."

"Thanks to Young Master Huo's props, we were able to induce the monster to go berserk and divert the prison guards. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to enter Area A so smoothly." Jiang Zhou's expression still seemed somewhat excited.

Being able to manipulate those NPCs completely gave him a particularly pleasant feeling.

"Hmm." Huo Heng's usually cold face showed a hint of confidence, but he still deliberately said, "It's nothing. Our focus now is to get to the warden's office on the tenth floor."

Jiang Lingxue was still somewhat worried: "Shouldn't we go look for clues elsewhere first?"

Based on the prompt upon entering the instance that "the warden is the master of Prison 01," they deduced that he must be the boss of this instance.

This is a boss in an A-level dungeon; you can imagine how terrifying it is.

If they were to face the boss head-on, the three of them would almost certainly die.

Huo Heng looked particularly proud: "According to the information I got from the prison guards, the warden hasn't been on his floor these past few days, and he prefers to stay in the interrogation room all night long, so he rarely goes back to his office here."

Jiang Zhou could also see Jiang Lingxue's worry. He thought to himself that although Lingxue had healing skills, she was still a little girl with little courage.

He didn't show his slight disdain, and even comforted her, "Don't worry, sister. See, we got in without any problems, didn't we?"

"Besides, our chance to infiltrate Area A is rare. It's too much trouble to search for clues here, which is so big. We might as well come directly to the warden's territory, where we are most likely to find clues. Once we find a clue, we'll leave."

Jiang Lingxue was successfully persuaded and nodded: "Okay, Second Brother, Brother Huo, I'll protect you later."

Jiang Liyue listened to their discussion as they went up to Xie Shiyuan's tenth floor from the corner, and finally understood their purpose in coming here.

Is this part of a mission to find Noy?

In fact, Jiang Liyue had also suspected that the mission to find Nuoyi might be on Xie Shiyuan's territory.

I was planning to go check it out tomorrow, but I didn't expect Jiang Lingxue and the others to sneak over tonight.

Judging from their tone, they were the ones who caused the chaos downstairs earlier.

As expected of the male and female protagonists in the novel, regardless of their character or personality, they certainly have some ability.

And just as they had found out, Xie Shiyuan was indeed not on the tenth floor, and hadn't even been there these past few nights.

Because he's going to come to the ninth floor to find her!

Jiang Liyue thought with amusement that she wondered if Xie Shiyuan would know about the thief on his tenth floor when he came to the ninth floor to find her.

Should we remind Xie Shiyuan later to make things more difficult for the male and female leads?