Wen Jiajia's face instantly fell; she was still shaken by the incident.
"I don't know. I was just sitting in my room, doing fine. Suddenly, I heard a loud shout from next door: 'I'm not reconciled!' and then there was silence. I was terrified and ran next door, only to find that the boy in the next room was completely dead."
"I'm not reconciled?" Yan Che repeated. What did that mean?
He turned to look at Wen Jiajia, "Besides that, have you heard any other sounds?"
Wen Jiajia nodded. "There were indeed quite a few, and they all happened almost simultaneously. Because of the distance, I could only hear the sounds from next door clearly; I couldn't hear the sounds from places further away very clearly."
She hesitated for a moment, "I think, I think I heard someone say 'Why did you fail?', but I don't know if I misheard. Anyway, I checked seven or eight rooms in a row and found that everyone had died instantly, very suddenly. I was terrified, so I ran to the roof and hid."
After hearing Wen Jiajia's words, everyone fell silent.
Yue Qi's brows furrowed into a deep knot. He recalled Guo Hu's ambiguous words inside the cave. The other party had deliberately hinted that he should come back and check, indicating that this person must have known all along that this would happen.
A thought flashed through his mind: "Could this person have experienced the exact same thing?"
"Who are you talking about?" Yan Che realized what was going on. "That brat in the cave! Could it be him who did this?"
Yue Qi rolled her eyes at him. "Of course not, but this person probably doesn't have any bad intentions towards us, otherwise they wouldn't have deliberately given us that 'Zhang Family Old House Rules.' As for the rest, we're strangers after all, so it's normal for them not to trust you."
"Tch, these people are so stingy," Yan Che couldn't help but scoff.
Yue Qi didn't think so. After all, he had seen adventurers opposing each other in the Rules of the Strange Tales dungeon before, so it was normal for them to hold back.
Then, he simply found a place to sit down and took out the "Rules of the Zhang Family Old House" to study.
Yan Che was all ready to go, waiting for Yue Qi to lead the team to escape! But instead, Yue Qi just sat down right there!
He was absolutely furious. "Master Yue, shouldn't you show us the way? We can't just sit here and wait!"
"Shh—" Yue Qi held up one finger and gestured, then continued to look at the rules.
This time, Wen Jiajia was quite sensible. Her strange guards spread out in an orderly fashion, surrounding the three of them in the middle, which would prevent any unexpected attacks.
After a while, Yue Qi closed the parchment and stood up abruptly. "It seems we still have to go back."
Yan Che was somewhat confused. "That grandson doesn't look like a good person at all. Why would he go back?"
"Didn't you notice the rules for clearing this level? This 'Zhang Family Old House Dungeon' has no intention of letting us out."
"What?!" Wen Jiajia's reaction was unexpectedly strong. "You, surnamed Yue, explain yourself clearly!"
Yue Qi waved his hand, knowing that this young lady always valued her life, so he didn't keep her in suspense and directly stated his guess.
"Based on my deduction, although the instance certainly doesn't have good intentions, we still have a glimmer of hope. Rules six and seven of the 'Zhang Family Old House Rules' are a very clear hint. Our only way to survive is to find the real Falling Flower Cave Girl and then wait for the fifteenth."
His words left both of them bewildered. "What does the Falling Flower Cave Girl have to do with Number Fifteen?"
Yue Qi shook his head. "That's what I'm trying to figure out too. That Guo Hu must still be hiding important information about Yan Qing. So we have to go back."
"Also—" He looked at the desolate little building, "I have a question for you. According to the timeline, we shouldn't be the first group of adventurers. So where did the first group go?"
Yan Che and the other person were instantly dumbfounded; there was more to this than met the eye!
Finally, Yue Qi made the decision.
"Walk!"
The group returned to the cave by the same route. Coincidentally, a man and a woman were also walking into the cave from the opposite direction. The two groups met face to face and immediately became alert.
After a long silence, the boy on the other end spoke first, "Who are you?!"
Yan Che was about to speak when Yue Qi interrupted him, giving him a slight smile.
"If I'm not mistaken, you must be Sun Ning."
These two were actually Sun Ning and Su Su, but for some reason they suddenly left the cave.
Sun Ning's expression was cold as he stared directly at Yue Qi. "Why do you know my name?"
"Yan Qing, does this name sound familiar to you?" Yue Qi dropped a bombshell right off the bat. "We are her family and friends, and we've come here specifically to find her."
Mentioning Yan Qing softened Sun Ning's attitude considerably. Su Su became even more friendly.
"So you are Sister Yan's family! That's great, we've finally found companions."
Compared to Su Su, Sun Ning was noticeably more cautious. However, after Yan Che provided photos of him and the girl, Sun Ning finally believed them and led the three back into the cave.
Guo Hu saw them returning together from afar, his expression a mixture of surprise and curiosity.
"Sun Ning, you know him?"
“Guo Hu, they are Sister Yan’s family and friends. This one—” she pointed to Yan Che, “Sister Yan’s brother.”
Yan Che laughed heartily, "We became friends after a fight."
With Yan Qing as a mutual friend, the two teams established a preliminary level of trust. Yue Qi and Sun Ning immediately shared what they knew about Yan Qing.
"You mean, tomorrow is that so-called Sacred Flame Festival? Yan Qing wants you to go to the Zhang family's old house?"
“Yes!” Sun Ning nodded. “Yan Qing was relatively free a couple of days ago, but starting yesterday, she seems to have suddenly changed her clothes and only shows up at a fixed time every day—I suspect she is being controlled by someone, so I don’t dare to contact her rashly.”
Yue Qi keenly grasped the key point in his words, "Changed clothes? What was she wearing before?"
“Wearing white, just like those maids,” Sun Ning replied.
Yue Qi fell into deep thought. He remembered clearly that Yan Qing was wearing a strange red dress, which looked somewhat like a wedding gown, and was holding a bouquet of flowers. There were three other women dressed identically beside her.
Could it be that she is being controlled? Or, to put it more boldly, is she calling out to me for help?
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