Chapter 147 The sound of the suona pierces the mountains beyond, and Xue Chao escapes from the clutches of the most powerful evil god...
The wedding dress is inside the groom's belly.
It was determined that he swallowed it whole; the rose at his waist, stained with blood, was stuck in his throat and turned grayish-brown.
The manner of death was bizarre, but it was indeed suicide. Molly, who was assisting with the investigation, was soon picked up by her worried fiancé, and their cold war broke down on its own.
Bolt kept apologizing in hushed tones, but Molly didn't listen; she felt this was far from over.
Sure enough, one person began to die in the town every night, and nightingales would linger near the crime scenes, singing mournful songs.
The deceased were all men, with partners or girlfriends, and were found hanging high up with wedding dresses stuffed inside their stomachs.
If there is a partner, the wedding dress is the one the wife wears on her wedding day; if it's just a fiancée or girlfriend, Molly's clothing store will be missing a wedding dress.
The probability of murder has increased, and the women who are partners are prime suspects, including Miss Molly, the clothing store owner, who has been placed under temporary surveillance.
It wasn't until the police anticipated the victim's fate and, along with officers and nearby townspeople, stormed into Porter's house that they witnessed him, with a grotesque expression, stuffing a wedding dress down his throat while tearfully hanging himself.
Is this a human or a ghost? He looks like he's possessed! No one dares to approach.
By the time the police realized what had happened and put him down, he was already dead.
The ladies have been wronged; the murderer is someone else, no, the murderer may not even be human!
With no hope of dealing with the police, the town was filled with fear.
At night, they would lock their doors tightly, listen to the mournful song of the nightingale, and wonder in fear who had died. When daytime came, they would rush into the church to pray.
The pastor of the Black Church whispered to Molly that everyone had become "much more devout" lately.
The pastor also became busy, having to pray for a new person to die every day.
"It has also boosted the development of the funeral industry." The newspaper in Huang Haitao's hand recorded the details of the pastor's prayer, "...'But when the townspeople were singing hymns with both hands, a discordant melody arose among them, just like the nightingale's song every night'..."
This happened yesterday, the "second day" after the players entered the instance.
The crowd stopped singing in alarm, and the nightingale's song, like its shadow, also ceased.
An old man fainted on the spot. Zhu Wen had investigated him; the old man was the oldest resident in the town, and he knew what those strange birds were singing.
"It's the Wedding March!"
Zhu Wen knew the wedding march, but the tune was completely different, yet the old man was very certain.
"It's definitely...she's back!" After shouting this, the old man fainted again.
Xue Chao: "There is a special 'Wedding March' here."
“You could say that,” the short-haired woman’s follower pushed up his glasses with an air of sophistication. “Because it doesn’t refer to that song we’re all familiar with, but rather to the name of an opera.”
The town once had a renowned soprano named Roger, who was a mainstay of the Hills Theatre.
The most famous opera is "Wedding March", in which Rosedale plays the lead role.
The story is about Oliver's wife, Rosedale, who is in a car accident and falls off a mountain road; her body is never found.
Oliver was heartbroken and shut himself in, spending his days with his wife's nightingale, pouring out his pain and longing.
A gentle nightingale kept him company, singing to lull him to sleep when he said he was tired.
That was a song Rosdale loved to sing, but the nightingale couldn't speak, it could only imitate her tune.
The bird's song was beautiful, but it also had a poignant beauty that it had never heard before.
Oliver was deeply saddened when the nightingale was about to die; it was the last trace his wife left on earth, and now it too was leaving him.
He thanked the nightingale for its companionship and gave it a human-sized burial. As he closed the coffin and prepared to bury it, he heard the familiar song coming from inside.
Upon opening the coffin, his wife Rosdale, who had been brought back to life, slowly sat up, and after centuries of gazing upon them, they embraced.
The melody remained unchanged, but it was no longer melancholic. The long-separated lovers, each taking a line, sang the song as their wedding march.
The rest of the story involves a funeral that turns into a wedding, celebrating their reunion. Nightingales also fly in to sing for them.
"It's a clichéd story of making dumplings for a happy family reunion," Xu Feiying commented. "In reality, their story is bound to be a tragedy."
As he said, the actors who played the male and female leads, Otto and Rosie, were also a couple, and they met and fell in love because of this musical.
At that time, Luo Jie was already a popular actress, and Aotelai rose to fame because of her.
"However, once he became popular, he became a different person. No, it should be said that he revealed his true nature. He cheated on Luo Jie with someone else and even slandered Luo Jie outside. They often quarreled, and he gradually found her annoying."
Outlet had bribed an actor in the theater who had once pursued Luo Jie to harass her again, planning to "accidentally" barge in at the right time to slander her reputation, ruin her name, and kick her out.
The players of Xibei Mountain felt as if they were hearing Xiangping's story all over again.
The woman with the buzz cut twirled her gun and continued sharing her intelligence: "But he suddenly changed his mind."
That doesn't sound like a good idea.
“He truly intended to kill her because Luo Jie discovered that he had reversed the cross enshrined in the church and was reciting incoherent prayers. He didn’t seem like a believer following the Lord; he seemed like a cultist helping the devil smuggle into the human world, and he was indeed like that. So he killed her to silence her and threw her off a cliff.”
Rosie followed the same path as the heroine Rosdale, falling off a cliff and disappearing without a trace.
Xue Chao seized on the key question: "What god is worshipped on that cross?"
“It’s different from that one. It doesn’t have a divine name or a real name. It’s probably something like God, although its essence might be Satan… But if we have to connect it to the secret realm, then it’s a ‘mountain god.’ Isn’t that what you guessed, which is why you went to sacrifice Marco?”
This title resonated with the players from Xibei Mountain. The woman with the buzz cut understood: "That one is also a mountain god in the story? That further confirms that my idea is correct. However, I think the mountain god of Nightingale Mountain is just a chaotic spiritual substance and has not developed any thoughts or personality."
The comparison with Mingzuo is easy to understand. There aren't many clear-headed bosses; someone with a distinct personality—more cunning than a human, more treacherous than a ghost, and more arrogant than a god—is a special case.
For the NPC Outlet, that's a god.
However, Xue Chao and the players of Nightingale Mountain knew that the god was born after Luo Jie's death, because the boss's name was "Rosedale".
Indeed, Ottore portrayed himself as a heartbroken lover whose girlfriend had gone missing. However, with Rosie gone, the opera house had to rely on him to keep things running. Despite his grief, he took on the responsibility and continued to perform "The Wedding March" with the understudy, making the audience feel that he was Oliver himself.
Ironically, the actress who was the female lead's replacement was his lover.
But when he reached the climax he knew best, he opened the coffin from which the singing was coming from, only to see Luo Jie's face.
No one knows exactly what happened after that, because no one survived that opera.
But they all knew what kind of story this was, and it was also about revenge.
To break Luo Jie's curse, you must help her exact her revenge.
Before the invasion of Joy and Sorrow Mountain, the players of Nightingale Mountain were already searching for the people she killed and what their connection was with her, as well as who else deserved to die.
But they got stuck at this step. Luo Jie was more like indiscriminately killing all the unfaithful men, like every female ghost.
“‘Faithless men,’ so these men really deserve to die,” a member of the band said. “The one I investigated is one of them; he had seven or eight mistresses on the side.”
"But the area is too large..."
“Luo Jie’s killings are logical.” The nightingale’s song echoed through the town again. Outside the gray fog, there seemed to be pairs of red eyes. Taking advantage of the opportunity to let everyone listen, Xue Chao said, “She’s not seeking revenge. Back then, she had already killed everyone she wanted to kill. She’s helping.”
Since he's not with the players, there's limited information he can convey, but luckily there are plenty of smart people among the players.
Many players have noticed that there is no theater in the town at all. Therefore, they initially sought more clues to determine the veracity of this past event.
It's a true story.
But where did the theater go?
Demolish it, rebuild it into another building, or perhaps it's due to the town's unique geographical location—the theater was originally on the edge of a cliff, and on the day Luo Jie slowly sat up in her coffin, the entire theater fell off the cliff to the strains of the wedding march.
“The audience that day were all cultists of the inverted cross, looking for offerings for the mountain god, and the discovered Ottoman ‘recommended’ Roze to them,” said Rison, the most insightful of the group. “Roze’s death was a sacrifice, and the performance was a ritual.”
They succeeded, and Rosedale was born.
Then God announced to them.
His revenge was long over, Xue Chao said she was now "helping"... The short-haired woman and Naga were the first to understand.
Someone asked God for help.
For women who have also been betrayed and are suffering in intimate relationships, Rosedale, who has become the evil goddess, is not a figure to be feared.
Rather, they are His true believers.
Zhu Wen: "That pastor has long been controlled by Rose."
And the first person to seek out the priest because of the Nightingale's Curse was... Miss Molly.
"Molly's mother died early, and her father passed away a year ago, which was when she and Bolt were deeply in love. He gave her a lot of companionship and comfort, but in fact, he bribed the members of the Black Church to kill Molly's father. He wanted to kill off Molly's family."
So she conspired with the other "ladies" to orchestrate their deaths.
Players need to find the people in this alliance who haven't had a chance to be killed yet.
“Then take us to the tavern on the cliff edge,” Xue Chao said, gazing out the tavern window.
In fact, Nightingale Hills is also a group of mountains, all of them are small, black hills with gentle slopes. The mountain they are on is the largest, occupying almost half of the area of the group of mountains, and the surrounding hills are like a school of fish surrounding a whale.
The dense forest on this mountain borders the edge of the secret realm. If you walk all the way to the cliff, you can see the mountains under the moonlight. That's why the town on the cliff is named "Hills".
Having solved all the puzzles, all that's left is to execute the plan. The only challenge is racing against time to defeat the boss.
The skilled players quickly located the still-alive unfaithful men. They found them kneeling in a row in the tavern, each with a player holding a weapon against them, like an execution ground.
Xue Chao stood in front of them, leaning against the window. He casually lowered his raised hand, and several players attacked simultaneously. The unfaithful men fell to the ground, their blood splattering everywhere.
[Congratulations on completing the main quest!]
[The instance is closing, ten minutes remaining]
On the battlefield of the boss, the dying Rosedale paused, then flashed towards the tavern, wanting to devour the nourishment that the cursed ones had turned into.
Jiang Ming naturally wouldn't let him go. The players hiding outside the tavern saw an even thicker snow fog surging in from the dense forest, as if it were encroaching on the land inch by inch, while a line of red light broke through the sky first.
Meanwhile, a commotion arose from the cliff, as countless nightingales rushed up the cliff and surrounded the tavern.
The red light, of course, did not miss its target. Before Rosdale could pounce on the tavern with its six wings, it pierced the coffin, but its power was too great, and it sank into the ground.
The fire talismans that Xue Chao had buried behind the tavern were instantly detonated, causing the ground to continue to drop. The tavern, which was already carefully standing on the edge of the cliff, was now in imminent danger, and the cliff top tilted downwards.
Players opened the doors and windows, and the smell of blood attracted a flock of nightingales that struggled against the tavern. Snow mist swept in from afar with unstoppable force, and the entire Nightingale Mountain was assimilated by ice and snow. The blood of the dungeon NPCs seeped into the soil, turning it into red earth.
However, just as they were about to reach the tavern, the cliff top broke off completely, and the tavern fell off the cliff, plummeting straight down.
What is that guy up to now? Zhu Wen hated Xue Chao to the core, but due to the treacherous situation, he only made sarcastic remarks during the inspection. He was wary of the guy, so he didn't go into the tavern and instead hid nearby to observe him secretly.
But as the tavern fell, he immediately cast out his fishing line and scrambled into the tavern during the fall.
He didn't believe Xue Chao was courting death; it must all be his conspiracy!
Then, one by one, the nightingales tore open the wings of the deep blue morpho butterflies, wrapped them around the nightingales, and ate the flock of gray-brown birds.
Countless tiny morpho butterflies formed a large morpho butterfly, using the eaves of the tavern as its wings, and spread its wings.
The tavern covered in morpho butterflies hovered in the air, then flew away into the distance, faster and faster.
As the mist raced over the cliff, the players who hadn't yet entered the tavern realized what was happening and rushed to buy tickets and board the train—the tavern hadn't been assimilated yet, and Xue Chao was determined to seize a piece of that person's land!
While the four teams of Xibeishan were united against the enemy, they secretly didn't forget to fight amongst themselves. After all, if they survived, the final score would be calculated, but time was tight, and they also wanted to maintain a balance. They couldn't figure out what good cards to play, and the gap between them wasn't that big.
The game wasn't over yet. Wudu was the only team with all members in the tavern, waiting for them to "get on board" in the last wave. Sure enough, someone fired a big shot at their team!
The Five Poisons team has overtaken others in points and taken first place.
The insidious Five Poisons! Huang Haitao, who lit the cannon, had a distorted expression on his face.
But they are not at peace yet.
Jiang Ming and Xue Chao understood each other without saying a word. The boss of Nightingale Mountain was dead, and it was their entanglement again. Even the most powerful evil god had to take things step by step when devouring new territories, unlike the carefree approach of Joy and Sorrow Mountain.
The suspended tavern sped away, and in the mist, the small mountains resembled shrouded grave mounds, occasionally revealing a hint of their eerie presence.
Just as they were about to cross the edge of the mountains, a blurry, pale dragon silhouette broke through the mist, and Xue Chao, by the window, met a fleeting glimpse of a crimson beast's eyes.
Jiang Ming guessed that he had a backup plan, but all he saw was a gambling desire rising in those charming blue eyes, as if he had long wanted to try the player's dice roll. In that instant, he didn't care about anything and handed everything over to the madness of fate.
He stared at Jiang Ming, thinking to himself, "Too lucky." Only they could hear this thought.
A lucky draw slip fell from his sleeve, signifying great success.
Before the red light fell, the tavern dropped out of the mountains, as if taking a step across the yin and yang worlds. The surroundings were chaotic blackness, with eerie lights scattered everywhere.
They flew away from the boundary of the secret realm and arrived at the spacetime rift between the zones.
Success! Xue Chao tore a piece of territory from the hands of the most powerful evil god and escaped with him!
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(Sprinkling flowers!) (Sprinkling flowers!) (Sprinkling flowers!)
【00:00:00】
Since Xue Chao broke the dungeon, the number of viewers has been increasing and the comment section has become extremely active, but it is only now that the stuck data has started to work again.
The two rooms were combined into one, and the host officially became "Xue Chao," encompassing players from both instances.
The secret realm is now closed.
Flying over the broken belt, Xue Chao ruthlessly drove away these players, including Zhu Wen, who was chattering and demanding a one-on-one fight.
After the settlement, the interview will take place.
The investigation team's interviews were not conducted in the studio. After the secret realm opened, everyone went home, so a video call was used. When Zhu Wen was left in the tavern, he still shouted for people to choose him, but Xue Chao pretended not to hear him.
There are many interviewees to choose from for the two instances, and there is no shortage of top players, but this time, no matter how high the player's ranking is, the audience's attention is entirely on the host.
No one can help but pay attention to him.
If the first two dungeons were amazing, this one is a complete breakthrough that made them famous.
Whether you're a player, a guild member, or a viewer, you'll know that there's a newly popular host named Xue Chao.
Three instances, surpassing the lifetimes of countless players and hosts, made him known as a "god" in the eyes of others.
Therefore, Xue Chao didn't ask any questions during the interview. He always gave perfunctory answers to interviews, just going through the motions.
He selected the leaders of each guild, said a few polite words to them, and casually invited them to come to his room to play often. However, a few players seemed to take it to heart and genuinely looked forward to it.
Looking for thrills, huh.
He ruthlessly hung up on all video calls.
The audience knew his character and were reluctant to let him go, trying to get him to talk for another five minutes. They had endless interest and admiration for everything he did in the dungeon, and they could talk for the length of another dungeon.
However, the ruthless host had no more patience for them. He just gave them a slightly more professional smile, lazily said goodnight, and then went offline.
When everything fell silent, the tavern, covered by countless morpho butterflies, once again hovered over the broken belt.
The darkness of the broken world left him feeling cold inside; he wasn't sure if that could be considered peace.
The NPC's corpse turned to dust as soon as he left the secret realm from the tavern, leaving no trace of blood, but the smell of blood seemed to linger, or perhaps it was just his hallucination.
Xue Chao sat at the dimly lit bar. The bottom row of the liquor cabinet was empty, but now, the third empty space had a jar of wine, a Daughter's Red.
He flipped through the files that had merged the two copies, but his thoughts drifted far away, recalling Risen's words.
He then asked Ruisen what he saw in Pu Fengchun's memory.
According to Risen, once Pu Fengchun entered the flower shop filled with white roses, he could see nothing at all; to him, the spy, it was a locked room.
He had similar thoughts to Xue Chao, but for some reason, he asked, "Anything else?"
Rison didn't know what he wanted to hear either, and pondered for a while.
"Before I erased her memories, I heard out-of-tune piano music, it must have been 'Für Elise'," the highly inspired young man said. "It sounded like a requiem."
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