Chapter 142 The Sound of the Suona Sings Beyond the Mountains "The coordinates next door are very far from here..."
Whether it was a bridal sedan chair or an embroidered red coffin, it was too small for them. Xue Chao's back bumped against the hard board. He looked up and saw that the sedan chair curtain was half open. Against the backdrop of the dark clouds, He stood in front of the sedan chair.
The floor-length mourning cap draped over Him resembled the white robe worn by the most sacred priest in the most wicked pagan religion; its stiff, paper-like material also conveyed a rigid, lifeless feeling.
His half-face, slender neck, and hands beneath the mourning cap were the same color as the cap, like cold white paint splashed on a painting. A few dark strokes across the shadows served as a dividing line, separating the person from the clothes.
The pointed top of the mourning cap perfectly blocked the sliver of starlight filtering through the thin clouds, giving the cap and his skin a sinister bluish-purple hue.
Beneath the stark white mourning cap was a magnificent and heavy red wedding gown, which seemed to appear even deeper because it was worn by Him.
The embroidery, like a dragon vein buried in the red soil, appears and disappears, its gold or silver indistinguishable, yet it shimmers with a cold, radiant light.
He was already tall, even taller than Xue Chao. The starlight stretched his shadow, and from Xue Chao's perspective, he looked like a giant statue built against the mountain.
However, the next second, with a flick of his finger, the clouds on the horizon closed the gap, and it became even darker all around.
The bizarre and sacred demon should be enshrined on a man-eating altar, but it instead bends down and, quite without any sense of boundaries, crawls into the sedan curtain.
The cool fragrance and the red and white robes flowed around Xue Chao, confining him inside the sedan chair.
His long white hair, hidden in his mourning cap, slowed down a beat and fell softly onto Xue Chao's eyes; the whiteness was the same as his mourning clothes and his face.
Xue Chao turned his head to avoid His annoying hair, but then bumped into His merciless eyes in the shadow of the mourning cap.
The most evil god... the god of joy... is about to cry out.
They were too close to hear Jiang Ming's breathing, yet they could hear Xue Chao's heartbeat all too clearly.
"Did you kill all the villagers?" Xue Chao suddenly asked.
"Parasitic ants, they don't kill but they're annoying, and it pains me too." The evil god spoke, without breathing, but a cold fragrance wafted onto his face, like cosmetics or incense ash, causing an allergic reaction wherever it landed.
His strange tone lifted with a hint of a smile: "Besides, every wrong has its perpetrator and every debt its debtor; how could it be my turn?"
Did A-Yun and Xiang-Ping kill him? Xue Chao: "A-Yun appeared in my dream and said that Xiang-Ping's survival was all thanks to your power. That master is the minor deity under your command."
“It’s their own strength; I’m just giving them a chance.” Jiang Ming’s fingernails were a bit long, white and rounded, like polished seashells, and she touched Xue Chao’s heart. “Don’t you know my abilities?”
Drawing strength from intense emotions to achieve one's desires truly makes one a "god of joy and sorrow who governs the seven emotions and six desires, happiness, anger, sorrow, and pleasure."
Mingbing's cold hand rested on Xue Chao's chest, about to forcefully seize his heart, but Xue Chao clicked his tongue and swatted away his ghostly claw: "Is this how you repay me?"
Jiang Ming tilted his head, his sharp pupils staring at him with a hint of animalistic confusion: "Didn't you come here to commit suicide with me?"
From the moment they created the mahjong dice, they had an unspoken understanding, and their coordination was even more remarkable when they disrupted the main quest and awakened Jiang Ming.
However, if the main quest fails, the player can only complete the game by defeating Him, and He will not lose.
They only have one way out: death.
But the host was different. He lowered his fingertips down again, stirring Ming's chest like water in a pond: "Oh? So you're begging me to let you go... Okay, come on."
Jiang Ming was slightly excited, so he calmed down and waited for him to please him.
Xue Chao slapped his face away: "Get lost."
Jiang Ming paused for a moment, then became even more excited: "This one works too..."
Xue Chao put his arm around His neck, suppressing the restless evil god, and whispered in His ear, "The coordinates next door are very close to here?"
Jiang Ming paused, his tone turning somber: "There seems to be a mountain to the south, pitch black... it's terribly ugly."
Xue Chao grabbed his wedding robe and pushed him back, then created some distance between them, and patted him on the chest with his other hand: "I thought nothing would grow around you."
Jiang Ming immediately understood his subtext and his eyes widened for a moment.
Staring at his lazy, smiling expression... this time He was truly excited, His soul trembling.
He was preoccupied with matters far away and had no time to pay attention to that small mountain, which allowed others to take advantage of the situation and interfere in His territory.
Shouldn't the other party pay a price?
He was already scheming wildly in his mind based on Xue Chao's idea, but on the surface he had to play the contrarian and sly look: "This is difficult... I have a bad reputation, and only those who come to beg for mercy dare not ask me to do anything. I will take a look at believers, but why don't you become my believer and I can grant all your wishes."
He wasn't lying; a bad idea that could excite even Him must be something that's difficult to do under normal circumstances.
"I trust you because I dare to be crazy," Xue Chao said listlessly. "I don't need you to do that."
He braced his elbows against the sedan chair wall, slightly raised his upper body, and provocatively leaned closer, staring into His inhuman eyes: "It's just a collaboration, do you want to enter His dream and take a look?"
Jiang Mingzhen was stunned. In a dream? There was a shrine in the dream, the place where He was sealed in the dungeon. After He appeared in the village, He didn't care about that place anymore.
He closed his eyes, and all the locks that had popped open in the ancestral hall closed again. The shrine was half open, with a long gold lock hanging on it, which could reveal a little bit of his consciousness.
There was a pair of round eyes in the gap, like the eyes of a young person who hasn't fully grown up yet; the left eye was sky blue, and the right eye was emerald green.
It is the soul of Risen within Riven's body.
With the hostage in hand, everything from finding the coordinates of the neighboring secret realm to doing more becomes possible... But when did Xue Chao enter the dream?
Jiang Ming turned his head slightly, and outside the sedan chair, the butterfly with the missing half of its wing fluttered and flew away leisurely.
As a result, the four teams of players encountered snow fog caused by an avalanche again on their way back to the village.
The southern peaks collapsed one after another, the rocks roaring louder than ever before, and a thick fog buried the entire Xibei Mountain area.
All players were on high alert. The three members of the travel agency were so frightened that they knelt down in the snow and begged for mercy, immediately reciting the oath of joining the church.
However, the snow fog lingered for them and continued to spread towards the edge.
Beyond the two-dimensional fault line, under the dim moonlight, Nightingale Mountain, with its long slope on one side and a cliff on the other, is covered with fir trees.
The boy, who had been frozen in place for a long time, started moving again. He awkwardly adjusted his hat, and a pair of heterochromatic eyes flashed by—the left one was emerald green, and the right one was sky blue.
The golden totem behind them was still spinning.
"[Ruisen] Wuhu, is he back?!"
"The hero who topped the overall leaderboard, haha, wouldn't you call this a secret team of a different kind?"
"【Rison】I feel like something's off... Did you guys see Ruisen's eyes?"
The boy suddenly turned around, and fog rose in the distance.
The mist drifted through the fir trees, spreading towards the cliff.
"Rison" widened his eyes, took two steps back, and vaguely realized what Xue Chao was about to do.
The younger brother owed Marco Polo a favor, so they agreed to Marco's request to read Pu Fengchun's memories and find the secret hidden in her consciousness.
The process went smoothly, but in the end, they failed. The younger brother didn't get what Marco wanted, and someone even died.
However, before they even had a chance to figure out how to explain themselves, they were not even able to escape unscathed; instead, they were drawn into an even bigger vortex.
The twins' heightened sensitivity during their connection was screaming that both of them were madmen, each more outrageous than the last!
However, since his younger brother was in Xue Chao's hands, he had to bite the bullet and go anyway.
He first checked the shared workstations to make sure they were off before heading towards the European-style town.
He didn't understand what his brother's copy was like, but a part of their souls seemed to be intertwined, relying on intuition and following each other's path, able to act correctly even without understanding why.
He found a strange fir tree with a black lace bow tied to it, which was probably a mark his younger brother had made in advance, originally intended to be dealt with after the soul was swapped back.
He looked up and, through the dense cedar leaves, used his supernatural ability "vision" to see a rotten bird's nest high up.
A ring of dead birds hangs from the nest, swaying like wind chimes.
There was also a dead bird in the nest, more beautiful than the others, with soft, glossy feathers, but its neck was terribly thin, making its body look like a gourd, with a faint shimmer around its neck.
He stood on tiptoe and squinted to see—the bird had a silver ring around its neck.
You need to get the ring before you can return to the instance.
He hugged the tree, trying to climb up, and the dead birds stirred, looking down at him, their stiff eyes reflecting a red light.
He stopped immediately, but it was too late. He heard the sound of flapping wings coming from the tree, and then the same sound came from the surrounding fir trees.
Climb! He quickly climbed the tree. His strength was average, but he was agile and quick-witted. He made a decisive move and took the initiative. In no time, he had climbed to the middle of the tree.
But the birds that had risen from the dead reacted and swooped down on him, screeching at the top of their lungs in an extremely eerie manner.
Unlike the simple muteness of crows, it is a muteness that was once beautiful but was destroyed, with a trace of heavenly sound remaining, like an angel and a devil squeezed into the throats of these birds, singing loudly at the same time.
The cry of just one bird could frighten a person into running away. "Rison" felt that all the birds in the forest were calling out, and he had nowhere to escape. He almost fell several times.
Worst of all, he couldn't pass the check. The dice system was bound to his soul, and he was inside his brother's body. The keeper who would pass the check for him must be Xue Chao.
But the body belongs to his younger brother, and his brother's keeper is Marco Polo. It's hard to say whether Marco will notice anything amiss.
If he wants to pass the test, he can only pass it once, and he has to succeed on the first try.
Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, the birds stopped swooping down, but all the birds landed on the fir tree, and the dense fir leaves turned into a dense array of red eyes, enveloping him in a "birdcage".
But Risen couldn't care less about that now. The soul swap across realms was too exhausting, and he was already at his limit. If this continued, he and his brother would be in danger.
He guessed that the birds in the nest would surely rise from the dead and attack him, so when he made up his mind to take action, he didn't go through "skillful maneuvering," but rather "fighting."
However, the keeper did not respond to him, but the bird truly came back to life, twisting off its head. Its beak opened, covered in thorns, and it bit at him. He quickly grabbed the ring and dodged, but fell straight down the tree.
The branches were covered with birds, and he didn't know where to start. The only thing he could do was quickly gather all the healing potions he had to try and stay alive.
However, just as he was falling, the sound of the lottery rang out—it was a lucky draw!
A protruding branch caught his magic robe, causing it to fall and startle the surrounding birds, making the whole tree sway.
What hit his head? He reached out and caught it—the headless body of the bird.
A flash of inspiration struck him—could this be a great success?
So he cleverly stretched out two fingers, reached into the bird's body, and pinched out a diamond.
He suddenly realized that the ring was fake, and the diamond was the key!
Congratulations on breaking the curse hidden in the mountains!
[The instance boundary is opening...]
[...]
The instance boundaries have been opened.
You have ten minutes to return to...%&jijs#（@￥#ng）
【￥%s2？ #&@）】
The thick fog rolled up the hillside with unstoppable force, entering the town before him.
As the clock struck the hour, Marco Polo stepped out of the Black Church, and suddenly looked up as a cold object landed on his cheek.
It's snowing.
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