Chapter 23
"Meng Zu! Something happened!"
The car that was speeding on the road suddenly stopped, and the slight smile on Qin Fei's face disappeared without a trace.
The three people in the back seat who were interrupted by the sudden brakes looked up at the same time. Meng Ziqiu held the notebook on his knees with one hand and pushed the glasses on his nose with the other hand: "What's wrong?"
Qin Fei's expression became completely serious: "Huailin Town just disappeared from the map."
He leaned to the side so that the three people behind the car could see the special large screen in his hand. The screen was flashing red and a line of prompts kept popping up -
[Warning! Warning! The navigation destination has disappeared, please re-plan your route! ]
[Warning! Warning! The navigation destination has disappeared, please re-plan your route! ]
[Warning! Warning! The navigation destination has disappeared...]
The prompt popped up several times without any response, and finally turned into the cold mechanical voice of the voice assistant:
[The navigation target has been lost, the navigation system is temporarily shut down, the driving route has been uploaded to the cloud of the remote department, the data number is 12376.2030.7.D]
After the voice assistant disappeared, the faces of the four people in the car all looked ugly at the same time.
"Isn't it a D-level mission?" Lu Yayin had a small table on her knees and a pen dipped in cinnabar in her hand. As soon as the voice assistant's voice came out, the binding talisman she was drawing was instantly scrapped. "How could such a cross-level interference phenomenon occur!"
D-level missions are life-threatening, but as long as the solution is appropriate, generally no deaths will occur. However, starting from C-level, the difficulty index doubles. The energy field near the mission location will become chaotic. The chaotic energy field will shield most electronic equipment and satellite signals. Only specially made expensive instruments can continue to be used.
Therefore, once interference occurs, it is likely that you have encountered a C-level or higher task.
"We have almost figured out the mission [Blood Wedding Dress] on the way. It has mutated after intersecting with the E-level mission [Old Building]. Missions that have mutated will not mutate again." Lu Yayin was puzzled. "Where on earth did this interference phenomenon that only occurs in C-level missions come from?"
"I just applied for temporary permission from the Alien Return Office to intervene in Yu Tu's personal task list."
Meng Ziqiu's hands tapped on the keyboard, and a series of dense symbols and windows kept changing.
The information of everyone linked to the inner world will automatically be kept confidential. To view it, you need to file a situation report and obtain special temporary permissions.
The freshman group that Yu Tu belonged to learned through the announcement that he had triggered the D-level mission [Blood Wedding Dress] because of the special settings of the freshman group, but people in the group could only see the name and would not know the specific content and completion process.
The situation suspected of a C-level mission was reported and received the green light, and temporary authorization was quickly granted.
Meng Ziqiu clicked on Yu Tu’s task list, and then... fell silent.
"Boss, why do you look more serious than us? It can't be worse than a suspected C-rank mission, right?"
Qin Fei saw Meng Ziqiu's expression through the rearview mirror and made a joke to ease the atmosphere, but he soon discovered that Gu Hongying and Lu Yayin, who were tilting their heads to glance at Meng Ziqiu's computer, had their faces wrinkled like bitter gourd skins.
Qin Fei: “……?”
He stretched his neck: "Let me see it too!"
Generally, when there is a task upgrade like this, temporary permissions such as viewing data need to be approved, and these permissions are shared by all team members by default. As Qin Fei was driving in the front, he really couldn't see the computer with its back to him.
Meng Ziqiu shared Yu Tu's task list in the group chat of their team members. Qin Fei clicked it and saw that the task list was very simple, with only two lines of words on it, one red and one black.
In black it says——
Accepted the E-level mission [Old Building] and the D-level mission [Bloody Wedding Dress].
The red line reads——
Did not accept the C-level mission [Sophora japonica] and the B-level mission [Barren Mountain].
Qin Fei: “???”
Qin Fei: “!!!”
"Fuck!" He couldn't help but swear, "What kind of Feng Shui is this? Are you playing connect the dots between BC and DE?"
"A Fei." Meng Ziqiu frowned, "Be civilized."
Qin Fei: "...Okay, Boss."
Meng Ziqiu asked: "Although the navigation is no longer usable, the route before it disappeared was correct. Do you still remember it?"
Qin Fei closed his eyes and recalled: "I remember roughly, but there are a few points that I am not very clear about. I can ask Yayin to guide me at the fork in the road."
"Okay." Meng Ziqiu nodded. "Now continue driving towards Huailin Town, drive at the maximum speed limit, and try to get there as early as possible."
"Don't draw the Binding Talisman now, draw the Defense Talisman instead." After arranging Lu Yayin, Meng Ziqiu turned his gaze to Gu Hongying, "Hongying, think back, did you encounter any strange people or things in Huailin Town before?"
"Strange people or things..." As soon as Meng Ziqiu mentioned it, a figure emerged in Gu Hongying's mind, the figure he met during his school enrollment mission and in the ruins in the desolate mountains.
"Team Meng, I actually completed my entrance exam in a very strange way," said Gu Hongying. "I was kicked out of my room by Sanqing and taken to the mission location in the middle of the night. I was wearing pajamas and slippers at the time. I climbed to the top of the barren mountain for five hours at night. I was exhausted."
He confessed everything honestly and was not afraid of being laughed at by the special group because Meng Ziqiu and Gu Hongying's parents were old classmates and Qin Fei and Lu Yayin were also very familiar with his parents. When he rushed home in a hurry, his parents were sitting at home waiting for him. The two unscrupulous parents were laughing happier than each other - his parents had already known about Sanqing kicking him to a deserted mountain in the middle of the night.
Later, when something happened to Yu Tu, he shamelessly contacted Meng Ziqiu through his parents, and then he joined the team to carry out the mission and became a temporary non-staff member.
"My mission is to investigate the mystery of the singing in the barren mountain, but—" Gu Hongying recalled his experience with the wolf half a month ago, and could not help but feel heartbroken, "I wandered around the mountain for a long time and encountered nothing. When I was about to go down the mountain, I heard a faint singing voice, so I followed the sound and went back."
Qin Fei thought of the B-level [Barren Mountain] on the mission board and sighed, "What a courage."
Meng Ziqiu: "Silence."
Qin Fei opened his mouth, then closed it unhappily.
Gu Hongying continued: "I followed the sound of the song and found a ruin. The ruin was covered with creepers and looked a bit eerie. I followed the path that almost fell to the gate and went in. The ruin was really deep and the light was very dim. The ground was full of broken bricks and debris, as well as moss and spider webs. The song was at the very end, so I kept walking forward and pulled up a lot of dead plants before I made a path that I could walk on."
At this time, not to mention Qin Fei, even Meng Ziqiu wanted to call him a tiger.
The more you feel something is wrong, the less likely you should get involved. Otherwise, you may suffer a big loss due to your carelessness.
"I don't know how far I walked, but I guess I walked to the very end. When I cleared the last withered vine of ivy, I saw a man in the ruins behind the withered vine." Gu Hongying recalled the mysterious man and described him in detail. "He had black hair and phoenix eyes. He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his left eye. The chain of the glasses hung down to his chin. He wore a black gown with buttons all the way to his neck."
"I don't know how to describe the feeling of seeing him." Gu Hongying shook his head, "Anyway, I felt that he had no ill intentions towards me, and when he was standing in the ruins..."
Gu Hongying gave a metaphor that the other three could not quite understand: "I felt as if I saw an old antique in time."
"Unfortunately, I only saw it once before the inexplicable white mist blocked my view. When I came to my senses, I was at the entrance of the ruins again." Gu Hongying said, "So I went in again, but it was empty."
"This description..." Lu Yayin touched her chin, "Why do I feel it sounds familiar?"
"Are you sure it just sounds familiar? Weren't you laughing so hard in the group a few days ago because of this?" Qin Fei reminded while driving, "A leopard is better than a tiger!"
"What happened to Bao Shenghu?" Lu Yayin asked subconsciously. Then she was stunned for a second and burst into laughter that shocked the world and made the gods and ghosts weep. "Hahahahahahahaha I remembered hahahahaha————"
She continued in one breath: "Is it the black panther that was sent to the zoo as if it had a mental disability and woke up to find itself behind a glass wall surrounded by tourists and screaming like a pig?"
"According to reliable sources, he stole the Emperor's Fluid from a young man of a big boss, and was caught by the big boss and given a lesson—" Lu Yayin's smile disappeared as she spoke, "Don't tell me the location is in Huailin Town, right?"
This incident is a lifelong dark history for the underage boy Bao Shenghu. Not many people know about it. Their team only knew the general idea of the incident because they were well-informed, but they knew no specific details.
But his life was not harmed, and his cultivation was not destroyed. He just made a small fool of himself. Everyone just listened to it as a funny story and moved on. No one would delve into the details.
Who knew these two things were intricately connected!
"This description... sounds familiar to me." As they laughed wildly, Meng Ziqiu paused on the keyboard and said, "I seem to have heard it somewhere."
"Ah?" Lu Yayin turned her head in shock, "Boss, you also read these gossips?"
"No." Meng Ziqiu hesitated for a moment, then switched his hand to the software and opened a chat interface. "A few days ago, the elder of the White Snake tribe chatted with me and said that a young man from their tribe went out to rob the Emperor's Flowing Plasma, but he was ignorant of the world and offended a senior. Not only was he detained for an inspection of his studies, but he also lost the Emperor's Flowing Plasma because of his scheming. After returning to the inner world, he turned back to his original form and cried the half-pound Xia Liangquilt down to one pound."
Meng Ziqiu opened the chat box between him and the snake elder. There was a video in the chat box. The angle of the video was a bit subtle, as if it was attached to some very hidden object. A small snow-white snake about the length of an adult's arm was crying silently with its mouth open in the quilt, tears falling down, and the quilt became wet to a degree visible to the naked eye.
After this ten-second video, there is a text message, and the word “HAHAHAHA” almost takes up half of the screen:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha these people-hating and dog-hating trouble-making brats have finally got their day, their tricks have finally hit a wall!
I couldn't beat the fact that my learning progress was checked and I found out that I was equivalent to an illiterate in the eyes of other seniors. I came back and cried with anger. Hahahahahahaha, I deserved it! Hahahahahaha, I'm so happy!
When this little girl grows up, I will play this video on loop a hundred times at her coming-of-age ceremony!
Hahahahahahahahahaha———
After reading this chat record, Lu Yayin said: "...What a loss."