HI Chapter 104

He had never experienced the momentary blankness over and over again, nor the tangible warmth of hot water in his dreams. Everything around him remained unchanged, with the sounds of Lin Zhen and Yu Feizhou urging from outside, mixed with the chaotic noises of players moving throughout the castle. Together with the warmth from Yan Mingguang gripping his wrist, it felt all too real.

—So this is how Yan Mingguang would react.

A notification sound from Lou echoed in his mind, informing him that he had earned a reward of 240 Perception and 200 Body Index for solving the dream quest in Puppet Castle.

Under the gift of Perception, Yan Wei’s awareness of his surroundings became increasingly clear.

He opened his eyes.

Right in front of him was Yan Mingguang’s face, so close.

The grip on his hand seemed a bit stronger than usual, more forceful than the usual tug, accompanied by a slight tremor as if he was controlling his strength.

Still caught in the emotional aftermath of the dream, Yan Wei recalled Yan Mingguang’s earlier question. A nerve in his brain misfired, and he blurted out softly, “…It felt like I was kissing you?”

Immediately after saying it, Yan Wei regretted it with full clarity.

He swallowed hard.

Reality and dreams had blurred several times, and his consciousness was still quite muddled. Now that he had completely pulled away, his convoluted reflexes finally returned to the starting point, and he felt himself burning up.

The urgency of breaking the situation had suppressed these emotions. Now that Yan Mingguang was right in front of him, Yan Wei was completely flustered.

He suddenly pushed Yan Mingguang’s hands away, agilely jumped off the bed, grabbed the coat by the bedside, and said, “…I was trapped in a dream. I was just dreaming. I need to go.”

“I have plans today; we need to hurry. My Benevolent Automaton should be starting to act.”

Before Yan Wei could reach the door, he was suddenly pulled back by the person behind him.

He was already walking fast, and with that pull, Yan Wei was easily yanked back a step, brought right in front of Yan Mingguang.

The other man looked down at him. The lenses reflected a bit of light, obscuring some of Yan Mingguang’s gaze. Yan Wei could only see those bottomless black eyes staring at him, devoid of any emotion. Yan Mingguang made no other move, just held onto him, silent.

Yan Wei’s palms grew slightly damp from sweat. He feared Yan Mingguang would notice his discomfort, so he hurriedly raised his hand to brush Yan Mingguang’s hand away. Just as he was about to speak, Yan Mingguang beat him to it, asking, “What did you dream about?”

Yan Wei was instantly caught off guard.

He couldn’t say it was because he had used kissing Yan Mingguang as the focal point to escape the nightmare, and ended up kissing his way right to the real person. So he had casually said he was dreaming, attributing all his actions to that.

But with Yan Mingguang’s question, he realized something was off—what kind of dream would lead to such actions upon waking? He had clearly only been in a dream within the instance, merely using the method of kissing Yan Mingguang to break through, yet with Yan Mingguang’s question, he realized how his words could be misinterpreted by others.

He had intended to downplay it, but it turned into something he couldn’t articulate.

Yan Wei: “…”

Fortunately, the next moment, Lin Zhen’s impatience broke his awkwardness.

A loud kick sounded, and Lin Zhen kicked the door to Yan Wei’s room wide open.

Lin Zhen stood at the door with his arms crossed, impatiently saying, “Are we going or not? I just listened in; there are over forty seed players hunting for the ‘prey’ hiding in the rooms. If we don’t leave now, I’ll be happy to engage directly.”

“It hasn’t actually taken long,” Yu Feizhou shook his head helplessly, “Yan Mingguang just came in a few minutes ago, and Yan Wei needs time to get up. Waiting another minute is fine.”

Another Yu Feizhou added, “Even if people have arrived, it doesn’t matter; we’re still here, we can fight.”

Yan Wei’s intended explanation was completely obliterated by Lin Zhen’s kick.

He merely exchanged a glance with Yan Mingguang—one was evasive and awkward, the other deep and silent.

Yan Wei turned back and quickly walked out of the room.

At this moment, he could already confirm that he was awake, and he knew they were still in the instance. The first night of the game had passed, and now breaking through and finding ways to win the competition was the most important.

Behind him, Yan Mingguang quickly followed. Lin Zhen and the two Yu Feizhou walked in succession, and the group surveyed their surroundings. Yan Wei paused his steps, spreading out the Perception he had just gained.

After a moment, he chose a path that seemed to have the fewest people: “Let’s go this way.”

Lin Zhen asked, “Is there any clue here?”

“No, I just feel there are fewer people.”

“Fewer people and we still go?? Wait, isn’t this instance about catching people?”

Yan Wei didn’t turn back, lightly laughing, “If we blindly catch people, do we have the absolute power to eliminate everyone, or a way to catch all players in one net? If not, purely racing against speed, do we have any way to leave everyone else behind?”

Lin Zhen was taken aback.

“We don’t,” Yan Wei said, “but we can.”

They had quickly reached a corner of the castle, where there were hardly any people. The guest rooms were already empty.

Yan Wei stopped, lowered his gaze to the ground, and directly squatted down at a wall corner.

The next moment, Yan Mingguang stepped forward, squatting down right in front of him, blocking him. He said, “Searching for structures… I know a bit. Let me do it.”

Yan Wei blinked.

He cleared his throat, awkwardly averted his gaze, and slowly stood up, saying, “Then I’ll leave this to you; I’ll go dig around in another place.”

Lin Zhen glanced at Yan Mingguang, then at Yan Wei, twisting his longbow in his hand, confused, “Wait, what are you two doing? Aren’t we fighting? Aren’t we catching people?”

Yan Wei had already exchanged for an item, and without further ado, he smashed a pit into the ground. On the other side, Yan Mingguang did the same.

Lin Zhen: “?”

One of the Yu Feizhou chuckled, saying, “They’re trying to use this floor that displays Puppet numbers. Although the power box is destroyed, it’s just that the numbers can’t be displayed; the entire internal structure of the castle’s floor is intact. If we can utilize it, we can read the numbers while keeping others from seeing them, giving us an absolute advantage.”

Another added, “In the early stages, getting points one by one is useless and only increases the killing. The later stages are the feast for scoring. Rather than spending time on scattered players in the early stages, it’s better to hold back and deal with those tricky and ruthless opponents later.”

“So we just stay here? What if someone comes and sees us?”

“No one will come. Yan Wei and another him are collaborating to predict the next move of the other players. Since Yan Wei is here, it means the other him is drawing away other players in this area.”

Not far away.

A youth identical to Yan Wei watched the approaching players from a distance, smiling subtly without drawing attention.

He took out a dagger, made a few cuts in the fabric wrapping his arm, tearing the clothing but not breaking the skin.

The next moment, he sheathed the blade, and his once lively eyes lost focus in an instant, his expression vanishing, leaving only a numb and indifferent demeanor. He didn’t hide from those players; instead, he walked down the corridor with a blank face, eyes glazed over.

Someone noticed “Yan Wei” and exclaimed, “There’s someone over there!”

“Is that… a Malevolent Automaton?”

“Run!”

“Why run? Aren’t we going to continue looking for the hidden trash?” Another person was reluctant.

This person pulled him away, saying, “That’s a Malevolent Automaton; didn’t you notice he has cuts on his arm but no blood? Only Malevolent Automatons have no blood and no reason! Since he’s wandering over there, it means there’s no one left. We’re wasting time with a Malevolent Automaton! Let’s hurry to the next place; otherwise, if the trash gets caught by others, it’ll be hard for us to score.”

“Fine,” the other person gritted his teeth, “let’s go.”

“Yan Wei” continued to swagger down the corridor, while those players had already turned around, heading in the opposite direction from where Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang were.

On the other side, Yan Wei had already examined part of the structure beneath the floor.

Yan Mingguang stood up, turned to Yan Wei, and said clearly, “It’s interconnected. Beneath the entire castle floor, there are complete circuits; connecting the power can make everything operate simultaneously, achieving the purpose of displaying numbers. There should be some structures related to the Puppet, but we don’t need to understand them; we just need to connect.”

A moment of surprise flashed in Yan Wei’s eyes.

He hadn’t expected Yan Mingguang to understand this so well. Throughout the instances they had gone through, Yan Mingguang had always been silent while working; now that he thought about it… he probably had many abilities that hadn’t been showcased.

“I also looked,” he said, “I didn’t understand the structure as well as you did; I was mainly looking at how to obtain this information. I just tried using my Perception; it can replace the power connection. But it’s too minimal; as soon as I connected, I couldn’t handle it. I can’t connect the entire castle’s underground wiring to provide operational energy.”

“But…”

“But…”

Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang spoke simultaneously.

“But what?” Lin Zhen asked.

Yan Wei smirked, “But I actually don’t need to connect the entire castle’s underground wiring at once. Although they can be interconnected, I can just connect the section beneath my feet. As long as we place an item that can control the switch and cut off the power in every corner of the castle, it will be fine.”

Yan Wei bent down, first wrapping his hand with a tissue, then picked up a piece of rubble that had cracked from hitting the ground, using a sharp edge to draw a square diagram on the ground.

“Look, let’s assume the castle has only four corners, and I leave power-cutting items at these four corners. When I’m at this top right corner…” Yan Wei circled the other three corners, finally pointing at the top right corner, “I can turn off the power switches at the other three places and then connect only to the section beneath my feet.”

Yu Feizhou’s eyes lit up: “This way, your consumption is minimal, but it’s enough for you—because all we need is the number beneath our feet. We don’t need to make it visible to everyone like the design of this instance; we just need to see the number when we want to. But this method… requires us to traverse Puppet Castle.”

Then, in every area they passed, they would hide the power-cutting items, and when they needed to use them, they would activate all the items’ cutting functions, individually turning off the area they were in. This way, Yan Wei could use Perception to replace the massive power supply as energy, temporarily maintaining the operation of the section beneath his feet, thus reading the Puppet numbers. This might seem rather useless in the early stages, but as player density decreased in the later stages, and others couldn’t determine the number of Puppets, they would essentially have a significant advantage.

Not only would it slow down the hunting speed of others, but it would also give them a prominent advantage.

The only problem was that they needed to traverse every part of the castle.

“So we might need to spend the first two days here, and our score will always be zero,” Yan Wei said seriously. “We are teammates, and I respect your thoughts. If you don’t want to take the risk—”

Lin Zhen yawned, “You’re so annoying.”

Yan Wei paused, chuckling lightly, “Then let’s get started.”

As he spoke, he slid his fingertip across the Black Ring, exchanging for a white stone from the Information Panel’s shop.

“This is a high-level false stone that can be exchanged in higher-level instances?” Yu Feizhou finally looked confused, “It can simulate the appearance of anything for a day, but it can’t simulate functions; it can only be used for observation.”

Yan Wei transformed this false stone into the appearance of a power-cutting item, walked over to a large vase nearby, and hid the item created from the false stone inside.

“Do you remember the explosion I deliberately delayed last night? I and another me used this to confuse players at the same progress, successfully destroying their support, but now, they are already on guard—they know that in this castle, there’s a team faster than them. So the things we think of now, they can think of too; since they can think of it, they will realize we can think of it as well.”

“I’ve said it before, this instance is a psychological battle, a stage for deduction.”

After hiding the item and repairing the ground with the item, Yan Wei turned around, pointed in a direction, and said, “Let’s go; we’ll start from this path.”

About twenty minutes later.

A woman holding a black staff in one hand and a black card in the other, accompanied by several players, arrived at the place Yan Wei had just been. Beside her stood another woman who looked exactly like her.

They approached a large vase, and one of them suddenly stopped, raised her hand, and took out an item from inside the vase.

“This is an item that cuts off energy related to electricity,” Xu Miaomiao said.

“You guessed right; the person who left an item in the power box before you started tampering with the castle, trying to use the function of reading the Puppet count alone.”

Xu Miaomiao raised her eyebrows slightly, smiling faintly: “What a pity.”

She raised her hand, directly crushing the item, taking out her own exchanged power-cutting item, and placing it in the spot where Yan Wei had hidden his item.

“Since he wants to tamper with the castle, let’s follow his path and reap his rewards.”

Another ten minutes later.

“Yan Wei,” following the traces left by Yan Wei, walked to the side of the large vase.

He looked at the obvious traces that had been repaired on the ground, glanced around, spread out his Perception, and carefully sensed every part of the surroundings.

Suddenly, “Yan Wei’s” gaze landed on that vase.

He walked up to the vase, raised his hand, and took out the item Xu Miaomiao had just left behind. His amber-like eyes flashed with contemplation, brows slightly furrowed, and he lowered his gaze in thought.

After a while, “Yan Wei” smiled.

“…So that’s how it is.”

He directly stored the item left by Xu Miaomiao into his Black Ring, then exchanged for a new power-cutting item using the invitation letter, and stuffed it into the large vase.