After tricking An Miao into wasting her 【Heavenly Thunder Talisman】, Zuo Lin'an killed her with ease.
Before leaving the courtyard where the guest rooms were located, he seemed to sense something. He stopped in his tracks and turned to glance at a certain corner.
Sitting there was a mini puppet, and Zuo Lin'an happened to lock eyes with it.
This simple action terrified Chang Sheng, who was using the puppet to spy. He immediately retracted his consciousness.
Of course, Zuo Lin'an had done this precisely to scare him.
After all, he was a specter, so such behavior was only natural.
He wondered if Chang Sheng would ever dare return to the guest rooms.
Seeing that the puppet remained still and the lifelike gleam in its eyes had vanished, he finally turned and left.
It was time to find Liu Da.
Habitually concealing his figure and pulling in his specter aura, he took a step forward and vanished from the spot.
At that moment, Chang Sheng was hiding nervously in a corner of the woodshed. The puppets he had stationed outside were all on high alert; the instant a specter approached, he would know.
Yet, after waiting for several minutes, the specter still hadn't appeared.
Only then did he let out a small sigh of relief.
“It seems the specter only found the puppet I left there and doesn't know I'm hiding here.”
“Then...”
He frowned slightly.
“The specter killed An Miao in the guest room just now. Is it going after Liu Da now?”
Naturally, he had no idea where Liu Da had run off to. After all, aside from the puppets around him, he only had that one back in the guest room.
“Should I send a few more out and station them in different corners of this old residence?”
If the specter appeared, he would be able to pinpoint its location immediately, giving himself ample time to hide, escape, or set up traps.
Chang Sheng didn't hesitate for long. He quickly selected ten puppets and sent them to lie in wait in various corners of the old residence.
Now, he had fewer than ten left by his side.
“Phew... with this, I should be safe for now.”
Chang Sheng grabbed another piece of wood from the pile and began crafting puppet parts.
“I need to hurry up and replenish my stock, just in case I run out later.”
As for An Miao's corpse in the guest room, he didn't care in the slightest.
Zuo Lin'an naturally had no intention of going after Chang Sheng. He wanted to keep this player around, so he only needed to ensure the man survived for three days.
As for his talent?
He couldn't care less.
In any case, it definitely wasn't a talent that could allow him to clear the dungeon directly.
He made his way down the mountain and found Liu Da with ease.
By this time, Liu Da had already run down the stone steps to the foot of the mountain, where he happened to spot a small path.
Standing on the path, he kept scanning his surroundings.
Zuo Lin'an could see the clear terror on his face. As he walked, he kept glancing back.
He was terrified that the specter would catch up to him, or that it was watching him from the shadows.
However, ever since he escaped from the specter earlier and ran all the way down the mountain, no specter had appeared. Meanwhile, his specter item sticker only lasted for two minutes.
If the specter really wanted to kill him, it surely would have caught up after those two minutes.
But it hadn't.
Because of this, Liu Da assumed the specter must have temporarily abandoned its hunt.
“Phew...”
“It must have gone after An Miao or Chang Sheng.”
He let out a long sigh of relief. Feeling much lighter, he finally had the peace of mind to observe his surroundings.
“Where does this path... lead to?”
Looking at the path stretching into the distance, Liu Da frowned slightly.
Should he go check where it led?
Having cleared a dungeon once before, Liu Da knew that the boundaries of a dungeon were limited, typically surrounded by a layer of white mist.
To his knowledge, no player could pass through the white mist.
The deeper one went, the easier it was to meet a sudden, violent death.
He had tried it back then, but upon sensing a vague, fatal danger, he had wisely retreated immediately.
He had realized then that players could only leave a specter dungeon by completing the main quest.
Any other shortcut simply wouldn't work!
Liu Da took a deep breath.
“I might as well go take a look.”
Perhaps... he could find other NPCs along this path?
The entire dungeon couldn't possibly consist of just a single house on a mountain and two NPCs, right?
He muttered to himself as he walked along the path.
“Speaking of which, does the young master mentioned by the NPC who opened the door actually exist?”
“Or was it just a random remark?”
Walking ahead, Liu Da remained completely oblivious to Zuo Lin'an quietly trailing behind him.
Zuo Lin'an, on the other hand, was simply biding his time.
Once it struck four in the morning, he would make his move.
Liu Da walked along the path for a long time, speeding up several times, and slowing down to a leisurely pace to recover his stamina whenever he felt tired.
Gradually, the time drew closer to four o'clock.
With only five minutes remaining, Zuo Lin'an stopped hiding.
Liu Da, who had been walking forward along the path, suddenly stiffened and turned his head back rigid.
Sure enough, something had gone wrong.
He saw a familiar dark figure, complete with those familiar crimson eyes.
“What's going on?”
“Why is the specter after me again?”
Liu Da simply couldn't wrap his head around it!
“No, that's not right!”
He suddenly realized his train of thought was flawed.
It wasn't that the specter had actively sought him out again; rather, he had triggered the Death Rule, and the specter had already locked onto him.
He had used a specter item to restrain the specter and save his life earlier, but it seemed that survival had only been temporary.
And now, the specter had caught up to him once more.
Liu Da took a deep breath and bolted, even though he knew running was futile.
Without any means to restrain a specter, encountering one meant certain death.
How long he could run depended entirely on how long the specter wanted to chase him.
The moment the specter decided to kill him, his time would be up.
Zuo Lin'an had no idea what was going through Liu Da's mind. He simply trailed quietly behind, ensuring only that Liu Da could see him every time he looked back.
In any case, he wouldn't actually make his move before four in the morning.
After all, he already understood the nature of Liu Da's talent, so there was no need to test him any further.
A few minutes flew by in the blink of an eye.
The moment it struck exactly four o'clock, his specter aura erupted violently.
Running ahead, Liu Da was instantly enveloped by a dense, bone-chilling cold. He felt as though his very bones and flesh were being frozen solid, drastically slowing his escape.
“Oh no!”
The specter was moving in for the kill!
Having used his sticker earlier to survive, Liu Da currently had no specter items left to protect him.
His talent was also a passive type.
Yet at this very moment, his talent was his only remaining hope.
Instinctively, Liu Da checked the countdown for his delayed injuries to take effect.
【Time until Delayed Injury takes effect: 28 days, 11 hours, 33 minutes, and 56 seconds!】
Rate on N.U.
