Emerald Eyes

The entire corridor fell silent as only the sound of sobbing echoed into the background. The two didn't open their mouths, patiently waiting for the man to calm down.

Xie Ai took his time to stabilize his emotions before realizing what had happened.

Did he just cry in front of this dog-food couple?

His expression twisted for a moment as he quickly wiped his face and stood up, pretending nothing had happened. After taking a few deep breaths, he said, "That kid…"

"Hmmm…. We know." Yu Weimin was cool about it despite knowing they were talking about his brother without taking his name.

Qi Jingguo clicked his tongue as he put his arms on his lover's shoulders. "What, did you really think we were blind and that we wouldn't notice your strangeness?"

Xie Ai pursed his lips and refused to reply.

"If you're in your right mind, say what you have to say." Yu Weimin didn't bother with pleasantries and directly jumped to the topic.

Xie Ai finally sighed and explained everything that had happened, starting from day one. After finishing his tale, he raised his head, staring at the duo with a hint of nervousness hidden deep in his eyes.

"Let's go." Yu Weimin concluded, "The instance isn't following the folktale, but it's the complete opposite."

"As expected, such situations had occurred in the past anyway." Qi Jingguo frowned as he said, "The question is, who and what changed this folktale? From what I remember, the mother, the queen of the demons, was supportive of the little child, and she even encouraged the kid to worship the shrine, but the demon lord and other elders hated him for that."

After that, the story was simple. The little kid was brought in public and humiliated terribly by his own father, even tying him up against the pillar. It was said that the deity from the shrine appeared from that pillar and personally killed the demon lord.

But now that the folktale is distorted, even the queen has turned against her own son. Even the little kid who was supposed to worship the deity ended up destroying the shrine personally with his own hands.

So was the queen responsible for this mess? Or was there something else that they had missed?

From what they knew, if they continued to stay here in this palace, something terrible would have happened. Even though they doubted the little kid's identity and his intentions, they couldn't ignore the warning.

Yu Weimin looked outside the window and said, "C'mon. We only have two hours before sunset."

Xie Ai walked behind them as they walked through the corridor. He seemed to be in deep thought.

For some reason, he wanted to stay here and see what was going to happen. Despite his impaired vision and his clumsy attitude, he couldn't sit back when Yu Chen was getting burned to death like this.

If he took the hallucination that appeared in front of him seriously, the little kid had already burned to death. So why was his soul trapped here? Even stranger, why did the ghost kid end up getting killed all over again?

He thought about a dead body appearing every night in the prison and frowned.

Something was strange here. He felt like he had lightly touched upon the truth of the matter, and there seemed to be a blurry wall between his mind and reality.

The building itself had several floors, and looking at the top, it touched the sky. The structure of the entire building dated back to somewhere between the 6th to the 10th century. There wasn't a trace of electricity back then, and people would fight with swords, and even the imperial guards would have swords on their waists.

But the same thing couldn't be said about the demons present in that era. They used their powers to fight back instead. Even if the guards wander about with swords on their waists, they never get to take them out, and their work would be done with a flick of their hands.

Right now, all they had to find out was that NPC.

Xie Ai frowned as he asked as they turned to the left corridor and continued walking, "Can the key NPC be a bad person?"

"Depends on the situation," replied Qi Jingguo. "Once we had entered an instance with the main villain as the key NPC, and even worse, he was guarding the window. So we had to kill him first and jump."

Xie Ai nodded and stopped talking. So he still couldn't rule out the possibility that the queen would be the key NPC. Of course, the ghost kid was also under suspicion.

Then, what about the guards?

He finally asked another question. "Are the key NPCs always the most powerful beings in the instances?"

"It also depends on the situation. We managed to enter an instance where a dog was the key NPC. A dog, can you believe it?" Qi Jingguo chuckled at the memory. "I remember how hard Xiao Min was trying to get information out of that little, poor dog. The latter deflated because of the constant torture and directly ran away."

Xie Ai's mouth twitched as he went silent once again.

The corridors they passed by were full of fungus without a trace of painting on the walls. There was a door at every interval, and most of them were locked. Those doors looked like the rooms were servant quarters, all old and greezy without a trace of decoration on the surface.

At this time, just as they turned in another direction, the state of the doors changed. The doors started to be decorated with silver and dark threads all over the place, looking ghastly.

The duo stopped and opened the first door, revealing a big throne room in front of them.

The throne room wasn't exactly what they thought it should have been. The entire room was full of dark energy as dark clouds full of red threads hovered over the ceiling. The entire room was empty, and even the chairs were scattered all over the place. The pillars were all broken to the point where you couldn't tell which piece of brick on the ground belonged to which broken pillar.

Only the throne remained intact. In fact, there was also someone sitting right there, staring at the three of them with a trace of darkness in his emerald eyes.