The Real Use of S-rank Props

The surroundings were dim.

Swaying under the black and purple sky, the blood-stained part of the old locust tree's canopy seemed a bit out of place.

A gust of cold wind blew over, causing the body to sway back and forth like an abandoned burlap sack.

It was only after a long time had passed that someone finally opened their mouth while trembling.

"I-is that a person?"

Zong Jiu frowned, "It should be. From the looks of it, they seem to have died some time ago."

The bullet chat was sweating nervously.

[Not just some time ago. If it had been there any longer, it would've already dissipated, okay… Its arm is hanging down to its ankles…

Oh my god.]

[Yeah, after a person is hung to death, they would sag from gravity. This body should've already been dead for many days now. Otherwise, its tongue wouldn't be so long.]

[Just a while ago when the camera turned to this place, I didn't see such a big person. And it's someone who has been dead for many days? Thrilling.]

[A horror incident has already happened now when they've just entered the instance not long ago. Sure enough, this instance's difficulty level isn't low.]

The white-haired youth turned his head around and asked, "When we were leaving, did anyone pay attention to this tree?"

The other people all shook their heads.

Before entering the house, everyone had carefully looked at it. There was no way that they would've missed such a big person hanging on the canopy of the tree.

And from the time they entered the house to leaving and coming back, it couldn't have taken more than an hour at most.

Without talking about the other features of this old locust tree, the main thing was that it was over a dozen meters tall, and its trunk was straight as a pen. There were no protrusions or places to grab onto on the trunk. It was impossible to get to the canopy of the tree within half an hour.

Not to mention also needing to hang up a body. The difficulty of accomplishing that was considerable. If they wanted to do it without anyone discovering, that was practically impossible.

When collecting the firewood, no one dared to stay in the mud house, so everyone came out.

After this, no one dared to get close to that spooky house. Thus, one team waited here, and the other team went to find the villagers.

After everyone worked together to hook down the body with hemp rope, everyone froze.

The villagers, who were still cursing and scolding before, rushed back to call for others, leaving behind the trainees to stare at each other.

The white-haired youth took one step back, grabbed a branch from a nearby trainee who was holding a bunch of firewood, bent his waist down, and flipped the corpse's head over.

On the ground, there was a blurred, purplish-green face with one eye missing, its expression savage and stiff, unable to close its eyes even in death.

At this moment, the system's notice rang in his ears.

[Not the main task item. Submission failed.]

Zong Jiu lowered his eyes, thinking.

It seemed that to complete the main task, he needed to personally confirm if every corpse was the "perfect corpse" that the corpse chaser was searching for.

Xu Su exclaimed, "Isn't this the person who had led the way for us just now?"

"Bu-but"

Someone's voice was trembling, "Didn't you say that this corpse had already been dead for many days? Then what had led the way for us just now was---

Dead silence.

The time of death and the time when Lao Qiang had led the way for them didn't line up.

Obviously, either the corpse was fake, or… what had led the way for them just now wasn't a human!

The sky became darker and darker, and all was silent in the mountains. In the dark, their expressions became like a fearful statue.

Right then, the villagers who had rushed back walked over, holding torches.

"What are you all gathered here for?"

When Wang Shou came, he was still holding a bowl and chopsticks in his hands. He most likely was called over when he was at the dining table.

Once he walked closer and saw the situation clearly, he was so scared that he fell down on his butt. The bowl in his hand also fell onto the ground.

Zong Jiu stood off to the side, discreetly sweeping a glance at the bowl he dropped.

Dark red soil wrapped up a piece of white meat. Both had just rolled out of the bowl.

Using soil as rice was already strange and uncommon. It was even rarer to have dark red soil. However, there was still a piece of meat paired with it. This made it puzzling.

If they could afford to eat meat, would they not have any rice to eat?

When Zong Jiu wanted to move over and take a closer look at that piece of meat, a violent commotion erupted from the villagers.

"Quick——" After seeing the state the corpse was in, Wang Shou yelled at the top of his lungs, "Call, call my dad over!"

Because of the series of commotions, the other group who had handed in food had also walked out of their house, huddling off to the side and whispering. Their words echoed in the silent night, and the words "mole", "villager", "something happened" could be vaguely heard.

"It must be the mole." Yi Ruisi, who was standing behind Anthony, angrily said.

A while ago, just like the group who didn't hand in food, the group that handed in food had also quickly selected a leader.

Black-Robed Azan didn't state an opinion, so this very wanted role fell upon the A-rank vampire Anthony. After all, as the right-hand man of No. 2, Anthony, known to be barbaric, was not only famous among the vampires but even among the contenders. There was nothing wrong with him taking on the leading role.

It made sense if you thought about it. The reason that the mole cards were different from regular cards was that their main task had a conflict of interest with the main task of regular cards.

Protecting the villagers was the main task of the regular cards. Now a villager had already died. Whether or not the mole played a role in it, the body was found on the old locust tree. If you thought about it, the other group was more suspicious.

Anthony's group had a large portion of veterans. Surviving for them was not a problem if they had a special prop in their hands. Comparatively, carrying out more dangerous challenges and completing chance tasks to raise their system rating was their main goal and top priority.

In the silence, one large and one small figure suddenly appeared in the dark.

An old man limped with a cane, holding a skinny little kid's hand.

Seeing Wang Shou, who was sitting on the ground, the little kid let go of his hand and ran over, calling out dad.

[This instance really is hard. Even little kids are so skinny that they are like a sack of bones and skin.]

[Yeah… Those suffering are always the common people at the bottom. Sigh, they can't even get enough to eat. It really is too sad.]

"Village head!"

The villagers, holding their hoes, backed off to give him a clear path.

The village head, who held a long, straight smoking pipe in his hand, nodded his head. His muddy eyes slowly looked towards the shriveled corpse on the ground.

He didn't know if it was due to the darkness, but for a second, Zong Jiu felt that his eyes had turned completely black.

Wang Shou pulled the child behind him, his expression panicked, "Dad, about an hour ago, Lao Qiang was still with me."

The other villagers all drew near, waiting for the village head's verdict.

"What Grandma Yin said was right."

After a long time, he finally sucked in a breath from the long smoking pipe, "I'm afraid that it's probably for real this time."

"Then what do we do?"

A commotion erupted among the villagers, "We're all just going to wait for death like this?"

"That's right. If it really is like what Grandma Yin said, then wouldn't our whole village be——"

"What are you getting so anxious for? Can you get rice to eat by being anxious?"

The village head knocked on his smoking pipe with annoyance, "Everyone, go back. It's already completely dark outside. Wait until tomorrow morning before we go to the temple and find Grandma Yin to think of a solution. Plus, that old granny says a bunch of crazy things every day. Maybe it's just a coincidence?"

Clearly, these words were quite convincing. The commotion gradually subsided.

Hearing these words, the villagers were convinced and one by one returned while holding their torches.

The trainees, who were watching, looked at each other.

They suddenly felt that the villagers of this village were too calm, so calm that it was like they didn't just see the aftermath of a tragic death just now.

Someone had died. According to normal logic, shouldn't they quickly think of a way to find the murderer? How come it looked like they already knew who the murderer was from their expressions?

Additionally, this person had just led the way for them, and in a flash, he was drained of blood and hung to death. The time between the two didn't make sense. Under such a situation with so many peculiar points, the Tong Bai village's villagers could still be calm and unperturbed. Even the fact that they had become used to seeing dead people due to the years of famine couldn't explain it fully.

Things were definitely not so simple.

Many veterans with lots of experience knew this well, especially Black-Robed Azan, who was frowning so hard that the character "( •̀ - •́ )" appeared between his eyebrows.

The instance had already come to this point. The probability of it being a supernatural type instance was extremely high.

Since the task was to protect the villagers, it meant that the entire village had been targeted. With some deductions they inferred that even if it wasn't an evil spirit that had strong resentment, it at least had to be an extremely scary curse in order for the scope to be so large that it affected the entire village.

Normally, when such a situation occurred, there had to be an unknown story behind it.

They had to figure out what story happened in this village in order to better protect the people in the village.

While they were thinking, Xu Su quietly asked, "Then, then what should we do tonight?"

The house allocated to them was behind the old locust tree. The murder scene was right in front of it. It was impossible to not be scared.

Additionally, not only was the mud house eerie, but an entire wall was also filled with scratch marks, making people creeped out.

"This is a horror instance. Those unusual occurrences definitely aren't coincidences."

Someone laughed dryly, "I think that for the sake of safety, we should think of a way to find a different place or just camp outside since we'll have a fire. If everyone huddled together in a circle, it wouldn't be too cold."

The white-haired youth pretended to think carefully and agreed with him, "I think this suggestion is not bad. Safety is the most important right now. It's better if we stay farther away from that mud house."

No one wanted to go near that mud house. Everyone liked this proposal. Other than the black-haired man in a Mino, who glanced over at the youth, his gaze carrying an obscure meaning, the other people all raised their hands, expressing agreement.

That gaze, Zong Jiu treated it as if it didn't exist.

In fact, the biggest variable in this instance might be Zhuge An because Zong Jiu was confident in being able to disguise himself well in front of other people by using various psychological tactics and his acting abilities.

However, he didn't have any way of dealing with resourceful and smart people like Zhuge An, whose actions didn't follow common sense.

But despite all else, Zhuge An did indeed give him many clues in the first instance and similarly so for Las Vegas. As a smart person, this already counted as showing obvious friendliness.

Just like Zhuge An said, it depended on whether or not Zong Jiu believed it.

Unfortunately, Zong Jiu only believed in himself.

Thus, the group that didn't hand in any food casually found an empty area near the houses and dropped the firewood onto the floor.

After preparations were done, everyone's gaze drifted towards the idling S-rank master No.3, who was doing nothing.

Everyone was very curious about what method he would use to light the fire. But when they turned around, they saw Zhuge An slowly pull out his Taiji Eight Trigrams.

[Am I stupid? What's he doing?]

[This, why did he pull out his S-rank prop? Is there a supernatural being nearby?]

The trainees were shocked, and all of them instantly vigilantly surveyed the surroundings.

Even plants and trees were treated with suspicion.

Zhuge An didn't even bat an eye. He spun the trigram on his hand for half a rotation.

In the position where the Li Gua trigram pointed towards, the firewood started burning with a whoosh.

The bullet chat suddenly understood. [I know now. I searched just now. It turns out that within the eight trigrams, there are trigrams representing the five elements: gold, wood, water, fire, and earth. So… lighting a fire isn't unreasonable. It's just a waste of the cooldown time. (Kneel)]

The other people: "...?"

Although they understood the reasoning, wasn't using this S-rank prop to light a fire a giant waste?