Realm Walker

There were two large buildings in the rear courtyard behind the blacksmith's forge. The one on the right served as the blacksmith's living quarters, while the left was used as a warehouse for ironwork.

The gaunt middle-aged man led Li Xianzong and the others to the warehouse first. He shoved open the doors, sealed shut for what must have been ages, and a wave of stale, rust laden air rolled over them.

Li Xianzong stepped over the threshold and swept a steady gaze over the interior. The warehouse was lined with torture instruments of every variety: razors, steel needles, thumbscrews, branding irons, standing cangues, tiger benches, and more.

Li Xianzong narrowed his eyes. These were nothing like Yi Chuanmei's idea of "instruments." No, the things in this warehouse were designed to break people—real instruments of torture. Most were coated in dust and riddled with rust, but a few looked freshly forged, as though they had been completed only days ago.

"Why would a blacksmith have this many torture instruments stockpiled in his warehouse?" someone behind him asked.

The speaker was a muscular youth with unremarkable features and a defiant set to his jaw. He looked like trouble at a glance, the kind of young man who thrived on violence. That sort of demeanor was nothing special among Evil-class Walkers, though. What set this one apart was his missing left ear, sliced clean off by what must have been a blade.

"That's not all," the gaunt man replied. "Look closely. Some of these are old, while some are new. Blacksmith Wang never stopped forging them."

He picked up two razors to demonstrate. One was caked in rust; the other gleamed with a freshly honed edge.

"He was repeating the same meaningless cycle of forging, over and over," Li Xianzong declared with finality.

The youth with the missing ear frowned. "What's the behavioral logic behind this NPC? Or is this just some decorative fluff with no real significance?"

At that moment, a man in a tailored suit exclaimed, "Look what I found!"

Everyone turned. In his hand was a steel nail, roughly two inches long, colored dark red from dried blood.

Li Xianzong's eyes flickered. He took the nail and examined it, and a few seconds later, a message materialized before him.

【Name: Nail of Curses】

【Type: Consumable】

【Function: Destroying Souls】

【Description: This steel nail once pierced the heart of a powerful being. In her final moments, her resentment coiled around the nail, forming a curse. Anyone wounded by it will have their soul consumed by the curse and perish.】

【Note: I curse you! I curse you to die as violently as I did!】

Li Xianzong barked a short laugh. "Now that's a powerful consumable. Makes sense, doesn't it? We took down a tough elite, so the dungeon threw us a bone."

He looked around at the group. "I'll hold onto this. Any objections?"

The others shrugged. Evil-aligned Walkers worshiped strength. The powerful ruled, and once someone established their dominance, their authority was ironclad. Anyone who disagreed was welcome to challenge them, provided they were willing to stake their life on it. Lawful-aligned Walkers, on the other hand, would have taken a vote, held a discussion, while also requiring discoverer's personal consent.

The team combed through every instrument and iron piece in the warehouse, but found nothing else of value. Satisfied, the group left the warehouse and headed for Blacksmith Wang's living quarters.

Creak.

Li Xianzong pushed open the wooden door and studied the room. A bed built from stacked green bricks sat beneath the window. A square table occupied the center, and a wardrobe stood against the opposite wall.

The group ransacked the room, and found an account ledger inside a wooden chest meant for clothes.

Li Xianzong, as team captain, flipped open the threadbound booklet, glanced at it, and looked up at his teammates.

"Does anyone here know how to read traditional Chinese characters?"

The ledger was written entirely in traditional script, and the handwriting was atrocious. Li Xianzong quickly realized his own literacy fell short of deciphering it.

Traditional characters? The evil class Walkers exchanged blank looks and fell into an awkward silence.

The man in the suit stepped forward. "Let me have a look."

Li Xianzong exhaled with quiet relief and handed it over.

The man studied it for some time before smiling. "It's the financial ledger for the forge. I know who those torture instruments were made for. A man named Squire Zhao. But the numbers in this ledger don't match what we saw. There are far too many instruments in that warehouse. The quantity far exceeds what Squire Zhao ordered."

Li Xianzong furrowed his brow. He sensed it was a clue, one the dungeon had deliberately planted for the Walkers.

Li Xianzong had survived an A-rank dungeon before. That was what had earned him the title of genius, after all. The higher the difficulty, the more a dungeon tested a Walker's ability, and much of the critical information had to be discovered independently. He shared his thoughts with the group.

The gaunt man considered his proposition for a moment and said, with some uncertainty, "I have a theory, though I'm not sure about it. Wang the Blacksmith seems to be cursed. I caught a faint trace of curse energy on him. But Curse is a Saint-tier Hex Master ability, and I haven't reached that level yet, so I can't say for certain. But since this is a PvP dungeon, the presence of curses isn't unusual."

"A curse..." Li Xianzong processed the information and arrived at a conclusion. "A curse that compels him to forge torture instruments without end?"

He didn't dwell on it long. "We're leaving. Let's go find Squire Zhao. He should be our next target. We need to clear the side quests before the Lawful team gets to them."

***

"Xiu'er! Xiu'er!" Zhang Yuanqing cried at the top of his lungs as he walked down a street on the western side of town. "My dear Xiu'er, where are you?!"

Guan Ya, Queen, and the rest trailed silently behind him. Queen observed their surroundings, then leaned toward the mixed-heritage beauty beside her.

"Is he always this lively?" she asked in a low voice.

She had been burning with curiosity about the legendary Yuanshi Tianzun. After spending some time with him, she'd discovered that this famous figure carried none of the arrogance or coldness she expected from a prodigy, but he wasn't humble or mild-mannered either. He was talkative, lively, and could chat about anything with anyone.

She didn't dislike it, though.

Guan Ya let out a soft laugh. "He'd been with the Five Elements Alliance less than a week before he was on friendly terms with every colleague in the squad. Also, you know Fu Qingyang, right?"

"Of course," Queen replied with a smile as she fiddled with the silver hoop on her earlobe. "Now there's a true prodigy. They say he's handsome, but ice-cold and impossible to get close to. He doesn't have as many female admirers as Ling Jun from the Taiyi Sect, but the ones he has are fiercely devoted."

Guan Ya tilted her head and glanced at her striking colleague. "Well, that Fu Qingyang? He actually likes Yuanshi. Whenever Yuanshi is around, he suddenly has a lot more to say."

Queen's jaw dropped. "Is that the whole 'geniuses recognizing geniuses' thing?"

"No. Fu Qingyang just likes hearing Yuanshi sucking up to him."

"..."

Just then, Fire Virtue spoke up irritably. "Does Widow Xu actually live around here? What if that old woman was lying to us?"

They had been searching for half an hour. Zhang Yuanqing's throat was nearly raw, and the legendary widow had yet to show even a shadow of herself. If they couldn't find her, the progress on their quest would stall completely.

The sun beat down mercilessly, baking the ancient town. After half an hour of walking, everyone was drenched in sweat. They ducked into a shaded alley to rest.

Li Chunfeng leaned against an aged white wall and fanned himself with his hand. "Are we missing something? Some piece of information we overlooked?"

Could they be missing something? Zhang Yuanqing lowered his head in thought, mentally replaying every detail. He didn't spot anything they had missed. Then again, not being able to find it didn't mean it wasn't there. If he triggered his old ailment, he could recall every detail with perfect clarity, but the tradeoff wasn't worth it.

Guan Ya settled in beside him, thought for a few seconds, then spoke. "No, we haven't missed any critical clues. Widow Xu has only come up twice—once when the old woman mentioned where her house was, and once when we found the straw doll. Neither of those connects to the problem we're facing now."

Lotus Eater, the round-faced youth, scrunched up his brow. "It's so hot. I can barely think straight. I'm parched. Anyone else?"

Me too, Zhang Yuanqing agreed silently, then immediately turned to Queen with a grin. "Your Majesty, how about blessing us with some of your juices?"

"What kind of juices? That sounds weird coming from you," Queen muttered.

If you were Guan Ya, I'd have said that line while staring right at your chest! Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself.

Making suggestive jokes at Guan Ya was simply playing to her interests. She was an open-minded lady who enjoyed that sort of thing. But pulling the same routine with other women would just make him look like a creep.

Judging by appearance alone, Queen was every inch the gorgeous, mature type. Silver hoops, smoky eyes, a summer top and cropped pants hugging a figure that curved in all the right places. But unlike Guan Ya, who relished innuendo, Queen was rather innocent when it came to that sort of thing.

"It's true that Water Ghosts can control water, but I can't conjure it out of thin air," she said.

Seeing how the heat was getting to everyone, she thought for a moment, then said, "I'll head to the river and bring some back. No matter how dirty the water is, a Water Ghost can purify it and make it safe to drink."

"Don't go too far," Guan Ya called after her.

"Relax," Queen replied without looking back. "We won't run into the Evil team before we finish the side quest."

Zhang Yuanqing watched her graceful figure recede into the distance, then turned back to the group. "I think finding Xu Xiu'er requires a specific trigger, but we don't have enough information yet to figure out what it is."

"Try approaching it from the character's background," Guan Ya prompted.

"Her background?" Li Chunfeng murmured thoughtfully. "She's a widow who presumably cursed the old woman's son. That means she's likely to be a Hex Master. Granny Wang's son must have wronged her somehow—probably forced his way into her home at night.

"But there's a gap in the logic. If she's a Hex Master, how could an ordinary man have harmed her in the first place? Of course, we can't confirm whether the son was actually ordinary. And either way, that doesn't directly solve our current problem."

"What are you even going on about?" Fire Virtue cut in impatiently. "You Scholars love to overthink things. This is simple. The old woman's son slept with her, and she cursed him. That means she hates men."

"She hates men, so she's avoiding us? That... actually makes sense," said Lotus Eater, the pudgy youth, nodding enthusiastically.

"It makes no sense at all," Grass Upon the Plains said flatly. "Do you really think none of the Walkers ever encountered this storyline in the past? Were none of them men?"

"Well..." Lotus Eater had no answer for that.

Guan Ya considered it carefully. "No, Fire Virtue's guess has merit. Here's what I'm thinking. What if this part of the quest requires a female Walker to trigger it?"

Her words sent a visible jolt through the group.

Queen had gone off alone.