Realm Walker

Somewhere in the central district of the ancient town, Li Xianzong stopped before a grand residence. The paint on the front gate was flaking, and the gate itself was riddled with wormholes. Cobwebs covered the weathered door plaque above it. Faint characters were barely legible beneath the dirt and grime: Zhao Residence.

He climbed the steps, reached the gate, and gave it a gentle push. A long, drawn-out creak set teeth on edge as the door swung open.

The group crossed the threshold into the courtyard. A quick survey confirmed the place had been abandoned for some time. The flower beds lining the front garden had been left unattended for ages, with nothing but scattered tufts of wild grass sprouting from them.

Beneath the upswept eaves of the outer hall sat a waist-high water cistern, the kind wealthy households kept on hand for firefighting—an old world equivalent of a modern extinguisher.

As they crossed the front courtyard and reached the outer hall, a rancid stench drifted from the cistern and hit them full in the face. The youth with a missing left ear wrinkled his nose, stepped closer, and peered inside, then swore under his breath.

A bloated, half decomposed corpse was floating in the water.

"Stay sharp. Whatever's in here could be far worse than Blacksmith Wang," Li Xianzong warned the others, then pushed open the doors to the outer hall.

Inside, the furniture had rotted to ruin. Everything the eye could reach was decay and dust. A corpse lay slumped beside the doorway, in an advanced state of decomposition. Judging by the clothing, it had been one of the household servants.

Li Xianzong crouched beside the body and, without the slightest hesitation, used his butterfly knife to slice open the clothing. After a careful inspection, he reported his findings to the others.

"Her heart and liver have been removed."

The six of them moved past the corpse and pressed deeper into the compound. Along the way, they encountered several more bodies, all with their hearts and livers carved out. The dead were scattered throughout, with every one of them facing the outer gate, as though they had been cut down mid-flight.

The Zhao residence looked like it had been the scene of a truly horrific massacre.

The youth with the missing ear scanned the surroundings and spat a curse. "I can't make heads or tails of this storyline."

The entire town was deserted. Blacksmith Wang had been cursed, and some terrible fate had clearly befallen the Zhao residence as well. There had to be a reason connecting it all, but with so few clues, speculation was pointless. The uncertainty left everyone on edge.

Of course, none of this changed the fact that they still had a storyline to follow. Based on what they had seen, the Zhao residence had been struck by some calamity, and their next objective was almost certainly to deal with whatever evil lurked here.

Still, the fog of confusion gnawed at morale and left them feeling exposed.

Li Xianzong kept his voice even as he addressed the others. "In a situation like this, there are two possibilities. One, the Yin Yang Town dungeon has a hidden quest. Two, uncovering the story unlocks bonus rewards and increases the payout. But higher rewards will always come with higher difficulty. For an average team, the smartest move is to just follow the main storyline."

"Should we try cracking the hidden story?" asked the gaunt, middle-aged man.

Li Xianzong considered for a moment. "We could, but not yet."

The youth with the missing ear raised an eyebrow. "How come?"

Li Xianzong quickly laid out his reasoning. "The information we pulled from Blacksmith Wang suggests every character in this town has a corresponding 'story.' Even if we gathered every scrap of intel on our side, we still wouldn't be able to solve it completely, because the other half of the puzzle sits with the Lawful team.

"Yin Yang Town is a symmetrical dungeon. Half the content is on our side, while the other half is on theirs. Cracking the hidden storyline will probably come down to the final showdown. At least, that's how it looks from our end. It also depends on whether the Lawful team can solve their half independently."

The gaunt man licked his lips. "I can barely wait. Do you think there are any pretty women on the Lawful team?"

The others were more concerned with whether the Lawful team had anyone as formidable as Li Xianzong.

They pressed on without delay, crossing the inner courtyard to reach the door of the inner hall. Li Xianzong stopped at the entrance and was about to push it open when his outstretched hand froze. They heard a low, delirious murmur coming through the crack in the door.

"No one will take my treasure. No one will take my treasure..."

Behind him, his team tensed as if facing a mortal threat.

The gaunt man dropped his voice down to a whisper. "It's right inside."

Li Xianzong drew a deep breath and shoved the door open. As the wooden doors swung wide, the group saw what lay within the inner hall and froze in stunned silence.

The spacious chamber was dominated by a towering mountain of treasure, heaped high with gold, bolts of silk, coins, calligraphy scrolls, porcelain, and other precious goods. Beside the golden mountain knelt a corpulent figure in a squire's robes, utterly oblivious to the intruders at his back, repeating his delirious whisper.

"Hah... hah..."

Li Xianzong heard heavy, ragged breathing. It was coming from behind him.

His companions were staring at the mountain of gold, eyes blazing with naked greed. They had silently spread out, away from one another, each watching the others with open suspicion. Every one of them wanted the treasure, and none of them wanted anyone else to have it.

Li Xianzong's heart sank like a stone. Those idiots had been bewitched.

The golden mountain radiated a hidden enchanting power, and the only reason he remained clear-headed was because he himself was an Enchanting Demon, with a natural resistance to such influence.

In front of him sat Squire Zhao, a threat of unknown magnitude, while behind him, his teammates were on the verge of tearing each other apart. One wrong move and they were looking at a total party wipe.

At that moment, Squire Zhao turned around. The face that greeted them was a mask of advanced decay, crawling with maggots with hollow eye sockets from which eyeballs dangled from their stalks, swaying gently against rotting cheeks.

"Hungry... So hungry..."

Squire Zhao's jaw split open, the corners of his mouth tearing all the way to his ears as he roared, "I'm going to eat your hearts and livers!"

***

Queen nearly leapt out of her skin. She whipped hear head around, and sure enough, perched on her shoulder was an infant with blue-black skin and horrifying white pupils.

Her face grew paler still. "I... I can actually see a vengeful spirit? Am I already that weak...?"

As a member of an official organization, her knowledge far exceeded that of any freelance Walker. She knew that unless one was of a specialized class or had special skills, the only ones who could see spirits with the naked eye was someone with a body so depleted of vitality that their yang energy had virtually collapsed.

"Don't move!" Guan Ya called out, her voice tight and urgent.

She reached into empty air and drew out a rifle roughly 1.2 meters long, adorned with golden patterns. It was constructed in the style of a 19th century weapon, which made it both ornate and antique.

She brought the rifle up and pressed the stock firmly against her shoulder. Then, planting her long legs wide and firmly sending her weight into the ground, she took aim at the blue-black infant spirit on Queen's shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

The sound of the shot was impossibly loud, and the powerful recoil kicked her right shoulder back. The spinning bullet punched clean through the infant wraith's skull, gouging a deep crater in the wall behind it and sending cracks spiderwebbing across the surface.

The infant tumbled from Queen's shoulder and writhed on the ground, badly wounded. The rifle was a high-level Scout-class item with only one function: raw physical lethality. It was the evil-breaking effect imbued in the bullet that had truly hurt the vengeful spirit. As a Scout rose in levels, they cultivated a crystal clear, unclouded mind capable of piercing illusions and shattering evil.

"This is just treating the symptoms and not the disease. To deal with vengeful spirits properly, we need a Nocturnal Specter."

Guan Ya worked the bolt, ejected the spent casing, lowered the barrel, and took aim at the writhing spirit once more. Before she could fire, the wounded infant wraith let out a series of shrill, piercing wails, each cry more agonized than the last.

The next instant, answering cries rose from every direction. From the river, the alleyways, the rooftops of the buildings lining the street, blue black infant wraiths crawled into view, one after another.

In moments, Guan Ya and Queen were surrounded.

Queen swept her gaze across the closing ring and noted seven or eight of the vicious creatures around them. "This is bad. Where did all these baby wraiths come from?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Guan Ya replied as she swung her barrel in a slow arc, senses on full alert. "We triggered Widow Xu's storyline. They're clearly connected to her."

Queen was taken aback. "You're saying these infant wraiths are hers?"

That sounded farfetched to her.

A wraith lunged in from the flank, scuttling toward Guan Ya on all fours. She pivoted and fired from the hip. The shot cracked the flagstones, sent stone chips flying, and drew an agonized shriek from the wraith.

Queen unclipped the hoop earring from her lobe and hurled it at another wraith. The ring transformed into a loop of water in an attempt to bind the creature, but it passed right through.

Water was a tangible substance. It could not restrain an intangible spirit.

"This is completely useless," Queen lamented, her voice strained. "We need Yuanshi Tianzun. He's a Nocturnal Specter. He could deal with these spirits without breaking a sweat."

Vengeful spirits this powerful were already at the level of a low-tier spirit servant. One would never encounter anything like them in the real world, and even if one did, Nocturnal Specter colleagues and official teammates would be on hand to deal with them. In the real world, spirits of this caliber were troublesome at worst, but never lethal. Running into them inside a dungeon, however, was an entirely different story.

Guan Ya calmly worked the bolt of her rifle to eject the spent casing, speaking as she reloaded. "Yuanshi isn't coming. If his enemies were vengeful spirits, he'd have dealt with them already and come to back us up. He hasn't, which means his enemies aren't spirits, and he's got his own hands full. These wraiths were sent specifically after the two of us."

She fired again, driving back another wraith.

Queen realized she could do nothing but stand there and act as a sounding board for Guan Ya's commentary. "Why us specifically?"

Guan Ya paused to consider. "Probably because we're both beautiful."

"What?" Queen exclaimed, staring at her.

Even neck deep in crisis, Guan Ya's mind remained razor sharp. "Think about it. The trigger to enter Widow Xu's storyline was separating the men in the team from the women. We've entered her storyline, but instead of meeting the widow herself, we're up against this swarm of infant wraiths. She almost certainly sent them to kill us while she personally handles the men in our group.

"Where would a widow get this many infant wraiths, anyway? Were they left behind by her husband before he died? She'd have to be a sow, birthing litters of eight. And consider this: Widow Xu only wanted the men. Yuanshi may have been wrong. It wasn't the Widow who cursed Granny Wang's son. A woman like her would never resent a man for having his way with her. If anything, she'd have been thrilled to spread her legs."

"You're still cracking jokes at a time like this?" Queen snapped, but she understood the implication right away. "So you're saying the men on our team are probably rolling around with that harlot right now? Men really are worthless. So what do we do?"

"All we can do is wait for Yuanshi to come save us. Trust him, even if he is a pervert," Guan Ya said as she fired another shot.

The eight infant wraiths circled them like a pack of hyenas, feinting and probing, ready to pounce.

Queen lowered her voice. "Guan Ya, there's another one behind you."

Guan Ya started and spun around. There, by the riverbank just beside her, a plump little infant wraith lay on its belly, head submerged in the water, round bottom pointed toward the sky.

Compared to the vicious, blue black wraiths with their maddened eyes, this little one emanated a far purer aura. Guan Ya could detect no malice in it whatsoever.

When did it get behind me? And what's it looking for in the water? Instinctively, she swung the rifle toward the small figure by the river.

One of the blue-black wraiths seized the opening. It launched itself forward on all fours, scrabbling at terrifying speed, and latched onto Guan Ya's calf. Bone-deep cold flooded her body in an instant, and she could feel her vitality draining away at an alarming rate.

Heart sinking, she angled the barrel downward and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet struck the wraith, shattered the flagstone beneath it, then ricocheted straight into Guan Ya's own calf. Flesh tore apart in an instant, and she could see bone through the gaping wound.

This rifle really has cursed my luck, Guan Ya thought as she staggered back toward the river, pulling Queen with her.

Queen's face drained of color. "Are you okay?"

"Not remotely," Guan Ya replied, ignoring the blood streaming from her leg. "If that brat Yuanshi doesn't get here within five minutes, things are going to get very ugly for us."