“I wouldn’t let this hidden danger slip away to seek help either.”

“One body is missing.” Lu Mingze and the blank book said in unison.

After looking around, Cao Qian nodded as well. “There really is one missing—the city lord’s body.”

Guan Ling and Qian Jinlai exchanged a glance. “Alright, the three of you—state your conclusions.”

Lu Mingze said, “Even though I don’t know exactly how many people there were, I’m certain the city lord is still alive. The one who gave the statue the mirror must also be him, so naturally, one person is missing.”

Cao Qian added, “According to Youna’s description, the city lord was 185 cm tall or taller. Judging from the skeletons here, all of them are under 180 cm. So the city lord definitely isn’t among them.”

The blank book mentioned, “First, I don’t see any diamonds. Logically, after everyone died, the Diamond Heart should have split into eight pieces and remained at the site, but there are no diamonds here—so someone must have taken them away. Second, although the pattern on the ground has eight positions, and several corpses fell in their corresponding places, there should have been one more person standing in the centre of the formation. There is blood there that’s different from the rest, but no body. Based on these points, the one who presided over this ritual may still be alive.”

“Very well.” Guan Ling and Qian Jinlai nodded, deciding that from now on, they would just listen to the conclusions and stop trying to work out the answers themselves.

The hall was clear at a glance. Apart from several dried skeletons, there was only a book in the corner—and beside it, a pair of boots soaked in blood.

Lu Mingze picked up the boots and heard the narrator’s prompt: “War boots obtained. Current war boots task progress: 0.81. Total task progress: 0.46.”

“Why is it only 0.8?” Lu Mingze asked in confusion. “Do we have to wash the boots clean for it to count as complete?”

The blank book replied, “The bloodstains on the boots seem to be residue from the ritual. This isn’t ordinary blood—it probably needs purification.”

“Even so, I still think finding the boots was far too easy.” Lu Mingze felt something was off. “This is a fivefold difficulty game, after all.”

The blank book said, “Logically, this is normal. For stage-based tasks like this, completing one task usually unlocks another task and advances the main storyline.
After we persuaded Youna, we obtained the clue that a demonic ritual had been performed on the third underground level. We originally thought this was related to the Diamond Heart. But the Diamond Heart is the little prince himself. We indeed didn’t find the Diamond Heart underground—yet we found the war boots instead.
That means the clue from the third underground ritual wasn’t for the Diamond Heart, but for the war boots.”

“But I still feel something’s wrong…” Lu Mingze murmured. “Actually, it’s not just the boots. Getting the gold armour also felt too easy… and the clues for the Sea-Blue Eyes weren’t difficult either. At most, it was just that Youna, being short, didn’t want to see us—but that wasn’t a big issue. Yan Hebi’s height alone solved it.
The game says it’s fivefold difficulty—can it really be this simple?”

He recalled the church incident: if they had rashly destroyed the main door, the seal would have been lifted. That proved the game did have real difficulty, with traps everywhere—one careless move and they would fail. By that logic, both the gold armour and the war boots should carry hidden dangers. But what were they?

Unable to figure it out for the moment, Lu Mingze picked up the book beside the boots and discovered—unexpectedly—that he could read the text inside. The book recorded a ritual for summoning a demon. The process required obtaining an item imbued with divinity, then preparing eight sacrificial substitutes. The person standing at the centre of the formation would, after the ritual concluded, become a demon capable of trampling even the gods.

Lu Mingze read the contents aloud and said, “Judging from this formation, the city lord’s original goal was never to become a god and gain immortality—he wanted to become a demon. The divine item was the Diamond Heart. He used the city’s nobles to carry out the ritual and summon the demon. The bishop noticed in time and sealed the demon using his life and the Holy Sword.
“I took the Holy Sword, and now the seal only has three days left. So in three days, will the demon the city lord became awaken?”

Cao Qian said, “Then where is the demon sealed? In the church’s formation, or here?”

“It should be sealed here.” Lu Mingze pointed to the centre of the ritual.

“Then this must be the place.” Cao Qian agreed.

The others neither refuted nor questioned it. If Lu Mingze said so, then it must be so.

Lu Mingze set the boots down, held the book, and squatted to examine the summoning ritual closely. After a while, he began to feel dizzy. He shook his head and looked up, only to see that his companions all looked unwell. Cao Qian had her fists clenched, as if enduring something.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lu Mingze asked, puzzled.

“Annoyed… irritated,” Cao Qian said with a frown. “The demonic aura here is the same as what we encountered last night—it amplifies negative emotions. You’re not affected?”

“No. But we should head back up quickly.” Seeing how uncomfortable everyone was, Lu Mingze picked up the boots and the book and suggested they leave.

Everyone readily agreed. They left the oppressive place and returned to the first underground level.

The bandits they had captured still hadn’t woken up and remained unconscious. Lu Mingze had once worried about feeding them, but the statue told him that bandits were different from residents—they were half-demons and could absorb demonic energy at night to sustain themselves, so they didn’t need food.

The group returned to the city lord’s residence without going outside. Through the wall, they saw Youna working with full concentration. Yan Hebi had been accompanying her, but when he saw the others waving to him from within the residence, he ran over to rejoin them.

At this time, Lu Mingze’s gold armour progress had also increased to 0.6. At this rate, the gold armour would be installed by tomorrow.

Lu Mingze said, “I really feel like something’s off. Let’s sort through the tasks.
We have six tasks in total. The bandits have been captured and imprisoned. The Holy Sword is in the statue’s hand. The gold armour is being repaired. The war boots have been found and just need cleansing and demon removal. At night, we can find clues about the Sea-Blue Eyes. Finally, once I—the Diamond Heart—return to the statue, the task progress will reach 66.
What happens after that?”

Cao Qian said, “The statue of the Child of God is restored, demonic energy is eliminated, residents return to normal, a new system is established, and under the statue’s guidance and self-governance, everyone works together to rebuild the city?”

“That does sound right, but…”

Lu Mingze’s instincts were usually accurate, yet he couldn’t figure out why he felt so uneasy. He puffed out his cheeks and thought hard.

Seeing him struggling so much, Xing Ye reminded him, “All of your tasks appear complete on the surface—but every single one of them carries a hidden danger.”

“What hidden danger?” Yan Hebi finally asked after sorting things out. His gaze fell on the blank book, and he was unwilling to look away.

“The bandits are half-demons. Although we’ve already destroyed the flying demon formed from their combined power, according to the statue, they can survive by feeding on demonic energy. That means the bandits themselves are still demonic beings. And this underground area is where the summoning ritual took place—could they absorb the demonic energy from the ritual below and become even stronger?” Cao Qian raised a concern.

“Based on my personal experience—by which I mean my experience reading melodramatic trashy romance novels,” Qian Jinlai said, her face full of disbelief, “can a woman who’s been deceived that deeply really give up her love for that scumbag city lord so easily?
I find it strange how Youna is acting so Buddha-like. Doesn’t she hate the city lord? Doesn’t she want to reduce to ashes the man who deceived her and caused her father’s death?
And when we were about to enter the third underground level, she didn’t even want to come down and see what happened to the city lord. I think that’s extremely suspicious!”

“Guga, guga—haven’t you just been watching too many trashy dramas?”

“What was that sound?” Qian Jinlai jumped. “Am I hallucinating? Why does it sound like Linlin’s voice? And… a duck?”

Cao Qian took out the Swan Crystal pendant and said to Qian Jinlai, “Linlin—our other roommate. The three of us are currently renting a three-bedroom apartment together. In this world, Linlin exists as the Swan Crystal item.”

“Items are people too…” Qian Jinlai blinked and couldn’t help looking at the book in Lu Mingze’s hands. She still hadn’t seen Xing Ye’s true form.

Sensing everyone’s gaze, the blank book said calmly, “Qian Jinlai has a point. Youna claims that only her eyes were demonised. But as someone at the centre of the story, whether her heart has also been tainted is something we don’t know. This, indeed, is another hidden danger.”

With the atmosphere turning so serious, the others also pulled themselves out of melodrama mode and refocused on the task. Guan Ling said, “I—I might just be used to repairing things, but I feel like there’s something off about the Holy Sword. The connection between the hilt and the blade doesn’t seem very stable. When Cao Qian was suppressing the bandits, I think I saw the blade shaking—but I’m not sure whether it was just because she swung too hard and damaged it.”

Cao Qian pointed at the war boots. “The fourth task—the war boots are covered in blood, and it might be blood from the demon-summoning ritual. It could even be the city lord’s blood. We might not be able to cleanse these bloodstains, and we also lack proper demon-purification methods. That’s another hidden danger.”

“The situation with the Sea-Blue Eyes is unclear, but Youna said they were taken by a noble young lady. The eight sacrifices who collapsed on the third underground level were also nobles—could there be a connection?” the blank book raised another question.

Yan Hebi raised his hand. “I was chatting with Youna earlier, and she mentioned that noble lady who took the Sea-Blue Eyes. Youna said that the lady has always harboured resentment about becoming a commoner and might not want the city to be restored at all. According to Youna, that noble lady might actually prefer to follow the city lord.”

“And there’s me,” Lu Mingze pointed at himself. “Once the other five tasks are completed, I have to give up my life and become the Diamond Heart. That doesn’t sound happy at all.”

Seeing everyone fall silent, the blank book reminded them, “Games usually have a surface ending and a true ending after a reversal. The true ending often overturns everything presented in the surface ending.”

“Overturn…” Prompted by the blank book, Lu Mingze suddenly had a flash of insight. He flipped open the ritual book. “The book says that once the ritual is completed, the eight sacrifices will be annihilated—body and soul completely erased. But on the third underground level, the bodies of the eight sacrifices are still there. That means the ritual was never completed.”

“There’s another point,” the blank book added. “To become a demon, one must hold an item imbued with divinity and find eight sacrifices. And both Youna and the statue mentioned one thing—the Diamond Heart was divided among eight nobles by the city lord.”

Cao Qian clapped her hands. “If the Diamond Heart was truly a divine item, how could the city lord let eight nobles eat it? What the sacrifices held must have been something utterly insignificant.”

“Then what was the real divine item?” Guan Ling asked.

Everyone arrived at the same answer at once: “The Child of God.”

Seeing that they had finally figured it out, Xing Ye let out a sigh of relief and concluded, “It was the Child of God—whose gold armour had not yet been stripped away, whose eyes and body parts had been taken. When the city lord carried out the ritual, he believed the Diamond Heart possessed divinity. But after obtaining it, he realised that the Child of God’s divinity had already faded as people’s faith gradually disappeared.

“So he had to wait—wait for someone to repair the statue and awaken the Son of God. Only then could he restart the ritual. On the surface, we are completing the tasks—but in reality, we are providing the city lord with the perfect opportunity to finish the ritual.”

 

Translator : DarNan