NOVEL NEXT Chapter 199: Master
There were some truths in the system’s words. In a sense, it already knows the Witch’s growth trajectory, so it can deliver a fatal blow at a critical moment.
Plus, the Witch is technically human, so she is weaker than the other six.
The system tried targeting the other six, but they all ended in…
His most successful host barely made it to the end, but the weakest one couldn’t even last three days.
The worst time was when its host couldn’t even find his target, and he was killed almost immediately.
World Enders take a long time to grow, so wouldn’t it be best to just kill them while they were weak?
The system, to be honest, was obsessed with progression.
It believed in slow, progressive movements leading up to a dramatic, grand finale.
It’s like when you lose countless times playing video games, but you just have to continue for the thrill of it.
“System?”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re so useless,” Gu Qianqian pouted. “You said she’s the weakest, yet you’re scared of her.”
“I said that she was easier to deal with, not weaker.”
“System…?”
“What now?” the system grumbled before seeing her slightly green face.
Poisoned fish? Is she going to die? Is she finally going to dethrone its weakest host?
The system popped out of Gu Qianqian’s mind, and he sniffed the fish bones left on the floor.
It did reek of the World Ender, but it shouldn’t be poisonous, so why…
“Ack… ack… Sorry, I got a fishbone stuck in my throat. Please help me.”
[The System has disconnected.]
“Eh?”
Gu Qianqian slammed herself into a tree, coughed up the last fish bone in her throat, and was already ready to look for her next meal. Meanwhile, the system continued to sniff at the bones, and it seemed to remind it of…
Home.
After resting for almost an hour, the jacket squirmed and returned to its original shape. She immediately got up, hid her knife in her sleeves, and left the hut to find the old man.
She remembered where the old man had left—into the main hall of the dilapidated temple. There were no strange noises in the courtyard, so it should be safe to look for him.
Leaving the hut, she avoided the water tanks and walked straight to the main hall. She was about to knock but remembered his continuous warnings about not knocking.
She grumbled before calling out to him, “Hey! I need to piss!”
Ze Mengrao lay on a hard wooden board, and he was half awake. His eyes were continually glossy, and he seemed to dance on the edge of being dead and alive.
Suddenly, that pleasant yet annoying sound broke into his ears, and he bounced off his bed like a corpse.
Hearing that the girl had no intention of letting him rest, he got up and opened the door.
The essence of being human is perseverance. Although she was technically not human, she still retained this human trait. Finally, after continuous pestering, the door to the main hall squeaked open.
“Stranger, return to bed, or something bad will happen.”
“Oh, alright,” she grumbled, turning around to leave.
He watched as she returned to the hut and shook his head, laying back on his coffin-like bed.
It’s better that these strangers avoid finding out the secrets of this village. Curiosity killed the cat, but…
He would never expect that this was just the beginning.
Half an hour later, her voice sounded outside the door again.
“Hey! I know you have some kind of back pain, and I know a way to relieve it! Open up!”
“Stranger! Return to your hut and keep quiet! If something bad happens, this old man will not be responsible.”
“Pssh, whatever.”
“Hey! I’m hungry! Do you suffer?” She whispered outside the door instead of yelling.
“Hello?” she continued.
“No!” He yelled out of bed. “Go back to your hut!”
“Man…”
“Hey, um… This might sound crazy, but it’s so dark inside the hut, and I can feel weird things crawling on me.”
The old man grumbled in his coffin. A stranger is afraid of the dark in this foreign place? Unbelievable.
He decided to ignore her.
“Hey, are there fish inside those tanks? I brought some fish food from outside.”
The old man couldn’t handle it anymore, and he sprung up from bed and opened the door, pointing at her, “Shut up! What are you trying to do?”
“Oh… Are you angry at me? I’m just scared. If I’m bothering you, I’ll head back inside.”
The old man scoffed. He guessed that she was going to awaken the things inside the water tank and then try to explore the secrets behind this village and lose her life.
Since she wanted to know so badly, maybe there was no harm in telling her, considering that she was not leaving here alive.
The old man opened the door, welcoming Yibei in.
He couldn’t refuse a dying person, anyway.
The air in the temple was turbid, and a strange smell entered her nose.
The tiles on the roof were rotten, and there were no windows. The air was cold, as if they were in a cave, and the surroundings were pitch-black until the old man illuminated a scarlet lantern before her.
Under its light, this ruined temple soon revealed itself in front of her.
The structural style of this temple seemed to deviate from traditional construction—pillars and beams and mounds of mud. This temple was like a closed box.
On the grey wall, it depicted a dark mountain forest and its black river. There were strange shadows that wore armour, holding their sacrificial utensils high up in the air as they squirmed along the way.
The god enshrined in the temple was a large snake, and its green eyes shimmered with light.
It was strangely realistic, from its scales to its delicate fangs, which contrasted with the dilapidated temple.
This is not something the people here could ever manufacture, so it must come from somewhere else.
“Tell me, what do you want to know?” The old man asked.
“We have all night to talk,” Yibei smiled, and for once in his life, the old man felt fear.