Chapter : 50

Yan Yunqing did not stay long at Cornelia's place.

After agreeing to meet her at the tailor shop on the commercial street in five days, he returned the way he came.

Lilian had long been waiting anxiously outside, pacing around in the tree.

When she finally saw an agile black cat leap out from the wall, Lilian couldn't help but pounce directly onto the little black cat's back.

"Waaah—I thought you got caught inside! Why did you take so long to come out!"

Yan Yunqing was knocked off balance by the pounce and almost landed face-first.

He quickly steadied himself, carried Lilian a little further away, and found a safe place before saying, "I met with Cornelia. She is indeed in the Prince's Mansion."

Lilian was still lying on the cat's back, her original train of thought interrupted, "Hmm?

Did she really go and become the prince's lover? Just to find her sister?"

"I think there's more to it." Yan Yunqing shook his head, flinging Lilian off.

He canceled the Roleplay skill, took out a small blue potion from his backpack, broke the cap off and poured it into his mouth, and began to recall while holding the bottle in his mouth.

"After all, I asked around a lot this afternoon and haven't heard of any prince or noble bringing back a mermaid in the past two years.

I'm more inclined to believe that the reason Cornelia told us before was fake."

Or rather, half-true and half-false.

If mermaids were born with the ability to sense the emotions in others' words, then Yan Yunqing had cultivated this ability since childhood.

Coupled with the fact that he often encountered perverts, he had seen so much that his perception of others' emotions had become even sharper.

At the very least, he could accurately judge whether a person was lying.

He had believed Cornelia so easily before because when she mentioned her sister, she did show sadness, along with a hint of nostalgia that was not easily detectable.

Therefore, Yan Yunqing had never suspected that Cornelia's reason for looking for her sister was fake.

After seeing her tonight, Yan Yunqing became certain.

Cornelia might really want to find her sister, but her purpose was by no means limited to that.

Moreover, Cornelia had a [Forbidden] debuff in her status bar, which directly sealed her level. Judging from Cornelia's attitude, it seemed she did it to herself.

It was probably to avoid detection by the two guards around Feu, as the levels of those two guards were much higher than Cornelia's.

A beautiful level 60 woman acting as a lover under the identity of a maid, this was unreasonable no matter how you looked at it.

So Cornelia had to make herself look more like an ordinary person.

Yan Yunqing greatly admired Cornelia's ruthlessness.

Just by looking at the description of that [Forbidden] debuff, he knew that Cornelia was suffering from excruciating pain at all times.

"Then what do you think Cornelia is really trying to do?"

Lilian was curious, "Will she be an obstacle to our plan?"

After being stuffed with five silver coins, the guard's face remained impassive, but his hand secretly traced the outline of the coins.

He glanced down and saw that they were silver, and the corners of his mouth immediately curved up slightly.

His gaze toward Yan Yunqing also became much friendlier.

"That's really not easy. Romunik is not close. This delivery trip must take several months back and forth."

The guard cursorily scanned the contents of Lane's backpack, found that they were all very ordinary supplies, and waved his hand to let them pass.

"Alright, you can go."

Yan Yunqing immediately nodded and bowed, pulling along Lane who was still stunned, and passed through several checkpoints, finally stepping out of the city gate.

Their pace quickened, and they only stopped by the roadside after they were out of the guards' sight.

Lane was panting slightly, "Can—can we go back like this?"

Yan Yunqing nodded, "Yes, we can go back.

But I suggest you don't be too conspicuous after you return.

There might still be people watching near your home.

Ask someone to pass a message to your family that you're fine, and hide outside for a few more days before going back."

"Okay, okay!" Lane was very grateful to this mercenary who had brought him out of the capital, and also to the bounty hunter who had rescued him from the dungeon. "Um... what will you do next...?"

Yan Yunqing could tell what Lane wanted to say at a glance, "I won't be going with you.

I still have some things to do.

You can go straight back. You don't need to think about thanking me or anything, someone has already paid the fee for rescuing you."

He emphasized the word 【someone】.

His personas were not lacking in gratitude.

When Lane returned to Sunset Village and confirmed with the village chief, he would know that the 【someone】 he mentioned was 【Yan Yunqing】, which would also help to increase his faction's favorability.

His favorability level with Sunset Village had already reached Trusted.

A little more, and it would basically be Respected.

Although Sunset Village was just a small faction, and raising the favorability wouldn't give him any hidden quests or hidden shops to buy items from, a higher favorability would increase the item drop rate when he ran the Sunset Village instance!

This was the village Kalenna protected!

Thinking of the instance that had entered a cooldown countdown after he cleared it, Yan Yunqing felt a little antsy.

He hadn't been inside the regenerated instance yet and didn't know if repeated runs could still drop a blue blueprint for him.

At this thought, Yan Yunqing couldn't sit still anymore.

After a hurried farewell to Lane, he took a different route and rushed towards Sunset Village.

With his current travel speed, running from the capital to Sunset Village no longer took too much time, but traveling was indeed a boring affair.

Logically, a game with such a large map should have teleportation points, yet Yan Yunqing had not yet found anything like a teleportation anchor.

I really want to just TP (game term: teleport) over.

After finally reaching the vicinity of the instance and seeing no one else around, Yan Yunqing directly chose to enter.

[Curse of Sunset Village] was a low-level instance and did not limit the number of entries per week, but the higher the level, the fewer the drops after clearing it.

Repeatedly farming low-level instances was of no benefit.

However, Yan Yunqing's current level had not yet exceeded the upper limit of this low-level instance, so he could still gain experience.

After entering the instance, Yan Yunqing didn't rush to start fighting.

Instead, he carefully observed the surrounding environment.

This regenerated instance was slightly different from the one he had run before.

He still spawned by the pond.

After killing two Ghost-faced Earthworms that emerged from the ground, an arrow appeared at his feet, guiding him in a certain direction.

Yan Yunqing felt that it was a bit quiet around him. He scanned his surroundings, "Lilian?"

Hearing no response, Yan Yunqing opened the minimap, which had been updated to the instance map. Lilian's little blue dot was not on it.

Huh?

Yan Yunqing opened the party panel and found a small line of text: NPC teammates cannot enter game instances.

After carefully reading the explanation, Yan Yunqing had a sudden realization.

NPC teammates could follow him into the previous instance because at that time, the instance had not yet been recorded by the game and was part of the storyline.

The current instance, however, had been recorded by the game and a new copy had been generated, so NPCs were not allowed in.

Anyway, this instance had no entry limit. Yan Yunqing exited first and saw Lilian anxiously pacing around again.

Seeing Yan Yunqing suddenly reappear, Lilian quickly pounced over, "Why did you suddenly disappear? And for so long!"

Yan Yunqing rubbed his nose: "I went into the instance.

I only realized you didn't follow me in after killing two Ghost-faced Earthworms, so I came out to check."

Lilian pouted, blinked a couple of times, and suddenly her eyes became wide and teary, looking pitifully at Yan Yunqing.

Yan Yunqing: ...

Yan Yunqing did a tactical lean back: "Wh-why that expression all of a sudden?

I really just didn't notice you didn't come in with me for a moment."

Lilian: QAQ

Yan Yunqing fell silent, finally raising his hands in surrender, "Next time, I'll check if you're there first next time, okay?

I absolutely won't accidentally overlook you again."

Lilian: QAQ...

Seeing that Yan Yunqing was about to freeze up completely, Lilian finally let him off.

She silently wiped away a tear, "It's okay, as long as you remember to come back for me, I'll keep waiting even if you disappear."

Yan Yunqing: ...

Ugh, the way she said that, his conscience was being sliced into a thousand pieces.

Lilian peeked at him. Yan Yunqing took a deep breath and promised:

"From now on, I'll tell you first before I go anywhere. I won't suddenly disappear again, okay?"

Only then did Lilian smile through her tears. She hugged Yan Yunqing's cheeks and rubbed against them, saying softly:

"Mhm, no matter where you go, I'll wait for you to come back."

Yan Yunqing's heart softened as well: "I know."

Since Lilian couldn't enter the instance, Yan Yunqing gave her a few instructions to be careful outside, saying he would be out of the instance soon and not to run too far.

Returning to the instance, it had reset again.

Yan Yunqing fought the Ghost-faced Earthworms once more, and the guiding arrow reappeared at his feet.

Yan Yunqing followed the arrow and found that the route was similar to the one he had taken with Henry last time, except that the plot to meet Henry was no longer triggered on the way.

After fighting a few waves of mobs, Yan Yunqing smoothly arrived at the giant tree.

The tree was still towering into the sky, entangled with vines, and had grown countless vine tumors.

A line of text appeared before his eyes.

[Use fire to attack those vine tumors and kill the demonic beasts!]

From the moment Yan Yunqing stepped in, the vine tumors that had been quietly on the tree began to throb, as if something was struggling to break free and crawl out of them.

Yan Yunqing unhurriedly took out his magic staff, aimed fireballs one by one, and smashed them into the vine tumors.

The fire spread instantly, and the demonic beasts let out shrill screams that were piercing to the ears.

However, these vine tumors were much easier to deal with than during the previous storyline.

When the tumors were almost burnt out, another gust of wind blew.

Two figures appeared in front of Yan Yunqing. He took a closer look—

Good grief, Henry and Kalenna have become instance bosses together???

The corner of Yan Yunqing's mouth twitched.

He felt that this instance was very unreasonable.

In the story, Henry had clearly killed Kalenna with him, but in the replicated instance, Henry had gone over to Kalenna's side.

Should I say: You lovebirds really know how to play...

Fortunately, the Henry and Kalenna in this instance were no longer undead, but just copied images with very monotonous attack methods.

After one round, he could see that their moves had a certain sequence and a long wind-up, which helped identify the ultimate moves they were about to release.

In the first phase, Henry fought in the front while Kalenna sneakily cast spells from behind.

In this phase, only Henry's health bar was visible, so Yan Yunqing only needed to focus on attacking Henry while avoiding the harassing magic Kalenna occasionally threw over.

When Henry's health dropped below half, the second phase began.

In this phase, Kalenna finally moved from sneakily casting skills in the back to formally revealing her health bar.

In contrast, Henry's health bar was locked and no longer dropped.

Yan Yunqing needed to switch his attack to Kalenna while defending against Henry's close-range attacks.

Because Kalenna was a mage, her health was not as high as Henry's, and her defense could be broken by physical attacks.

When Kalenna's health was beaten down to below half, Henry's health would unlock again, and the two would formally cooperate to attack Yan Yunqing. This was the third phase.

The most speechless part was that their two health bars had to be controlled to within a 15% difference.

Once one side's health dropped too quickly, the two would both stop, retreat, and embrace each other intimately.

In the time it took to share a kiss, their health would rise back to half.

Yan Yunqing: ...

You lovebirds are so annoying!

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