Chapter 144#
Free Hunt 01#
Of the two men, one was wearing a black suit with an aquiline nose, and the other was a young man dressed like a student in an ill-fitting blue-and-white school uniform. They didn’t appear to know each other — the man in the black suit wore a grave expression, while the student looked somewhat ill at ease.
“I finally ran into another player. I’ve never been in a instance like this before — it’s huge, NPCs everywhere, no quests posted, and I have no idea where to go.” the student said.
The man in the black suit’s eyes flickered with thought. “How did you get in here? What should I call you?”
“Ah…? I… don’t know. I was clearly still in another instance, and then I was suddenly pulled here. Everyone else disappeared too. You can call me Luo Lan.”
The self-proclaimed “Luo Lan” looked like a complete newcomer who knew nothing about the City of Mist.
Then again, Yu Feichen didn’t consider himself particularly knowledgeable about the City of Mist either.
Inside the tavern, after hearing this, the man in the black suit softened his tone slightly. “Do you have a silver key on you?”
“A key? I think — ah, yes, I do…” The young student Luo Lan thought for a moment. “A friend of mine ran into danger in an instance and died. He gave it to me before he passed. I don’t know what it does, so I’ve just been carrying it around.”
“Then you stumbled your way here by accident,” the black-suited man said.
“Do you know what this place is?”
“Mm. I’ve heard about it from others. They all say it’s a good place — somewhere you can gain power.”
Upon hearing this, Luo Lan seemed to grow excited, pinching the hem of his school uniform. “Really? I’ve cleared quite a few instances already, but I still don’t know how to obtain my own power.”
“You’re just getting started — don’t rush.” The black-suited man’s tone had fully eased. At that moment, Yu Feichen noticed him inconspicuously touch his waist.
Beneath his jacket, something was concealed there — the shape of a gun.
The black-suited man continued: “But as things stand now, something seems to have changed. This place isn’t quite like the legends. I’ve been here for over a day and haven’t run into any crises, but I haven’t gained anything either.”
Luo Lan nodded and added, “There’s also that enormous clock up in the sky — it’s really creepy. Lucky I ran into you as soon as I arrived, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“Right. With the situation still unclear, it helps to have someone to watch each other’s backs.”
“Exactly, exactly.” Luo Lan took a sip of his drink. “Not bad — the wine here is actually pretty good. In other instances it’s all running for your life or fighting. We never get treatment like this. If we just stayed here forever, does that mean we’d never have to risk our lives in another instance again?”
The black-suited man smiled without saying anything. Indeed, there was no shortage of legends about people who had stayed in the City of Mist forever — it was one of the reasons the City of Mist had become a sanctuary that everyone in the Eternal Night longed for.
But the City of Mist of legend had no strange clock hanging in the sky — pale and black — and certainly no system notifications. Something was definitely off.
The City of Mist had changed.
Before long, they finished their drinks. The black-suited man said, “It’s not safe at night. Let me take you to where I’m staying for the night, and tomorrow we can split up and scout the area.”
Luo Lan nodded compliantly and followed the black-suited man to his feet.
The two left their seats. Yu Feichen glanced at the rough alley wall, stepped back a few paces for a running start, used the windowsill as a foothold, and vaulted up onto the roof of the two-story building, looking down toward the tavern entrance.
The black-suited man and the student walked out of the alley one after the other. At first the student was in the rear, but the black-suited man gradually slowed his pace until they were walking side by side — and then, a minute later, he had fallen two steps behind the student.
At that very moment —
The black-suited man drew a handgun from his waist and aimed it at Luo Lan’s head in front of him. In the dim glow of the tavern’s corridor lamp, a cruel smile crept onto his lips as he pulled the trigger.
Simultaneously, a dark silver dagger materialized silently behind the black-suited man. In the instant just before he squeezed the trigger, the dagger launched itself forward with invisible force, piercing straight through the back of his skull.
The black-suited man’s eyes bulged in disbelief as he stared ahead — and then his body pitched forward and crashed to the ground.
He was dead.
The system’s cold, eerie voice rang out in Yu Feichen’s ears — and in everyone’s ears.
“Good night, Leonard.”
The young student Luo Lan turned around at a leisurely pace, and all the awkwardness and nervousness he’d shown inside the tavern had completely vanished.
It seemed that even in the City of Mist, fools were everywhere. A faint smile played at the corners of Luo Lan’s mouth — entirely at odds with the blue-and-white school uniform he wore. He crouched down and took the gun from the black-suited man’s hand.
At that moment, the cluster of gray mist on the black-suited man’s shoulder slowly drifted away from where it had been and floated toward Luo Lan, then seeped into the cloud of mist already resting on his shoulder.
The smile on Luo Lan’s face instantly grew wider. He murmured to himself, “Killing a player lets you take all of his power… What was written on the blackboard was right.”
Night fell quickly. Mist rose through the city, and leaving the alley required passing through a stretch of pitch-dark road with nearly zero visibility.
The pale, strange clock face hanging inverted in the sky was still clearly visible — but it didn’t seem to exist in the physical world at all and provided no illumination whatsoever. If anything, having such a conspicuous object in your field of vision drew attention toward it, making perception of everything else even weaker.
Luo Lan tensed his body and raised his vigilance to its peak. He remembered that past this stretch of darkness lay a plaza with lights.
“Clack.”
In the silence of the night, a peculiar sound suddenly rang out from the road ahead.
Luo Lan stopped dead in his tracks, staring ahead warily.
“Clack.”
The sound came again — and it was a little closer.
“Clack.”
Luo Lan’s pupils contracted sharply. He recognized the sound now — it was the grinding of some unidentifiable material, along with scraping against the ground. Something was heading toward him.
His right hand twitched slightly. He first reached for the gun, then thought better of it and kept listening.
“Clack.”
“Clack.”
Two more sounds. Luo Lan gauged the rough position of whatever it was. But ahead was far too dark — he had no way to tell the size of the approaching thing.
“Clack.”
Getting closer and closer…
Forget it! Luo Lan gritted his teeth and spun sharply around —
— only to find himself staring directly into another person’s eyes.
Close enough that even in this darkness, he could make out a clear silhouette.
Why was there someone behind him???
Luo Lan’s heart hammered wildly. Blood rushed to his head. His mind went completely blank.
What should he do?
— He had no time to think.
Something heavy crashed down on top of his head, and Luo Lan instantly lost consciousness.
After Luo Lan’s body crumpled to the ground, Yu Feichen set down the heavy gray brick in his hand.
— He had casually picked it up from the small rooftop terrace of the tavern. He swore this was the last time he would ever use such a crude weapon.
“Clack.”
“Clack.”
Didn’t I just die? Why can I hear it again?
The ghostly sound drew closer and closer. Luo Lan marshaled every last ounce of his willpower to pry one eye half-open, and finally saw what was crawling toward him.
A metallic-colored thing, no bigger than the palm of a hand… a rabbit?
It was making its way forward with all four limbs, struggling laboriously — and one of its legs was… lame?
Luo Lan was so furious he nearly exploded — but the effort of that reaction consumed the last of his strength. His vision went dark.
In his ear came one cold, quiet farewell: “Good night, Luo Lan.”
Luo Lan’s eyes slowly closed. He lost consciousness forever.
The mechanical rabbit continued its labored crawl. Yu Feichen reached down and picked it up.
After all, it had been crafted by the Godhead — it was anything but ordinary. Besides its decorative appearance, it naturally had other functions.
— Wind it up, and it would crawl.
Its crawling posture just wasn’t particularly graceful.
Yu Feichen looked back at Luo Lan. Gray mist was already rising from Luo Lan’s shoulder, drifting leisurely in his direction.
In ordinary instances, players helping each other was normal — but in the City of Mist, that was far from guaranteed. From the moment Luo Lan and the black-suited man had walked out of the tavern, Yu Feichen had already predicted what would happen next.
Sure enough: the black-suited man had drawn his gun to kill — only to be double-crossed by Luo Lan, who had been playing the innocent.
The black-suited man’s gun appeared to be an ordinary firearm. But the dagger Luo Lan had used to kill him was not. Yu Feichen had seen with his own eyes how the dagger had materialized out of thin air behind the black-suited man.
If the dagger were something that could appear at will, Luo Lan wouldn’t have waited until they left the tavern to act — the item had to have some condition or restriction.
When Luo Lan used the dagger, the black-suited man had intentionally fallen two steps behind him, creating that gap so he could smoothly draw and aim.
If Luo Lan had been a genuine newcomer, he would have turned around to ask when the person beside him suddenly slowed down and put that much distance between them. But Luo Lan hadn’t.
So Yu Feichen had reasoned: the dagger could only be used against someone who had their back turned.
He himself had nothing but a rabbit and a brick. If he attacked from behind, Luo Lan would hear the wind and the dagger would immediately strike back. If he attacked from any other direction, Luo Lan could nimbly adjust his position to keep his back to the threat — and the man also had a gun.
Unless Yu Feichen could appear directly in front of Luo Lan, unseen, at very close range.
And so the plan had taken shape: use the mechanical rabbit to draw Luo Lan’s attention and bait him into turning around.
— Conveniently, the mechanical rabbit made noise as it moved, masking the sound of him dropping silently into position behind Luo Lan.
Luo Lan turned around. They came face to face. The dagger was rendered useless.
The brick came down. Luo Lan died. The plan succeeded.
Luo Lan’s breathing stopped completely. The two clouds of gray mist merged into one.
The system’s cold voice rang out in Yu Feichen’s ear: “Hunt successful.”
Yu Feichen tilted his head back and looked up at the clock face in the sky.
In that very instant, the black hand ticked back one notch.
When the black-suited man had died, he had also looked up — the same thing: one notch back.
One notch back meant one player had died.
Then a notch moving forward would mean one player had entered the City of Mist from the outside.
Three thousand six hundred notches in total. The City of Mist had given no instructions aside from the clock face — could certain graduation marks on the face serve as trigger points for change?
Yu Feichen turned his attention inward, entering the gray mist.
Beside the ghostly silhouette of the fortress, two more hazy shapes had appeared. They were irregular and scattered, far less elegant than the fortress. His will could probe into them, seeing every structure within.
Were these the worlds belonging to Luo Lan and the black-suited man — whose power Luo Lan had absorbed?
One of the worlds contained considerably more power, roughly on par with the fortress — that was likely Luo Lan’s. The other was small and chaotic. Both world-silhouettes dissolved into pure power under Yu Feichen’s will, then re-condensed back into worlds.
— He could fully control them.
At the same time, two new entries appeared in his inventory.
“Item: Ordinary Handgun.”
“Function: Aside from shooting, it doesn’t appear to have any special use.”
“Note: Low ammunition remaining.”
“Tier: Low.”
“Item: Never-Seen Assassination Dagger.”
“Function: Instantaneously appears at any point within three meters and delivers a charged strike.”
“Note: Can only appear outside the owner’s field of vision. Power diminishes progressively with each use.”
“Tier: Mid.”
Yu Feichen withdrew his attention from the gray mist.
Just now, when Luo Lan died, the system had said “Hunt successful” — which meant the City of Mist actively encouraged players to kill one another.
Here, no one could draw on the power of their own world — each person could only bring out a single item. Everyone’s combat strength was leveled to the same baseline.
But if you successfully hunted someone, all the power and worlds that person had accumulated in the Eternal Night became yours.
Very… wild.
Yu Feichen let out a quiet breath. Having grasped what was happening in the City of Mist, an unbidden surge of hunting desire rose unexpectedly in his chest.
The cold metal weight in his hand — he and the mechanical rabbit locked eyes for a few seconds, its red-and-black gaze steady, before the strange feeling gradually ebbed away.
Yu Feichen tucked the gun into his usual holster. The dagger had no physical form to stow. As for the rabbit —
The rabbit was an awkward size and weight. Too bulky for a pocket, too childish to carry by hand, too cumbersome to hang anywhere. In the end, Yu Feichen tossed it onto his shoulder and walked out of the alley.