Chapter 145#

Free Hunt 02#

As he drew closer to the central plaza, oil lamps finally flickered to life along both sides of the road.

After passing beneath one of them, Yu Feichen’s shadow stretched out ahead of him.

One man, one rabbit perched on his shoulder — one ear pricked up, the other drooping halfway.

The city was at its liveliest. Horse-drawn carriages thundered down the streets, ferrying richly dressed passengers to banquets. Civilian NPCs strolled in twos and threes along the sidewalks, and noise spilled out from the gambling dens.

The city was vast, with no end in sight.

If the clock’s current reading represented the number of players still alive, then roughly eighteen hundred players remained on the field. Eighteen hundred players scattered across a thriving metropolis — they might as well be drops of water lost in an ocean.

To find more players, he would need to go to the entrances.

According to the rabbit-hide map, there were eight roads that directly connected to the City of Mist, one in each direction. Yu Feichen had come through the northern one, which deposited arrivals at the canal docks.

He had arrived just as a steamship was unloading passengers — the chaos had meant no other players had noticed him, and he hadn’t spotted any either. But it wasn’t out of the question that someone was lying in wait near the docks, hunting new arrivals.

Yu Feichen passed the entrance of a tailor’s shop. Inside, headless mannequins stood in rows, each dressed in a precisely tailored formal gown. A white-haired old tailor worked at a bench, tanning a piece of cowhide.

“Passing gentleman — care to take a look at our clothes?” the doorway attendant called out to him.

Apart from the lurking danger of other players, this city turned no one away.

All drinks, food, clothing, and jewels could be taken freely. The lavishly decorated hotels required no payment whatsoever.

Yu Feichen continued along the streets into the city’s depths. He wanted to know what else this place held.

The further in he went, the fewer people there were. When a road eventually dead-ended, he hit an invisible wall and could go no further. But looking ahead past that barrier, the enormous city still stretched endlessly into the distance — buildings loomed in the haze, and he was standing only at the outermost edge.

Beyond layer upon layer of overlapping rooftops, at the city’s very center, a colossal cathedral-shaped structure squatted in the distance. Gray mist surged around it like a tide, and its gaunt, cold spires seemed to pierce straight upward into the sky — it reminded Yu Feichen of the first time he had laid eyes on the Tower of Creation.

His exploration complete, he found the area around him silent and empty. Yu Feichen turned back the way he had come, intending to find an inn to settle in for the night.

The world would feel more peaceful if the system notifications didn’t keep chiming in his ear every so often — “XXX, good night.”

The clock tracked the player count. Killing a player awarded all of their accumulated power, and the system would announce a farewell to the deceased in the ears of every living player.

Movement was restricted by the invisible walls — whether that would change later remained to be seen.

Beyond all that, Yu Feichen still hadn’t forgotten one loose thread.

When that student called Luo Lan had killed the man in the black suit and absorbed his power, he had said something.

He had said: “What was written on the blackboard was right.”

The warm glow of an inn was clearly visible not far ahead, yet after several minutes of walking, the distance hadn’t closed by even a fraction. Yu Feichen looked around. Gray mist was rising from the ground, slowly encircling him.

Just as it had happened when he’d encountered the Black Rider outside the city — the surroundings were shifting again within the gray mist. So even the interior of the City of Mist had these random scenes.

This time, a wide avenue unfolded before Yu Feichen’s eyes. The buildings on either side were solemn and stately, adorned with ancient totemic patterns — yet every surface was veiled in a layer of deep, lightless shadow. The flowers and leaves in the central garden were black; some petals were ash-white, others blood-red.

Someone spoke behind him.

“Every time patrol ends, I find myself thinking about the same question — what is the point of what we do?”

In his peripheral vision, there was a rider in black armor mounted on a towering black horse. Behind them, an entire column of Black Riders.

He himself was also on horseback, at the front of the formation.

Another rider sighed and replied, “Every soul in the Holy City follows the law, just as we do. And since the Young Master presided over the Sabbath, the wandering dead no longer roam.”

Yu Feichen tilted his head slightly, turning their words over in his mind.

A third rider, however, seemed to catch sight of something alarming and quietly cleared his throat at the two murmuring colleagues.

The first rider looked up and met Yu Feichen’s gaze. “I was wrong. I’ll focus on patrol.”

The second rider: “I was wrong.”

Yu Feichen looked away. They fell silent, and the column continued forward.

Every time he entered one of these random scenes, the palette was blinding in its darkness — the sky a washed-out gray, pressed flat and low overhead. The streets were wide; the occasional pedestrian appeared only as a smudged black silhouette. From the windows on either side, faint and pallid glimmers of light bled through.

Outside a tavern ahead, a carved glass lantern hung above the door. Four winged angels perched at its four corners, peaceful smiles resting on their lips.

Something tugged at Yu Feichen’s attention. He glanced up at the second-floor window — in the brief moment he’d passed by, he had sensed something there.

He looked up. The figure at the window happened to be looking down at the same instant. Their gazes met in the middle.

A faint, crystalline golden light — perhaps the only vivid color in this entire world — came from the long hair falling over that person’s shoulders. They looked down, and their eyes seemed to hold the ghost of a smile.

Yu Feichen recognized the face.

It was the same child he had met outside the City of Mist’s gates — only older now, the face of a boy of fourteen or fifteen.

Three seconds of locked eyes.

The boy blinked slowly, then turned his head away.

— As if none of it had just happened.

But Yu Feichen had already seen him.

His body acted before his mind did. He heard himself say:

“Bring him down.”

The golden-haired boy seemed to hear the order from upstairs, and cast one last quiet, unhurried glance downward.

The two black-armored riders who had been whispering to each other dismounted and went up. Before long, they came back down with someone between them, one on either side.

They were talking as they walked.

The rider on the left said, “Look, this time you’re lucky — it was the Knight Commander who caught you. If it had been the old priest, you’d be going home to memorize scripture as punishment.”

The one on the right said, “Next time you sneak out of the shrine to wander around, find somewhere out of the way.”

“Still talking about how patrol has no point — and then you go and deliver yourself right to us.”

Both riders on either side were chatting away. The person in the middle said nothing. After they rounded the tavern entrance and came face to face, he simply watched Yu Feichen with a calm, steady gaze, the trace of a smile still not quite faded from his eyes.

He was brought to stand near Yu Feichen.

The horse was tall. He couldn’t mount on his own.

The wind picked up suddenly, snapping at the dark, cloak-like robe he wore. The hem swayed and billowed, making his slight frame look as if it might be carried off by the wind.

Yu Feichen reached a hand toward him.

As if they had done this countless times before, the boy reached his own hand back.

The moment their hands met —

Yu Feichen grasped nothing but air.

The gray mist receded like a tide. He blinked, and snapped back to full clarity.

The scene was gone, dissolved away like smoke. He was still standing on some nameless street in the City of Mist, facing the door of the inn he had intended to stay at from the start.

A carved glass lantern hung above the door. Four weeping angels were suspended at its four corners by chains. That was the light he had just reached out and grasped at.

He withdrew his hand and went inside.

The ground floor was a lobby. The second floor had street-facing booths, and rooms lay further in. An attendant held out a ring of keys and said, “No other guests tonight, sir. Please feel free to choose whichever room you’d like.”

The attendant opened a door to show him the interior.

A single bed, a wall lamp… the furnishings were simple.

Yu Feichen stopped. His gaze settled on the wall beside the bed.

Where bare wall should have been, there hung a square black stone slab — and something white seemed to be flickering across its surface.

Luo Lan’s word — blackboard — echoed through Yu Feichen’s mind once more.

“What is that?” he said.

“A decorative piece, sir.”

“Show me another room.”

The attendant unlocked door after door. Every room had one. Since there was no difference, Yu Feichen chose a room and went in.

Only up close could he see clearly: the white things moving across the black slab were not decorations — they were words, written in what looked like chalk, though touching the surface felt completely ordinary.

— And they were scrolling upward in a continuous stream.

[Acri]: Friends, stop hiding in your rooms — come out! Hit the streets! Pick a fight!

[Glass Bottle]: Idiot.

[Block Four]: Sure, meet me on the rooftop at Plaza No. 5. @Acri

[Acri]: Sweetheart, as if I’d trust you.

[Master of Eternal Night]: You’re all incredibly loud. Don’t let me run into any of you in the daytime.

As if on cue, the system’s ethereal voice drifted into every player’s ear once more: “Doll, good night.”

[Block Four]: “Doll”… yikes, that name is terrifying.

[Tin Spirit]: Do me a favor — can we have a no-killing rule at night? Let people sleep in peace.

Yu Feichen: ?

He looked to the side. A quill pen sat on the desk — presumably the way to write on the blackboard.

He hadn’t seen a single outsider with gray mist on their shoulders out on the streets. Apparently they were all in here, chatting online.

At that moment, a new message appeared on the black slab.

[Puppet]: …Just arrived. Can anyone explain what’s going on?

[Glass Bottle]: The briefing is here @Vincent

The name Vincent made Yu Feichen’s brow twitch. The word involuntarily brought to mind Murphy, who had once gone by that alias. Claros had later revealed that Vincent was the name of a painter Murphy greatly admired.

“His taste isn’t bad, but what he actually painted was truly something else,” Claros had said.

But Vincent was a common name — the odds of overlap were high. Besides… Yu Feichen was fairly certain he had arrived in the City of Mist early enough. Anfi had been with him the entire time, leaving no opportunity to contact any other officials from the Sanctuary.

Vincent appeared shortly after, posting what looked like a mechanically assembled block of text.

[Vincent]: 1. The City of Mist is no longer as it once was. It is suspected to have undergone a transformation and become a large-scale instance. Previously, the City of Mist’s exit was located at the central cathedral. Our movement range is now restricted and we cannot leave through the exit.

2. Blood is an ancient magical medium. When we used blood to activate our keys, we entered a binding contract with the City of Mist. All power is held in trust by it, regardless of whether we live or die.

3. According to the first few people who arrived in the City of Mist by key, they heard the words “Free Hunt Begins” in their ears upon arrival. We therefore infer that we are currently in the first phase of the instance — players may kill freely with no consequences. The second phase may begin when the clock completes a full cycle.

4. Hunting refers to outsiders preying on one another. Killing another player awards all of their power.

5. The blackboard is open for free communication, but only functions at night. It goes dark during the day.

6. That covers all currently known information.

[Puppet]: Thank you. Let me take that in. Wasn’t the City of Mist supposed to be a wonderful place? So what are we now?

[Acri]: Ha, sweetheart, you’ve boarded the wrong ship. Rooftop at Plaza No. 5 — coming? I’ll personally show you what this place is all about.

[Puppet]: …No, thank you.

[Ears]: Honestly, I’ve wanted to say this for a long time. For hundreds of cycles, everyone who came to the City of Mist has left better off than they arrived. How could something that good last forever? There’s no free lunch in this world — and now the net is closing.

[Block Four]: That’s a very insightful perspective. So why, oh all-seeing one, are you here?

Messages continued to scroll upward. Many people were participating in the blackboard chat — which painted a clear picture: they were all scattered across the city right now, each sitting in some room somewhere, watching the same shared interface.

Only the occasional “XX, good night” reminded everyone that the hunt had never stopped.