Chapter 150#
The Hunt 01#
“Wha-wha-wha-what,” Bai Song had barely finished the sentence when he shuddered, reaching up to touch his blond hair.
“…Am I young-looking?”
Windsor: “Point is, you’re blond.”
Messages rapidly scrolled across the black stone slab.
[Vincent]: ……
[Acri]: Hehehehe, what a weird requirement~
[Red Doll]: What kind of grudge is this?
[Square Four]**: I’m getting the vibe now.
The blood-red text faded away, and with it the uncanny silence — reality reasserted itself.
The clock in the sky reverted to a normal timepiece.
The Hunt: three-day time limit. Miss the target, and everyone gets penalized. Kill the prey, and high-tier items are your reward.
[Acri]**: Blondie babies, rush the hair salon!! !! !! !!
[Square Four]**: Green-eyed babies, feel free to gouge your eyes out~
[Patient 103]**: The young-looking little darlings can just off themselves on the spot.
[Brain Surgeon]**: All of the above, kindly come register for treatment.
[Patient 071]**: Doctor, I know you’re blond — I’m coming for you, hehehe.
[Brain Surgeon]**: You’re all so annoying, I wish lightning would fry every one of you.
[Red Doll]**: The department store sells wigs, hurry hurry hurry!
But at this moment, the vast majority of people were no longer paying attention to the black stone slab. The fact that only a handful of the notoriously unhinged regulars were still active on it was proof enough of that.
“Barber! Barber!” A young man with short golden hair stumbled out of his lodging inn and sprinted into the roadside barbershop across the street. “Are you still open?”
A young, slender barber NPC stood in the warm, bright light of the shop. He turned slowly, a gleaming silver pair of scissors in hand.
The barber greeted the newcomer with polite enthusiasm and gestured for him to sit. “Hello, my name is Tony. It’s a pleasure to serve you. What style would you like today?”
“Shave it all off. Quickly, please — as fast as you can. Or dyeing works too — can you dye hair?”
“Dye hair?” Tony said softly. “I once heard tell of that wondrous technique from a faraway land. They say leeches fermented for two months can turn hair black…”
The words “fermented leeches” sent a wave of revulsion crawling across the blond young man’s scalp.
“No time for that — shave it, shave it, shave it! The faster the better.”
“Of course.” Tony gently draped the cape around his shoulders, then turned back for the sharp silver scissors.
“Well… losing this much hair in one go…” the young man muttered to himself.
Snip.
Bright red blood erupted from the blond young man’s throat. His head tilted slowly down onto his shoulder.
“Good night. I do have a lot of hair.”
At that same moment, across every inn and hotel in the city, waitstaff began pushing meal carts down the corridors, knocking on doors one by one.
“Room service — could you please open the door?”
“Room service — could you please open the door?”
“Room service — you haven’t answered after two calls. For your safety, we must open your door. Please forgive the intrusion.”
A door creaked open. An outsider who appeared to be sixteen years old was trembling inside the wardrobe.
The footsteps drew closer and closer. Only one thought remained in his mind.
— Should’ve known better than to play young.
A line of blood-red text drifted silently across the sky.
“Note: The original residents of Misty City will generously assist hunters during the Hunt.”
Bai Song tugged at his own hair, muttering curses under his breath. “What? ‘Generously assist’…”
By the vacant window, a salesclerk behind the counter suddenly spotted him.
Dressed in a white uniform, the salesclerk’s pupils were suffused with a faint grey mist. She lifted one foot and began walking between the aisles toward the merchandise displays — her expression perfectly placid, as though conducting a completely routine inspection, yet her gaze was locked squarely on Bai Song’s position.
“Run!” Windsor slammed Bai Song’s golden head down. Bai Song yelped and ducked into the maze of shelves, a flash of blond hair darting between gaps in the merchandise.
Then Yu Feichen and Windsor exchanged a glance. Windsor went after Bai Song, while Yu Feichen turned and moved southeast. They were on the third floor — the gifts and sundries section — and southeast was a display case containing a few festive-occasion wigs.
Meanwhile, Windsor chased after Bai Song, and the salesclerk gave equally relentless pursuit. Her walking pace was visibly rapid — one had to jog just to keep up with her — yet she maintained the composed gait of someone out for a casual stroll, making the whole thing deeply unsettling.
Windsor raised his arm, revealing the cold steel crossbow hidden in the sleeve of his morning coat.
It was a high-attack mid-tier item he’d acquired in a previous skirmish. It came with a 100% accuracy effect: the further the target within a hundred-meter range, the greater the force. The restriction was that it could only be used against enemies with their backs turned, and its power decreased with each use.
He hadn’t used it once since obtaining it, so the bolt’s power should still be at peak.
He raised his arm and aimed at the salesclerk’s back. When he judged the distance sufficient, Windsor pressed the trigger.
The recoil sent him stumbling backward several steps. The cold steel bolt thwacked out with a snap, its sharp tip cleaving through the air with a piercing whistle — and it vanished into the salesclerk’s upper-left back.
A spray of dark red blood burst out. The bolt struck with tremendous force, driving without resistance toward the heart, burying itself so deep that even the tail disappeared into flesh and muscle.
The next instant, Windsor’s pupils contracted sharply.
The salesclerk’s back clearly bore a gaping, blood-soaked wound — yet she showed no reaction whatsoever. She continued chasing after Bai Song without breaking stride.
Just then, Bai Song, seeing danger closing in, rounded a corner and bolted east.
The grey mist swirled in the salesclerk’s eyes. Her gaze was locked onto Bai Song’s position. Bai Song turned; she turned too. A rack of shelves stood in the way. She moved as though she couldn’t see it at all — when she was nearly upon it, she thrust out one hand. The heavy shelving unit crashed to the floor with a bang, sending a cascade of colourful stuffed animals tumbling across the ground. She walked calmly over them; certain toys with mechanisms inside immediately erupted in hideous screaming or tinny music.
Bai Song glanced back over his shoulder at the scene and felt every hair on his body stand on end.
What in the hell is this thing. She’s not human. Absolutely not.
Watching the salesclerk close the distance again, Bai Song gasped for breath, clutching his defensive armour, his mind racing through every option.
Just as he had no idea what to do, he suddenly heard Windsor call out: “Don’t let her see you!”
Meeting the salesclerk’s unblinking stare sent a jolt through him. He scanned his surroundings.
The gaps between displays weren’t enough to fully break line of sight. The only thing nearby that could completely conceal him was…
Bai Song sprinted forward, scrambled hand-and-foot inside the nearest unmanned counter, pressed his body flat against the inner wall. From the outside, there was no trace that a person was hidden there.
Windsor, seeing Bai Song find cover, let out a breath of relief — and redirected his full attention to the salesclerk.
Once Bai Song disappeared from her field of vision, the strange salesclerk’s pupils abruptly went unfocused. She stopped in place. Five seconds later she turned and walked away, bearing the bloodied, arrow-torn wound on her back with perfect composure, conducting a meticulous patrol between the shelves, her gaze intensely attentive, missing no detail.
Inside the counter, Bai Song was anxiously wondering whether the salesclerk would double back. Outside, Windsor watched her depart and was about to call out to Bai Song — when he saw a small door near the counter swing open from the inside.
Out from the door walked another salesclerk, also dressed in the white uniform, wearing black Mary Jane shoes with a low block heel.
The door connected to the store’s staff passageway. She was here to take over the shift… which meant she was the employee assigned to this empty counter.
Windsor only had time to shout: “She’s here!”
Inside the counter, the measured click of Mary Jane heels against the floor came like a death knell. Bai Song looked up — straight into the calm gaze of the arriving salesclerk.
The next moment, the salesclerk bent down, leaned in. The movement was as casual as picking up a pen dropped on the floor.
But her fingers — painted with vivid red nail polish — were reaching directly for Bai Song’s face.
If the other salesclerk could knock over an entire shelving unit with one gentle push, then this one could probably take his head clean off with a simple grab…
Bai Song’s eyes went glassy. He murmured, “I’m a good person. You don’t kill me, I don’t kill you. But if you kill me, I’ll…”
At the very instant those fingers were about to reach him, Bai Song’s upper body lurched out from his hiding spot. He seized the salesclerk’s wrist with one hand.
— And could do absolutely nothing to stop her momentum.
The sheer force nearly shattered his entire arm. Gritting his teeth, he resisted for one second. In his other hand, cold light flashed — a mid-tier attack dagger. He drove it at the salesclerk’s eyes like a man with nothing left to lose.
Mortal danger unlocked something deep in him. At a speed he’d never managed before, he stabbed that spot four or five times in quick succession. Blood sprayed in every direction.
A tremendous crashing sound erupted behind him — Windsor had shattered the front panel of the counter with some item, blasting open a gaping hole, and reached in to drag him out.
Bai Song scrambled out hand-and-foot. When he finally stood upright, he saw the salesclerk rising behind the counter as well. Her face was drenched in blood, her eyes completely destroyed. Even now, facing Bai Song head-on, she made no move to pursue — she had clearly lost her vision.
Sightless, her face soaked with blood, the salesclerk raised a hand and smoothed a few strands of hair that had come slightly loose during the struggle. She stood behind the counter — now missing a large chunk of its front panel — and slowly, methodically tidied the paperwork on the surface. A professionally appropriate smile settled on her face. She was formally beginning her workday.
Bai Song: “…Now that’s dedication.”
They’d barely caught their breath before voices rang out not far away: “There’s a blond one over there!”
— The commotion just now had been too loud. Others had noticed.
In an instant, scattered footsteps rose from every direction. Outsiders who’d spotted Bai Song converged on the location; those who hadn’t seen him yet poured out regardless, drawn by the noise, scouting toward where the crowd was thickest.
Killing other players no longer yielded rewards. People had finally stopped guarding against one another, free to appear openly in any public space, in broad daylight.
They had finally left behind the days of living like rats in the gutters, hunted and terrified, shed the identity of potential prey — and become true hunters, jointly sighting in on those precious, valuable targets —
This was the real Hunt.
A rough scan counted at least five or six moving silhouettes. There had to be more in the shadows — and salesclerk NPCs were converging from other directions as well. Their own side had only two people.
Faced with this situation, Bai Song had no choice but to deploy his final trump card.
That afternoon in the department store he’d collected quite a few spoils of war, including a number of mid-tier items — but none of them came close to this one.
A howl worthy of a slaughterhouse rang out across the third floor of the department store.
“YU GE————!!!!!”
In another corner of the third floor, among mountains of festive ribbons and gift boxes, a silver-haired guest in a black robe stood in silence. A knife-wielding corpse had just collapsed in front of him with a thunderous crash, blood spreading slowly across the floor.
The desperate howl echoed on and on. He heard it, and looked in that direction. A faint trace of a smile surfaced in those frost-blue eyes.
The next moment, a ghost-like black butterfly materialized at Bai Song’s side and settled soundlessly on his shoulder.
Bai Song’s body instantly vanished, entering perfect invisibility.
Simultaneously, the hunters surging toward that position were stopped cold by something invisible. They sensed it was some kind of defensive item and were about to combine their efforts to break through — when a suffocating flash of killing intent swept through the air and was gone. The three foremost hunters went pale and collapsed without warning, unknown whether dead or merely unconscious.
The others faltered, taking up cautious defensive stances. But in that moment of hesitation, the golden-haired figure was already gone from view.
Only a young man with linen-coloured long hair and aristocratic dress remained, standing in place with an amused smile, gesturing in a direction. “He ran that way!”
At the top of the festive-wig display rack, Yu Feichen withdrew his gaze.
The invisibility item had been deployed at just the right moment — likely one of the spoils Windsor had collected that afternoon. The only issue was it overlapped with his own attack just now.
Third floor. The Hunt was playing out in more than just this one place.
Near the corner where the silver-haired guest stood, a group of people came sprinting down the aisle between the shelves, chasing after a young boy — but two of them stopped and turned to peer into the corner.
“Does someone like that count as young-looking?” one of them asked.
“Hard to say,” the other replied.
The first leaned in again for a better look in the colourful light of the holiday string lights, and said quietly: “The others went chasing past. Should we take a chance here?”
— After all, no one said there was a penalty for guessing wrong.
While they were still deliberating.
Without anyone noticing when it had appeared, a black wide-brimmed hat was now in the guest’s hand. He raised it; the broad brim tilted slowly upward to obscure his face, then settled onto his head. The hat was trimmed with white feathers arranged into a few quietly ornate floral shapes, and black veiling hung from the brim, draping over his features — making it impossible to read his face at a glance.
The one who’d been uncertain whether this person could really qualify as “young-looking” found that now, with the black veil covering the guest’s face, combined with his tall, slender frame, the obscured figure in that soft haze looked far more like an adult woman.
Then the second person glanced at the body lying nearby, and the blood still spreading across the floor. He tugged at his companion’s sleeve. “Don’t get involved. Let’s go.”
The two continued forward after the others. The guest stepped out of the corner unhurried. For the sake of peace and quiet, he did not remove the veiled hat.
A music box played its chiming melody. A clown’s colourful balls lay scattered across the honey-toned floor. Nearby stood the clothing and wig displays, headless mannequins mounted on thin iron rods casting strangely-shaped shadows across the ground.
Another figure appeared in the light of the festive string lamps. He reached out; the brim dipped slightly, luxurious satin catching and spilling a flowing glimmer.
In the aisle, Yu Feichen passed him, shoulder brushing shoulder.