Chapter 124: The Human Skin Drum (28)

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The players were cursing furiously.

Yes, they were cursing the Fatty! They had placed no fewer than twenty bets—perhaps even a hundred—but they had never encountered anyone as unreliable as him.

His weapon being excessively destructive was one thing. But the bastard had even activated an ACE area-of-effect attack.

Even the monsters in the dungeon were not as indiscriminate between friend and foe as the Fatty!

As for the Fatty himself, he crawled out of a mound of dirt, his face covered in clods and fragments of soil. He casually glanced at the players, paying particular attention to whether any of the dark-purple liquid flowing from the belly of the female stone statue had splashed onto him. Only after confirming that none had touched him did he finally relax completely.

Patting his chest, the Fatty put on an innocent, affected expression and asked everyone, “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

…

Did they look all right to him?

What a fucking idiot!

“Hmph.” The explosives the Fatty had used this time did not possess the ability to harm spiritual entities, so Sister Ying could simply disregard the damage they had inflicted upon her.

She gave a cold snort, her expression indifferent and icy.

“I originally had no intention of sending you into the lair so soon. But this time, you truly have angered me!” Sister Ying swept her indifferent gaze over every player present. “When you first entered this dungeon, you took photographs with a camera, didn’t you?”

She smiled, but her smile was filled with sinister cruelty.

“Then come and enjoy yourselves! Enjoy the suffering I endured back then!”

“This pain will surely make you remember it for the rest of your lives!”

The ground suddenly cracked apart inch by inch. Everyone began to plunge beneath the earth.

Only Tang Mu was not dragged into the abyss by that terrifying vortex.

She was the only one who had never taken a photograph with the camera. Thus, this stage simply ignored her.

The surrounding darkness filled with cries of “ahhh” in voices both male and female. In less than a moment, the sounds that had just been ringing in her ears abruptly vanished, sinking into the depths of the darkness.

The monsters and her teammates had all been dragged hundreds of meters underground.

“What rotten luck. If I’d known, I would have taken a picture with the camera too and gone down with them. It would have saved me the trouble of walking down on two legs.” Tang Mu gazed toward the bottom of the abyss and sighed faintly.

The enormous abyss resembled a colossal beast with its jaws wide open, seemingly capable of swallowing innocent lives at any moment. Yet there was a direct route from the rim to the bottom. The path descended in a spiral, every part of it seeming to beckon Tang Mu onward, urging her to hurry down and uncover the unknown.

There was no one else around her.

Tang Mu could only set out alone.

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After all, she still had to fight the monsters to clear the dungeon.

If the monsters refused to play with her, she would be trapped in this dungeon for the rest of her life.

“Where are you?” Tang Mu took a communication conch from her backpack. Qiao Yuan had given it to her, saying that if some unavoidable circumstance separated them, they could at least use it to contact one another.

After a long while, a low male voice finally came through the conch. He sounded to be in considerable pain, grunting repeatedly as he spoke, as though he had been injured by some obstacle during the sudden plunge.

“There’s no light where we are. We can’t see anything. All we can hear is water dripping constantly—drip, drip, drip. There may be mutated monsters here, but for some reason, they haven’t made any obvious move. If you’re planning to come rescue us…”

“Stop right there.” Tang Mu cut him off coldly. “Who said I was coming to rescue you? I don’t care whether you’re injured.”

“Where is he?”

A deep, low chuckle came from the other end of the conch. After another brief silence, the man indicated the direction for Tang Mu.

“Kid, she’s calling for you.”

Xingwen seemed to be right beside Qiao Yuan.

Whether Qiao Yuan had struck him or beaten him for a while, Xingwen let out a muffled groan of pain.

But he said nothing.

The conch once again carried only Qiao Yuan’s low, threatening voice.

“I know you don’t care about anyone else. You only care about Yan Xingwen. That’s why I’m with Yan Xingwen. If you don’t come rescue me and the other members of the Association within the allotted time, I’ll kill him.”

“You don’t know this yet, do you? Even monsters cannot reincarnate after dying too many times.”

“Do you want to bet on it?”

Fuck.

“Are you threatening me?” Tang Mu’s voice turned vicious as well. “Do you know what happens to people who threaten me?”

The other side responded with complete indifference.

“Even if I didn’t threaten you, we’d still be in danger. Taking a gamble at least gives us a chance to survive.”

“You have twelve hours,” the man said. “If you don’t come, I’ll kill him.”

Silence fell from the conch.

Over on Tang Mu’s side, she was naturally furious.

Damn it.

Very well.

She hated being threatened.

But since Qiao Yuan insisted on stepping directly on her land mine…

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Then she would let him learn exactly what happened when someone provoked a demon!

Tang Mu stepped onto the spiraling stone stairs.

She set out on her journey to rescue them.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of a certain abyss, An Xiaoying regarded Tang Mu with profound distrust as she spoke to Qiao Yuan.

“You seriously asked her to come rescue us? If she sees us tied up and doesn’t stab us again, that alone will count as mercy.”

Qiao Yuan had only one answer.

“Xingwen is in our hands.”

An Xiaoying looked toward Yan Xingwen. The underground depths were not entirely devoid of light. Yet the little brat, unconscious from pain, was worlds apart from the legendary Yan Xingwen who had participated in designing this game.

The difference was like heaven and earth.

An Xiaoying still remembered the beginning of the game’s construction. When the Queen of Spades had recruited game designers on a large scale, Yan Xingwen’s mental-power aptitude had been recorded as “unmeasurable.” Only when someone’s mental power exceeded the limits of the human psychic domain would such a result appear.

In other words, Yan Xingwen’s mental power was at least SSS rank.

It was terrifyingly inhuman.

But could this little brat before her—who cried at the slightest provocation and fainted whenever someone touched him—really be that legendary figure? An Xiaoying remained deeply skeptical.

Even if he was, once Tang Mu reached the underground depths, she would probably save only him. As for An Xiaoying and Qiao Yuan, that hard-hearted woman likely would not even spare them a glance.

An Xiaoying suddenly gave a bitter laugh.

She had actually fallen so low as to rely on the enemy who had killed her sister to save her.

How utterly humiliating.

**

Tang Mu’s side.

The stone stairs were very narrow, wide enough for no more than two people to walk abreast. Moreover, once someone entered the abyssal stairway from outside, it seemed as though the light were blocked at the entrance, unable to reach the depths within. The stone steps and walls along the way glimmered with the faint light of firefly stones, but that glow illuminated a range of only about half a meter.

Beyond that range, it was difficult to make out the surroundings.

From time to time, cold, slick, clammy vines slithered across the stairs.

The sensation was like black snakes soaking in sticky liquid.

It made her skin crawl—and filled her with disgust.

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