Chapter 232 (II): Hidden Mission

Zhang Yuanqing drew his hand back and dropped from the wall. I knew it. That talisman is what's blocking the commandery princess. She can't get back into the tomb and can only wander around the village. Good thing I didn't tear it down just now.

Looks like she can't come back. So I just have to hole up in the tomb until ten tomorrow morning and I clear Mute Village and get back to reality.

With that, the Mute Village dungeon was fully solved.

I’m so tired... I almost died three times in one night. This is ten thousand times more intense than the Official Tournament. Why am I so unlucky to draw such difficult dungeons every single time?

Zhang Yuanqing was in a foul mood, and his mood got even fouler because he remembered that the dungeons he entered would most likely be ones Demon Lord had been through.

And with Demon Lord's hidden rating, there'd be plenty more of these ahead.

It was all Demon Lord's fault.

Wait.

Zhang Yuanqing frowned. If hiding in the chamber was enough to clear it, then by normal logic, the dungeon run should end when the commandery princess's stage was over, which meant at the end of the fourth watch. There was no reason to continue lingering in this instance if all the bosses were dealt with.

However the dungeon's main quest lasted twenty-four hours. That meant he had to keep sitting in here for ten more hours.

His mind began to theorize.

Those ten hours are completely meaningless. This is ridiculous. Is it a bug? If it isn't a bug, then in my experience, this dungeon has a hidden mission, and those ten hours are set aside for the Walker to do it...

In a survival dungeon, the Spirit Realm gives you no hints at all. You have to determine on your own if there's a hidden mission. It's not like Yin Yang Town, where you're informed of one the moment you trigger it.

So what was the hidden mission?

Items that slept once daylight came, and a commandery princess who had a home she couldn't return to...

Zhang Yuanqing understood. The hidden mission was to help the commandery princess recover her items and help her back into the tomb.

This was why the items are inactive during the day. It was so that the Walker could hunt them down with nothing in the way. Looking at it this way, finding the items is surely not an easy task. But no matter. I've got Little Goofball.

The more he thought, the surer he felt, and his eyes lit up in delight. Besides, this task was perfectly in line with his warm and honest personality.

With his mind made up, Zhang Yuanqing sat down in a corner of the outer room, his back against the brick wall, and shut his eyes for a short rest.

Three hours later, after dozing off lightly, he woke up and put on the Red Dancing Shoes, clambering up the steep brick wall to the robber's shaft above and then climbing up out of the earth along the shaft.

The sky had already turned bright. The mountain valley was lush, covered in a dense forest, with ridges piled on ridges to either side.

Zhang Yuanqing made full use of the shoes' active duration to make his way out of the deep mountains before dancing one dance with it outside the village and heading in.

He'd taken the same route back to the village. The ruined village lay silent. There were no human voices, but no danger either.

Zhang Yuanqing let Little Goofball out and sent him off to hunt for treasure. Little Goofball crawled to his master's feet and spread his stubby little arms to hug his calf, then rubbed his round little face against it to show his affection. The little infant's intelligence was slowly awakening, and after the crisis from the night before, it had learned to show gratitude.

Little Goofball paddled his limbs and crawled ahead to lead the way. Zhang Yuanqing followed at an easy pace, and before long, they found Corpse No. 1 down a little alley.

Corpse No. 1 lay stiffly on the ground like a frozen body. Though it bore no obvious wounds, but Zhang Yuanqing's face was heavy with grief. The spirit body inside the yin corpse had been destroyed.

The first step in refining a yin corpse was to integrate the spirit body left inside the corpse with its mortal shell. The spirit body was the yin corpse's root, its core. Without the broken spirit body, the yin corpse was just an empty shell, worth as much as scrap.

Zhang Yuanqing dropped to his knees beside the corpse with a thud and kowtowed. "Brother, you died for me, and I'll never forget it. I can only pay you back in the next life. In the meantime, rest well."

With his kowtows done, he felt as though something was off, but honest as he was, he didn't dwell on it. He picked up the human-shaped membrane beside the corpse instead. The Perfect Skin was still there and had not been taken by the commandery princess. It had peeled itself off the yin corpse's body.

"You're the item which made me decide to sacrifice my brother," he muttered angrily. "You're nothing but a menace. The second I'm out of this dungeon, I'm selling you."

Feeling sick to his heart, he stowed it back into his Inventory then headed to the little courtyard where Mr. Xu had lived and took the silver rouge box off the desk.

The next task was finding the ghost doll and the bronze mirror.

Little Goofball led Zhang Yuanqing in a loop around the ruined mountain village, and in the end, they came right back to Wang Xiao'er's place.

The old man's headless body still lay by the little path outside the yard.

As he watched the infant spirit crawl into the yard without a shred of hesitation, Zhang Yuanqing raised an eyebrow and was about to hurry after him when his eye caught the old man's body.

An irrepressable wave of guilt rose within him, followed by a wave of sorrow. He walked over to the old man's body, dropped to his knees with a thud, and sincerely kowtowed three solid times to express his remorse.

Then he got up and went after Little Goofball, into the inner room with its coffin. The little infant spirit was already down under the coffin, his small hands patting the packed earth, babbling “abba abba."

Something tugged at Zhang Yuanqing as he pulled out the Bloodthirsty Blade and drove the sharp point through the hard soil. A dozen-odd centimeters down, the blade struck something hard with a sharp metallic ring.

He reached in and brushed the loose dirt away, revealing the lid of an iron box. He kept digging into the soil, widening the pit, and finally dug the iron box out.

The box was half a meter long, twenty centimeters wide, and thirty high, fastened closed with a bronze lock.

Zhang Yuanqing sheared the lock off easily with his blade and opened the lid. Inside was a box packed full of gold, silver, and jade. At the very top was a black statue that seemed crystal clear, in the shape of a little girl with a pair of jug-like ears.

The girl's mouth hung open, and there was no tongue inside.

Beside the statue was a palm-sized bronze mirror, dull and round, with a luan phoenix carved on the back of it. Two red, gleaming gems were inlaid as the phoenix's eyes.

Zhang Yuanqing flipped the mirror over and looked at himself in it, but nothing showed. It was a mirror that could not reflect the appearances of people.

He held the two items and waited a moment for the Spirit Realm text to appear.

【Name: Yin Jade Doll】

【Type: Handicraft】

【Function: Possession】

【Description: Made of yin jade and gestated for a hundred years in a place filled with utmost yin energy. By chance, it came to a lonely little girl with no one else in the world. The girl carried the yin jade for a long time as the yin energy slowly seeped into her body. She soon died, and her spirit body fused with the yin jade and turned into a statue.】

【Note 1: The spirit body in the yin jade longs to play games. Anyone who won't play with her will be possessed. The possession cannot be evaded, cannot be blocked, and the spirit body cannot be wholly wiped out.】

【Note 2: Let's play a game. I want to be the third one, hehe.】

Zhang Yuanqing was momentarily stunned before he mumbled, "Rule... Rule-type item..."

Any item with properties that carried a specific limitation such as "cannot be X" or "unable to Y" was considered a rule-type item. Only a rule-type item could be that overbearing. Its rule couldn't be subverted. The ghost doll's function was simple, but it was a rule-type item.

Truth be told, back when he'd learned he had to gather three people to evade the danger of the ghost girl, he'd already had an inkling. It was similar to the Red Dancing Shoes' rule. You had to dance in order to break the rule and dodge the hunt.

On instinct and without thinking, in a way that didn't suit his honest character at all, Zhang Yuanqing attempted to stow the ghost doll into his Inventory and make it his own.

【Ding! This item cannot be taken.】

This belongs to the commandery princess. I can't take it. Zhang Yuanqing felt ashamed for a couple of seconds, then looked at the description of the second item.

【Name: Ghost Mirror】

【Type: Mirror】

【Function: Charm, Reveal Ghosts】

【Description: All things in this world can be reflected. Only the human heart is difficult to grasp. The Ghost Mirror is an item forged by Commandery Princess Yin Yao after two sixty-year cycles of wandering the world. She experienced hard living after seeing all human affairs, and her Charm ability reached its peak. It can record all it sees and hears, and conjure a realm that no one can differentiate from reality.】

【Note: From the moment you use it, you are the Great Sage.】

Zhang Yuanqing felt confused. You become the Great Sage? That counts as a price?

However, since he hadn't become the item's master, Zhang Yuanqing couldn't experience what the price entailed. Not that any of it mattered either way, as returning the items to the poor commandery princess was the only thing.

He found a bamboo basket in the outer hall to hold the three items, then carried the basket out of Wang Xiao'er's stone house and headed off towards the back of the village.

It was time to finish the hidden mission and clear the dungeon.