Chapter 58: You Wouldn't Want...

Song He's severed hand and injury made Cao Yu and the other two abandon their logical deductions and immediately enter a state of high alert.

When did he get injured...?!

Song Qiao immediately activated her Spirit Vision. After her Immortal path evolution rate crossed 11%, her internal vision had evolved into Spirit Vision, allowing her to see many things invisible to ordinary people.

For example, certain spirit-type ghosts not only lacked physical forms but did not even produce optical physical phenomena, rendering them completely invisible in the eyes of ordinary people.

Yet, Spirit Vision could perceive such monsters.

Song Qiao scanned her surroundings with Spirit Vision active... and saw nothing.

Suddenly, two lines of clear tears streamed down the corners of her eyes, and her nose began to twitch... She was actually crying?!

What was going on... Cao Yu asked Song Qiao, "Why are you crying?"

"I don't know either... I just suddenly felt so sad... I want to cry so badly... What is going on here...?!"

Song Qiao spoke in a tearful, bewildered voice.

It sounded extremely bizarre.

Just like she had gone mad.

"Uh..." Zhou Fan suddenly grabbed his abdomen and sank to one knee on the ground.

"..." Cao Yu: "Your stomach hurts?"

"I... I suddenly feel so miserable... It feels like life has no meaning anymore... Why do I have such thoughts...-?!"

As Zhou Fan replied, expressions of pain and despair surfaced in his eyes.

He felt a searing pain in his stomach—not from any physical stomach ailment, but rather an emotional gastric spasm triggered when feelings of anguish reached a certain intensity.

At this moment, it felt as though he had pursued a goddess for ten years, and she had finally agreed to his confession, walking down the aisle into the halls of marriage with him. Yet right after the wedding, he discovered the goddess already had a master, and marrying him was merely an assigned task from her master, shifting their clandestine affair from behind his back to out in the open... Multiply that feeling by a dozen times, and that was the extent of his current agony.

Moreover, this agony kept intensifying.

With one supporting a wrist and frowning, another holding her nose and weeping, and a third clutching his stomach and wailing, Cao Yu felt a surge of stifled frustration and anger, giving rise to a violent intent to kill... Cao Yu forcibly suppressed that murderous intent.

He was malfunctioning too!

Anger and murderous intent were inexplicably welling up from the depths of his heart... and growing stronger as time passed... What was going on?

Were they being attacked?

Cao Yu immediately cast the "Slayer-of-Immortals Incantation" to cover his whole body, attempting to dissolve this invisible assault.

The result was no effect.

He instantly deduced the nature of this invisible attack—Instance Domain Rules!

His "Slayer-of-Immortals Incantation" possessed a physical-level defense that was practically invincible; its essence was to attack in place of defense, piercing through everything, belonging to the category of rule and conceptual skills.

The lower the superpower serial number, the more conceptual it tended to be.

Yet the "Slayer-of-Immortals Incantation" alone could not defend against influences originating from the same rule level.

After all, his evolution rate was far too low at the current stage.

Rule-based power was not something low-tier players could touch upon.

Much like the previous instance domain "Shared Graves," under the operation of the instance, all players experienced hunger and were plagued by negative buffs that drained stamina... This belonged to the power of instance domain rules, not a simple physical, energy, or mental attack. It was utterly undefendable, and one could only seek a solution within the rules themselves.

'A severed hand, sorrow, pain, anger... Blissful Town, the townsmen who constantly smile, players who choose to stay and live here, Federation citizens who never cause trouble... A town that makes one forget all troubles...'

Cao Yu's brain operated at high speed, stringing all the clues together before quickly arriving at a speculative conclusion—this town was highly likely to devour anything that hindered the townsmen from attaining happiness.

For instance, negative emotions.

For instance, painful injuries.

As long as one abided by the town's rules, happiness could be attained.

As for those who broke the rules... judging by the current state of the four of them, those "negatives" devoured by the town would most likely gradually transfer onto the rule-breakers.

This speculation aligned well with their current situation.

If they wanted to break the deadlock, they had to obey the rules.

And obeying the rules... Cao Yu thought of those perpetually smiling townsmen, obeying the rules was even more dangerous!

There was a high probability of being "assimilated" and becoming a part of the instance domain.

However...

'Rule-based influences are not something low-tier players can handle; they can only be resolved within the rules. That being the case, there shouldn't be a guaranteed death scenario of immediate and complete assimilation the moment one obeys the rules. The player is definitely left with room to fight back.'

'Since multiple rules exist, violating different rules presumably corresponds to different dangers.'

'At the very least, the known dangers currently include spirit-type monsters and the transfer of negatives... We haven't encountered spirit-type monsters, presumably because we haven't violated the corresponding rules yet. The mealtime hasn't passed, and 10 PM hasn't arrived... The rule we have currently violated is to pray at least three times during the day.'

'Then conversely, does obeying different rules also correspond to varying degrees of assimilation?'

Cao Yu rapidly pushed forward with his logic.

As long as it wasn't an instantaneous and complete assimilation, there was still a chance to turn the tables.

Of course, this was merely a guess, and even though he was quite confident, he still needed to verify it first.

Cao Yu suppressed the increasingly violent intent to kill in his heart and quickly said to Zhou Fan and the other two:

"This instance domain will likely devour all the negatives of the townsmen, including negative emotions, painful injuries, and so on. Then, these negatives will gradually be transferred to those who do not follow the rules. If this continues, we will probably be swallowed up by these negatives, resulting in either physical death or mental and psychological collapse.

The method of resolution is to complete at least three prayers, though the price is being affected by the instance's assimilation power.

How much assimilation will occur is unclear, but I can say it won't cause immediate trouble. I need someone to help me verify this hypothesis. The reward is... helping you secure at least a 'B-' instance domain rating and obtaining a prop."

Hearing this,

Zhou Fan endured the escalating agony and despair in his heart and said:

"I..."

"I'll do it!"

Song He spoke up.

At this moment, aside from the fracture on his right wrist, more than a dozen harrowing self-inflicted wounds had appeared on his left arm, with blood gushing out frantically.

If this continued, heaven knew if a waist-severing injury would suddenly strike?

Or a broken neck injury?

He didn't dare gamble!

Fortunately, what he suffered were merely external wounds, and he hadn't been trapped by negative emotions, which was why he spoke up faster than Zhou Fan and took action sooner.

Zhou Fan: "?"

No, bro, you're even going to fight for the chance to be a bootlicker?

Song He naturally paid no mind to Zhou Fan's state of mind.

He simply raised his injured hands, palms facing upward, made a gesture of lifting the air, slowly raised them above his head, and murmured under his breath:

"May my life henceforth be filled with continuous happiness."

He repeated this three times, whispering it three times.

The instant the prayer concluded, his severed hand injury and self-inflicted wounds vanished directly, as if sucked away by some force.

His player interface also popped up at that moment, and the Evolution Game prompt rang out:

[You have triggered a side quest]

[Side Quest 1: Retrieve what you have lost]

[Side Quest 2: Retrieve what the surviving instance residents have lost]

Song He had recovered to normal.

He immediately informed Cao Yu of the intel.

The despairing Zhou Fan and the grieving Song Qiao had also heard it. Suppressing the emotions in their hearts, the two looked at Cao Yu to seek his opinion.

Praying actually caused one to lose things... Lose what? Should they do it?

"You guys bear with it for a moment." After cautioning the two, Cao Yu asked Song He, "Since you lost something... Have you noticed any changes in yourself?"

"No." Song He shook his head, looking suspicious: "I don't feel like I've lost anything; everything is completely normal."

"And your memories?" Cao Yu continued to ask.

"Uh... Things from my childhood all the way up to now, I can recall them all. There are no gaps." Song He replied truthfully.

Cao Yu looked back and forth between Song He and Song Qiao, then commanded:

"You two are siblings and are familiar with each other. Both of you carefully search through your respective embarrassing and agonizing negative memories—remember, memories that are too humiliating to look back on—and then state them one by one, cross-referencing each other."

This town would devour "unhappiness" and manufacture "happiness."

If one did not know what they had lost, searching through their "unhappiness" was undoubtedly an excellent direction for investigation.

"..." Song Qiao: "I... Do I have to speak as well?"

Cao Yu replied, "Ms. Song, you wouldn't want to fail to get a high rating or miss out on a good backer, would you?"

Song Qiao: "I wouldn't..."

"Then speak." Cao Yu said mercilessly.

And so, the brother and sister began exposing their own dark histories that left the deepest impressions.

Fortunately, Zhou Fan and Cao Yu nearby were in abnormal emotional states—one in agony and the other wanting to hack people to pieces—so listening in didn't make them feel awkward for the two.

Perhaps because players possessed strong mental fortitude and clear memories, coupled with the fact that the siblings knew each other very well, after a round of exposing dark histories, Song Qiao quickly discovered that Song He had omitted at least one rather profound event.