Cultivating in Online Games

Chapter 73 - The Ghost Contract

“But what else can we do? We still have to take him with us.” Yi Mengxiaoyao’s face was full of resignation and acceptance after being tormented by the game.

Having been comprehensively restrained by this instance, he had already been ground down.

Dugu Zhuo: “At least if we discover it in advance, we can identify what kind of bug worm he has and in what form it will erupt. The effects of the power surge type, parasitic transfer type, and self-destruction type are completely different, and so are the countermeasures.”

If it’s the power surge type, he might suddenly attack the players nearby, so additional restraints are needed to give the players time to distance themselves.

The parasitic transfer type is a control type, which is more troublesome, and requires constant attention to You Lang’s movements during the battle.

If it’s the self-destruction type and You Lang dies, they will be ejected from the instance, and they might face a situation where they have to both fight the boss and prevent You Lang from self-destructing, which is also very troublesome.

“I think whichever type it is, it will be hard to guard against,” Ye Jian said, “It would be great if my painting could still contain people.”

Dugu Zhuo: “I’ll first check if he is parasitized by the bug worm.”

“Can that even be confirmed? Do you have any special tools or skills?” Bai Yi Piaopiao asked.

Dugu Zhuo: “Sort of.”

He infused a strand of true essence into You Lang’s body. The true essence circulated through his meridians and finally found a small unhatched egg in You Lang’s heart.

“It’s indeed as Ye Zhou said; he is parasitized by a bug worm,” Dugu Zhuo frowned and said.

While they were discussing, You Lang was not idle. He perked up his ears to listen to the players’ conversation. Upon hearing that Dugu Zhuo said he was parasitized, he immediately drew his sword and said, “Not only did I fail to recognize the evil path practitioner, but I was also controlled by a bug worm. I… truly feel unworthy of being a righteous disciple. Master, I am incompetent, so I will make amends with my death!”

“Wait!” Yi Mengxiaoyao quickly used a branch to bind You Lang into a bundle, “What’s wrong with you!”

Ye Zhou: “It seems that if players discover the parasitism in advance, they might self-destruct.”

Dugu Zhuo: “The game usually doesn’t reuse the same setting. Since he is showing signs of self-destruction now, it is likely that he won’t self-destruct when the bug worm acts in the future.”

“So what should we do now?” Yi Mengxiaoyao said helplessly.

“Let’s use my method,” Ti Tou Lai Jian said.

He held You Lang’s wrist, and his nails, like Bai Yi Piaopiao’s before, grew long and deeply pierced into You Lang’s wrist, absorbing his blood.

Ti Tou Lai Jian said to You Lang, “Let’s make a pact. Before I reach the final boss, you must behave yourself, understand?”

You Lang didn’t speak. Ti Tou Lai Jian said, “Force him to nod.”

Yi Mengxiaoyao held You Lang’s head and made him nod vigorously. Ti Tou Lai Jian, feeling that the contract was about to be established, continued, “If we can reach the final boss, you must let me decide who you will attack first when you see the boss, okay?”

Yi Mengxiaoyao continued to hold You Lang’s head and made him nod.

A mark belonging to Ti Tou Lai Jian appeared on You Lang’s wrist, and upon closer inspection, the mark even had Ti Tou Lai Jian’s game ID on it. The ghost contract was now established.

“NPCs are easier to deal with than players. Players have to trick them into willingly agreeing, but NPCs can be made to comply by simply making them nod,” Bai Yi Piaopiao said with satisfaction.

She explained the use of ghost contracts to the group, which involves deceiving players or NPCs into agreeing to certain demands. The contract also has a conditional clause, such as Ti Tou Lai Jian’s condition of “if we can reach the final boss,” and Bai Yi Piaopiao’s condition before entering the instance, “if I pass this instance.”

The content that the conditional clause can restrict depends on the difficulty of the condition. If the difficulty does not match, the contract cannot be established.

“A contract is relative. If I fulfill the condition, they have to act according to the agreement. If I fail to meet the condition, we will face corresponding penalties. These penalties are random, such as being unable to enter any instance for seven days or not obtaining any useful items from monsters for a period, even missing out on first kills. The types and severity of penalties are unpredictable and very strange,” Bai Yi Piaopiao said.

Ti Tou Lai Jian added, “Contracts can only be used in non-combat situations, and the ghost race can only establish one contract at a time. My sister cannot establish a new contract before completing the agreement with that demon clan man, so it falls to me to handle You Lang.”

“The ghost race skills are really interesting,” Ye Jian said enviously.

Bai Yi Piaopiao: “Evil path skills are all very interesting. Otherwise, if you can’t see the sun at the start, and you look strange and bizarre, who would play the evil path without some interesting skills?”

You Lang finally became obedient. The group continued deeper into the Corpse Gu Village and encountered the first instance boss in no time.

After players had stopped trusting anyone in the village, the first instance boss was very recognizable. He was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man who would suddenly emerge from the ground and, with a fierce expression, utter standard villain lines like, “You killed my little darlings,” before directly starting the fight.

The challenge was that as soon as he emerged from the ground, he would instantly kill one player, and the appearance location was random and without warning, giving players no chance to react.

However, the boss’s chosen target for the instant kill was Dugu Zhuo. Dugu Zhuo had long detected movement underground, and at the moment the boss emerged, he used the Earth Sword from the Five Elements Sword Technique, causing the boss to be pierced by countless earth swords before he even fully emerged, taking out a third of the boss’s health without harming Dugu Zhuo.

The group initially planned to directly attack the restrained boss, but the middle-aged man immediately turned into a mass of pixels, his body dissipating and reassembling, escaping the earth swords’ confinement.

“What is this thing?” Yi Mengxiaoyao asked.

Dugu Zhuo: “He seems to be an insect-man, scattering his body into countless small insects and then reassembling. This move was probably so terrifying that the game’s censorship mechanism automatically pixelated it.”

Ye Zhou: “…The game is also trying hard.”

Aside from this, the boss was a regular boss, continuously attacking and using offensive moves. With proper evasion and strong attack power, the players quickly reduced the boss’s health bar to just 5%.

At this point, Yi Mengxiaoyao, who was very experienced, said, “Be careful, when the boss’s health bar is nearly depleted, he will generally use a big move. Keep your distance!”

As soon as he finished speaking, the middle-aged man turned back into a mass of pixels and split into seven streams of insects attacking everyone. Clearly, these insects were either severely injuring or controlling their victims.

Yi Mengxiaoyao, who liked to use branches to whip enemies, tightened his grip on the branch and carried You Lang away. Dugu Zhuo used the Flame Talisman to burn the insects furiously.

Fortunately, Bai Yi Piaopiao’s crowd control skill, White Silk, managed to control a large number of insects, making it easier for everyone to deal with them.

With only 1% health remaining, the pixels reformed into the middle-aged man, who was then killed by the group.

Before collapsing, the middle-aged man ominously said, “It’s too late. You will not be able to leave Corpse Gu Village.”

Bai Yi Piaopiao approached the monster and obtained a level 40 metal material called “Stone Green Gold,” which could be used to craft armor or weapons.

Since the two ghost race members had contributed significantly in this battle, the group did not compete with them for the material and gave it to the siblings.

Ye Jian asked, “Why did he say we can’t leave Corpse Gu Village?”

Yi Mengxiaoyao replied, “The boss always has to say something before dying, like the villains in cartoons who always say, ‘I’ll be back.’”

“That’s not it,” Dugu Zhuo said, looking around. “We really can’t leave.”

The group followed his gaze and saw that the road they had entered the village on had vanished.

Dugu Zhuo said, “I suspected something was wrong with this village when we entered. It seems to be using a formation I don’t recognize. After the middle-aged man died, the formation activated and trapped us here.”

“I’m losing health,” Ye Zhou said. “For no apparent reason, I lost 5% of my health without any injuries.”

“Me too,” other players said, raising their hands.

Dugu Zhuo also noticed he had lost 5% of his health and his true essence was significantly weakened. He immediately took a health recovery pill, but it had no effect.

“It seems that in this formation, players will continuously weaken and eventually be trapped to death by the formation, and health recovery items are ineffective,” Ye Zhou analyzed.

Yi Mengxiaoyao said, “I calculated the time. About a minute after the first boss said that line, I lost 5% of my health. If it’s 5% per minute, this must be a time-limited escape room game. We must leave the village within 20 minutes, or we will definitely die.”

“Why don’t we split up to find a way out?” Bai Yi Piaopiao suggested.

Dugu Zhuo shook his head. “This is a formation, and blindly searching won’t help. It will only waste time. To escape, we must find the formation’s core.”

Ye Jian asked, “What is the formation’s core?”

Dugu Zhuo explained, “In any formation, there must be an energy source and a person or a magic tool maintaining its operation. For example, in the ‘Mysterious Maze Formation’ I used before, to maximize its effect, it required a player skilled in the formation and spirit stones to sustain the energy. The location of the player is the formation’s core. This formation can trap so many of us at once, so there must be a core.”

Ti Tou Lai Jian asked, “So we need to search in the village?”

Dugu Zhuo replied, “The core must be hidden using various methods, so blind searching won’t work. To break the formation, you either need a formation expert to use true essence to carefully explore the flow of energy and find subtle differences to locate the core, or…”

Bai Yi Piaopiao raised her hand, “Say something we can understand.”

“Or you can use a large-scale attack, covering the entire formation with the five elements—water, fire, wind, and earth. Elements like water flow and wind direction can help us pinpoint the formation’s core,” Dugu Zhuo said.

“But such a large-scale attack would require at least level 60 players. We don’t have that capability,” Bai Yi Piaopiao said. “There must be another way to break the formation that normal players can use, not something that requires cheating.”

She had a point, and Dugu Zhuo frowned in thought.

Three minutes had already passed, and everyone had lost 15% of their health. While player health loss was manageable and could be revived, Dugu Zhuo’s situation was more critical, as dying in the game would likely mean real death.

However, Dugu Zhuo, who should have been the most anxious, remained calm. He broke a willow twig from Yi Mengxiaoyao and drew a map of Corpse Gu Village on the ground.

He had taken a quick look at the village’s layout from the sky when they entered and hoped that redrawing it might give some clues.

Dugu Zhuo completed the drawing in a few minutes. Ye Jian looked at it and took out a Mirage Lamp.

The Mirage Lamp could project the drawn image into reality as a virtual image. After Ye Jian used it, Dugu Zhuo’s village map appeared in 3D form in the air.

“What’s this for?” Ti Tou Lai Jian asked.

“Formations are often based on terrain. Reproducing a small-scale formation might give us some insights,” Dugu Zhuo said. He then took another willow leaf from Yi Mengxiaoyao and blew it into the 3D image. The leaf floated around the simulated map but couldn’t escape.

Bai Yi Piaopiao found it interesting and waved her sleeve. A gust of wind spread over the entire model, causing the leaf to whirl above a particular house and refuse to leave.

The group said, “…It’s here!”

They ran towards the location indicated by the leaf.

Upon arrival, they found no house, only a flat area.

“Formations can create illusions. Don’t be deceived by your eyes. Use abilities to attack. All the houses in this village are made of wood. According to the five elements’ interactions, the best way to attack is with metal-type moves,” Dugu Zhuo said.

Ye Zhou wielded his flying sword and stopped at the location of the house.

“There’s indeed something!” Ye Zhou strengthened his true essence, instantly casting numerous spirit spells. The long sword forced its way into the house, turning into a shadow under Ye Zhou’s spirit spells, causing the wooden house to shatter into pieces!

As the cottage fell, the illusion blocking their view disappeared, revealing an old man with a white beard leaning on a cane.

You Lang saw the old man and exclaimed, “He is the village chief of Corpse Gu Village!”