After confirming the state of the two unsolvable specters near the campfire, Zuo Lin'an glanced back at the specter Yuan Shan, who was chasing Zhou Meng. The difference was truly massive.
Yuan Shan's ferocious expression, his twisted and resentment-filled eyes...
Was it because Zhou Meng, the murderer, was still alive?
Once he killed Zhou Meng, would he also become vacant?
Zuo Lin'an stroked his chin. This was most likely the case, as there was no other way to explain it.
As time ticked away, Zhou Meng had already been chased by the specter Yuan Shan in a complete circle around the white mist. Perhaps because he had run with all his might, he looked utterly exhausted.
Panting heavily, Zhou Meng felt his dwindling true qi. His expression was terrible. He knew his death was certain, yet he still couldn't stop himself from fleeing.
The specter Yuan Shan, who had been pursuing him all along, seemed to realize he was reaching his limit and accelerated significantly.
In the blink of an eye, the specter thrust out its claws, which were about to sink into Zhou Meng's back. It looked like it was preparing to gouge out his heart.
It seemed that even after turning into a specter, Yuan Shan hadn't forgotten his habit of gouging out hearts.
Right at that moment, a blood-stained chopstick suddenly appeared out of thin air in Zhou Meng's hand, one end of it clearly sharpened by hand.
Clutching the chopstick, he stabbed backward at the specter Yuan Shan.
If it were an ordinary specter, or even Zuo Lin'an's specter body, this specter item would have definitely been effective.
But unfortunately, the one chasing Zhou Meng was an unsolvable specter.
Unsolvable.
True to its name, any and all methods were completely useless against it.
Just as Bai Yuan had mentioned in the small chat group before, an unsolvable specter could only be forcefully suppressed and compressed by a logic-defying, overwhelmingly powerful specter aura.
However, the restrictions on unsolvable specters were also the greatest among all specters, as they could only attack the person who had personally killed them.
Indeed, there were always trade-offs; it was a balance of abilities.
The chopstick in Zhou Meng's hand struck the specter Yuan Shan. Putting all his strength into it, he directly pierced through Yuan Shan's wrist.
Yet Yuan Shan seemed entirely unfazed. With a furious roar, he violently swung his hand, throwing Zhou Meng far away. Zhou Meng rolled several times on the ground before barely coming to a halt.
Due to this desperate strike, Zhou Meng had exposed a massive vulnerability. Seizing the opportunity, the specter Yuan Shan lunged forward, grabbing him by the throat just as he was trying to stand.
Zhou Meng's face was filled with horror.
“The specter item didn't work? It really didn't work!!”
He had always heard that unsolvable specters could not be dealt with by any means, not even to buy time. Before this, he had dismissed it as alarmist talk and refused to believe it.
Driven to a dead end just now, he had wanted to test it with a specter item.
But he never expected that this single attempt would cost him his life.
Little did he know, the specter Yuan Shan had been holding back the entire time. The only reason Zhou Meng had managed to run for so long was purely because Yuan Shan wanted to torture him.
Zuo Lin'an watched this unfold from a distance.
Once Zhou Meng was captured, the specter Yuan Shan thrust his hand into Zhou Meng's chest. In the blink of an eye, a bright red heart appeared in his grasp.
The heart was still beating rapidly, even steaming in the cold air.
“Ahhh!!!”
The agony of having one's heart gouged out alive was not something that could be easily endured.
Even so, Zhou Meng did not die immediately.
Zuo Lin'an noticed that Yuan Shan was using his own specter aura to connect with Zhou Meng's body.
He was all too familiar with this scenario; Yuan Shan was using his aura to sustain Zhou Meng's final breath.
It seemed Yuan Shan was far from venting all his anger.
Sure enough, after only a few seconds, Yuan Shan crushed the heart in his hand, threw Zhou Meng to the ground, and slammed both fists down with brute force.
Accompanied by agonizing shrieks, the bones in Zhou Meng's limbs were systematically crushed to pieces, bit by bit.
Finally, the fist descended upon Zhou Meng's head.
With this strike, Zhou Meng's skull was completely smashed to pieces. Its contents splattered everywhere, painting a gruesome and sickening scene.
Zhou Meng was dead.
Zuo Lin'an sighed inwardly.
Unsolvable specters were indeed incredibly cruel.
From this, it was clear that Yao Qianhe's previous choice had been the correct one.
If he had waited for Wang Luoshan's specter to fully form, he would have definitely met an incredibly gruesome end!
After Zhou Meng was killed, Zuo Lin'an did not leave immediately. He didn't actually care about Zhou Meng; he merely wanted to see if the unsolvable specter would undergo any changes after killing its murderer.
Sure enough, after killing his murderer, Zhou Meng, the once ferocious specter Yuan Shan gradually became peaceful and vacant, his eyes slowly losing their luster.
Before long, he began to wander aimlessly around the spot where Zhou Meng had died.
“Hmm, it seems my guess was correct.”
Zuo Lin'an walked back slowly, pondering what had just transpired.
For his current self, the more unsolvable specters there were, the better. However, a method like the one he just used could only work once on any given player.
Zhou Meng wasn't a fool.
The first kill could only be attributed to him being caught off guard and unprepared. Once the deed was done, he would inevitably realize something was wrong.
Trying to get him to kill a second one?
Zuo Lin'an shook his head slowly.
That was impossible now.
“It seems I'll have to plan more thoroughly in the next dungeon.”
Currently, only two women with shattered limbs remained in the entire dungeon.
Having nothing better to do, Zuo Lin'an first went to the mountaintop with the campfire and extinguished it, then turned toward the peak of the other mountain.
The two female players, who had been unconscious all this time, were still lying there.
He only needed to kill these two to conclude the dungeon.
Even Zuo Lin'an couldn't help but marvel at how quickly this dungeon run was coming to an end.
“Roleplaying as an NPC actually seems quite nice.”
Time quickly marched on to 3:00 AM. Zuo Lin'an picked one of the women at random and executed her.
With that, only the last one remained.
He stood in the distance, browsing the forum on his phone.
It was still a bit too early, so there weren't many new posts.
When 4:00 AM arrived, Zuo Lin'an killed the final player.
The dungeon run was over.
Zuo Lin'an stretched lazily, deactivated his perfect fusion state, and reverted to his original appearance.
“Finally done. I didn't expect that roleplaying as an NPC could instantly manipulate the players into slaughtering one another.”
“Is this what they call winning without shedding blood?”
The more he thought about it, the more he felt he should roleplay as an NPC more often in the future. Aside from honing his acting skills and familiarizing himself with the NPC's perspective, it also gave him opportunities to drive wedges between players.
This time, he hadn't managed to detect their talents or specter items while roleplaying.
But that didn't matter.
Once he became more proficient in the future, he would definitely be able to take it a step further.
“Still, being able to pull this off so smoothly was mostly down to luck.”
Zuo Lin'an was well aware that this smooth run was because the relationships among these players already contained irreconcilable conflicts.
Especially Zhou Meng's identity.
This identity was the true source of disaster.
In Zuo Lin'an's opinion, the moment Zhou Meng and Wang Luoshan entered the dungeon and saw each other, they should have immediately pretended not to know each other, or at least acted unfamiliar.
That way, they could have deceived the others.
Yet, they hadn't done so.
Rate on N.U.
