Blood splattered across the grand chair. The body of the “Fu Young Miss” slid softly to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
Having fired the shot, Yu Huaiting gasped violently. The gun in his hand clattered to the floor, and he collapsed to his knees before Chen Yu as if his very soul had been drained dry.
He looked at Chen Yu, his eyes full of despair and pleading: “A-Yu… I avenged you… Fu Songcheng… I’m sorry…”
Chen Yu floated in midair, looking down at this beaten dog kneeling before him.
There wasn’t a shred of pity in his eyes.
He spat out a few cold words: “Yu Huaiting, kill yourself.”
Yu Huaiting’s whole body trembled violently.
He didn’t want to die. He resisted this absurd command, a beast-like, suppressed howl rising in his throat.
“I… won’t…”
Yu Huaiting clutched at his own hair in agony.
Just then, Lin Feng, holding the blood-dripping bayonet, slowly walked up to Yu Huaiting.
He looked at Yu Huaiting struggling on the ground, his voice soft and unhurried, yet like a poison-quenched blade: “Chen Yu is already dead. Don’t you plan to go accompany him? Aren’t you the one who loved him most?”
That sentence was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
The clarity in Yu Huaiting’s eyes collapsed completely.
He slowly reached out, picked up the gun from the floor, and aimed the barrel at his own chin.
He looked at Chen Yu’s face, and the corner of his mouth actually twisted into a relieved, tragic smile.
“A-Yu… I’m coming to accompany you.”
Bang!
Another gunshot.
Yu Huaiting’s massive frame crashed down. Dark red blood intertwined with Fu Songcheng’s, flowing across the floor of the Fu main hall.
The courtyard full of NPC military police had long since scattered like frightened birds in the upheaval of Fu Songcheng’s death. The vast Fu residence was now left with nothing but a deathly silence.
Lin Feng tossed the bayonet aside, clutching the wound on his neck, gasping violently.
Chen Yu drifted down to his side, his heart aching as he tried to touch Lin Feng’s wound—but his hand passed straight through his neck.
“Brother Lin, we won…” Chen Yu murmured.
Lin Feng leaned against the pillar, looking at the two corpses on the floor, his brain rapidly piecing together everything that had just happened.
His voice was somewhat hoarse. “You and Yu Huaiting were a pair of progressive thinkers who tried to rebel against this era. But because of family interests, Yu Huaiting was forced into a marriage alliance with the Fu family’s ‘Young Miss.’”
Chen Yu picked up Lin Feng’s thread: “Because the Fu family discovered ‘my’ existence and applied pressure, the Yu family or the Fu family killed me. Yu Huaiting, out of cowardice and compromise, couldn’t save me, and so bears guilt toward me.”
Lin Feng nodded. “Because you died at his hands, you can control the guilt-ridden Yu Huaiting. And Yu Huaiting and Fu Songcheng were merely products of a family marriage alliance—there was no emotional foundation between them at all, just a binding of interests. So when Yu Huaiting was controlled by you, he could kill Fu Songcheng without hesitation.”
The reasoning seemed to have restored the entire story.
They had exploited the fatal weakness of the opposing faction’s character settings, thoroughly eliminated these two powerful enemies, and completed the mission.
Yet deep in Lin Feng’s heart, not only was there no joy of victory, but a huge, indescribable unease surged up instead.
Too strange.
All of this was too strange.
Their behavior just now hadn’t looked like players at all.
Instead, they seemed more like story characters born and raised in this world.
If the two lying dead on the floor were “characters,” then where were the real players, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting?
Amid Lin Feng’s doubt and relief, the system’s cold, mechanical notification suddenly sounded in his ear:
[Ding!]
[Successfully killed opposing-faction players.]
[Congratulations, players Lin Feng and Chen Yu, on triggering the final stage.]
[Players, please infiltrate the Yu residence immediately and complete the final mission.]
…
The Yu residence’s main gate was half-open, a deathly stillness seeping through the crack.
Lin Feng clutched the wound on his neck that had already stopped bleeding, his brows tightly knitted.
He stood in the shadows outside the mansion, staring dead at the vermilion gate, not stepping forward for a long time.
“Brother Lin, what’s wrong?”
Chen Yu drifted back to his side, his gray-white eyes full of worry.
He reached out, wanting to touch the frown between Lin Feng’s brows, but could only pass through empty air.
“It’s fine. The system gave the next instruction. We have no way back—we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Chen Yu nodded gravely. “Alright. Before Yu Huaiting trapped me with the soul-guiding formation, I wandered this mansion for a long time. There’s a place that’s very strange—maybe that’s where the final mission is.”
The two avoided the servants in the front courtyard and moved with practiced ease through the Yu residence’s deep corridors.
Chen Yu was like a wisp of ungrabbable green smoke, leading the way, while Lin Feng was like a leopard ready to strike, guarding against any faint rustle around them.
All the way, Lin Feng’s heart pounded fast.
Unease, anxiety.
“This is the place.”
Chen Yu stopped before a side room not far from the Yu Young Master’s room.
Lin Feng stepped forward. The door bore a seal and a heavy brass lock.
“This room is completely sealed off.”
Lin Feng narrowed his eyes, examining it. “Is it here?”
“Should be.”
Chen Yu nodded. “There’s some kind of aura on this door that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can’t get near it. But I always feel there’s something inside that’s vitally important to me—so important it surpasses my life.”
Lin Feng said no more.
He took out a wire, wedged it into the gap of the brass lock, and nimbly applied force.
With a dull click, the brass lock was picked open.
Then Lin Feng tore off the seal on the door and opened it.
The instant the door was pushed open, a thick moldy smell rushed at them.
Lin Feng’s muscles instantly tensed. He summoned his weapon, holding the long saber horizontally before his chest, and carefully stepped over the threshold.
After Lin Feng opened the door, Chen Yu was able to drift in too.
The moment he entered this room, his entire soul body began trembling violently beyond control. His gray-white pupils contracted sharply, fixed dead on the pile of moldy, stinking thread-bound books in the corner of the room.
“It’s those books…”
Chen Yu’s voice trembled badly, as if every word was being forcibly squeezed out from the depths of his soul, carrying an irrepressible grief. “Brother Lin, there’s something in the books!”
Lin Feng strode quickly to the corner. By the moonlight, he crouched and casually picked up the topmost book, opening its already-yellowed cover.
The instant his fingers touched the pages—
[Ding!]
[Congratulations, players Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting, on successfully unlocking the story fragment: “The Unsent Message.” The instance has entered its final stage.]
The system’s mechanical voice exploded in their minds.
Immediately after, Yu Huaiting and Fu Songcheng’s vision went black as they were forced to share this sealed, tragic memory.
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