Chapter 2276: 603
"Was that woman just now?" Tang Yu said. "I don't think she's an ordinary person. I wonder if she's wearing some powerful item. From her physical ability and aura, I can't tell she's a player."
Xu Huo's spiritual world was enough to cover the entire residential area. While the others were talking, he had already quickly searched the area once and hadn't found the woman from earlier.
"Not sure if this is caused by an item," he said. "That woman just now has disappeared."
"She's not in the residential area? Then she must be a player. An ordinary person couldn't have walked out either." Old Cai's expression turned slightly grim. "We can basically rule out a dungeon. If this isn't an item, I really can't think of anything else that could achieve this effect. The more powerful an item, the stronger its restrictions. Since the person isn't here, the only remaining answer is that the item's coverage extends beyond just this residential area."
"Let's go out and take a look." Xu Huo turned and walked toward the main gate. Tang Yu and Chu Tiểu Kim had some reservations and were about to say something when an old lady burning paper money in the distance suddenly called out to them, with a hint of urgency: "It's already dark. What are you young people still doing outside? Why don't you hurry home!"
Xu Huo paused mid-step and turned back to ask her, "We don't live here."
The old lady was taken aback, then said somewhat irritably: "You young folks don't know the rules. Is this place somewhere you can just come and go freely? If you're going to leave, you should've left earlier... It's already dark now. You won't be able to get out. If you really have nowhere to go, come to my place. I live in 603."
Having said that, the old lady hurried away, muttering things like "the living walk the main road, the dead don't block the way" and "dead spirits, recognize the face" as she went.
It wasn't just her—several other old ladies did the same, hastily finishing their paper burning, then hurriedly returning to their own buildings and disappearing into some stairwell.
"We're not really unable to leave, are we?" Chu Tiểu Kim tentatively reached his hand out past the main gate. There was no obstruction, but beyond the gate was another identical residential area.
"Space is restricted." Xu Huo tried to manipulate spatial power but found a spatial barrier outside the residential area that couldn't be budged at all. Unlike the blockade barriers of ordinary spatial items that left traces to follow, this was like the very edge of the world—no gap to exploit whatsoever.
"Then it's most likely an item, no doubt." Old Cai held firm to his judgment. "Looks like some kind of trickster item. Spiritual interference needs to reach a certain level to actually affect reality—that is, spiritual power must be able to materialize into objects. We're all B-rank players. General spiritual interference is hard to take effect on us in a short time. If it wants to cause damage, it has to condense its power into a physical form, similar to the situation in spiritual-type dungeons."
Similar to "Seventeenth Hospital"—when a player's imagination in a dungeon deepens to a certain degree, it gains lethal power. That's no longer purely an illusion from spiritual interference, but a genuine condensation of spiritual power, close to the materialized objects of spiritual evolution.
Given the players' strength, spiritual interference can't achieve its goal quickly. The best approach is direct attack. That should also be the purpose of that player luring them here. But since there's a physical entity, it can attack the players, and the players can attack it too.
However, there was really no need for them to waste time here, so they still tried to leave the residential area. But the moment their front feet stepped out of the gate, their back feet found themselves back where they'd been standing—because of the rain, there were footprints from all of them at the entrance, so after stepping out, they returned to their original spot.
"Looks like we really can't get out." Tang Yu said. "Why don't we go in and look around?"
The others had no objections, so they headed straight for the nearest building. Searching floor by floor was obviously inconvenient, and Xu Huo had already searched earlier anyway, so Chu Tiểu Kim directly placed a bomb on the first floor. "Rather than us looking for her, let her come to us. Maybe this explosion will blow the item to pieces!"
After placing the bomb, they retreated a good distance. With a deafening explosion, Building No. 1 began to collapse from the base, also taking down Building No. 2 next to it.
At that moment, the rain also stopped. As the overwhelming dust burst outward, all the lights in the residential area went out at once. Darkness flooded over Xu Huo and the others like a tide, but only for a moment before the lights came back on.
The scattered points of light were no different from when the sky had suddenly darkened earlier. The heavy rain began to patter down again, and the Building No. 1 that had just been blown up stood there perfectly intact.
Xu Huo and the others were still at the main gate taking shelter from the rain.
"It's already dark. What are you young people still doing outside? Why don't you hurry home!" The old lady burning paper money shouted at them from a distance.
"Damn, did time reverse?" Chu Tiểu Kim blurted out.
"We don't live here. We only came in to shelter from the rain." Xu Huo asked the old lady, "Ma'am, which way can we get out?"
The old lady answered without addressing the question: "It's dark outside and not peaceful. If you have nowhere to go, come to my place for the night. It just so happens my grandson is away at school, so there's an empty room. You can squeeze in together."
"Alright." Xu Huo agreed lightly, then said to Chu Tiểu Kim and the others, "Let's go take a look."
Blowing up buildings couldn't get them out, and there was no better option at hand. They had to figure out what was really going on here.
The group followed the old lady to 603.
The old lady was quite hospitable. As soon as they entered, she handed them towels, poured water, and even brought out biscuits and fruit she couldn't bear to eat herself to entertain them.
It was a three-bedroom, one-living-room apartment, kept quite clean. But a funeral had just been held—a portrait of an old gentleman was enshrined in the home, and some old folded clothes lay on the sofa.
"Those clothes are going to be thrown away. Now that he's gone, these things can't be kept either." The old lady rambled on about family matters.
Her son and daughter-in-law had died in a car accident years ago. She and her husband had raised their grandson together. The husband had been strict with the grandson, and the two often argued over schoolwork. The grandson had no talent for studying—after spending money to get into a mediocre university, he soon stopped attending classes and dropped out.
Because of this, the relationship between grandmother and grandson had frozen over. Even when the old man passed away, the grandson didn't come back.
The old lady took out her grandson's photo and wiped it over and over again. "My good grandson, hurry back. Grandma made you something delicious."
Chu Tiểu Kim, who couldn't sit still, used the excuse of going to the bathroom to open one of the inner bedroom doors. A moment later, he came out looking like he'd swallowed a fly and pointed at one of the rooms. "The grandson is enshrined in there. The room is covered in talisman paper, and there's a coffin on the bed."
"Ma'am, your biscuits are pretty good. Could I have a bit more?" He sent the old lady away, then said to Xu Huo and the others, "You all wait. I'm going in to set a fire."
"No need." Xu Huo, through the gap in the door, sliced the coffin and the corpse inside it into pieces. Immediately after, a shrill scream that didn't sound human rang out. (End of chapter)