The White Candle

Unbeknownst to him, Xiao Yang was nearing the point of clearing out this Zombie Prison, with only a few particularly crowded multi-person cells remaining.

During this time, while leveling up, Xiao Yang couldn't help but ponder a question: if this was truly a prison, what about the Prison Guards? It was impossible for a prison to only have prisoners.

This didn't make sense. It couldn't be that this area was simply a monster grinding zone created by the God Game for players to level up on a single type of monster.

But if that were the case, these Prisoner Zombies hadn't even respawned!

Xiao Yang wasn't someone who obsessed over lore, but he did pay attention to the story while playing the game.

While clearing this prison area, Xiao Yang discovered some doors that he couldn't open.

Behind one of these locked doors, Xiao Yang spotted a Shovel leaning against the wall. The Shovel had a faint blue glow, making Xiao Yang quite envious. Unfortunately, he couldn't open the seemingly not-so-sturdy cell door.

These rooms likely required some special method to open.

This God Game felt like a game, yet not entirely like one. At least concerning these locked rooms, Xiao Yang had tried to break the lock directly with the Axe he held, but after several blows, there was almost no change.

The door was wrapped in some kind of special protection. Xiao Yang hadn't met the conditions to open it yet. Perhaps his strength wasn't enough, or maybe he needed lockpicking skills, or perhaps he simply had to find the key. It was utterly frustrating.

Continuing his exploration, Xiao Yang rounded a corner and discovered a large horde of zombies.

In the latter half of this zombie prison, the zombies that should have been confined to their cells had all escaped. They were densely packed in the corridors, occasionally letting out unintelligible roars, aimlessly wandering this area.

There were quite a few Prisoner Zombies gathered here, densely packed. Easily twenty or more. It was incredibly tricky. Currently, Xiao Yang had to be extremely cautious even when facing rooms with more than three Prisoner Zombies, daring not to provoke them, let alone such a large group.

The leveling process came to a halt, and the food he had on hand was officially depleted for the day.

Stillness breeds thought. Xiao Yang had to pause his relentless leveling. He was close to level five, thanks to the Prisoner Zombies lying in the prison.

He had to complain; the experience gain in the God Game was simply harsh.

A single zombie only gave him twenty experience points, but the requirement to go from level four to five had jumped to six hundred. This meant Xiao Yang now needed to defeat thirty zombies to level up.

This was assuming he chose to target Prisoner Zombies that were at least five levels higher than him. If he were to fight the ordinary Skeletons, Xiao Yang felt he would need to achieve at least a thousand kills to level up.

This situation was already difficult enough, but this wasn't even the God Game's limit. The experience decay became increasingly exaggerated with each level. At level three, he could still get thirty experience points from killing these Prisoner Zombies, but now it was only twenty.

However, upon closer thought, it seemed reasonable. After all, this was Real Life Online. If there wasn't such exaggerated experience decay, perhaps all the players in the God Game would naturally lean towards becoming world-ending threats.

After all, bullying the weak was always easier than challenging the strong. If Xiao Yang gained experience from killing ants, he would probably be quite interested in flooding ant nests with boiling water.

He didn't even want to imagine how chaotic and terrible the world would become if all the powerhouses cultivated by the God Game were so fond of flooding ant nests with boiling water. At that point, the God Game should just change its name.

Game of Terrifying Demon Gods Destroying the World.

While in a state of quiet contemplation, Xiao Yang did two things. First, he seized the opportunity to return through the hole created by the Bone Ball to the large door he had entered through on the slope. As expected, the room door was firmly shut, and he couldn't budge it even a crack.

Second, he followed the path the Bone Ball had rolled down to explore deeper into this hidden area.

He didn't return empty-handed. Along the path, in what looked like recessed Shrines, Xiao Yang did manage to explore a certain distance forward.

Yes, Shrines. In these wall recesses, strange statues were placed. The deity being worshipped was a statue of a figure sitting on a cushion, surrounded and covered by countless arms, its face obscured.

An unsettling image. Whatever was being worshipped here was definitely not something proper.

He sprinted past one Shrine after another until he reached the last one in this passage. There were no more beyond it. The wall was no longer adorned with Shrines.

This path was a dead end. Xiao Yang looked ahead to see a black chasm appearing before him, a bottomless, dark rift stretching across the path.

Another frustrating situation. It seemed he had to turn back. As Xiao Yang prepared to leave, his peripheral vision caught a pile of ashes in front of this Shrine.

He wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but this pile of ashes seemed to be smaller than the ashes in front of the other Shrines. Pausing, Xiao Yang suddenly made an unexpected move.

In front of the statue of the figure with countless arms, obscured face, and overwhelming presence, under its gaze, Xiao Yang began to search through the ashes. As expected, Xiao Yang's player's intuition wasn't wrong; he found a candle within the ashes.

[White Candle Quality: Unknown Description: This is a white candle. It's ordinary, but when lit, you can smell a very special scent – the scent of meat.]

Just from the description, Xiao Yang could tell this candle was unusual, but he still had no idea what its purpose was.

He carefully put it away. After completing this, everything returned to its previous state.

Not long after, a disheveled Xiao Yang, pursued by the whistling Bone Ball, made another desperate dive, plunging back into the Zombie Prison. He had returned here again. For now, Xiao Yang realized he truly had no choice but to fight these Prisoner Zombies head-on.

His bread was all gone. Although there was still a bag of black bread and a bottle of mead in his personal inventory, and while in principle Xiao Yang was somewhat reluctant to eat the black bread, it wasn't a matter of overcoming psychological barriers. He simply felt that this bag of black bread might have other uses.

But now, there was no other way. When the time came to eat, there was no choice.

And so, Xiao Yang returned once more to the latter half of the zombie prison, appearing before this crowded zombie corridor.

With things as they were, there was no other better option. Let's grind some zombies first!