She Ran!

The moment the woman spoke, Carlos tensed up, and Lin was terrified.

He had no concept of this person! If he had known this woman was waiting for them here, he certainly wouldn't have brought San and Carlos this way. Now... it seems they've walked into a trap?

Lin turned around, and just then, a rumbling sound came from the stone gate. A heavy door descended from the tomb passage they had just walked through, completely blocking their way back.

They were forced to stay with the treasures scattered everywhere and the blonde woman on the throne.

It's Unica.

Unica's blonde hair seemed out of place in the tomb, and her foreign appearance made it impossible to associate her with the infamous "demon daoist" of ancient times.

But that "welcome to my home" tone of the host could only be from demon daoist priest.

"Not only are we smarter than you think, but you're also more fashionable than we imagined." Yu Xing looked up at the languid woman on the throne, scrutinizing her without any restraint.

Unica's attire was quite different from when she had walked with them before. It was a kind of Yu Xing dress that Yu Xing had never seen before, probably a kind of ancient costume from the history of this hypothetical world. It was layered with wide sleeves that draped down to the ground as her hands rested on the armrest of the throne.

The black fabric is as smooth as satin and silk, and the gold lines make the clothes less monotonous and heavy, adding a touch of luxurious beauty. The waist is thin and light, and it is adorned with bronze ornaments that are rarely seen nowadays. On a large area of fabric, ghostly tongue patterns are connected by bone vine patterns, which are strange and beautiful.

Her legs were fair and smooth, and her feet rested on a skull beside the throne.

Ignoring the rotting flesh and blood on half of Unica's face, it was actually a rather erotic sight.

Yes, no one knows what Unica went through after she went missing, but half of her face looked as if it had been splashed with something highly corrosive, and it was completely rotting. Even now, a thin stream of black liquid is still flowing down her face.

Unica, who had been admiring Carlos and Lin's wary expressions, was angered by Yu Xing's gaze. Instead, she laughed, one half of her face beautiful, the other half hideous. "Are you mocking my appearance?"

"How could that be? I absolutely didn't mean to mock you." Yu Xing wasn't suggesting that having different facial features was fashionable. "I'm just curious, why do you represent yourself with blonde hair and a foreign woman's face?"

He used the honorific "you" (formal), which made Carlos look at him with disbelief. Lin, however, thought it was a rational move; before knowing Unica's strength, it would be best to resolve things peacefully.

Unica touched her face, feeling a handful of black liquid. She narrowed her eyes, clearly extremely displeased. "This is the most complete face I could find; the others have all been partially destroyed."

She didn't say who destroyed it, but the outsiders all understood her implication: the rest had become fertilizer for the Ghost Tree and were no longer usable.

"Unfortunately, this face is useless now." Unica said, her pale hand touching her neck. With a tearing sound, her entire face, along with her blonde hair, was ripped off.

The corroded wounds were so deep that the bone was visible. Even after half of her good face was torn off, the scars still covered Unica's face—no, they covered the face of the demon daoist.

The muscle tissue was exposed to the air, like an unborn baby; beneath the transparent skin, every chilling texture was revealed, sending shivers down one's spine.

Even so, the demon daoist is half red flesh and blood and half black rotten flesh.

She must be injured, and it must be a very serious injury that cannot be reversed in the short term.

Thinking of this, Yu Xing felt quite pleased. Under the gaze of the demon daoist's eyes, which couldn't close because he had no skin, he chuckled happily, "Demon daoist, are you trying to humiliate us by locking us up here?"

The demon daoist remained unperturbed; her voice was still pleasant. "Your face is quite nice. Though masculine, it is also delicate and beautiful. It shouldn't look out of place on my face."

Anyone could tell it was a threat. Lin quietly tugged at Yu Xing's sleeve, but Yu Xing seemed completely oblivious to the threat in the demon daoist's words. "So cruel? Perhaps it's because you're angry? Don't be angry, I apologize. I didn't know you were the demon daoist from history. I was impolite, and I hope the demon daoist will forgive me~"

Despite using "you" (formal) throughout, his nonchalant tone was almost overflowing, and it also revealed an obvious sense of schadenfreude.

Carlos almost chuckled upon hearing this. He wasn't exactly a rational person to begin with, and he remarked, "The demon daoist in the mural was quite handsome, but now... it's not entirely our fault we can't recognize him."

How awful! How awful! Lin couldn't bear to listen anymore. He didn't pity the demonic demon daoist, but he pitied himself for being about to be attacked and retaliated against by the demon daoist's ultimate attack.

As expected, the demon daoist stirred, finally enraged by their attitude.

"Heh heh heh... Do you think you're any better? In this tomb, I've seen far uglier versions of yourself." Her voice was cold and disdainful. "Imagine your bodies gushing blood, your skin peeled off—the grotesque sight of you begging for mercy."

Is this me from another timeline?

Lin Shun thought about what the demon daoist said for a moment, then felt a chill run down his spine.

The next second, he heard his partner, with whom he was working for the first time, let out an even more disdainful chuckle, "Little liar, what are you saying?"

Yu Xing walked towards the demon daoist King's throne, his footsteps echoing, seemingly oblivious to the treasures on either side of the road. "If that were truly the case, why would we attract your attention, causing you to personally trap us despite your injuries? Allow me to make a bold guess... In all the current timelines, none of the three of us have experienced 'death,' right?"

This was Yu Xing based on the fact that after the timeline jump, only the three of them remained alive or had not yet turned into Ghostification. The two deducers and the experiencer were all people with stronger self-preservation abilities than the natives. If they were careful and cautious enough, they could very well survive any crisis except when the Ghost Tree was mobilized.

If they were alive in every timeline, they wouldn't have Ghostification, nor would they have given the demon daoist the opportunity to "take away their faces".

This might be the reason why the demon daoist has trapped them. The demon daoist wants to start from this timeline and break this established conclusion.

"You're clever, but it's no use." Seeing him approaching without any fear, the demon daoist sat up straight, his black robe swaying with the movement, revealing even more of his leg skin.

"No matter how clever you are, you can't escape. You'll just be trapped here for decades and die of old age." Yu Xing had already climbed the steps to stand in front of her, now looking down at the demon daoist Yu Xing. The demon daoist smiled and beckoned to Yu Xing with her finger. "Anyway, since you 'don't die,' you'll be trapped in this space forever. San, if you're willing to chat with me to relieve my boredom, I might consider disregarding your face and not feeding you to the Ghost Tree."

Her fingers had already hooked onto Yu Xing's clothes. Seeing that Yu Xing didn't immediately attack her, she became even more unrestrained, letting out a series of coquettish laughs. "Because the price you pay for going out is probably too high for you to afford."

Lin said coldly, "What do you mean? What do you mean we can't afford the price?"

"Hmm... I just can't afford it." The demon daoist feigned difficulty, but in reality, her gloating was no less than Yu Xing's earlier. "Let me tell you a secret: here, living people are only allowed to enter, not leave."

"But from what you're saying, there's still a way out." Yu Xing suddenly grasped her fingers, feeling the warmth of her fingertips. He didn't know what he was thinking, but his tone suddenly softened, "Tell me, okay?"

Holy crap, what a scumbag, changing his attitude in public!

When there's something to do, call her "Little Sweetie demon daoist"; when there's nothing to do, call her "Mrs. Cow".

This pretense and perfunctory behavior were almost undisguised, but sometimes, only a pervert could understand it Yu Xing knew that what the demon daoist wanted was not his true feelings, but simply forcing him to do things against his conscience because of what he wanted, which was enough to satisfy the demon daoist's twisted and perverse emotions.

"Hahaha... Of course I can tell you, because I believe none of you can do it." The demon daoist's voice trembled with glee. "If you want to get out, you must... kill yourselves."

"Are you playing us?" Lin frowned. Even if he hoped to leave peacefully, it didn't mean he wanted to be used as a plaything by BoSS.

"People in this world really have no patience." The demon daoist sighed regretfully, "I killed my counterpart from another timeline, and then, before the timeline changed, I put the corpse into the black coffin."

"I don't need to remind you what the Black Coffin is, do I? It's something you yourselves deduced, the culprit that caused the timeline split. As long as the Black Coffin believes that you were put inside, and that you're already dead, it will end the split in your timeline, leaving only the current one." The demon daoist pulled Yu Xing closer, forcing Yu Xing to look directly at her terrifying face. She thought that even if she could see the slightest discomfort or disgust on Yu Xing's face, she would be very happy.

Her skill lay in making her prey suffer; she had driven many lords mad in the same way before... She didn't need to do much in secret; as long as they never had a day of peace, friction and conflict would naturally arise, and their expressions of dissatisfaction and resistance would only satisfy her twisted tastes.

But Yu Xing's face didn't show the expression she wanted to see. Instead, she smiled and said, "The black coffin is in the ancestral hall, and we can't find our way back to the ancestral hall now."

The demon daoist grimly released his grip, leaned back on the throne, and said in a weak voice, "There's more than one black coffin. There's another one right next to mine."

Carlos chuckled wickedly, "So, what's the price? What's so difficult about killing a self that will eventually disappear and shouldn't have existed in the first place? Demon daoist, what are you plotting? How much of what you just said can be believed?"

"Your biggest problem is that you don't believe me." The demon daoist looked at Carlos and mocked him with glee. "You two cannot exist simultaneously in the two timelines. Only I can break this boundary and send you to the other you, but this will cause you to fall into a coma in front of me."

She crossed her legs, one leg in front of the other, the other dangling back and forth. "Would I really be that kind? Wouldn't it be more convenient to kill you while you're unconscious and use you as nourishment? Why should I tell you how to survive? It would be fine to just let you die of old age in your graves... You must be thinking that of me, right, Carlos?"

Carlos, realizing she had hit the nail on the head, put his hands in his pockets and met the demon daoist's gaze with unwavering daring in his turquoise eyes.

This demon daoist is so strange. One moment I feel she's nothing special, but the next I can clearly sense the shadow of her manipulating people's hearts back then.

"You're quite adorable when you pretend to be indifferent, Carlos. Come on, doubt me, let doubt block your only way out." The demon daoist urged, making it truly impossible to tell whether she was telling the truth or not.

Her bloodied and mangled head turned slightly, looking directly at Lin: "And Lin, didn't you like me? Now you can be so calm... What choice will you make? I've taken it upon myself to access your memories and toyed with your feelings, you know?"

"And, Mr. San, you're so smart, have you thought about whether you want to trust me, someone for whom there's absolutely no reason to be trusted?" The demon daoist finally provoked Yu Xing again. She grabbed Yu Xing's collar with one hand, pulling him down, and lifted Yu Xing chin with the other. "Anyway... can you save your face?"

Yu Xing down, the sensation of her hand on her chin exceptionally clear. Ha, this was a body that had survived so many cycles of life and death in the tomb! Demon daoist hadn't gone out of his way to take a bath?

It's a little dirty...

Yu Xing grinned and pulled out the Sheqing Dreamscape.

"I understand." No one knew what he understood, but suddenly he stabbed the slender hand that was pinching his chin with a dagger.

Yu Xing lowered his voice and chuckled in a tone only he and the demon daoist could hear, "Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately, I have no reward to offer you. Hmm, how about I water the Ghost Tree for you after you're completely dead?"

A swirling blue mist, a dagger piercing flesh—under the control of Yi Qing, this bug-like Sheqing Ghost, the mist instantly corroded the demon daoist's fingers until only bones remained.

The power of Sheqing is not something a mere demon daoist can resist.

The demon daoist was terrified; her eyes nearly popped out of her flesh. She quickly withdrew her hand and shrieked, "What are you doing too?!"

"Also?" Yu Xing tilted her head, interrupting her, "So your face was done by an outsider too. Are the people from Oster Company that powerful? Was that person wearing a trench coat?"

The demon daoist didn't answer him, or rather, she simply didn't understand why he would expect her to answer such a question.

The azure mist seemed to become agitated because it didn't hear her reply, surging and attacking the demon daoist. Suddenly, her entire body turned into a pool of melting black liquid, polluting the throne before her aura completely disappeared.

They actually ran away.

Yi Qing said with interest, "I only used the same method to corrupt her, and she became so terrified. It seems that the one from Oster Company left a rather deep shadow on her."

"So this is what happens when someone tries to chat with me. I talked to her, and she ran away again. Women are so hard to please, especially a woman who's over a thousand years old." Yu Xing seemed a little regretful. His mutterings reached Carlos and Lin's ears, helping them recover from the sudden turn of events.

"She escaped? Then what was her method of getting out...?" Lin squinted, "This demon daoist really likes to put people in a dilemma. Can we believe what she just said?"

"I don't think so," Carlos chuckled. "Given her past misdeeds, it's more likely she's just looking for an excuse to upset us. Why should we really be stuck just because she says we can't get out?"

Yu Xing stood before the throne and turned around upon hearing this.

In that instant, Lin and Carlos both seemed to see a blurry blue ghostly figure enveloping Yu Xing.