Blind Peddler Kidnapper

There weren't many things worth five Employee Points, but this was the most useful one to him right now.

Because all he had to do was shift his focus to move freely between both sides, this item effectively gave him a god's-eye view.

"Thump thump..." That strange peddler crossed the entire first floor of the supermarket and reached the stairs in mere moments.

Dressed in ancient cloth garments, it shook a rattle drum as it groped its way forward, that bizarre smile still hanging on its lips.

"Click!" It decisively opened the bedroom door and went inside.

Zhang Anzai immediately returned his attention to the player's body, turned around, and quietly opened the storeroom door.

The "thump thump..." of the rattle drum reached his ears directly, and Zhang Anzai felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.

That was right. The Mountain Peddler's drumbeat could lure away the soul. Though blind, it was exceptionally sensitive to sound, so the forced lockpicking at the beginning would inevitably draw it to the bedroom first.

If he had not gotten out in time and hidden in the storeroom, he would already be dead.

This was the difficulty of a Fierce-grade instance. Not to mention rookie players who were still ordinary people, even many official players with game classes found it difficult to clear.

However, there was a reason for such matchmaking. The requirement for entering this instance at the start was possessing a Grade B or higher talent. Zhang Anzai had become a man guilty of possessing a treasure.

Fortunately, quite a few of his colleagues had accidentally been matched with high-level players and died here before. He had heard plenty about it through their usual chats and complaints.

So although this was his first time seeing it with his own eyes, he already knew this instance very well.

This was a folk taboo-type instance, meaning its content involved folk crafts, old customs, rules, and other such things. The fellow outside was clearly the reason for that classification.

It looked like a Mountain Peddler, but the fact that it could ensnare people with drumbeats showed that the blind freak was actually an ancient child kidnapper disguised as a peddler.

But this was, after all, a strange instance. It sounded like merely a folk occupation, yet national-level mixed martial arts fighters and even rarer civilian assassins had entered this instance before.

The result was that the thing looked human, but was actually some sort of ghost or monster. Whether bare-handed or wielding a butcher's cleaver from downstairs, they could only be instantly killed by it.

Therefore, newcomers had no option of fighting back. This instance was purely a stealth escape game.

That was precisely why he had so decisively bought the Third-Person Talisman. Other low-level items were meaningless. In this instance, seeing more was the only way forward.

Zhang Anzai quietly walked down the corridor, not daring to glance at the bedroom even once.

Normally, as a blind man, the peddler would need quite a while to feel around the bedroom before coming out. But then came the second disgusting part.

"Creak..." Zhang Anzai had barely stepped onto the stairs when he made a sound.

The reason was simple. To store goods beneath the stairs, this small supermarket used metal stairs made from iron frames embedded with wire mesh. They had fallen into disrepair from age, and even if he stepped on the frame at the edge, it was impossible not to make noise.

The only question was how loud it would be.

Zhang Anzai shifted in tiny movements, doing his utmost to keep the noise at a level an ordinary person would barely notice.

On the bedroom side, the Mountain Peddler did not rush out at once.

This was the only solution, because the volume of the noise affected the peddler's awareness and movement speed. At this level of noise, Zhang Anzai might be halfway down before the Mountain Peddler even started leaving the bedroom.

"Creak..." The somewhat rusty iron frame squeaked again and again.

The wire mesh forming the stair surface was not entirely flat, stabbing pain into the soles of Zhang Anzai's feet.

But he endured it and descended one step at a time, leaving the stairwell and entering the supermarket's first floor.

Zhang Anzai did not even dare breathe loudly. With both feet on the cold tiles, he began assessing the situation.

Ordinary chats would never go into such detail, and many of his colleagues had never even seen a player reach this instance's entrance. So he did not know everything and still had to explore for himself.

At night, row after row of supermarket shelves towered above head height without quite reaching the ceiling. Densely packed goods of every shape sat upon them, visible only as silhouettes in the dim light.

Walking among them felt like being trapped in a maze. At every moment, it felt as though something might emerge from around a corner, from behind him, or over the top of a shelf.

But Zhang Anzai had a clear goal. The moment he entered the supermarket, he hugged the outer side and began walking. It was not because that would get him to the entrance quickly; he was looking for something.

Not long after he set out, he began sniffing while trying his best not to make even an inhaling sound.

Soon, the smell of blood flooded his nostrils. Zhang Anzai looked up and saw that the butcher's shop was not far away.

The meat had all been put into freezers, leaving only knives and meat hooks outside, but he had not come for any of those things in the first place.

After confirming the butcher's shop's location, Zhang Anzai turned and left, deliberately avoiding the stairwell he had come down through.

When his colleagues told him about the unlucky fools who had tried to duel the Mountain Peddler and been brutally killed instead, they had specifically mentioned this.

The entire supermarket was full of complicated props, meant to make players think this was an instance they could manipulate. But because they were facing something supernatural, none of it was actually usable. The butcher's shop with its knives was the biggest distraction.

Not only could the knives not kill the peddler, the butcher's shop and the entrance were in opposite directions. If he lingered there too long, escaping would become even harder.

Seeing the butcher's shop meant the opposite direction was definitely correct. But not long after he went around the stairwell, that strange rattle drum sounded again.

"Thump thump... thump thump..."

Zhang Anzai was not surprised. This thing had already blinked across space once before entering. It was a ghostly creature—how could it have only one ability?

Now it was a race against time. He had to escape before it caught up.

Zhang Anzai kept this body moving mechanically past the shelves, then shifted his focus to his body at the company and took a quick look at the screen there.

What he saw was an extremely bizarre sight.

The Mountain Peddler was only separated from him by one shelf. Even more bizarrely, its gray-green neck had stretched out more than half a meter!

Its round, nauseatingly smiling head extended directly over the shelf, listening to the movement on the other side.

"What the hell kind of monster is this?!"

Zhang Anzai forcibly suppressed his fear and hurriedly returned his attention to the instance.

There was still time, because the peddler was listening to the other side, not his side.

His feet had already gone somewhat stiff from directly stepping on the cold tiles, but he still quickened his pace and walked out from between the shelves.

When he turned around, he saw a patch of light. Beyond row after row of shelves ahead was the supermarket's half-open rolling shutter, with the dim yellow glow of streetlights filtering through from outside.

Zhang Anzai decisively kept his body moving forward and quietly made his way toward the entrance.

At the same time, he shifted his focus to his body at the company again and observed through the third-person view.

"Fuck!"

But after only one glance, every hair on Zhang Anzai's body stood on end. He immediately turned back and stopped his body in the instance.

At some point, the Mountain Peddler had blinked across space again and suddenly darted out from between several shelves ahead of him.

Zhang Anzai stopped himself abruptly, but he was still only inches away from the Mountain Peddler's gray-green arm and the enormous box on its back.

He completely held his breath and watched the strangely behaving Mountain Peddler turn around in front of him.

"Thump thump... thump thump..."

The eerie drumbeats made his vision darken, and his entire body swayed as if he were about to collapse.

But because it had not discovered him right beside it, the Mountain Peddler did not attack. It merely shook the rattle drum in its hand, then soon turned again and walked back between the shelves.

Perhaps the Ox-Horse Pill was still working. Zhang Anzai quickly regained his senses, and only the last few meters remained to the entrance.

He decisively lifted his foot and passed the last several shelves one step at a time, edging toward the door.

"Bang!" Zhang Anzai could no longer care about anything else. He lowered his body and rolled out.

Zhang Anzai rolled all the way outside and lay on the ground, facing into the shop.

To his horror, the peddler's enormous head had somehow stretched an unknown distance and reached directly to the entrance. It was right in front of him, its smile blooming far brighter than before.

But Zhang Anzai had already grabbed the rolling shutter. "Goodbye!"

"Click!" He yanked the rolling shutter down in an instant, firmly trapping the huge face that was about to pounce outside.

"Bang!" A strange face-shaped bulge appeared on the metal door. Clearly, it could not stop the creature, but Zhang Anzai had already escaped outside the shop and fulfilled the mission requirements.

"Old Shadow exploration complete!"