Three days passed in the blink of an eye, and it was time to enter another instance.
Tang Cha rushed over first thing in the morning and knocked on the door as though his life depended on it. Ji Xun got up, bleary-eyed, to let him in.
"What's wrong?" Ji Xun asked.
Tang Cha looked frantic. "We agreed to enter the instance this afternoon, but now neither Sister Rui nor I can get hold of Brother Lu."
Ji Xun tried sending Lu Jiancheng a few messages too, but none received a reply.
"What do we do? Could something have happened to him?" Tang Cha was on the verge of tears.
There were no police in this world. No one would help them search for a missing player.
Lu Jiancheng had been assigned to F District, so Ji Xun immediately took Tang Cha onto a bus heading there.
After paying the fee to enter another district, the two found his home at the address Lu Jiancheng had previously given Tang Cha.
Like Ji Xun's little house, Lu Jiancheng's contained only a table, chairs, and a bed.
But now the table and chairs lay overturned in disarray on the floor. There had clearly been a fight.
A closer look revealed drops of blood on the floor.
"Shit, something must have happened to Brother Lu." Tang Cha gritted his teeth. "I'll go find the City Guard."
Ji Xun stopped him. "Look at the door."
Tang Cha followed his gaze and saw a piece of paper stuck to the inside of the door. On it were the words "A District 004."
"Who took Brother Lu?" Tang Cha clutched the note and asked anxiously, "Could he be in danger?"
"I have a pretty good idea who it was. You go back first."
Tang Cha knew Ji Xun intended to rescue Lu Jiancheng alone and wanted to insist on going too.
But he was no match for Ji Xun's strength and was forcibly sent back to C District.
Without enough points to pay another cross-district fee, Tang Cha could only pace anxiously around his room.
A District had always been a gathering place for veteran players and guilds. Many players with a knack for business also sold all kinds of items in its square.
As a result, A District was always bustling and prosperous.
Ji Xun struck up a conversation with a vendor and learned that A District 004 was the address of the Temple, one of the four major guilds.
The vendor assumed he was a newcomer looking to join. Seeing how freely he spent, he kindly offered a warning. "Brother, if you're thinking of joining the Temple, I'd advise you to think carefully."
Ji Xun feigned curiosity. "Why's that?"
The vendor glanced around and lowered his voice. "Once you join the Temple, you're no longer a person-you're a follower of the God Lord. They're experts at brainwashing. Their followers willingly devote everything to the God Lord. Tell me that isn't a cult."
Ji Xun nodded as though he only half understood, then headed toward the Temple while the vendor watched in exasperation at his refusal to listen.
Only after entering the gates of A District 004 did Ji Xun understand why the vendor had called them a cult.
The guild members all wore white robes, and a roughly two-meter-tall human statue stood in the ground-floor lobby.
The base beneath the statue bore the words: "The God Lord loves all mankind."
Ji Xun's fists clenched.
Ji Xun's black trench coat stood out among the white-robed crowd, yet none of them showed any surprise. Their faces all wore identical smiles.
One of the white-robed figures approached and led him to a room on the third floor.
Lu Jiancheng was tied to a chair. Aside from some bruising at the corner of his mouth, he had no other injuries.
The white-robed man standing beside him, however, had bandages wrapped around his head and had clearly been hurt badly.
A man in his thirties sat quietly in front of them all.
Only then did Ji Xun realize why their smiles looked so similar. They were all imitating this man.
"You're here."
The white-robed man who had brought Ji Xun upstairs bowed respectfully to the man, then frowned at Ji Xun. "Hurry up and pay your respects to the God Lord."
Ji Xun scoffed, drew his blade, and cut through Lu Jiancheng's ropes. Then he dragged over a chair and sat down without ceremony.
The God Lord frowned slightly, but the smile on his lips did not change in the slightest.
Lu Jiancheng rubbed his wrists, giving the white-robed man a hostile look.
"You-" The white-robed man glared at Ji Xun.
"Do not lose your temper." The God Lord's voice sounded gentle and forgiving, remarkably warm and approachable.
Ji Xun asked coldly, "Why did you lure me here?"
The God Lord clasped his hands over his chest, his expression devout and compassionate. "You are steeped in sin, your hands stained with blood. I wish to redeem you. Would you be willing to join our Temple?"
What Ji Xun hated most in all his life were people who abused the power of faith. Any ordinary person who presumed to proclaim himself a god was bound to suffer a backlash.
So, to his ears, the God Lord's words sounded like: @#%#&...%￥would you be willing/&^!@$%blah blah blah
"No." Ji Xun stood and looked at Lu Jiancheng. "Can you still walk?"
Lu Jiancheng spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and grinned. "Sure can. What could those two weaklings possibly do to their Grandpa Lu?"
The white-robed man with his head swathed in bandages glared at him, and Lu Jiancheng immediately answered with a provocative grin.
Ji Xun led Lu Jiancheng boldly out of the room.
The white-robed man hurriedly asked, "God Lord, should we send someone to stop them?"
The God Lord shook his head, his face full of compassion. "Even sinners will one day see the error of their ways. Aren't you an example of that?"
Looking ashamed, the white-robed man knelt and prostrated himself devoutly, pressing his face against the God Lord's shoes.
"I beg for your forgiveness, my god."
Only when Ji Xun reached the ground-floor lobby did he hear from Lu Jiancheng how he had been captured.
"I was sleeping just fine when seven or eight bastards in white suddenly charged in. I thought I'd gotten up too fast and started seeing ghosts. Then I figured, what kind of ghosts use a fishing net to catch people? Sneaky bastards." Just bringing it up made Lu Jiancheng furious. He had been fighting on the streets since childhood and had never lost a fight.
Yet he had ended up defeated by a fishing net.
Ji Xun laughed at his story. When he looked again at the God Lord's statue in the lobby, it seemed utterly phony from every angle.
He clicked his tongue, drew his blade, and hurled it at the statue!
Amid the white-robed followers' panicked screams, the statue toppled and shattered into pieces.
"How dare you blaspheme!" A white-robed man glared with such fury his eyes seemed ready to split, as though Ji Xun had destroyed not a statue but some priceless heirloom.
"Just returning the favor. Tell your god that if this happens again, my blade won't stop at destroying a statue." Ji Xun copied the curve of their smiles, tilted his head, and smiled faintly. "Goodbye."
Feeling refreshed from head to toe, Lu Jiancheng followed Ji Xun out through the Temple's gates with his chest out and his head held high.
"Whatever else, thanks for this." Lu Jiancheng bumped Ji Xun's shoulder with his fist.
Ji Xun smiled. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have been captured."
Lu Jiancheng looked entirely unbothered.
With the time to enter the instance fast approaching, Ji Xun told Tang Cha that he had found Lu Jiancheng, then headed with Lu Jiancheng to A District's bus stop for entering instances.
As long as the four of them formed a team beforehand, they could enter the same instance even from different locations.
Once they boarded the bus, the familiar mechanical voice sounded.
[Vehicle departing. Next stop-Witch Forest]
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