Li Qing slowly opened his eyes.
Before him was a cramped room, its only light coming from a dim, dust-covered old pendant lamp.
As Li Qing sat up, the iron bed frame beneath him let out a teeth-grating creak.
A low, greasy table stood in the center of the room, probably where the owner usually ate.
A dressing table stood against the wall. Its mirror was cracked and held together with yellowed clear tape.
Li Qing pulled open a drawer. Inside were a woman's comb and hairpins. The metal hairpins had rusted, and dark brown stains marked their tips.
He made two rounds of the room, then found a bundle of clothes under the bed: a wedding dress in the same style as those the brides had worn at the beginning. The white inner garment had been torn to shreds and was covered in dried blood.
-A room where a bride had lived. Its owner had most likely met with an untimely end.
Li Qing opened the administrator interface and entered commands:
[Get current coordinates] [Load map]
A second later, the system returned the results.
His current location was actually beneath the Fortune Lady Temple!
This instance only had a three-day run, and it had an underground map too?
Just then, heavy footsteps sounded outside the iron door.
Li Qing looked toward the entrance. He heard a key slide into the lock and turn halfway, then the door opened.
The person who entered wore a strange ancient outfit. Judging by his build, he was a man.
An enormous mask covered his face, concealing his entire head.
Painted on the mask was a strikingly handsome man with sharp brows and bright eyes, yet here, it carried an eerie air.
The man stopped after two steps, and a deep, commanding voice rang out. "I am the Divine Warrior Star Lord. I have chosen you as my bride."
Divine Warrior Star Lord? What the hell was that?
Li Qing quickly searched the instance's records for this Divine Warrior Star Lord, but found nothing.
Perhaps noticing his confusion, the masked man who called himself the Divine Warrior Star Lord barked, "You have never even heard my name?! I am the greatest guardian deity in Fortune Star Village! Have you mortals now forgotten my very existence?"
The other man was getting rather agitated. Li Qing felt he ought to soothe him, so he tilted his head slightly. "...Hello?"
The Divine Warrior Star Lord said, "Fortune Star Village has a tradition of the Fortune Lady choosing a man from a household, but few know that women can also receive the honor of being chosen by me, the Divine Warrior Star Lord. For you mortal women to receive such a blessing, you must have cultivated good fortune for eight hundred years!"
Li Qing politely reminded him, "I'm a man."
The Divine Warrior Star Lord said, "..."
"Ahem. Naturally, I could tell you were a man! But since you have already become a prospective bride, what does it matter whether you are male or female?"
This "deity" certainly did as he pleased.
So much so that he had appeared in an instance that had never included such a character.
Li Qing stopped wasting words on him and opened the GM panel:
[Query target ID] [...Target information retrieved successfully.] [Name: Zhao Wu] [ID: N-C9999048 (NPC)] [Level: 99 (MAX)] [Status: Abnormal]
Meanwhile, the "Divine Warrior Star Lord" continued his endless spiel, taking a few steps closer to Li Qing.
"Zhao. Wu." Li Qing slowly spoke the name.
The "Divine Warrior Star Lord" stopped in his tracks.
Li Qing shook his head. "I knew there wasn't any Divine Warrior Star Lord here..."
"You... how do you know? Who are you!"
With his identity exposed, the "Divine Warrior Star Lord" immediately lost every trace of the divine bearing he had put on. An extremely dangerous aura emanated from him, and even the handsome face painted on his mask seemed to turn vicious.
He apparently had no intention of listening to Li Qing's explanation. Pulling a billhook from somewhere, he lunged at Li Qing!
Li Qing's expression remained unchanged as he calmly typed a command:
[Modify level: Reset N-C9999048 to level 1] [Verifying permissions (S/A)...] [Target is a low-tier NPC. Permission granted. Reset applied.]
The final line flashed across Li Qing's light screen and vanished. Zhao Wu's intimidating aura disappeared instantly, and the billhook fell to the floor with a clang.
"..."
"Go on, then. Explain what's happening here, and what this Divine Warrior Star Lord business is about."
Li Qing sat on the edge of the bed, propping his chin on his right hand while the fingers of his left tapped lightly along the bed's edge, one after another. He waited to record Zhao Wu's statement.
Zhao Wu knelt on the floor. He had taken off the enormous mask and set it aside, revealing a deeply pockmarked face.
"Please, esteemed S-rank sir, judge me fairly! I was only carrying out the tasks set by the instance..."
"The instance never included a basement or a 'Divine Warrior Star Lord.'"
Zhao Wu grimaced. "This instance has been running for decades. There wasn't a Divine Warrior Star Lord at first, because that setting only appeared in the instance a year ago."
"Hmm?" Puzzled, Li Qing reviewed the logs transmitted by the "Fortune Star Matchmaking" instance that the maintenance team's system could access. Sure enough, there was no record of that update.
Zhao Wu said, "It was... it was the village chief's idea. He said that since so many brides came to the village every year anyway, we could choose a girl each time to 'bless,' just like the Fortune Lady did. That would attract even more girls to marry into our village."
A groom chosen by the Fortune Lady would marry a blessed woman whom the Fortune Lady had personally selected. For the groom's family, this was an extraordinary blessing.
"'After a woman is possessed by the Fortune Lady, her original appearance changes. The men of Fortune Star Village consider marrying a wife possessed by the Fortune Lady a blessing and an honor...'" Li Qing read aloud from the instance's settings, then asked, "Then what happened to the women blessed by the Divine Warrior Star Lord?"
To his surprise, Zhao Wu actually said dismissively, "What Fortune Lady? The legend of the Fortune Lady was a lie from the very beginning!"
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