In Wang Guangfei's eyes, Red-Eyes shed the harmless appearance he had seen before.
Its eyes, already like red crystals, deepened in color and even seemed to glow. When its mouth split open, the corners stretched all the way to the roots of its ears.
The playful buck teeth were gone, replaced by a row of sharp teeth covered in blood and shreds of flesh. At the same time, its claws shot out to twenty centimeters long.
Their hooked tips looked as though a single thrust and pull could snag its victim's guts and drag every organ out.
Its transformed appearance, coupled with an intimidating aura,
made Wang Guangfei forget what he had been about to do. His eyes went wide, and his entire body froze in place, as though he had seen some terrifying creature.
But in Zuo Cheng'an's eyes, Red-Eyes was still the same lovable white rabbit.
It was merely missing an ear, a little bigger, and dressed in shabby clothes.
Was this a filter the game had deliberately put on its bosses to protect the players' eyes?
Would failing a task or attacking the boss break that filter?
Faced with an opponent on an entirely different level, Wang Guangfei could not muster the slightest thought of resistance. Seeing the system message box, he shouted,
"Cancel!! Cancel the boss fight!!"
The moment he finished speaking, Red-Eyes' true appearance faded, and it turned back into a harmless white rabbit.
With its tattered evening dress, Red-Eyes even looked somewhat bedraggled,
but Wang Guangfei could not laugh at all.
Fortunately, he had only thought about resisting the boss. The scissors in his hand had not actually stabbed down yet, so there was still room to back out.
If he had lost his head just now and thrown his weapon at Red-Eyes without a care, canceling the boss fight would not have been as simple as saying a few words.
Zuo Cheng'an narrowed his eyes, focusing on the space above Red-Eyes' head.
[HP: 51.75%]
He still remembered that when he had checked earlier, Red-Eyes' health bar had been at 42.77%.
It had lost an ear and had countless wounds all over its body, yet after all this time, its health had risen instead of falling!?
Was its regeneration really that powerful?
Leaving aside whether Wang Guangfei's attacks could even touch Red-Eyes, the damage his scissors dealt might not even outpace the boss's automatic recovery.
Fortunately, he had stopped in time instead of getting himself killed.
[Sigh, another one blinded by love. Didn't they break up? Why does he still want to avenge his ex-girlfriend? Still, we were so close to seeing Slaughter 2.0. What a shame.]
[Count me in on not getting it. A girlfriend is only my precious little darling while she's with me.
Once we've broken up, I wouldn't react at all even if her dismembered body were thrown in front of me.]
[People from lower worlds are all like that. They can have the biggest fight and still care about each other. So awkward.]
[That's nothing. I once saw a brother and sister. The brother kept saying every day that he hated his sister and telling her to get lost.
Didn't he end up giving her the very last clearance slot anyway? I specifically kept an eye on her. After she cleared it, the sister didn't last more than a few weeks before killing herself in an instance.]
[I've also seen married couples who argued and fought every day. They'd cut off all contact for good, but when one got hurt, the other still secretly took revenge.]
Although the viewers behind the eyeballs were also "human," they seemed cold by nature and extremely self-centered, finding some of the players' behavior difficult to understand.
Did evolving into a higher life-form require throwing away emotions like empathy?
The viewers constantly bandied about the words "lower worlds," disparaging human technology and behavior in everything they said.
In their eyes, humans being ruled by emotion was a sign of incomplete evolution.
Only beings like themselves, possessing absolute rationality, were higher species that had successfully evolved.
Zuo Cheng'an did not understand. To him, reason and emotion were both essential parts of a complete human being. Neither could be missing.
But there was one thing he knew for certain.
One day, he would crush those eyeballs with his own hands, one by one, then throw every viewer hiding behind the scrolling comments into the game.
He would make them experience those instances they claimed anyone with a "kindergarten diploma" could clear without a scratch!
Then he would see whether they could still laugh so happily!
Inside the farm,
after going through the formulaic proceedings, Red-Eyes glared fiercely at Zuo Cheng'an, as though committing his face firmly to memory, then vanished on the spot.
As the boss left, the game's notification rang out inside the instance.
[Game over! "1-4779 Uncle Muzhou's Farm" will close in 1 hour!]
Having suffered repeated psychological blows in a single day, Wang Guangfei was considerably more dispirited. He looked a dozen years older.
Partings in life and death were commonplace in the game. Even the top players who had reached the fifth ladder could not avoid them. Low-level players had long since grown accustomed to them.
"Phew..." Wang Guangfei took a deep breath and steadied his emotions. "Bro, I owe this clear to you. Add me as a friend, and I'll transfer you some points later."
Zuo Cheng'an had no reason to refuse points offered to him and readily accepted Wang Guangfei's friend request.
Wang Guangfei then left the instance to settle his rewards.
After all, this was a ladder instance. Its rewards were far more generous than those of ordinary instances.
Quite a few players had been unknown while their status was Not Yet on the Ladder, only to start making a name for themselves in the game after clearing a single ladder instance.
Seeing that all the surviving players had left, Zuo Cheng'an was in no hurry to return.
Instead, he took another walk around the farm.
He had noticed earlier that ever since the instance's name changed, the farm animals had begun tending toward the rather normal appearances shown in the photographs on the cabin's second floor.
If all these animals changed back, how would the next batch of players do their tasks?
Collecting eggs wouldn't be difficult at all, the cowshed had been cleaned until it looked new, and the tomatoes had almost all been picked...
Even the instance host would have to change from Red-Eyes to someone else, wouldn't it?
[Ding! A change in the internal environment of "1-4779 Uncle Muzhou's Farm" has been detected! Rectification will begin shortly! Its eligibility to enter the Instance Hall has been temporarily revoked!]
Normally, after players cleared an instance used by the Ladder Tower, it would enter the Instance Hall for ordinary players to use.
The first batch of players to successfully clear it in the Ladder Tower held firsthand walkthrough information. They could choose to sell it to a guild or selflessly make it public.
But if a destructive player entered a ladder instance the very first time it opened and wrecked its interior,
it would be sent back for maintenance and temporarily kept out of the Instance Hall.
Once the adjustments were complete, either it would be transformed into an entirely new instance, or various minor changes inside would make the method of clearing it different from before.
Zuo Cheng'an's actions had even changed the person who owned the instance's farm behind the scenes.
Fortunately, the instance had merely lost its host. Its overall environment had not been damaged, so it only needed a small adjustment to its rules before it could be put back into use.
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