The man waiting at the door was nearly 1.9 meters tall.
He stood with his back to the moonlight, and there was no shadow beneath his feet.
Through the hazy moonlight and the occasional gusts of night wind, even though he wore a wide red robe, one could faintly make out his broad shoulders and narrow waist.
The man exuded an unapproachable, piercing coldness, overwhelmingly oppressive to outsiders; the heavy aura of death surrounding him was enough to make anyone’s heart tremble.
Under the moonlight, his slanted shadow stretched long. The faint rustling sounds from nowhere, combined with the man standing before them, formed an indescribably absurd night scene.
Outside was utterly empty, with no other buildings. Something darker than the night itself lurked, hidden within the vast shadows cast by the moon.
The air was filled with a faint, elusive scent, like burning incense and paper money.
Outside, everywhere exuded an indescribable sense of absurd strangeness.
Qi Wuyuan could not clearly see the man’s face.
But at the very first glance upon stepping out, a bone-chilling cold surged up Qi Wuyuan’s back.
Qi Wuyuan felt nothing consciously, but his body had already instinctively reacted to seek benefit and avoid harm.
Extreme danger rose in Qi Wuyuan’s mind.
The neurons firing in his brain kept warning him—run.
Unfortunately, at that moment Chen sao silently moved behind him. From the corner of his eye, he saw her mouth stretched wide, clearly grinning with great delight.
His escape route was gone.
Qi Wuyuan ignored the inexplicable fear stirred up by his subconscious, suppressing the resistance in his mind, and step by step slowly walked toward the door.
Qi Wuyuan was a very strange person.
His perception and understanding of fear were completely different from other people’s.
When all the negative emotions seeped into Qi Wuyuan, fear transformed into his driving force.
Qi Wuyuan enjoyed indulging in this contradictory tug-of-war.
He was stirred into a strange stubbornness, which made him feel something long absent… the sensation of being alive.
The more bone-deep the danger, the more he could feel that he was still living in the world.
Qi Wuyuan felt every drop of blood in his veins boiling, excitedly urging him to confront the danger head-on.
The warning that leapt from his subconscious was, of course, ignored by him.
He was starting to like this place a little.
“A-Yuan, hurry over, time is almost up.”
Chen sao leaned against the doorframe and coldly urged him on.
Qi Wuyuan let out a light breath: “I’ll go now.”
He had never heard of a wedding where the groom had to fetch someone in the middle of the night, in such desolate silence without any of the lively atmosphere a wedding should have.
This place was definitely problematic.
Qi Wuyuan suddenly thought of the barcode hidden beneath his left wrist.
Seeing that Chen sao was about to urge him again, with his character collapse level rising by 1, Qi Wuyuan stopped thinking further.
He consciously stepped into the vast shadows outside the door, paying no attention to the danger of being enveloped by the heavy aura of death surrounding the man.
Only after walking closer did Qi Wuyuan realize the man’s face was shrouded in a mass of black mist, so blurred that nothing on it could be seen.
Just as he was about to reach the man’s side, a sudden glance revealed a pair of dark-red eyes flashing out from the black mist covering the man’s face.
Locked by that gaze, Qi Wuyuan saw eyes filled with the purest, most venomous malice; within the piercing, bone-deep obsession and unwillingness also lurked a violent, critical hostility directed at him. These eyes were unforgettable, yet instinctively made one want to avoid them.
The dark-red eyes were like a pair of splendid, dazzling gems, but within them lay deep, indescribable negative emotions.
They were not eyes that any human could possess.
Even staring for a few seconds longer would cause intense discomfort.
Qi Wuyuan could even see the unnaturally deathly pale skin around the man’s eyes.
Yet, locked in that gaze, Qi Wuyuan leisurely curved his lips, showing a smile to the man before him without the slightest fear.
Regarding his assumed identity, he blended in seamlessly.
On his overly fair and delicate face bloomed a stunning, radiant smile.
Framed by the bright red wedding robe, he appeared all the more like a submissive and beautiful “bride” yet to enter the household.
Even the man’s dense aura of death and critical gaze involuntarily weakened a little.
“I’m here.”
His frail body, brushed by the midnight cold wind, couldn’t help but cough twice. In his cool, clear voice there was a trace of familiarity — a kind of special regard that made people unconsciously pay attention.
[!! These eyes are going to scare me to death ahhh]
[I remember the boss of this instance was supposed to never show his face, right?]
[Earlier, the groom indeed didn’t show his face, only revealed a pair of eyes.]
[But even just a pair of eyes is terrifying enough, isn’t it? Honestly asking — can this kind of oppressive feeling really come from just a low-level instance boss?]
The system’s livestreams always carried a strange, malicious sense of humor; just now, the groom’s sudden reveal of his eyes nearly filled the entire screen.
Viewers who had been watching leisurely were caught off guard by the abrupt close-up, many shuddering even through the screen.
[Honestly asking, when is the streamer going to die?]
[So annoying, I came to watch the newbie die — he should be dead by now, right?]
[Soon, soon, didn’t we just see the boss appear?]
Usually, in a newbie player’s livestream, aside from normal viewers who drop in out of boredom, there’s also a small group of struggling bottom-tier spectators from the “Fourth World” who deliberately camp in these streams — just to watch newbies embarrass themselves, and to find pleasure and superiority in comparing themselves to the newbies’ miserable deaths.
Their own instance-clearing lives were full of fear and anxiety; they could only rely on experience to barely survive in low-level instances, slowly enduring. Because of this, they especially liked to camp in newbie livestreams, hoping to see others embarrass themselves to gain self-satisfaction.
Especially when they wanted to see the unusually special Qi Wuyuan get instantly killed by the boss right after stepping out, but instead ended up being frightened themselves by the sudden close-up shot — after that, such annoyed and mocking comments began appearing one after another.
[He’s about to die, about to die, stop babbling.]
[Exactly, at least it’s a newbie instance — with the system’s twisted nature, how could he possibly be killed instantly right at the start?]
Normal viewers couldn’t be bothered to argue with those hanging around just to watch newbies embarrass themselves, but up to now, nearly everyone still in the stream believed Qi Wuyuan absolutely wouldn’t survive this instance.
[Am I the only one who thinks the streamer will make it out alive…?]
A single small-font comment quietly scrolled across the bottom, unnoticed by the other viewers.
After Qi Wuyuan finished speaking, the man did not respond, only gave a slight nod.
Chen sao followed from behind, stopping precisely in front of the man at the spot where the moonlight still reached.
She had been smiling for too long, and when she finally spoke her mouth almost couldn’t close. As she kept moving her jaw and cheeks, Chen continued reciting the procedure.
“Hiss… congratulations to the groom and bride, zzzt, the bride has been received—on, onward to the road!”
Chen sao rubbed her face for a long while, until the entire lower half of it was red, before she managed to get the words out clearly.
Moonlight shone on her face, revealing a peculiar translucent quality to her skin.
As Chen sao’s words fell, the rustling noises in the darkness suddenly grew louder. Before Qi Wuyuan could understand what was happening, four burly men appeared as if out of nowhere, carrying a sedan chair from the distant shadows.
Qi Wuyuan was still observing the sedan chair when suddenly a violent wind arose, deliberately directed at him, blowing so hard he couldn’t open his eyes—he nearly couldn’t breathe.
The wind was so strong that Qi Wuyuan felt he was about to suffocate.
At that moment, on the exposed skin of his neck, he felt the strange sensation of being stroked by icy skin. The touch slid down along his neck, finally reaching his hand.
When the strange sensation stopped at his hand, the fierce wind immediately ceased as well.
The groom beside him had vanished without him noticing. At his fingertips lingered the cold touch, but the feeling of skin against skin suddenly turned into the sharp-edged texture of wood. Lowering his head, Qi Wuyuan saw that he was holding a picture frame in his arms.
Inside the frame was a black-and-white photo of a man. His features were deep and handsome, and he even carried a faint smile when the picture was taken. Most striking were his eyes—Qi Wuyuan could feel a sense of being annotated, marked.
This was the groom’s true face.
What Qi Wuyuan held in his arms was the groom himself.
Yet that dense aura of death still surrounded him, as if acknowledged by the overly domineering groom.
He had already been targeted.
But Qi Wuyuan himself accepted it calmly.
His body had always been weak, his skin unnaturally pale and fragile. Now, with the deathly aura enveloping him, it was hard for anyone to see him as a normal human anymore.
Qi Wuyuan was quite satisfied. As if struck by a thought, he suddenly said lightly: “Do you think the other players will mistake me for a ghost?”
At the start of the instance there had been a prompt: this was not a solo instance. Qi Wuyuan knew that other players would definitely appear later.
He hadn’t forgotten that he was livestreaming; when he spoke, the camera would surely be focused on him.
Qi Wuyuan deliberately said it for the livestream audience, also to test the NPCs inside the instance.
He wanted to see if he could break out of the set storyline, and at certain moments put on a bit of theater.
Although Qi Wuyuan thought he hadn’t said anything particularly unconventional, to those viewers who only wanted to see a newbie’s humiliation, his words came across as arrogant provocation.
The scrolling comments in the livestream instantly multiplied.
[This sentence is so incoherent, speechless — are you showing off your IQ at rock bottom?]
[What an idiot, does the newbie think pretending like this is cool?]
[Still calling yourself a “ghost”? Keep pretending, your head’s about to vanish, hilarious.]
[I don’t know if other players will mistake you, but the newbie is about to die anyway for breaking character settings.]
[I recorded it. Once the streamer dies, I’ll upload it to the forum — another newbie joke added, hahaha.]
Qi Wuyuan could not see the lively reactions in the livestream chat.
By now, the four burly men had carried the sedan chair right up to him. As the chair was set down, the once-bright moon was still half-hidden by dark clouds, and the night grew even heavier.
After he finished speaking, neither Chen sao nor the four men waiting for him to board the sedan, nor even the groom in his arms, made any response.
Qi Wuyuan sighed lightly, even feeling a bit regretful.
“Boring.”
Chen and the four chair-bearers said nothing, but their eyes remained
fixed on him.
The four sedan-chair bearers each looked ugly in their own way. Not a single one of them had normal eyes—either carelessly squinting slits or large, distorted eyes devoid of spirit.
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