Card Room

Chapter 485 - Ghost Town Crisis

From the moment he discovered that he was unable to contact his other teammates, Xiao Lou was very anxious and his brow was tightly furrowed.

Yu Hanjiang saw his serious face and comforted him. “Don’t worry too much. Brother Jiu and the others have the ability to protect themselves. Chief Shao and Ye Qi have Tao Yuanming in their hands and can hide in the Peach Blossom Spring when in danger. Perhaps it is just that the connection is cut off. It doesn’t mean they had an accident. You can look at the team contract book. Their names should still be there.”

Xiao Lou opened the team contract book. The 12 names on the signature page were still there and the team limited Resurrection Card and Reverse Time card hadn’t been used. The names were still there which meant all the team members were alive.

He sighed with relief. “You are right. Since we can’t contact them, let’s do what we have to do first. Investigate this ghost team and see if we can find clues.”

Yu Hanjiang nodded in agreement. He pressed down on the earpiece and said, “Everyone, jump out the window and gather as soon as possible.”

A moment later, a group of six people gathered downstairs at the inn.

Liu Qiao stepped forward with concern. “Professor Xiao, are you okay? Your expression is a bit ugly.”

Xiao Lou forced a smile. “I’m fine. I’m just worried about our teammates who we suddenly lost contact with. Fortunately, they are all alive. Their names are still in the contract book.” He turned to look at the dark alley. “Let’s go and investigate first. Then we will find a way to meet Brother Jiu and the others after dawn.”

The group followed Xiao Lou to walk forward.

At night, Qingfeng Town seemed to have become a ghost town. There was no sound in the town and even the moon and stars above seemed to be obscured. It was pitch black and it was hard to see in front of them.

Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang took out two Night Pearls for lighting.

The group walked forward for a few minutes before Old Mo wondered, “I remember that during the day, the alley behind the inn should be around 100 steps long. How come it seems to be longer at night?”

The dark alley looked like there was no end.

Yu Hanjiang was also alert and he spoke in a deep voice, “Last night, we went to the ghost town and walked through most of the paths in the town. We never encountered such a long alley, right?”

Old Mo took out the topographic map of the labyrinth drawn last night and confirmed it. “No, the labyrinth we walked last night was similar to the honeycomb labyrinth and the paths were all curved. There was no such long and straight alley at all.”

Qu Wanyue said, “I also remember the ghost town’s labyrinth. Most of them had a turn every 10 steps or so. We just walked hundreds of steps but we kept walking straight. Is it possible that the labyrinth will change every night?”

Liu Qiao hadn’t followed everyone into the labyrinth last night. She heard this and made a guess. “Will the ghost town’s labyrinth change according to the plot at night?”

Xiao Lou also thought so. He looked at Liu Qiao and said, “There is indeed such a possibility. Last night, we saw the young lady from the Zhao family get married and the Chen family had a child. There might be different plot clues tonight so the labyrinth will change… if the ghost town is different every night, it will bring a lot of inconvenience to our investigation.”

Long Sen complained, “So the labyrinth map that Old Mo drew last night can’t be used tonight?”

Old Mo looked depressed. He flipped the white cloth over and sighed. “Ah, I can only re-draw it. It is a different labyrinth every night. Is that Diamond’s little girl trying to toss us to death?”

Liu Qiao shrugged. “I never thought she was cute. If Brother Jiu was here, he would definitely call her abnormal.”

Xiao Lou helplessly said, “Let’s go. We don’t know what the ghost town will look like tonight.”

The group continued along the narrow alley. Old Mo’s maps would be scaled proportionally. For example, one centimeter on the map was ten steps. Such a map would look more intuitive.

He drew a long straight line on the back of the white cloth with his finger. Strangely, there was no end to this straight line.

It wasn’t known how much time passed before Old Mo stopped. He looked down at the map he had drawn and frowned. “It has been more than 200 steps. Why haven’t we exited this alley yet?”

Liu Qiao looked around. “It is such a long alley. How come there isn’t a single home around?”

Xiao Lou looked around. The inn they had jumped out from was gone. Under the illumination of the Night Pearl, the entire alley seemed extremely empty. Only the shadows of the six of them stretched out long on the ground.

A dark and quiet environment could easily magnify people’s sense of tension. This made Xiao Lou think of a scene in a doomsday movie. In the entire world, it seemed like only the six of them were left.

The six people stayed in the empty alley and looked at each other.

Yu Hanjiang suggested in a low voice, “Try and see if there is a way out from the side.” In the ancient tomb labyrinth, they also encountered endlessly rotating stairs but it turned out to be a hallucination. The way out was actually to the side. Yu Hanjiang wanting to test the side was a normal reaction.

Xiao Lou knew what the other person was going to do and took a step back.

Yu Hanjiang took out a sharp saber, raised it above his head and slashed hard at the wall.

This saber could slash through iron like it was mud and Yu Hanjiang’s strength was so great that his teammates thought the wall would be cut open by him. Yu Hanjiang’s blade descended but the wall wasn’t affected. Instead, Yu Hanjiang’s saber was sucked into the wall like a sponge!

An extremely strong force was pulling Yu Hanjiang. Seeing that his arm was about to be sucked into the wall, Xiao Lou hurriedly grabbed Yu Hanjiang’s other arm and pulled him back. “Hanjiang, be careful!”

Yu Hanjiang reacted extremely quickly and immediately put away the saber.

Xiao Lou was shocked and grabbed Yu Hanjiang’s hand. “Are you okay?”

Yu Hanjiang frowned and shook his head. “I’m fine. There is something wrong with the wall. Don’t get close to it.” If the saber wasn’t a card, it would’ve been sucked away by the wall just now. Fortunately, Yu Hanjiang acted fast enough or he would’ve lost an S rated card in vain.

Liu Qiao’s face was pale and she looked at the wall as if she had seen a monster. “Could it be a visual illusion? Or have we encountered a real ghost wall and we will walk forever in this alley?”

In order to verify Liu Qiao’s question, Xiao Lou took out the compass, drew a circle and threw it at the wall.

Just as before, the ring was automatically sucked into the wall and quickly disappeared without leaving any traces.

The walls on both sides of the alley were like monsters that could eat people. The six people fell silent collectively and the atmosphere in the alley became more depressing.

Old Mo suddenly said, “Look closely. The bricks on the ground and on the walls aren’t the same as the bricks used in the construction of Qingfeng Town and they aren’t the same as those encountered in the ghost town last night. Even if the keeper changes the labyrinth, there is no need to change the bricks, right?”

He was indeed the most professional when it came to building materials. He could see the difference with one glance. Xiao Lou also realized something was wrong when he heard this. The light might be dim so the patterns on the bricks couldn’t be seen clearly, but Qingfeng Town during the day and night used ancient stone bricks. They weren’t as smooth and some green moss even grew in the gaps.

Yet in tonight’s alley, the ground and walls were extremely smooth. It was a bit like blue marble?

The technology of ancient brick kilns was far from such a level.

Xiao Lou was stunned as he suddenly thought of a possibility. “This isn’t the labyrinth but a card effect. Someone has locked us in an enclosed space!”

The moment Xiao Lou spoke, there was a sudden ‘quacking’ scream around them. Yu Hanjiang turned back and shone the Night Pearl behind him, only to see crows flying from behind like a dark cloud. They screamed and swooped at everyone!

Yu Hanjiang had never seen so many crows in his life. The crows filled the entire alley and almost drowned the six of them.

The speed of the murder of crows was extremely fast. Liu Qiao was standing at the end and was almost blinded by the crows. She hurriedly threw out Little Red Riding Hood as her stand-in. Almost instantly, Little Red Riding Hood was overwhelmed by the crows and bitten to pieces. Liu Qiao was frightened and quickly released the Elsa fairy tale card she had drawn before.

Ice and snow were coming!

The Elsa card had been drawn just after clearing the Q secret room and Liu Qiao used it for the first time today.

She saw the snow and ice with extremely gorgeous special effects falling. The air behind her was frozen into ice in an instant and the sound of living creatures freezing could be heard in her ears!

The ice and snow turned the crows collectively into frozen crows. They were like ice sculptures and froze in the air in various strange postures.

Liu Qiao rushed back to Xiao Lou with a pale face. “It is a hunter again!”

Xiao Lou looked at the crows with a very serious expression. He took a step back and protected his teammates with his arms, saying softly, “Everyone, be careful. This time, the hunters are very capable.”

They had just met the ‘female ghost’ whose hair flew everywhere and now someone locked them in an alley and let crows attack them. It seemed there was more than one hunter in the ghost town at night.

Yu Hanjiang suddenly said, “This alley should be a type of space domain card like Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring and my brother’s Absolute Domain. It forcibly pulled us into an enclosed space.”

Old Mo was stunned and asked, “Then how do we get out?”

Xiao Lou was helpless. “We can’t go out without the permission of the master, just like my Peach Blossom Spring.” It was just that the environment of the Peach Blossom Spring was very beautiful and the mountains were full of peach blossoms. This time, the field environment was a dark, never-ending alley.

Xiao Lou took a deep breath. “The domain generally has a time limit. Peach Blossom Spring is three hours. This hunter’s card can pull us into the dark alley. According to the strength of an S rated card, the time shouldn’t exceed three hours.”

Liu Qiao nodded. “In other words, we have to live as long as possible and survive these three hours?”

In the Q secret room, Xiao Lou pulled the merpeople clones into the Peach Blossom Spring and burned them. It was inevitable to become prey when pulled into someone else’s domain.

As the difficulty of the level increased, the strength of the challengers increased as well. The hunters naturally wouldn’t be weak.

Xiao Lou calmly told his teammates, “Everyone, gather around back to back. Hold your cards and be ready to fight at any time.”

The teammates immediately headed to Xiao Lou’s side when they heard this. They gathered in a circle and looked around alertly.

However, nothing happened.

10 minutes… 20 minutes…

Compared to the nervous and extremely vigilant team, this hunter seemed to be very patient.

It wasn’t known how much time passed but the surrounding environment still didn’t change. The dark alley was so quiet that a falling needle could be heard.

Everyone was tired but they didn’t dare to relax. The large-scale ice and snow made by Liu Qiao had started to gradually melt but no one could say if something else would attack them.

Just then, a large number of green vines suddenly appeared under everyone’s feet. The vines seemed conscious and quickly wrapped around everyone’s legs!

Yu Hanjiang’s expression changed. He immediately waved his saber, cutting off the vines under his feet. Xiao Lou hurriedly took out the compass and drew an invincible circle around his teammates.

The green vines moved outside the invincible circle but couldn’t get close to them.

It was a pity that the invincible circle could only last for 10 minutes. There were so many green vines. The moment they got out of control, the vines would quickly strangle their necks. The more frightening thing was that until now, the hunter hadn’t appeared. No one knew how many trump cards this person had.

Xiao Lou whispered in Yu Hanjiang’s ear, “We can’t sit still like this any longer. Since the hunter can attack us with so many cards, they must be in this field. The hunter must be found as soon as possible.”

Yu Hanjiang nodded and a trace of sharpness flashed in his eyes. “That’s right. There is another way to crack this closed space. It is to kill the master.”