Chapter 219: Yan Jing's Third Rite

The gameplay for Stage B was Monopoly.

Yan Jing had guessed as much earlier. With a setup based on Regional Grids, the standard gameplay would likely be one of two things: Aeroplane Chess or Monopoly.

He'd hit the mark.

The only problem was the meager starting capital.

If he landed on a penalty square right off the bat, he'd have no choice but to sell his land.

A Republican-era version of Monopoly. Interesting.

What kind of special buildings would it feature? A spy agency? A pawnshop? A red-light alley?

He dismissed the system prompt and headed for one of the rooms in the Lin Estate courtyard.

Inside waited the item he intended to take with him.

It was a dilapidated bronze idol.

Its lower half looked like an ordinary human body, but its upper half sprouted six arms. Each hand gripped a different object: a human head, large and small orbs, a khakkhara staff, a seal...

Its chest and stomach lay bare, draped with various jewels, while its lower half wore a skirt embroidered with hideous human faces. A massive serpent coiled around its sides.

It was headless, making it impossible to discern its features.

Among the thousands of Ancient Relics, this piece was actually nothing special. Its only function was to turn tiny insects like ants to ash.

Yet its quality was bizarrely high: a black-purple item.

[Item Name: Broken Divine Idol]

[Quality: Black-Purple]

[Tier Requirement: Usable at Second Tier]

[Effect: Destroys extremely weak targets or ???]

[Description: This idol originally possessed considerable power in the era of its birth, but as time flowed on, that glory became a thing of the past. Bathed in the light of the New Heaven, it could have regained its strength. However, it refused to betray its era, and thus it remains extremely frail.]

Yan Jing placed the idol into his Inventory. After bidding farewell to the Old Man and the rest, he logged out of the Inner World right in front of them.

...

"It's over? Alright, I'll be right there." Shen Youran happily hung up and set her phone down. But the very next second, the device began to vibrate violently.

A familiar number flashed on the screen. She picked it up, wedged it between her ear and shoulder, and jogged to the door to put on her shoes.

But the phone didn't stop vibrating.

Taken aback, she pulled the device away from her ear. Notification after notification was lighting up the top of the screen.

They were all forwarded alerts for missed calls while the line was busy.

At first, they were familiar numbers, but soon, plenty of unknown ones joined the flood.

And the count kept climbing.

What was going on?

She stared blankly until Lin Xiaoran's voice blared from the other end of the line.

"Hello? Hello?? Hello??? Why aren't you saying anything??"

"Yeah, I'm listening. Go ahead," Shen Youran said, gathering her wits.

"Do you have any idea what kind of mess that monster of yours made in this Super-Large Dungeon?!"

Lin Xiaoran was practically shouting. The sheer shock in her tone threatened to spill right out through the screen.

"What kind of mess?"

"He slaughtered three of the four leading figures from the Eight Major Families in one breath!"

"Three Third Tier experts! From the sixty-and-seventy-year-olds down to the thirty-and-forty-year-olds, he wiped them all out!"

Lin Xiaoran's pitch rose and fell with dramatic flair.

Shen Youran arched an eyebrow.

"Well... that's not too bad, is it?"

"I told you ages ago, my Xiao Yanzi's strength is beyond your imagin—"

"That was just the appetizer! He also seized the Regional Grids of absolutely everyone in Rainbow City!"

Lin Xiaoran's voice blared over the line again, cutting her off.

???

Shen Youran couldn't help but take a deep breath. She weighed her words carefully. "What do you mean... absolutely everyone?"

"I mean everyone!"

Lin Xiaoran practically roared into the phone.

"The Public Security Association, the Investor Alliance, the Federal Municipal Government—every single faction in Rainbow City had to hand their land over to him!"

"He's the player the dungeon description warned about, the one who spread a malicious influence! The Inner World Residents in Bianliu County all call him Advisor Yan! Don't tell me he didn't mention this?"

Catching her breath, Lin Xiaoran plunged on.

"You know Crazy Jiang from the Public Security Association, right? Jiang Yao? The lunatic everyone thinks is highly likely to become a seed candidate? She went out yesterday and came back with her face bruised and swollen, half-limping."

"Rumor has it someone saw her trying to snatch her land back, only to get pinned to the ground and beaten senseless by a shadow your monster left behind!"

"Then there's that blind guy the Investor Alliance is backing, the one who's just a step away from becoming a seed. I was on his team this time, and I noticed something off about him!"

"What was off?" Shen Youran asked.

"When he first entered the dungeon, even though his eyes were closed, the Weird Energy pooling in his eye sockets was incredibly dense. But later, on the day he surrendered his land, I secretly observed him. For a short time, there wasn't a single trace of Weird Energy around his eyes!"

Lin Xiaoran lowered her voice. "I suspect he actually went completely blind!"

"Don't go pinning every little thing on my Xiao Yanzi, I'm warning you!" Shen Youran's heart skipped a beat, but she immediately shot the accusation down.

"You can't blame me for thinking it."

Lin Xiaoran shrugged over the line. "That's what everyone is whispering."

Then, she let out a mischievous laugh. "You've poured a lot of effort into that monster of yours, haven't you? Rumor has it that back in the day, the Shen Family coveted the Summit and even mapped out a route to reach it. Don't tell me you have it on you."

"Do you really think they would have let me live if such a thing actually existed?" Shen Youran's voice turned icy.

"I'm just joking! Let your monster carry me through the next stage, won't you?"

Lin Xiaoran giggled. "I did help you out a ton back when I was in the Fourth Ring Domain. I finally managed to transfer back to Rainbow City, and I'm still short one massive headline to secure my footing here."

"I've paid you back for those favors more than once. We'll talk about it later."

Shen Youran hung up the phone.

She hurried toward Yan Jing's detached house.

When she arrived, she was surprised to find Yan Jing standing in the doorway, the front door wide open.

"Xiao Yanzi, what are you doing out here?"

Shen Youran blinked.

Given his usual habits, he should have been waiting inside for her to knock.

Yan Jing didn't answer. Instead, he smiled.

"Teacher Shen, you're three or four minutes later than usual."

"I had to take a call."

Her fox-like eyes flickered, and a teasing smile suddenly touched her lips. "Oh~ I get it! Xiao Yanzi, you were worried about my safety, weren't you~"

She shot him a flirtatious look. Unfortunately, he had already turned around and was walking back inside, completely missing it.

"Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment, Teacher Shen. In our line of work, we must stay rational at all times."

"Who has feelings for you?!"

Shen Youran's face fell. Grinding her teeth, she followed him inside and plopped down on the sofa.

Yan Jing chuckled. He picked up a glass of milk he'd been warming on the table and offered it to her. "Then please drink this milk, Miss Shen Who Has No Feelings."

"Hehehe."

Shen Youran took the milk with both hands, instantly delighted again.

She took a sip and looked at him. "The great Reporter Lin just called and told me everything."

"Reporter Lin is quite well-informed," Yan Jing replied with a smile.

"So... Xiao Yanzi, what's your evaluation score this time..."

Shen Youran looked at him expectantly.

Yan Jing nodded.

"I've reached the Third Tier."

"Nice!"

Shen Youran leaped up from the sofa in sheer joy.

Then, with a mysterious air, she materialized a box in the palm of her hand.

"This is what I prepared for your Ritual!"

"Then I really have something to look forward to."

Yan Jing took the box with a smile and cracked the lid to take a look. Instantly, his pupils shrank.

The smile vanished from his face. He shut the lid again and looked at the expectant Shen Youran.

"Teacher Shen, where did you get this?"

"Huh?"

Shen Youran blanked. His reaction was nothing like she had expected.

"Well, it's just—"

"You can't resort to loan sharks, Teacher Shen!"

Yan Jing heaved a long sigh, wearing a look of long-suffering disappointment.

"Who went to a loan shark?!"

Shen Youran laughed out of sheer exasperation. He was at it again.

"Then tell me, where did you get this?"

Yan Jing pulled the item from the box. It was a slender, pitch-black bone.

[Item Name: Right Wing Bone of a Certain Creature (One)]

[Quality: Black]

[Tier Requirement: Usable at Second Tier]

[Effect: Piercing it into one's body grants a small fraction of the creature's power. Irreversible.]

[Description: The bone of a bizarre entity from a long-vanished Domain. Its kind favored featherless wings and possessed double pupils, rendering demonic calamities and swarming evils harmless against them. With the emergence of Chaos, the power this bone had lost over the years returned; however, that Domain ultimately perished.]

A Black-quality item usable at the Second Tier.

It was definitely no ordinary object.

For a Third Tier Ritual item, Purple quality was already considered excellent. Yet the bone before him was two grades higher than that.

It was hard to imagine the penniless Shen Youran pulling out an item of such quality—unless the information recorded in the original host's notebook was actually true...

"..."

"..."

Shen Youran pursed her lips. After a moment of hesitation, she finally spoke.

"This is something my family left behind."

"My family once explored the route to the Summit and left behind two sets of items believed to enable one to reach it. But I wasn't able to take either set out in its entirety. Both are incomplete."

"This set, for instance, only contains items for the Third Tier, Sixth Tier, and Seventh Rank Rituals. The other set had even fewer—only Second Tier and Sixth Tier items."

"And strictly speaking, I don't own them."

"I merely knew their locations and took them out."

She finally clarified how she had managed to exploit a loophole in her contract back then.

"This is from the second set."

After saying this, she pursed her lips again and looked Yan Jing in the eye, speaking with absolute sincerity. "The items from the other set have already been used up. It's not that I was unwilling to give you the Second Tier items, Xiao Yanzi."

Her gaze instinctively drifted to the side, as if she was worried he might blame her.

Yan Jing smiled.

"Actually, those items were the very reason I came to you in the first place."

With a wicked grin, he added, "And now they've finally fallen into my hands."

"..."

Shen Youran's eyes flashed, and then she burst into laughter.

She knew he was only saying this to defuse her awkwardness.

"The gloves require three items in total."

Shen Youran pulled out two more boxes. "I went and borrowed a Purple-quality item, and I bought a Yellow-Purple-quality one."

"Since the Chaos Gloves synthesize based on the highest quality material, they should do the trick."

But Yan Jing shook his head.

"I've got my own preparations too."

He immediately produced the Broken Divine Idol and the mirror shard tied to the Void Pathway, which he had pulled from a chest in the Sun-Swallowing Tower.

Seeing what Yan Jing held, Shen Youran stared in shock before her face lit up with pleasant surprise.

These two items were undoubtedly vastly superior to the ones in her own hands.

Yan Jing slipped on the worn gloves.

Weird Energy surged into them.

Instantly, the gloves blossomed with an obscure light. Veins resembling electronic circuits flared to life, and a pitch-black vortex slowly tore open just above the back of his hand. Incomprehensible whispers burst forth from within. In the blink of an eye, the entire room darkened, as if all the light were being sucked into that swirling abyss.

Controlling the gloves, Yan Jing lightly touched the three items.

The vortex abruptly expanded, swallowing the three items one after another.

In an instant, chaotic, disorderly power erupted from the vortex like a turbulent current. It ricocheted around the room, transmuting everything it struck.

The desk lamp warped into a toaster, the faucet bent entirely backward, and a section of the sofa morphed into a giant loaf of bread...

A few minutes later, the pitch-black vortex finally ceased. The darkness receded like a fading tide. The Chaos Gloves vanished along with it, leaving only a bizarre, massive wing resting on the table.

It possessed eight main bones, and each main bone sprouted eight branches. Black feathers clung tightly to every inch of bone, giving the wing a withered, macabre look rather than a full plumage. Under the light, it took on the dark red hue of rusted copper. Hideous bone spurs stood erect at every joint, and at the very tip of each wing bone grew a double pupil—sixty-four in total.

[Item Name: Wings of Praying for Death - Chongming]

[Quality: Black-Orange]

[Tier Requirement: Usable at Second Tier]

[Effect: Piercing it into one's body grants a small fraction of the creature's power. Irreversible.]

[Description: With the aid of Chaos, the deceased Chongming Bird accidentally touched the power of reincarnation, earning a sliver of a chance at rebirth. Ultimately, however, the arrival of nothingness prevented the wheel of reincarnation from stopping. Having just brushed against rebirth, it experienced a fate worse than death. Its thirst for life was finally broken by the agony of this endless cycle. It began to pray for death, ultimately transforming into a new form and constituting the wing seen today.]