"What?”
Gu Zhan’s words left everyone surprised.
How could he determine that the system had changed?
They hadn’t even spoken much with the system!
After a moment of silence, the system suddenly chuckled again: “That’s not important. What matters is that you now have to face the mother. If you can kill her as your storyline suggests, your journey through this scenario will come to an end.”
With that, the overhead fell completely silent.
The system disappeared.
Yu Yezhou quietly asked Gu Zhan, “How did you realize it had changed?”
Gu Zhan shook his head.
He couldn’t explain; he just felt that this new voice of the system was very irritating, akin to someone he knew.
But didn’t Mo Tuo say he was being punished? Perhaps he was overthinking it.
“Let’s go.” Gu Zhan’s gaze grew firmer as he walked toward the only path before them.
Surprisingly, there were stairs in this twisted building, spiraling upward, and there was one door ajar.
The countdown above followed them closely, the blood-red letters illuminating the staircase.
When they reached the door, they leaned against the wall to look inside. A monster sat on the sofa, watching television.
The images on the screen were bloody and terrifying, abstract lines and blocks coming together and scattering again, making one’s eyes ache.
Staring at its enormous body, Yu Yezhou exclaimed, “We have to defeat that thing?!”
An He Yan replied, “According to the system, yes.”
Yu Yezhou fell silent, but his expression clearly conveyed disbelief—“Fight that monster?”
How was that even possible?!
Gu Zhan, however, was carefully observing the room. It was laid out similarly to Xiao Ming's home from their first cycle, but there was something odd about the area where the TV cabinet stood.
There was a strikingly out-of-place vase there.
He pondered for a moment and slowly said, “Perhaps we don’t need to kill it.”
“Really? But the system just said…” Yu Yezhou hesitated.
Gu Zhan replied, “We’ve already determined that the system has changed. So it’s normal for it to lie. Asking us to confront the monster doesn’t seem reasonable, does it? Here, we’ve had almost all our abilities and items disabled. Humans cannot fight these monsters. If it wanted us dead, it could have easily turned this place into an arena for us to battle the monsters. If that were the case, we would have died long ago.”
“Hmm, you have a point.” Yu Yezhou nodded but couldn’t help saying, “But you always sound so convincing that it makes me suspicious. Is it really like that?”
An He Yan said, “I think we can give it a try. If it really does force us to confront the monster, that would essentially mean giving up.”
Yu Yezhou then carefully observed the vase’s position; it was indeed within the monster’s line of sight.
They would have to revert to their old strategy and send someone out to draw the monster away.
Xu Ke said, “I’ll do it. I think I’ve picked up some tricks to distract it.”
But Yu Yezhou shook his head, “This house is too small. The hallway isn’t suited for us to maneuver with the monster. I doubt it would follow us anywhere.”
“But it can come this way,” An He Yan added.
Yu Yezhou glanced around. Yes, the staircase and hallway were more spacious than the room, allowing the monster to reach this area, but first, they had to leave here.
“Let’s stick to the old plan,” Yu Yezhou said.
Fortunately, they hadn’t thrown the cardboard from their fridge too far away; they just needed to go downstairs to retrieve the cover.
By the time they made a trip downstairs and back up, the two-hour countdown had already ticked down by half an hour.
Despite only half an hour having passed, everyone remained tense, mindful that Sang Yue was still alone outside.
She faced so many monsters alone.
They had to move quickly.
With cover in hand, everyone returned to the room, using the previous method to slip into the room under the monsters' noses.
This was a three-bedroom apartment, with the living room occupied by monsters, and the hallway inside the living room led to three more rooms.
The doors to the three rooms were all closed, but one seemed not to be shut tightly, with a gap visible.
As they passed by that doorway, Yu Yezhou glanced inside.
What he first saw was a large, blood-red eye pressed against the door, followed by a twisted body, thick tentacles distorted and pressed against the door frame, filling the small square space with its hefty form.
He was startled and quickly jumped back to avoid the monster's gaze.
At the same time, he reminded the others that there was more than one monster in the house.
Everyone turned to see the writhing monster in the room, gasping in horror.
The monster seemed to have noticed them, but its twisted body couldn’t get out of the room.
Yu Yezhou pushed Gu Zhan, saying, “Hurry up, hurry up.”
They passed by the terrifying doorway and went to the adjacent kitchen.
The kitchen counter was high, with countless sticky, dried-up blood dripping down the surface. The area next to it was piled with unknown rotting meats, emitting a foul odor.
But this was better than the room with the monster; they planned to take shelter here temporarily.
“I'll distract it,” Xu Ke said, moving towards the living room after settling things.
Everyone stood at the kitchen door, nervously watching his back.
What was unsettling was that as Xu Ke passed by the door to the room with the monster, its eye followed him intently.
It seemed to be straining slightly, the door frame warping under its pressure.
“Not good!” Gu Zhan suddenly exclaimed and dashed out.
“Damn it!” This exclamation came from Yu Yezhou.
Gu Zhan hadn’t taken his disguise, completely exposing himself to the monster’s sight!
The monster, seeing a living person, became even more excited, letting out a roar as it crashed through the door frame, bursting out of the room!
To prevent Gu Zhan from being killed by the monster, Yu Yezhou had no choice but to follow him out.
The two appeared before the monster simultaneously; its eyes darted back and forth as if deciding which way to go.
In that brief moment of hesitation, the monster's tentacle, hidden in the room, shot out horizontally, lunging at Xu Ke, who was hiding behind a cardboard box by the fridge.
Unaware of the danger he faced, he was about to be impaled when Gu Zhan shoved him aside just in time.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye, from Gu Zhan leaving the kitchen to the tentacle's fatal strike missing him, in just three seconds.
If it had been a second later, Xu Ke would have been gone.
Yu Yezhou realized why Gu Zhan had left the kitchen; he broke out in a cold sweat, clenching his fists as he looked at the monster that was now fully focused on him.
Meanwhile, the monster in the living room was drawn to the noise and began moving toward them.
They were surrounded by monsters.
In an instant, Yu Yezhou made a decision: “Everyone, come out!”
There was no other way; they had to go all out and give it a try.
They abandoned their disguises, exposing themselves directly to the monsters’ sight. Given the monsters' enormous size, they were somewhat limited in their ability to capture them in such tight quarters.
Although the system restricted the players' skills and items, their physical abilities and stats could not be limited.
The players possessed bodies more agile than ordinary humans, with greater endurance.
With everyone joining in, Xu Ke and Xu Yu no longer held back; they dashed past Gu Zhan, heading to block the monster in the living room. Yu Yezhou, already exposed to the monster in the room, roared to attract its attention.
They unanimously assigned the task of finding the vase to Gu Zhan.
Gu Zhan immediately reacted, running toward the TV cabinet in the living room.
The monster in the living room seemed to catch on to his intent, swinging a long tentacle at him, but it was intercepted by Xu Yu with a dagger just as it was about to hit Gu Zhan.
These monsters looked terrifying, but they weren't invulnerable; the dagger pierced the tentacle, causing yellow pus to ooze from the wound, emitting a foul stench.
The monster seemed enraged, temporarily abandoning Gu Zhan to pounce on Xu Yu instead.
At the same time, the monster from the room also emerged, and chaos ensued in the living room and hallway. Tentacles flailed wildly, smashing against the walls, which shook and shed debris.
Amid the chaos, Gu Zhan crawled on the floor, inching closer to the vase.
The vase was surprisingly on the TV cabinet; he reached out and grabbed it easily.
It was light and offered no resistance, and there was nothing inside.
Could it be… he had remembered wrong?!
Gu Zhan felt a sinking feeling in his heart. Behind him, the two monsters had met; they seemed not to recognize each other, flailing their tentacles and grappling.
The three humans responsible for distracting the monsters were squeezed between the tentacles and the massive bodies, in constant danger of being crushed.
Even without being injured, the house wouldn’t hold up much longer; the monsters’ movements caused it to sway precariously, with floor tiles already starting to cave in.
The countdown above them was also ticking down.
There was no time left…
They didn’t have a second chance to correct their mistake; everything had to happen in time!
How could this be, the vase…
The vase…
Suddenly, Gu Zhan stopped. Something felt off; the texture of the vase seemed to have a crack.
He slammed the vase to the ground with all his strength, and it shattered upon impact.
However, such a loud noise didn’t attract the monsters’ attention. Looking back, he saw that both monsters had already captured his three teammates, their dark, brown tentacles hoisting them up high, their gaping maws wide open, ready to swallow them whole.
Yu Yezhou struggled to look in Gu Zhan's direction. He was bound and unable to make any sound, so he could only convey his thoughts through his eyes—he believed in Gu Zhan and trusted that his choices were the right ones.
Time and reality had reached their limit.
Yu Yezhou thought that perhaps they would have to stay here forever.
He wondered if Yang Lin could hold up the entire guild on her own outside.
But just then, Gu Zhan's eyes suddenly lit up.
"I’ve got it!"
He discovered something!
The inside of the vase had inscriptions, and its overall shape seemed familiar.
It was that book!!
The book from the power struggle between Xiaoming's mother and her mother!
When Gu Zhan had gotten the book before, he couldn't make out the words, but now, they appeared clearly.
He picked up all the pieces of the vase that had writing on them and pieced them together on the ground to form the shape of a book. Upon closer inspection, it was densely filled with a sentence—"Love can save everything."
Gu Zhan didn’t have time to critique this phrase; he read it aloud.
And then he declared loudly, "I command you to stop!"
In that instant, the monster in the room came to a halt.
The colors of the room rapidly faded, gradually turning pure white, and the monsters were swallowed up, turning to ash within that pure whiteness.
A cold, emotionless voice from the system echoed: "Correct answer: Love can save everything. They are a loving family, so they should walk toward the same ending together. Even amid the world’s flaws, they can save each other with love."
"Congratulations to players Gu Zhan, Yu Yezhou, Sang Yue, Xu Yu, An Heyan, and Xu Ke for clearing the instance <A Loving Family> and receiving score rewards..."
The system's voice continued, but Gu Zhan didn’t catch the rest, as the brightness of the white room increased, becoming so intense that he couldn't open his eyes.
After closing his eyes, the system’s voice faded further away until it was completely gone…
Yu Yezhou and the others fell down due to the sudden disappearance of the monsters, landing hard on the ground.
Once everyone landed and looked up again, they found themselves at the entrance of the instance.
Sang Yue stood a few meters away, looking bewildered at this pure white city.
"We made it out?"
Her voice was filled with disbelief.
The survivors embraced each other, and even the normally indifferent and cold men couldn't help but choke up.
"We actually made it out?!"
Only Gu Zhan stood still at a distance, unmoving.
The last words of the system echoed in his mind.
What did it say?
Love can save everything?
…Such an arrogant and sarcastic statement.
The last voice that appeared must have been the original system.
Not Mo Tuo pretending to be it.
After this incident, Gu Zhan found himself more interested in the monster world over there.
Just how many freaks were hidden inside?
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