Npc 97

As soon as Ding Wanyu spoke, the noisy bedroom fell silent.

At this moment, the giant maid, who had been silent, came to her senses. She blinked and said, "No wonder the guests who were standing next to His Highness last night said they heard some noises."

Jiang Yan: "..."

Tao Shi: "..."

Cao Youfeng: "..."

No!! Sister!! How could you not hear such a loud noise??

How could you have that "if you uncover the castle’s secret, you will die" expression without hearing it??

How could you not be curious about last night’s ‘thump’? It was so loud and lasted for so long. Didn’t anyone go take a look??

Oh, a few guards saw it.

They saw a bunch of body parts running around the castle and didn’t react at all!!

I have to say, this truly deserves to be in a "magical land" setting. This is really damn magical!

The maid sneered inwardly.

Jiang Yan, with a blank expression, looked at the severed arm in his hands.

Letting one's dismembered body parts run wild in the streets without causing fear among people...

Yeah... very fitting for Yu Xiu.

At this point, the golden-haired, golden-eyed real NPC, still not giving up, tried to pull Jiang Yan down further.

With his arms crossed, he said to Ding Wanyu, "Even if His Highness left on his own, that doesn’t prove Jiang Yan isn’t the killer. On the contrary, the fact that His Highness left on his own could suggest that the person who killed and dismembered him was his own wife. His Highness couldn’t bear this and chose to run away, right?"

Upon hearing this, the guests, who had previously fallen silent, began whispering again:

"Yeah, yeah! That makes sense!"

"Yeah! Otherwise, why would His Highness control his own severed body parts to leave? He must have been too disappointed."

"Perhaps, he still wants to protect his wife, not wanting her to be judged."

"Sigh... He loves him so much, even though he has hurt him like this..."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Yan couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as he looked at the severed arm in his arms. A faint, mocking smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

Because he loves his wife so much and is afraid he’ll be hurt, he runs away after being dismembered, just to protect him from being judged?

Pfft!

This guy just wants to show off that he was dismembered!

"Perhaps Jiang Yan knows where His Highness went, but he’s unwilling to say!" The golden-haired, golden-eyed half-elf again pointed the blame at Jiang Yan. "Even though the head of the guards says Jiang Yan is innocent, to find out His Highness’s whereabouts, Jiang Yan should also be questioned along with the soldiers who saw His Highness's body."

"Right! That’s right!"

"Jiang Yan should be questioned!"

"..."

The guests chimed in.

Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow in response to the challenging gaze of the golden-eyed elf.

"No need for questioning or investigation." Ding Wanyu spoke. "Yesterday, some guards saw the direction he left in."

The smile on the golden-haired elf’s face stiffened.

Seeing this, Jiang Yan blinked, concealing the coldness in his eyes. When he opened them again, his expression became pitiful and tearful: "Really? He... My husband... Where did he go?"

Ding Wanyu slowly spoke: "To the town of Jiekhe."

Ding!

[Real NPC Ding Wanyu Key Clue – The direction the Giant Kingdom King left: The town of Jiekhe.]

The mood of everyone on site shifted immediately.

The guests started whispering:

"Why did he go to that place?"

"What should we do now? Should we go find him?"

"But... that's the place cursed by the gods. It's dangerous..."

The new players looked at each other, unsure of how to respond.

"I’m going to find him!" Jiang Yan said, clutching the giant’s arm, his eyes red as he spoke, "It’s our first day of marriage. He can’t just leave me like this..."

Ding!

[Dungeon Level: S, Dungeon Progress: 10%]

[Players: 10, Real NPCs: 3 +1]

[System NPCs: Several]

[Main Quest: Help the young prince of the elves piece together his husband’s body and find the murderer of the Giant Kingdom King within seven days.]

[Side Quest: Vote for a 'murderer' every night at midnight and eliminate one player.]

Jiang Yan was a bit confused.

He asked 663, "What does +1 mean?"

Before 663 could answer, the golden-haired, golden-eyed half-elf in the crowd spoke with a smile: "I will go with everyone to search for His Highness. I assume no one objects, right?"

He then looked at the bewildered Jiang Yan and said, "Your Highness, you are so lucky to have so many people willing to support you!"

Ding!

[Player Unlocks Real NPC: Lu Sha]

Jiang Yan’s eyes widened immediately.

"Damn! I knew he looked familiar," Yu Jia muttered softly.

—

A massive luxury carriage rolled along the forest path.

Since it was a large carriage provided by the giants, it didn’t feel cramped even with ten players and two real NPCs inside. There was still plenty of room for everyone to create their own "boundaries."

At the center sat the two NPCs.

On Jiang Yan’s side were the veteran players Tao Shi, Cao Yufeng, Yu Jia, and Jian Hou.

On the other side, aligned with the newly appeared golden-haired NPC Lu Sha, were the new players: the braided-hair father and son, a glasses-wearing short-haired girl, the chef, and the buzz-cut player.

It was clear that the new players, after their earlier attempt to sell out Jiang Yan, had now positioned themselves as opposing forces. Aligning with Lu Sha, who also stood against Jiang Yan, offered them a sense of safety.

Compared to the old players who had been consistently siding with Jiang Yan, sitting near the real NPC Lu Sha gave the newcomers more confidence. After all, they had already witnessed the horrifying tentacle-like appendages that emerged from beneath Jiang Yan’s skirt twice. The most recent one had bitten off the braided boy's finger!

It was terrifying!

Though this game was described as a horror experience, in their eyes, the most terrifying thing they had encountered so far wasn’t the dungeon itself—it was Jiang Yan.

Even without Lu Sha, they wouldn’t dare approach Jiang Yan again. Who could say when the monster under his skirt would suddenly emerge and rip them apart?

The new players cautiously glanced at the beautiful boy sitting opposite them, dressed in a pristine white suit and clutching a long, muscular severed arm.

To them, Jiang Yan was like his current visual presentation—both stunningly beautiful and dangerously unsettling, innocent yet disturbingly perverse.

Now, they were keeping as much distance as possible from Jiang Yan. When they got on the carriage, all of them had tried to sit as far away from him as they could.

There were only two exceptions—the braided-hair father and son.

Thanks to Cao Yufeng’s medical bandage, the braided boy’s bleeding had stopped, but his severed finger couldn’t be reattached.

The [Medical Bandage] was effective in treating most external injuries, but for cases like severed limbs, the method was crude and straightforward—it rapidly grew a layer of flesh over the wound to stop the excessive bleeding.

As a result, the braided boy’s five fingers on his right hand were now neatly truncated in the middle, leaving five smooth, bare stumps.

A perfectly healthy son, now turned into a cripple.

The braided boy’s father was furious, his hatred for Jiang Yan practically seething through clenched teeth.

His dark, brooding gaze fixated on Jiang Yan.

Tao Tao liked him.

Originally, he had planned to treat Jiang Yan with some gentleness, but now it seemed that before turning him into a doll, Jiang Yan would have to suffer significantly.

The braided boy no longer felt any pain. Looking at the five smooth stumps where his fingers used to be, he awkwardly tried to clench his fist. With the upper parts of his fingers gone, the most he could manage was a half-clenched gesture.

Still, he wasn’t upset.

Instead, he felt a peculiar sense of anticipation.

His mind was flooded with the image of Jiang Yan’s pale, slender ankle, and that alluring little red mole nestled delicately on it.

Just moments ago, his fingertips had almost grazed it.

Now that his fingertips were gone, he couldn’t touch it the same way—but he could still use his finger stumps.

He looked at the newly formed flesh over his stumps, noting how much more sensitive the skin there was compared to his old fingertips.

If he used these stumps to touch that flawless spot, surely he could experience the silky smoothness of that milk-white skin even more vividly, couldn’t he?

The thought alone made the braided boy's eyes gleam with an indescribable desire.

Imagining his incomplete fingers caressing Jiang Yan’s perfect body filled him with uncontrollable excitement, his body trembling slightly at the thought.

Meanwhile, Jiang Yan remained completely unaware of all this.

At this moment, Jiang Yan was holding his husband’s severed arm in his embrace, calmly sitting across from the golden-haired NPC and the players. Meanwhile, Cao Yufeng, seated next to him, was quietly complaining to him and Jian Hou about the sudden appearance of this golden-haired NPC.

Cao Yufeng leaned in and whispered, “Just now, Yu Jia said he looked familiar. I thought so too, but because of the enhancement the dungeon gives NPC appearances, I didn’t recognize him at first.

“His name is Lu Sha. He’s a real-person NPC from [Valen Church]. You know about [Valen Church], right? We encountered their players in a previous dungeon.”

Jiang Yan remained silent for a moment.

In his mind, he asked his personal system: “What’s [Valen Church]?”

663: “…???”

After a brief pause, 663 exploded, “It’s one of the Four Major Guilds! You’ve even met their players in a previous dungeon—how could you forget?”

“Did I?” Jiang Yan asked, his tone indifferent.

663 finally lost its patience. “Jiang Yan, you spend all your time playing games in these dungeons—what on earth have you been doing? You can’t even remember one of the Four Major Guilds? And you’ve forgotten the advanced players you’ve encountered?”

“I meet a lot of players in every dungeon,” Jiang Yan replied, expressionless. “Like now—there are ten sitting next to me. How could I possibly remember every single one of them?”

“But—but Jiang Xiu and Su An are advanced players! How could you forget them?!”

Jiang Yan casually pulled back the hand that had taken the opportunity to misbehave under his skirt and answered, “Tentacle play.”

663: "..."

“Do you really not remember? Try to think back to Jianshe Road Private Hospital,” 663 urged.

Jianshe Road Private Hospital?

Jiang Yan furrowed his brows slightly.

He vaguely recalled there were two players from [Valen Church] in that dungeon, but their names and appearances had completely slipped his mind.

The only thing he remembered clearly about that dungeon was encountering Yu Xiu and taking Yu Xiu back with him.

All other memories had long since blurred into obscurity.

Jiang Yan had always been indifferent toward unimportant people and events. If it weren’t for Tao Shi and Cao Yufeng having stuck around for three dungeons already, he might have completely forgotten about them as well.

However, after hearing what 663 said, he seemed to recall a bit more.

“That kid named ‘Su An’—wasn’t he kind of a psychopathic antisocial type?” Jiang Yan asked.

“Yes! Exactly!” 663 sounded deeply moved.

“Players from [Valen Church] are always weirdos! And this real NPC, Lu Sha, is no exception,” 663 grumbled.

“Oh? Really?” Jiang Yan replied, his tone faintly curious.

“Yes,” 663 began explaining.

“Lu Sha—ranked 10th on the server’s real-person NPC leaderboard—is one of the top NPCs. His specialty lies in disguise and mimicry… Oh, this might be something you’re unfamiliar with, so let me explain it thoroughly.

“Many real NPCs use disguises to blend seamlessly into the game world, often by masquerading as system NPCs. For example, when you, Cang Rou, and Ding Wanyu appeared, the main system announced your entry. However, when Lu Sha entered, there was no system announcement at first. It wasn’t until the storyline advanced that the system revealed his presence. This was because Lu Sha had disguised himself as a system NPC at the time.”

Hearing this, Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “You can do that? Why didn’t you ever tell me I could disguise myself?”

“No, you can’t,” 663 denied flatly.

“Why not?” Jiang Yan asked, unconcerned.

“Because it’s a skill exclusive to high-level NPCs. It requires exceptionally strong mental power and a highly optimized stat panel to pull off. The stronger a real-person NPC is, the longer they can maintain their disguise in a dungeon.

“Do you want to know where you stand as a real NPC right now?” 663 asked.

Jiang Yan: “…Not particularly.”

Looking at its hopelessly unmotivated host, 663 was practically gnashing its teeth in frustration.

It was true—while Jiang Yan’s in-game popularity was now on par with, or even surpassed, those of advanced NPCs, possibly even rivalling the Best Actor himself, his capabilities were another story entirely.

Due to his persistently lazy approach to improving his stats and his initially low base attributes, Jiang Yan was, at best, a third-rate NPC even with an S-tier item boosting him.

While his stats had improved enough to not be dead-last anymore, he still ranked in the bottom half of all NPCs on the server.

His so-called "mental power" ranked only in the bottom 50 across the entire server—a far cry from the "high-level NPC" status.

And yet, this person remained completely indifferent, with no sense of urgency or awareness of any potential danger!

663 was filled with hatred! Hatred for failing to meet expectations!

However...

In the system space, at 663's workstation, a pair of long legs were crossed. Looking at the boy with indifferent blue eyes on the screen in front of him, he chuckled softly.

Forget it. He hadn’t entered the game to become a “high-level NPC” anyway.

Unlike those real NPCs with their career plans.

Thinking of this, 663 spun his chair around and continued speaking into the microphone to Jiang Yan, explaining:

"Of course, this is also related to the level of the dungeon.

"The higher the difficulty of the dungeon, the harder it is to maintain a disguise. The lower the difficulty, the easier it is to maintain the disguise.

"Although this is an S+ level dungeon, logically speaking, a real NPC of Lu Sha’s level should have been able to maintain the disguise for a longer time. This means he deliberately revealed himself just now.”

Deliberately?

Jiang Yan furrowed his brow slightly.

Could it be that he wanted to join them in completing the main quest?

One thing was certain: Lu Sha himself definitely disliked Jiang Yan, but the mixed-blood elf Lu Sha was portraying also disliked Jiang Yan as the “elf prince.”

Thus, Lu Sha’s various targeted actions toward him in the castle were permitted by the main system.

For this reason, when Lu Sha proposed joining them to search for Yu Xiu’s body and investigate the murderer, it didn’t contradict his character setting.

However, if he had requested to join them as a “system NPC,” they would have definitely refused him, and it might even have triggered another fight like earlier.

But if he requested to join as a real NPC, after revealing his true identity, even if Jiang Yan and the others didn’t want him to follow, they wouldn’t act recklessly.

This saved a lot of unnecessary trouble, especially since the confrontation in the castle had already wasted a lot of time.

But why did he dislike him?

When Jiang Yan looked up, he met the dangerous and provocative golden eyes of the real NPC across from him.

Hugging the severed arm in his arms even tighter, Jiang Yan couldn’t help but wonder:

Had he offended him before?

No!

No... right?

Remembering how he had just forgotten about the other’s guild, Jiang Yan asked 663 somewhat guiltily:

“Have I encountered him in a previous dungeon?”

663 replied, “No.”

“Then... when I was at Jianshe Road Private Hospital, did I say anything offensive to him while communicating with their Valen Church members?”

“Also no.”

“Could it be that I offended the entire Valen Church back then?”

663 thought for a moment and replied, “You just won the game, it shouldn’t be considered an offense.”

“Then why has he been targeting me?” Jiang Yan asked in confusion.

663 replied, “Well... first of all, the Valen Church has some weird people. I’ve told you about them before. They’re weird! They might like or dislike someone, but it doesn’t always make sense! Maybe he just simply can’t stand you?”

Jiang Yan: “...”

“However, there’s another possibility.”

“Another possibility?”

663’s voice grew low, even carrying a hint of amusement. “Do you think the only one targeting you is Lu Sha, or that it’s just the Valen Church?”

Upon hearing this, Jiang Yan froze for a moment and instinctively glanced at Yu Jia, who was sitting next to Tao Shi.

At that moment, Yu Jia was looking at Lu Sha, deep in thought.

Right!

How did he forget that Yu Jia also wanted to kill him?

No! Not just Yu Jia, but the whole Puppet Workshop!

“Why?” Jiang Yan asked, now even more confused. “Am I really that detestable?”

He had always been an ordinary person with little presence, and he assumed he was the same in this game — just another insignificant third-rate NPC.

He remembered that he hadn’t done anything outrageous, nor had he offended anyone. Why had he suddenly attracted the pursuit of two major guilds?

If the other players knew what Jiang Yan was thinking at this moment, his private messages would probably be flooded with notifications!

Ordinary and without presence?

Brother, are you kidding?!

Your popularity and reputation are almost on par with the Best Actor! How could you be ordinary with no presence???

Your name has been trending on the game forums non-stop!

At this moment, Jiang Yan suddenly thought of a possibility.

He quickly asked 663, “Can you check if they might be related to Yu Xiu?”

“No.” 663 immediately denied it.

The speed with which 663 denied was so fast that Jiang Yan was stunned for a second.

“You didn’t even check, how can you be so sure?” Jiang Yan asked.

663 sighed, “Didn’t I tell you before? There’s no record of the name ‘Yu Xiu’ anywhere in the game. And players of their level, along with real NPCs, their conflicts, who they get along with, or who they’re involved with — everything is known, the entire server keeps track of their movements.

“Let alone such large guilds. If they were at odds with a player, there would definitely be a record of it.

“Just like now, both Puppet Workshop and Valen Church are against you. Even though the reason is unknown, a quick search on the server would reveal that you have some history with them. The name ‘Jiang Yan’ wouldn’t disappear because of it.

“However, when I searched the entire server, I couldn’t find any record of Yu Xiu.”

Jiang Yan fell silent, his thoughts drifting. He felt the delicate, smooth touch on his thigh and sank deeper into contemplation.

Is that so?

But Yu Xiu clearly existed in the game. Not only was he in the game, but for some reason, he had transformed into this form, which couldn’t be clearly defined as either a player, a real NPC, or even a system NPC.

Yet there was no record of him on the server?

Considering Yu Xiu’s talent and his love for all things dark and bloody, once he entered the game, he would have thrived. He’d surely stand out and draw attention from the entire server!

How could there be no record of him?

If Yu Xiu had used some sort of alias, like Best Actor or Spades K, it would make sense that he wasn’t using his real name in the game.

However, before entering this dungeon, Jiang Yan had checked the list of high-level players and NPCs in the game. Even though Best Actor and Spades K used game aliases, their real names could still be found.

So, logically, even if Yu Xiu was using an alias in the game, his real name should still be traceable!

In other words, it was impossible that there would be no record of “Yu Xiu”!

But it was exactly the opposite!

What’s going on with this guy?!

Thinking this, Jiang Yan gripped the severed arm harder, his frustration building. He pinched a few marks into it, as though venting his anger.

His instincts told him that his being targeted by both Puppet Workshop and Valen Church must have something to do with Yu Xiu!

Perhaps... this person knows something?

With this thought, Jiang Yan looked over at Lu Sha, who had been watching him.

When Lu Sha met his gaze, he flashed a meaningful smile.

Just then, the carriage came to a stop.

Outside the carriage, the headless coachman’s voice rang out:

“Your Highness, we’ve arrived at Jiekhe’s little town.”

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