“Mission Requirement: Explore Ancestral Hall Street and repair the altar on the street.
“Mission Hint: It might not be gods living inside the altar.
“Warning! This mission has a time limit, please complete it within the next 3 hours!”
The system notification’s appearance was very abrupt. After Han Fei read all the mission notifications, his eyes narrowed with confusion. ‘Repair the altar? How am I supposed to do that?’
He was there to deal with the Singer who happened to be at Ancestral Hall Street. His focus wasn’t the street itself. However, since this was a Grade F Mission, Han Fei had to treat it seriously. Every mission that was related to the altar had to be treated seriously. Based on known information, altars were a required step for Pure Hatred to evolve to Unmentionable so Han Fei had to be careful around any kind of altar.
‘This is a time-limited mission, I only have 3 hours to complete it.’ Han Fei hugged the urn and entered Ancestral Hall Street. Instantly he could feel how this place was different from the other locales he had visited in the past.
There was no sign of any ghost or monster. There was no bloody scent or horrible stench that was normally associated with Lingering Spirits, instead a light smoke lingered in the air. Standing at the entrance, Han Fei could look down the entire street, Ancestral Hall Street wasn’t that long. The windows and doors of all the buildings that lined the street were sealed by bricks. The walls were painted with strange symbols.
“Can you feel anything out of place?” Han Fei communicated with his neighbours inside the urn. But even Weep, who was very sensitive to despair and negative emotion, didn’t sense anything.
‘The Singer is heavily injured, if I’m him, I would lay low and hide in the dark. I would find a chance to assassinate me. Because after I die, the people at both the Ziggurat and Happiness Neighbourhood would dissolve and fight among themselves. That will make my life so much easier.’ Han Fei’s brain spun quickly even though his expression didn’t show any of that. ‘Before the Singer entered the Ziggurat, he was already injured. After he got entangled with the Butterfly, his injury deepened. I believe currently he only possesses 1/10 of his usual power.’
As strategies formulated in his mind, Han Fei slowly moved deeper into Ancestral Hall Street. When he reached the middle of the street, not only him, but all the ghosts, including Zhuang Wen stopped moving. An ancient ancestral hall sat in the centre of the street. The harrowing Song drifted out from the building.
‘The Singer is inside!’ They were only a few metres away and everyone could feel the pressure. Their bodies instinctively tried to turn away. They hadn’t even seen the Singer but their minds already told them to return.
The tenants from Happiness Neighbourhood walked out from the urn to guard before Han Fei. When they encountered the Singer at the security company, Han Fei sacrificed himself to lure the Singer into the Ziggurat to buy time for them to escape. Now that they were facing the Singer again, the tenants at Happiness Neighbourhood would not allow that to happen once more.
‘Things appear to have changed.’ In the past, whenever they heard the Singer, all the Lingering Spirits and Animated Regrets would run as fast as possible but things were different this time. Everyone moved slowly towards the building situated at the centre of Ancestral Hall Street. Compared to the other building, this hall appeared older than the rest. It had a different architectural style, it looked like an old hall built several hundred years ago.
“Something else has been here before we do.” The Mirror God carried by Drake suddenly spoke. “There’s a lingering presence at the door that I absolutely despise. Even though it is very weak, I am certain someone from another area has been here before us.”
“What is that?” Drake found several red threads at the door. He reached out to touch them and the tiny threads immediately dissolved into horrible smelling blood.
“Stay away from those threads.” Mirror God continued, “The area around Ziggurat is covered in Death Curse, so the most common thing around there is curses. However, different areas will have different geographical features. For example, these threads that will dissolve into blood. They are called life threads, normally bound around the ankles of the dead. I heard from the previous manager that there’s a Pure Hatred from another area who can use these threads to control Lingering Spirits, to make them into toys and dolls.”
“Butterfly has just died and other people are already moving into its territory?” Han Fei took out Rest in Peace. He cut at the pool of blood on the ground. A scream came from the blood before it vaporized into black smoke.
“According to legend, life thread is connected to a person’s destiny. Your blade appears to possess the ability to sever the destinies touched by a Pure Hatred.” The Mirror God was surprised, this was the first time he encountered something like this.
“Since Rest in Peace can cut through it, then it can only mean that the opponent is a manifestation of extreme evil. We’ll have to be prepared for it.” Han Fei signaled for the rest to keep on moving. “We’ve just dealt with Butterfly and already other things are encroaching upon us. There’s really no time to rest in the cryptic world.”
Pushing open the door of the hall at the centre of Ancestral Hall Street, there were bloody red threads everywhere. Each thread was bound with black and white talisman. Using Rest in peace, Han Fei cut through all of them. Deep inside the hall was a black coffin. At the end of the coffin was an altar table and the broken altar sat on top of it.
“The altar from Ziggurat’s top floor has been brought here by the Singer?” Han Fei and the tenants from Ziggurat recognized the altar at first glance. At the time Butterfly activated the thing hidden inside the altar and used it to attack the Singer. The Singer took the attack head on and then scurried away with the altar and the old man’s head.
Everyone became nervous when they saw the altar. They were all on full alert. Their eyes slowly moved towards the black coffin. Inside the hall, only the coffin was large enough to hide a person. Several Lingering Spirits approached at the same time. With the Mirror God giving the direction, they opened the coffin lid.
There was a music box sitting inside the black coffin. The harrowing soul-summoning song came from the music box. No one dared to move recklessly. In the end, it was Xu Qin who picked the music box out from the black coffin. The music box looked perfectly normal but two sentences were written on the bottom of it.
The first sentence Han Fei had seen in real life before-- I hope that everyone in the world can hear your voice and that you can move their heartstrings, bringing them warmth and salvation.
The second sentence’s handwriting was completely different from the first. It spoke of madness and twisted desire. Just reading the words was enough for the readers to feel the writer’s anger and pain—God only blesses those who are useful to him.
“If the Singer is really one of Fu Sheng’s 3 children, then the first sentence should be something Fu Sheng left for his child. The second sentence then would be the Singer’s reply to Fu Sheng.” Han Fei could thus determine that there was some kind of unhappy history between the Singer and Fu Sheng.
‘The faces of all the figurines inside this hall have been ruined. The name of the person being mourned has all been carved away. It’s like the thing being mourned here has an unmentionable name.
‘Among the people I know, only Fu Sheng, the previous manager, fulfills that quality. He chose to destroy the cryptic world. He was bound to make enemies with all the Unmentionables in the cryptic world. In the end, he was defeated until his memory was fractured and his name became a taboo.
‘After the Singer obtained the altar and the old man’s head, he came directly to the Ancestral Hall Street and placed the altar here. Does this mean that this whole street was built to mourn Fu Sheng? If he wasn’t defeated, the whole street would be filled with figurines with his face.’
The path taken by Fu Sheng had led him to a dead end. Now no one dared to bring up his name and his figurines had all been desecrated. Other than Han Fei, the Singer was probably the only one who still remembered him.
‘For Fu Sheng, destroying the cryptic world is his final goal. Even though the Singer is his child, to achieve his goal, the Singer will have to be sacrificed.’ The Singer was an Unmentionable, just what kind of trauma he had experienced to become something like that?
Han Fei still had many questions but no one was able to answer them for him. It appeared like before they arrived at Ancestral Hall Street, the Singer had carried away the old man’s head while leaving behind the altar. Theoretically speaking, Han Fei should be proud of himself to have cornered an Unmentionable so, but he could not find the joy within his heart.
The life threads at the door proved that other than himself, someone else had targeted the Singer.
“When I logged into the game, I could still see the Singer squatting at the Ancestral Hall Street with the human head, was he purposely waiting for me? Or he was trying to lure me here?” Han Fei’s impression of the Singer was strength, madness and vengeful. However, after the Singer gained the old man’s head, he appeared to have changed, it was like he had regained some shred of rationality and humanity. “What is it that he wants?”
Staring at the altar on the table, Han Fei slowly approached it, he felt like there was something summoning him.
“There’s an impression on the table for the altar. It fits perfectly. It’s like the altar has always been here…”
“Be careful, don’t go near the altar.” Mirror God warned. But Han Fei still grabbed the black cloth draped over the altar and peeled it back. Han Fei stood alone before the altar and looked inside it.
The broken altar had been fixed. However, the figurine inside it had no face. At that moment, Han Fei’s eyes appeared to leak with blood, he could hear echoes of maddened laughter inside his ears.
When his eyesight returned to normal, the face of the figurine inside the altar took on Han Fei’s features!
“Notification for Player 0000! Building an altar for yourself is highly risky, please consider this carefully!
“Warning! The possibility of death for players below level 30 to build an altar is 100 percent, please consider this carefully!”
Han Fei also panicked listening to the endless warning from the system. He only pulled the black cloth back, he had not done anything beyond that.
