This is that sculpture room.
The entrance to the classroom was sealed off with an iron door. Mu Li stood on tiptoe, pressing his face close to the glass, and found not even the tiniest gap.
Mu Li turned his head and glanced at the male classmate who had led the way for him.
The classmate jumped as if his hair had stood on end: “Don’t look at me. This classroom was sealed up three years ago, and there is no way we can open it.”
Mu Li turned back around, bolted several meters away, and suddenly turned around to launch into a sprint.
With a loud thud, the young man’s body slammed hard against the iron door.
Not only did the door not budge an inch, but Mu Li also lost a layer of HP.
[Ding, the player has triggered a restriction.]
A restriction?
Mu Li pondered for a moment and continued to slam himself against the door.
After smashing into it a dozen or so times, he scared the male classmate standing nearby to the point of almost crying: “Why don’t we just forget it?” But before he could even finish his sentence, he was shoved roughly to the ground by someone behind him.
“Get out of the way.”
The male classmate fell to the ground, wincing in pain. When he raised his head to look, it was unexpectedly Young Master Su!
He instantly stopped talking and scrambled away in a panic from this place of trouble.
“Why are you the only one here? Where is that teaching assistant? Today, I am going to settle accounts with you properly.”
Young Master Su was followed by a group of bodyguards, all of them big and brawny, holding stun batons in their hands.
Oh, they were the very NPCs he had knocked down using a model earlier.
Without even turning his head, Mu Li looked at the undamaged iron door before him, a contemplative look on his face.
Young Master Su’s face fell with a swish. With a lift of his hand, he had the bodyguards surround Mu Li: “You still dare to be this arrogant? If you kneel down and beg me, I might consider letting you off.”
Mu Li’s view was blocked, and the eyes behind his sunglasses were exceptionally cold: “Move aside.”
Young Master Su was flying into a rage: “Get him!”
The group of burly bodyguards shook the stun batons in their hands, slowly closing in on the scrawny youth. He looked just like a little lamb that had fallen among a pack of lions, utterly pitiful.
The youth didn’t move at all; he must have been scared out of his wits.
Mu Li didn’t take these NPCs seriously at all. He was simply wondering why the door was right in front of him, yet completely unopenable.
Could it be that breaking the restriction was a must?
He stepped forward, grabbed the so-called Young Master Su, and without another word, slammed him to the ground, asking:
“Do you know how to break a restriction?”
Before the bodyguards could even react, Young Master Su had been pinned to the ground by the youth, tossed about until he was completely disoriented, his limbs flailing around like a turtle’s.
“What are you bunch of freeloaders standing around for? Hurry up and get him!”
Mu Li understood now. Only by subduing these people could he continue opening the door.
The first bodyguard’s stun baton came down. Mu Li didn’t dodge; the current surged through his neck, feeling just a little itchy, and nothing more.
The bodyguard’s eyes widened in shock as he watched the youth before him tilt his neck. The youth was completely fine, and even looked a bit impatient.
He patted the stun baton. Was it out of charge?
Taking the opportunity, Mu Li dislocated the man’s arm and twisted his wrist to snatch the stun baton away.
“Ah!”
The bodyguard let out a cry of pain. After his entire body convulsed with spasms, he collapsed to the ground, unable to get back up.
Young Master Su never expected this person to be such a capable fighter, and he roared: “Get him! All of you, get him!”
The bodyguards exchanged glances and rushed forward together.
Blue electricity flickered around the youth.
The bodyguards watched with their own eyes as their companions fell one after the other, every single one of them dumbfounded with shock.
After a flash of lightning and flint, the youth suddenly turned his gaze toward the only person still standing.
Young Master Su shuddered violently, his legs trembling like a sieve: “What are you going to do? Don’t come over here.”
Mu Li seized the NPC and pinned him against the wall: “Go break the restriction.”
Young Master Su was still shouting loudly: “If you hurt me, the Su family will never let you off!”
Mu Li snapped the NPC’s arm: “Go break the restriction.”
Young Master Su let out a miserable howl, cold sweat streaming down from the intense pain: “I don’t know what that is.”
Mu Li kicked and broke the NPC’s shinbone: “Go break the restriction.”
Young Master Su knelt on the ground, a mess of snot and tears: “I really don’t know anything about it.” This youth simply didn’t understand human speech.
Too much time was being wasted.
Mu Li hoisted the NPC up and slammed him against the door.
Young Master Su’s face collided with the door, flattening his nose. Blood streamed down continuously, and after hitting the floor, he clutched his face, rolling back and forth while wailing. Deep inside, he felt extreme hatred and cursed fiercely, yet he didn’t dare make any rash moves again.
The iron door sensed something and a red four-pointed star array emerged upon its surface, its four corners corresponding to a pig, a sheep, an ox, and a human. It was as red as oozing drops of blood, looking extremely ominous.
Yet it seemed to have a bad connection; after flickering a few times, it went out with a click.
The restriction was broken.
Hm, just as expected.
Ignoring the NPC on the ground, Mu Li once again used his body to frantically slam against the iron door.
Yet the effect was still minimal to the point of being negligible.
Lying on the ground, Young Master Su spat out a mouthful of blood, clearing away the bloody water, and crawled away using just one hand.
A lunatic, actually going to slam into an iron door.
A madman!
Just you wait for me. Our Su family is not to be trifled with. A flash of cruel light crossed his eyes.
Realizing this was futile, Mu Li slashed his hand through the empty air and allocated all 8 reward attribute points he had just acquired directly into strength.
He clenched his fist, then delivered a single punch straight into the iron door.
Young Master Su’s complexion paled slightly.
The iron door had actually dented.
It worked!
Mu Li’s eyes lit up. While continuing to slam into it, he added elbow strikes, one after another.
Enduring tremendous impact force, the iron door gradually began to shake precariously until it could no longer hold out.
It broke.
The bodyguards who had just recovered their wits felt a chill run down their spines.
How could a person possibly be harder than an iron door?
If the youth had used this kind of force when hitting them earlier, they surely wouldn’t have survived. The desire to retreat took root within them immediately.
Mu Li kicked the door open.
With a bang, the iron door collapsed inward into the sculpture room, kicking up a cloud of dust.
A crowd of red-named names appeared on the map.
At this very moment, the densely packed statues inside the sculpture room turned their heads in unison, gazing eerily toward the uninvited youth standing at the entrance.
The layout of this classroom was identical to that painting. Aside from the missing human mannequin, one could tell at a glance that they had found the right place.
Yet Mu Li’s attention was fixed entirely on the girl in the wheelchair.
The girl’s torso was oriented toward a picture frame, her face stiff and her pupils unfocused. Her hands were carving something, locked in this exact posture without moving a single bit.
So, that was Xu Yueke’s mortal body.
Who on earth had sealed her inside the sculpture room?
She had been sealed away for three whole years, yet her body hadn’t even decayed.
At that moment, the sounds of shrieks echoed continuously from the hallway outside: “Ghosts!” Scared out of their wits with pale lips, the bodyguards trembled all over.
The statues moved.
All of the statues were actually moving!
Those with legs walked toward them, those without legs crawled over, and those with only heads hopped over with thud, thud, thud sounds.
Beholding this bizarre spectacle, they scrambled over one another to escape outside, the ones whose legs wouldn’t work crawling away while grabbing at each other’s ankles in utter chaos.
Meanwhile, upon catching sight of the girl inside the sculpture room, Young Master Su felt his scalp go completely numb. Terror welled up in his eyes, and disbelief spilled from his lips:
“It’s that woman! Wasn’t she dead? Is she not dead? No, she died!”
He suddenly remembered why the pattern on the door had looked so familiar.
Wasn’t that the seal belonging to their Su family?
Since the seal was broken, whatever was inside…
Young Master Su didn’t dare think any further. Panic instantly washed over his entire face, and he too began crawling away while screaming.
And so, a crowd of robust, grown men could be seen sprawled on the ground, surging in the direction of the stairwell in a truly spectacular sight.
Rather than retreating, Mu Li advanced, stepping forward to kick a statue straight across the waist, snapping it in two. Yet the statue stuttered for a moment before automatically reassembling itself.
He let out an hmph and glanced down at the dancer statue he still held. It had been the same situation back then; all damage proved completely useless, but Pei Kanyan had been able to carve eyes onto it using his pen knife.
And those eyes hadn’t reverted to their original appearance.
With a swish, Mu Li drew his pen knife and slashed downward at the statue. The statue was hacked clean into two halves, both pieces dropping onto the floor.
1 second, 2 seconds. There were no signs of coming back to life.
Oh ho.
Professional tools were still a must, after all.
Back at the stairwell, the male classmate from earlier returned, watching from afar as the youth systematically eradicated all the evil entities within the statues one blade at a time.
Hacked into individual pieces, the statues turned into ordinary plaster, piling up all over the floor of the sculpture room.
Once the statues in reality became ordinary statues, the statues inside the painting would also lose their ability to regenerate.
Pei Kanyan’s crisis should be resolved now, right?
Yet Mu Li stared at that music box for quite a while, tapping it against a tabletop, but it kept spinning and the music didn’t stop.
That’s not right.
Mu Li walked toward the real-world Xu Yueke and abruptly leveled his pen knife right across her throat.
“Let Pei Kanyan go!”
There was no movement.
Mu Li brought the pen knife a little closer, his tone dripping with heavy threat: “You should know how powerful this pen is. Let him go!”
Without any warning, a tiny spark suddenly appeared on Xu Yueke’s body. Seeing this, Mu Li stepped back, just as he thought she was about to come back to life.
Who would have expected that every single item inside the sculpture room would ignite without a fire source in that exact instant?
“Cough, cough.”
Choked by the smoke, Mu Li covered his nose and mouth.
Roaring flames devoured the entire classroom, and some crumbling pieces of plaster couldn’t hold their weight, collapsing into heaps of ash.
What was going on?
The real-world sculpture room was burning, but what about the one inside the painting?
Mu Li’s expression grew somewhat solemn as he hammered fiercely against the music box: “Mr. Pei, hurry up and come out!”
Aside from the crackling sounds of the flames, there was no other response from the classroom.
The thought of entering the painting suddenly arose within Mu Li right at the moment his figure began to turn translucent.
The music box suddenly stopped spinning.
“Are you acting up again?”
A deep, magnetic male voice rang out beside his ear, and another hand reached over to grasp Mu Li’s hand.
“You’re back!”
The figure of a tall man appeared by his side, and the youth immediately halted his action of entering the painting.
Rushing eagerly forward, Mu Li crowded right up in front of the man, gesturing wildly as he asked: “What happened inside the painting? Why is everything catching fire?”
Pei Kanyan’s expression drifted into a trance for a brief moment as he looked at this incomparably vivid youth. But it lasted only for a flash before he regained his usual aloofness.
The man grabbed the youth’s wrist and pulled him along: “There’s no time to explain. Let’s go!”
“Oh, oh.”
Mu Li followed blankly for a few steps before coming to an abrupt halt.
“What is it?” Pei Kanyan turned his head back to ask.
Only a string of system prompts could be heard.
[Warning! Quest: Rescue The Girl in the Wheelchair, is about to fail!]
Ah? The quest was going to fail?
How could that do?
“You go on first.” Mu Li shook off Pei Kanyan’s hand and turned back toward the wheelchair. But the moment his hand touched it, a spark splashed onto his sleeve.
So Xu Yueke was the quest target after all. Indeed, putting aside the fact that she had attacked Pei Kanyan, she was easily the most innocent person in the game’s plot.
Her body was still right here. If left unattended, it would definitely be burned into ashes.
“Once this fire attaches to something, it consumes it entirely to the last shred.” Pei Kanyan reached out and forcefully ripped away the youth’s burning sleeve.
“But I have to get her out.”
In just this short moment, the wheelchair had already cracked from the flames, and the girl toppled flat onto the ground. Mu Li propped up Xu Yueke’s arms and dragged her outward.
“A waste of effort! She was already dead by the time she was pushed down the stairs.” Pei Kanyan ruthlessly blurted out this truth.
“I know.”
Yet Mu Li stubbornly went his own way. The fire had already spread up to his arm, and a thick scent of burning permeated the air.
Seeing the flames grow fiercer, realizing that if this continued no one would escape, Pei Kanyan grabbed the girl and hoisted her onto his shoulder.
Cutting through layer after layer of fire, he brought her out to the hallway and set her down.
Mu Li hurried to follow, pulling a bottle of water from his bag to pour over Xu Yueke, but the fire continued to burn unabated. He bit his lip anxiously: “What happens if the fire burns her away completely?”
“She vanishes.” Without even lifting his head, Pei Kanyan swept a hand across the youth’s arm, and the fire vanished as if all the air had been sucked out of it.
“Then we’ll send her off before she vanishes.”
Flipping through the system interfaces, Mu Li discovered a skill whose unlock conditions were exceptionally harsh.
He pulled out a talisman paper, pasted it onto Xu Yueke’s forehead, and then slashed open his palm, guiding his own blood into the talisman.
“What are you doing?” Pei Kanyan caught Mu Li’s hand, staring with a startled and suspicious look at the solemn-faced youth before him.
“Soul-ferrying,” Mu Li answered obediently.
Soul-ferrying?
He must be out of his mind!
“Do you have any idea? Not a single person has ever succeeded at this in decades.” Pei Kanyan’s hand gripped the youth’s wrist in a deathly lock.
“I know, though.”
Watching the youth with his expression of just because others can’t doesn’t mean I can’t, Pei Kanyan felt a searing pain in his chest from anger: “Even draining every single drop of blood won’t work. You’ll just die in vain.”
Blood-drawing soul-ferrying was a bottomless pit that had already claimed an unknown number of lives. Who did he think he was?
Someone who listens to advice wouldn’t be a player.
Seeing that the man before him refused to let go, Mu Li feigned an attack toward him with his left hand.
The man sidestepped to dodge the pen knife, and Mu Li took advantage of the opening to drip his blood onto the talisman.
“Mu Li!”
Pei Kanyan forced those two names out from deep within his throat.
His HP dropped rapidly. The talisman paper emitted a faint golden glow, yet Xu Yueke’s soul still failed to materialize.
[Player Soul-ferrying completion rate: 20%.]
So that was how it was, and Mu Li happened to have 5 talismans in total.
Sacrificing one talisman brought no change whatsoever. Figuring the youth would finally abandon this notion, Pei Kanyan watched as the youth pulled yet another one out from his crossbody bag.
Pei Kanyan: “…”
He could no longer sit still and reached out to stop him, but miraculously found himself unable to touch the youth. His heart sank. His hand shifted to snatch the talisman away instead, only to be blasted two meters away by a sudden flash of golden light.
[Ding, once the Soul-ferrying skill is activated, it cannot be stopped or interrupted.]
“You’re going to die.”
“I’m not afraid.”
The youth’s complexion grew paler and paler, turning almost transparent. Blood trickled from the corners of his lips, dropping onto the ground one by one to form scattered dots of red blossoms.
The gloom on Pei Kanyan’s face darkened so much it seemed as though water could be wrung from it.
Wisps of black fog began to manifest around his body, converging toward a single direction until black threads gradually crawled all over his eyes.
The man’s lips parted: “Stop…”
Before he could finish issuing the command, the youth suddenly halted his movements.
The black fog abruptly dispersed.
The youth seemed to realize that if he took it a single step further, his blood really would run completely dry.
He had finally given up.
Pei Kanyan’s hanging heart dropped back into place as he stepped forward to bandage Mu Li’s wounds.
Looking at his remaining 2 HP, Mu Li wiped away a bitter tear.
Ah, I’m dying, I’m dying!
This wasn’t even combat mode; dropping by 1 more point would genuinely trigger the pseudo-death state.
The weak youth looked toward the man with hopeful eyes, his lips quivering slightly as if entrusting some final dying words:
“If I really die, can you carry me home?”
It would be best if he handed him some healing items so he could resurrect at full health!
Or at the very least, drop him outside the master bedroom door so he could regenerate his health slowly on his own.
Either way, he had to finish this quest today!