absurd deduction game.

After Zeng Lai answered, he noticed that Yu Xing had not commented on the matter, and instinctively turned his head to look at him.

But they noticed that Yu Xing's face was flushed, as if he had encountered something that excited him, causing him to become emotionally agitated and even look a bit sickly.

Oh dear.

In fact, he had long sensed that the Yu Xing in this instance was somewhat strangely different from the Yu Xing he knew before. If it were the normal Yu Xing, he should be joking and bickering with his teammates right now... What is he so excited about now!

Well, he's probably still affected by the aftereffects of the last instance.

Of course, Zeng Lai's teammates wouldn't tell an outsider about the aftereffects of their captain's illness, so Zeng Lai only had a partial understanding of Yu Xing's situation. He only knew that Yu Xing wanted to eat ghosts, but he didn't know that even his cognition had been altered and that he wanted to drink human blood.

Then Carlos said, "Captain, haven't I been a good friend? If we hadn't gone to the cemetery, not all the ravens under the graves would have come out."

In other words, the number of ravens that blend seamlessly into the cemetery won't spawn in the tombstones, which is equivalent to a significant reduction in food resources.

Yu Xing was no longer listening. The tentacles around her were swaying back and forth like cat tails, clearly impatient to continue waiting.

Seeing his expression, Carlos sighed helplessly and put his arm around Zeng Lai: "Alright, alright, go in. We'll wait outside. The clues I mentioned are all in the gravedigger's hut. No matter what noise you make, just remember not to collapse the hut."

“Okay,” Yu Xing readily agreed.

Zeng Lai glanced at the raging black storm and gasped, "He can eat it all? That's a gaping maw of an abyss."

Yi Qing resumed his gentle and refined demeanor, waving his fan: "Yes, my friend, you can."

If it weren't for the fact that Yu Xing, who doesn't consider himself human, still possesses remarkably excellent thinking abilities, Yi Qing would have suspected that Yu Xing could have taken a few bites of him, the Qing-ghost, as a target.

At 12:40, there was still half an hour left before the limited-time phenomenon in the cemetery ended.

Yu Xing entered the cemetery alone once again.

—This time I used a VPN to get in.

High-level tactical arrangements often only require primitive infiltration methods.

The cemetery was now the territory of a monster called the Carrion Raven - Gravekeeper. As before, the monster sensed him as soon as he stepped into the land, and the ravens cast deathly glances at him. Not long after returning to his gravekeeper's hut, Old Edgar once again pushed open the door.

To be honest…

When the same scene is performed for the first time, onlookers are stunned by the mysterious and evil scene and unconsciously become immersed in the terrifying atmosphere.

But when it happened again, the scene became somewhat comical.

The remaining two people and one ghost stood outside the cemetery gate, watching the unsteady gravedigger slowly walk out. They felt a sense of guilt for bullying the old man and making him work too hard.

The half-dead dog by the door couldn't break free of its chain and lay there motionless, its eyes revealing a weariness that said, "Death is fine, but life is fine too."

As the old gravedigger and the bubbling tentacles of Yu Xing drew closer, Carlos widened his eyes slightly, wanting to see how Yu Xing would eat in this state.

If the scene is bizarre enough, it can even inspire his new magic tricks.

But at that moment, his nerves were touched.

A fleeting coldness crossed the magician's eyes as he turned to look at the other side of the cemetery.

Through the wall, he sensed the presence of several humans. It seemed that someone had used a teleportation item or offering to bypass the main path and appear directly at the back of the cemetery.

That makes sense. With such a commotion here, it's normal for any player who's paying attention to the situation to spot the flock of ravens in the sky and come to check if any plot points have been triggered.

but……

Carlos winked at Yiqing and moved closer to the direction of the human presence.

……

"Holy crap, what's going on here?!"

The blonde mixed-race girl with double braids had just adjusted to the dizziness of landing after being teleported when she was shocked by the continuous loud noises coming from above.

She had never seen so many small monsters flapping their wings at the same time; the sound was extremely oppressive, like a natural disaster.

For a fleeting moment, the dense swarm of ravens reminded her of the overwhelming swarms of giant insects she encountered when she first entered the Pharaoh's Tomb instance.

Oh no, I'm going to have trypophobia.

"Someone triggered the conditions, didn't they?" Beside the blonde girl stood a thin, white-haired man. He glanced at the flock of crows once before fixing his gaze on the cemetery.

The brick wall blocked the view, but coincidentally, there was a collapsed section of brickwork at the location they had teleported to. By clearing away the moss and greenery entwined on the outer wall, they could find a large hole about half a person's height, through which they could see directly inside—and if they were brave enough, they could go in through there.

"Who is it? One of those people at the top of the contribution list?"

"Who knows? But I seem to remember there was a similar commotion in the cemetery a few days ago, but I was investigating in the businessman's basement at the time and didn't have time to look."

Four people were teleported in, two men and two women. It was a team that had just been formed tonight. The white-haired man and the burly woman with a mechanical arm were both deducers who survived from the first stage. The blonde girl with double braids and the limping man came later.

The latter two were clearly stronger in combat, but the former two had an information advantage. After discussing it, the four of them realized that their abilities were complementary, so they decided to act together.

At this moment, the white-haired man discovered the hole, and the four of them bent down and stealthily peeked inside.

"Hiss...that's it!"

"Keep your voice down! Don't get caught."

What they see is—

The old gravedigger, who should have been dead, stood in the enormous shadow cast by thousands of ravens, like a monarch, his cold death seeming to grip the souls of all the living.

At the edge of the cemetery, the shadow of an old elm tree, long dead and twisted like a tormented human figure, suddenly writhed and lengthened unnaturally.

When the crackling sound reached their ears, they realized it wasn't a shadow, but rather rotting roots emerging from the earth. The roots, freed from the tree's grasp, seeped into the ground like spilled ink, then quickly coalesced and swelled again in an open area not far from the gravedigger's hut.

From that patch of living, rotten roots, a figure silently emerged from its cocoon.

The light here was too dim, and the four strategists were only able to peek, so their limited perspective prevented them from seeing what the figure actually looked like. However, judging from its aura, it must be a powerful monster. "It" had a slender, almost human-like physique, even graceful, with skin that was a cold, moonlit white. The rest of its features were indistinct, except for a pair of eyes that were a pure, unblemished ice blue, gleaming with an eerie, inhuman light.

However, from behind its graceful torso and limbs, countless dark brown, deep and terrifying branch-like tentacles slowly unfurled. These tentacles resembled both dead wood and living, elastic, and powerful branches and leaves, covered with a thin layer of black mist, their tips sometimes sharp as spears, sometimes forked like claws.

They writhed slowly in the air, like appendages of a giant tree in the abyss, carrying a deadly yet pleasurable threat.

Wait, pleasure?
I peeked at the four of them and they were momentarily puzzled by the emotions they subconsciously read in their minds.

The appearance of this new monster came without warning, yet it instantly altered the balance of power in the graveyard. A chilling sense of dominance was briefly transferred from the gravediggers and the crows to this newcomer.

The group held their breath, utterly shocked.

Good heavens, did they stumble upon a monster brawl?! Monsters of this level are practically mini-bosses, and they're appearing in pairs!
With a mix of fear and excitement, the group tried even harder to see the battle situation clearly.

Suddenly, the black-robed tomb keeper carrying the lantern raised his head. The flame of the lantern in his skeletal hand flickered violently, and for the first time, his two thick, dark eyes showed a kind of "emotion" fluctuation—not fear, but a deep anger and warning, as if his territory had been violated.

Above, the massive flock of crows also stopped moving. The head formed by countless ravens turned towards the new intruders, and thousands of small, scarlet eyes with distorted human faces focused simultaneously. The low hum of the flapping wings suddenly rose and became sharp, like countless grains of sand rubbing against glass.

This is a threat and an expulsion.

The bizarre humanoid monster remained completely unmoved by all these threats. It merely tilted its head slightly, its icy blue eyes sweeping over the black-robed gravedigger and then over the flock of giant crows in the air. Its perfect lips seemed to curve upwards in an extremely subtle way, forming an arc that inexplicably aroused hunger.

Then, countless tentacles behind it started moving.

Swift as lightning, yet possessing a strange, unhurried elegance, it was no longer a slowly swaying branch, but transformed into a deadly, wildly dancing whip, shooting fiercely towards the giant ravens in the air, while a portion of it, like a feeding tongue, coiled around the black-robed gravedigger on the ground.

The gravedigger let out a hoarse, inhuman murmur, raised his lantern, and the dim yellow light suddenly surged in an attempt to block it.

His skeletal body beneath his black robe creaked and groaned, emanating a chilling aura. In the air, the raven giants let out a deafening shriek, their massive raven arms slamming down on the oncoming tentacles.

However, it is ineffective.

The tentacles, shrouded in black mist, easily pierced through the dim yellow light, ignoring the chill. They wrapped around the tomb keeper's black robe, twisted off his lantern-carrying arm, and burrowed into the jagged bones beneath his robe.

A heartbreaking voice sounded.

It's not broken, but... disintegrated.

The black robe touched by the tentacles melted away rapidly as if corroded by strong acid. The pale white arm bones did not break, but melted quickly like ice sculptures under the scorching sun, and were then "absorbed" and devoured by the tentacles like liquid.

A denser black mist shimmered on the tentacles, as if they were savoring an unparalleled delicacy.

The gravedigger struggled, the eeriness in his dark eyes replaced by an unbelievable void, his body being forcibly disintegrated by a more primal, more greedy force.

With almost no chance of resistance, old Edgar's entire skeletal body rapidly collapsed, completely swallowed by the writhing tentacles, leaving only the lantern lying on the ground, its flame flickering briefly before silently extinguishing.

The battle in the air... if that can be called a battle, it was also a one-sided crushing defeat.

The massive swarm of tentacles pierced into the equally massive flock of crows.

They didn't simply scatter the ravens; instead, each tentacle seemed to possess its own life and appetite, precisely wrapping around the struggling, screaming carrion-eating ravens. The tips pierced the ravens' bodies, causing them to wither and die at an alarming rate, eventually turning into a drop of black liquid that was absorbed by the tentacles.

The enormous crow colony collapsed at a visible speed, with countless tentacles moving through it, grabbing, and devouring.

The low hum was replaced by the raven's desperate, shrill cries before they died, but soon even the cries faded quickly, covered by a more terrifying, viscous sucking sound and the writhing of tentacles.

It only lasted a dozen seconds.

The massive, suffocating shadow of the crows in the sky vanished.

A cold wind blew past the tombstone.

All the ravens, black robes, and bones were devoured completely by the waving branches and tentacles behind the humanoid monster, leaving no trace, as if they had never existed.

The cemetery fell silent again, even more deathly silent than before, because even the invisible, patrolling "will" had vanished.

The four people peeking: "..." Holy crap, they were done for.

The humanoid monster retracted all its tentacles, the black mist on them gradually fading away as it slowly shrank back. Its icy blue eyes swept over the ravaged cemetery with lingering interest, finally seeming to glance at the hole in the wall.

Several people: !
We can't be discovered. If a monster of this level is discovered, it's certain death!

But none of them dared to move, afraid that making a sound would attract the attention of the humanoid monster. The blonde woman even used a sacrifice, and an invisible halo enveloped them, temporarily erasing their presence.

Then, the group carefully bent over and moved backward.

Move, move, move.

The feeling of being watched disappeared.

However, before they could even breathe a sigh of relief, a voice with a mocking smile came from behind them: "Gentlemen, what are you doing?"

"Eek!" A terrified gasp escaped from their throats. Their muscles tensed, they instantly assumed a fighting stance, and they whirled around.

Then, I saw a blue-haired man.

Ah... thank goodness it's a human... wait, isn't that the magician from the Broken Mirror Squad?
The blue hair was very distinctive, not to mention that two of the four had been with Carlos in Yolikev for over a week, so it was impossible not to recognize him. At that moment, cold sweat broke out from the shock.

The white-haired man knew that the Broken Mirror Squad didn't indiscriminately kill their own kind. He thought for a moment and felt that he had touched upon the truth. He said in a hoarse voice, "Is that the one inside your observation subject? Did you lure it to the cemetery?"

Carlos smirked: "...Yeah, how much did you see?"

"I didn't see anything!" The burly woman spoke her mind, but her intelligence was questionable.

The blonde woman closed her eyes briefly and stepped forward: "We have no intention of competing with you for contributions and rankings. We just came to check because the commotion here was too big. As for that monster, we only saw it devour the gravedigger with its tentacles. We haven't even triggered the side quest yet. We'll leave now!"

Carlos, having confirmed from their micro-expressions that they had not seen Yu Xing's face or recognized her identity, lost interest in teasing them.

In fact, Yu Xing's abilities were not a secret, and it didn't matter if he was recognized. He just wanted to make sure that these people were not sent by the actors to cause trouble.

The magician, like a captivating villain, smiled in a way that was terrifying: "Alright, you guys can leave now. This is my territory for the time being. If you try to interfere again... I'll throw you in front of that monster." (End of Chapter)