You Want to Dance, Too?

Thump, thump, thump.

“Hoo-hah!”

Thump, thump, thump.

“Hoo-hah!”

In Wu Wang's eyes, the figure of Power King, wearing his bizarre mask, danced with even more energy. The horrifying ghosts and monsters surrounding them began to move in strange, jerky steps.

Drums throbbed from an unknown source, and the creatures roared with a heart-shaking rhythm.

The ferocious markings on each ghost's face twisted as if they were alive. Their expressions grew stranger, more sinister with every beat.

At the same time, the other players noticed something was wrong.

The changes to their hands were becoming more pronounced. A thick, keratinous layer was rapidly forming over their skin, and coarse, stiff black hairs sprouted out like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.

They couldn't see the ghosts dance.

But they could feel a sinister wind begin to howl throughout the Nuo Opera Garden. The tattered cloths hanging from the wooden pillars began to flutter and snap.

They were large red cloths, like the curtains of a theater stage. Worn down by countless years of wind and rain, they were tattered and riddled with holes.

Yet as the sinister wind lifted them, it was as if invisible hands were pulling the torn pieces together. The scraps aligned and connected, forming a single, vast red banner that blotted out more than half the sky.

In the center of this red cloth…

…was a massive Vertical Pupil.

It stared fixedly at the players.

Then, it blinked.

The book boy shouted a frantic warning.

"Close your eyes! Don't look at it!"

A large amount of yellow and white paper surged from his sleeves, resembling the joss paper burned for ancestors and the paper money scattered at funerals. The papers instantly swirled up, blocking the other players' vision.

This stopped them from making eye contact with the Red Vertical Pupil.

The book boy himself snapped his eyes shut, terrified of accidentally seeing it. At the same time, he raised his index finger and drew a heavy line across the spot between his eyebrows.

In a hair-raising moment, the skin between his brows slowly split open. From the skull beneath the flesh, a bizarre third eye emerged.

The eye swiveled stiffly twice, then began to survey its surroundings.

Clearly, the book boy knew something about this phenomenon. He could use this eye to see without being contaminated.

However, when the eye struggled to look toward Wu Wang, he saw a sight that made his brain crash.

Beneath that sky-blotting contamination, a youth wearing a human-skin mask was looking up, meeting the gaze of that ineffable god.

A smile played on his lips.

There was not a trace of awe or fear in his eyes. Only excitement and mockery.

What arrogance!

"N-no… Impossible! How… how could It tolerate a mortal meeting its gaze?"

The book boy was aghast. He knew of the Abyss God's existence, but his knowledge was limited.

He only knew that regardless of an Instance's difficulty, the moment this mark appeared, the challenge would skyrocket. Even an Easy-difficulty Instance could become a death trap for high-level players.

This thing originated from an existence far beyond Divine Envoys and Venerables. In a sense, it might be a mark left in the world by a true god.

Unnameable. Ineffable. Not to be looked upon directly.

The eye on his forehead was the result of a lucky survival after encountering the being's mark in a Hard Instance. He had gone through immense difficulty to modify a tool that had been contaminated by It and integrate it into his own body.

That was the only reason he could barely resist the high-intensity contamination when using it to see. Even then, he couldn't stare for long, only for a few seconds at most. Otherwise, a contamination beyond any player's comprehension would utterly twist him.

The eye-item also came with a host of side effects. The book boy would never use it unless it was absolutely necessary.

He had only meant to sweep a quick glance over his surroundings. Encountering this mark now, in a nightmare-level Instance, was the worst-case scenario.

He had thought he was the only one here with a hope of uncovering the truth. He never expected to find another master.

"Around us, this is…"

While using the eye to observe Wu Wang, the book boy also saw the outlines of countless ghosts materializing around them. Their dance was exceedingly bizarre, yet it was hypnotizing, drawing one's focus.

It felt less like a Spirit Jumping Ritual for a sacrifice and more like the telling of a magnificent story, one that compelled you to watch.

He gritted his teeth.

"Damn it! The sacrifice has already begun?"

He knew about the so-called "Yin World" and that ordinary players couldn't see anything in it. One needed a special method to perceive the things there.

The reason he had been more composed than the others was his knowledge of a strange rule governing the Yin World.

【Beings from the other world can only interact with those who can see them】

In other words, back at the rockery, the female ghost Wu Wang had seen could only affect Wu Wang himself. She had posed no threat to the other players.

It was a very strange rule, like 【Schrödinger's cat】.

When a being from the Yin World is unobserved, it does not exist for you. But the moment you observe them, they can interact with you.

But now, things were different.

The 【Blessing】 of the sacrifice was beginning to affect players who couldn't even perceive the beings of the Yin World. This meant the danger was escalating for everyone.

Something unexpected must have happened.

Zi Jin spoke, her head lowered.

"Are you guys hearing any drumming?"

Though she didn't know why the book boy had told them to close their eyes, she saw that he had covered his own. She correctly figured that some unknown danger could be transmitted through sight.

They were all high-level players. Even with their eyes closed, they had other ways of perceiving their surroundings, though none as direct as the book boy's Heavenly Eye.

As they focused their senses, a new sound cut through the howling wind and the snapping cloth. It was the muffled roar of drums and the synchronized stomping of countless feet.

Hearing her question, the book boy's expression grew grim. He could only see the Yin World because he had opened his Heavenly Eye. But now, the other players could hear the Nuo Dance.

That meant it was only a matter of time before they could see the beings from the Yin World. When that happened, everyone would be plunged into mortal danger.

Just as the book boy began to frantically think of a way to escape, Wu Wang acted.

At the very front, the young man who had just been laughing wildly while meeting the gaze of the Abyss God's Mark suddenly leaped. He landed directly in front of the ghost crowd, right beside the pillar Power King was circling.

With a sharp ripping sound, he tore the mask from Power King's face.

A bizarrely shaped gun and a water pipe had appeared in his hands. He slammed the pipe into the back of Power King's head.

He put the stolen mask on his own face, a grin spreading across his lips.

"You want to dance, too?"

He chuckled.

"Your boy here is the kindergarten Latin dance champion and the three-time reigning king of the neighborhood square dance Elderly Cup. I can cosplay a dancing jiangshi at a comic con and breakdance while grabbing live wires."

"Nuo Dance? I know a little something about that, too."

With that, he spread his legs into a wide, slightly exaggerated stance. He began to merge with the crowd of ghosts, his movements perfectly matching their varied, otherworldly dance.