Chapter 35: Hidden Mission Begins

A silent night passed. An Ling endured several agonizing hours inside her room, until daylight finally arrived outside.

She got out of bed, put on her shoes, twisted the pendant on her neck, and sat down at the table to take care of her hunger.

[Received Blessing Pendant bonus: Perfect Aim. Fishing, throwing, ranged attacks, etc., are guaranteed to hit.]

[Remaining time: 17 hours 45 minutes 23 seconds]

“Perfect Aim again?” An Ling was a little puzzled. There was no way she could roll the same pattern three days in a row. “Could it mean there’s another danger tonight?”

That was it. As the days passed, the dangers would only increase. Today was already the fourth day.

A pack of sandwiches and a bottle of mineral water—that was her breakfast. She’d already had a meal at midnight.

Although An Ling was very sleepy now, she couldn’t go right back to bed yet; she had to use this item card first.

There were three locked places in total: the unknown room on the fifth floor, the Iron Gate outside the manor, and the Rooftop.

The first to be ruled out was the Iron Gate outside the manor. Not to mention whether she could even leave the manor that way, the warning on the gate alone made her decide to give up.

Without completing the Hidden Quest, even if she left the manor, she wouldn’t be able to escape the island. Surviving would become an even greater problem, and she might even face the pursuit of the island’s Overlord, which was simply not worth the risk.

As for the room and the Rooftop, it was clear the room was more likely to hide something valuable.

The Rooftop naturally became her discarded target.

As for the Basement, there was no such place in the entire vast manor, which was the most baffling thing of all.

An Ling tied her hair up, pulled on her hoodie, shouldered her backpack, and left the room.

Arriving at the supermarket, she used up her three chances in one go as usual, and picked the same five items as on the first day, making it easier to keep track and save storage space in her backpack.

After that, An Ling headed to the fifth floor. On her way, she didn’t see a single survivor on the fourth or fifth floors. The entire corridor was eerily quiet.

It was easy to guess that everyone else had wised up and chosen to rest during the safest time of the day.

She stopped in front of this utterly ordinary room. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened and, after confirming there was no movement inside, took out her master key item card.

With a click, the lock opened.

She gripped the doorknob with her left hand and her pistol with her right, slowly opening the door, her entire body on guard.

Inside, it was pitch black. The air was thick with the smell of mold and decay, mixed with heavy dust. It was obvious that no one had set foot in here for a long time. By the door, there was a switch. An Ling pressed it, and white light banished the darkness, allowing her to see the room’s original appearance.

In the room stood a black iron Dungeon, its surface mottled with rust, with a thick chain lying quietly atop it. There were no windows, and the walls were covered with dried bloodstains, making the scene even more terrifying.

Apart from that, there were piles of miscellaneous items on both sides of the room, as well as torture devices An Ling had never seen before.

“This looks like a place for torturing people?” An Ling’s delicate brows rose as she walked in with a hint of distaste. The walls were wrinkled and peeling; just a light touch would make the paint flake off.

This room was a world apart from the outside. If the manor outside felt like a product of the modern era, then this place seemed stuck in the 80s.

An Ling had no interest in the Dungeon or torture devices. She didn’t want to waste an item card here and walk away empty-handed.

Her main target was that pile of documents—maybe there was an item card or some useful information hidden among them.

“Antonses Nigo, 24 years old, punished for three days for having relations with the manor’s hen…”

“Jinitaimei Xukun, secretly raised a black baby born from a slave for two and a half years, punished for seven days…”

“Polynia Newt, incited the slaves to rebel, punished for a month…”

An Ling read through the records, which were all about prisoners who had been locked in here. The more she read, the more speechless she became. “What kind of nonsense is this?”

She searched through everything but found nothing useful. The documents were as good as wastepaper to her.

Just as she was about to give up, a yellowed sheet of paper fell to the floor and caught her attention.

This piece of paper was different from all the others. It was square and yellowed like parchment.

She picked it up to see what was written on it.

[Hidden Quest triggered: Kill the Slave Owner to leave the island and obtain the Ultimate Reward.]

[Hint: The Slave Owner is trapped on the island. Using their own methods, they killed all the intruders until they became the Overlord. They have become neither human nor ghost, a monster obsessed with fresh pancreases. They are hidden among the survivors, unable to resist the temptation of a fresh pancreas!]

“This is great, it’s a system message!” An Ling’s face lit up with joy. Now she’d found the key to killing the Slave Owner.

“Fresh pancreas? So I need to lure the one hiding among the survivors with a pancreas, and that’ll make them reveal themselves.”

An Ling put the paper away and started flipping through the rest of the documents. After confirming there was nothing else useful, she decisively left the room and headed downstairs.

To get a pancreas, the quickest way was to kill someone—but An Ling wasn’t a lunatic; she couldn’t do such a thing.

Her target was that girl from before, the Watcher. Her organs were still intact, but after a night had passed, who knew if the pancreas would still count as fresh.

Arriving at the first-floor hall, An Ling was dumbfounded. It was empty; there wasn’t a single corpse, not even the Watcher’s, nor the Puppet’s body. Everything had vanished without a trace.

Even the bloodstains on the floor had been completely cleaned up.

“This is going to be troublesome…”

An Ling pushed open the manor’s main doors to check outside, since Qin Xiao had also taken care of someone before.

But after a thorough search, the situation was exactly the same as inside the hall. No corpses, and no blood.

“Why does it feel like the Mist outside is getting thicker?” Standing at the door, An Ling stared at the Mist beyond the iron railings. The trees that were once faintly visible had now become even blurrier.

It was as if the Mist was flowing into the manor itself.

She couldn’t bring herself to kill someone unprovoked. For now, all she could do was hope that some idiot would provoke her again—then she’d have a perfectly good reason.