Ya Ya waved her little hands and dug around in the snow. She grabbed a hand from the snowdrift and pulled it out quickly, crying, "Brother, come out quickly!"
An arm extended outwards, revealing the sleeve of a black suit jacket. Realizing whose hand it was, Ya Ya immediately let go and dug to the side, crying, "Brother, where are you? Did you hit anything, brother!"
Zhong Mu witnessed everything from the side. Embarrassed, he rushed over and pulled Li Mo out from inside. Sure enough, wherever Li Mo was, Yin Xiu was lying down, being well protected.
"Brother Xiu, how are you?" They were more concerned about Yin Xiu than about the monster's body.
Yin Xiu shook his head, then looked at Li Mo, "It got smashed?"
"Mm." Li Mo nodded. The moment the wall piece fell, he naturally protected his boyfriend and was hit by it as well.
"Where did you smash it?" Yin Xiu held out his hand. "Let me see."
Li Mo obediently transformed one of her tentacles and placed it in Yin Xiu's palm, waiting for her boyfriend to blow on it.
But Yin Xiu just glanced at it and then put it back. The tentacles were so dark that his eyes didn't even break them. He was only slightly worried and let it go.
The group tidied themselves up, dusted themselves off, and prepared to officially set off into the snow-capped mountains to find an exit.
Before leaving, Yin Xiu turned back to look at 408, who was still standing in the courtyard where the wall had collapsed, and asked, "Aren't you planning to leave?"
"You're still willing to take me with you?" 408 paused, feeling inexplicably embarrassed.
"You can't even find the exit of a small mental hospital, how can you get out of the snow mountain?" Yin Xiu's gaze was cold and gloomy. "I'm still waiting for the information you have."
408 scratched his head awkwardly, "There wasn't a yard here before, so of course I couldn't get out through the gate."
He immediately followed, grateful for the big shot's hospitality.
Yin Xiu silently turned his head. Thinking that this clumsy monster, like Li Mo's original body, had been locked in one place for so many years and couldn't get out, he felt a little soft-hearted. Moreover... 408 seemed to have his own reasons for wanting to leave this place so much.
He respects a soul willing to rebel, regardless of whether it is a player or a monster.
He can keep this monstrous creature with him now, or he can kill it with a single blow if it becomes a threat to him in the future.
Yin Xiu was merely taking another tentative step in exploring the relationship between the monsters and the players.
408, who had followed excitedly, was immediately glared at by two pairs of eyes, one from Ya Ya and the other from Li Mo. The two monsters were already crowded enough, and they had taken in a third one. How annoying!
408 ignored their gazes and followed behind Yin Xiu, saying, "I don't have many complicated thoughts. Since you're willing to take me out of the instance, I'll tell you what I know about the monsters."
Yin Xiu replied calmly, "Go ahead, I'm listening."
408 cleared his throat, eager to play his part so as not to be disliked by the other two, and then urged Yin Xiu to leave him in the snow mountain.
"I don't know if you're aware, but the supernatural can be divided into two factions." 408 took the initiative to start the conversation. "On the surface, the classification of radicals and pacifists is relatively clear, but in reality, in any conflict, there will always be a neutral faction that is difficult to choose between."
Zhong Mu, standing to the side, earnestly pulled out her small notebook, while Yin Xiu glanced at 408 and asked, "So you are?"
408 nodded, "But because our group's survival was in danger at the time, almost everyone quickly made different choices. Only I and a small number of people did not take a stand, so we were rejected by people from both sides at the same time."
408 lowered his eyes slightly, and in the white snow, his voice sounded somewhat ethereal, "After the dungeon was created, monsters lived in the dungeon."
"The radicals believe we are superfluous and unable to contribute to them, while the pacifists reluctantly accept us but also believe that our unwillingness to integrate into the instance will make us a volatile factor that could easily cause a greater crisis."
"So they killed your group?" Zhong Mu stopped writing and stared cautiously at 408.
"The radicals intend to kill us all. If we don't contribute to the dungeon, we'll have nowhere to go and nowhere to escape."
"The radicals launched an operation to wipe us out, but the pacifists didn't want them to do that, so they took us in." 408 sighed softly. "In the end, unable to integrate into the instance anymore, we were locked in a closed instance to sleep, as consumables for the instance, to be awakened when needed."
408 looked up and glanced at Ya Ya, who was being held by Yin Xiu's hand. "Children like this can't contribute anything to the dungeon either, so the old and young monsters are treated the same as us. This little sister must have been awakened and entered the dungeon as a backup NPC, right?"
Several pairs of eyes immediately fell on Ya Ya. Ya Ya blinked in confusion, "Really? I was just sleeping with my mom. When I woke up, I was called into the dungeon."
"When I woke up, my mother was no longer by my side. They said that if I didn't want my mother to get hurt, I had to kill a lot of players in the dungeon. If that wasn't enough, my mother would die, so I tried my best." Ya Ya shrugged. "Before my brother came, I had already gone through a long dungeon refresh."
Yin Xiu suddenly remembered something and asked, "Then when you touched the rule stone tablet? Was it part of the dungeon settings?"
Ya Ya shook her head, then pursed her lips. "Ya Ya did touch the stone tablet she shouldn't have. The events in the town happened before Ya Ya fell asleep. I didn't expect to have to go through them again like a nightmare after waking up."
Yin Xiu was confused, so 408 explained it to him.
"The reason we split into different positions is because of an anomaly. This anomaly did not happen suddenly, but gradually eroded our lives, starting from the seaside and slowly spreading to some distant places. I think the place where she lived was slowly changed, but at first no one realized what it was."
Ya Ya nodded in agreement, "Before I fell asleep, what happened in the town was the same as what my brother knew."
Yin Xiu pondered. In other words, Ya Ya originally lived in that peaceful town, just like in her grandmother's diary, peaceful and harmonious. It wasn't until a strange man came to the town and became the mayor that everything started to change.
The background of the game is entirely based on real events, and the rules are also custom-made.
In summary, Yin Xiu now had an answer to his question about the supernatural.
He slowly raised his eyes and looked at 408. "You were all human beings once, weren't you?"
He initially thought that everything in the instance was a monster acting out human behavior according to the plot, but if it was all real, then the monster must have been human.
Under Yin Xiu's unwavering gaze, 408 frowned in confusion. He didn't want to admit this almost certain fact, not because he wanted to hide it, but because he didn't want to face it.
"You…you're right, all monsters were once human."
"But... that was all in the past. Now they no longer consider themselves human."
"The long-term mutations have changed not only our bodies, but also our hearts."