Free Web NovelChapter 119: Chapter 37: Second Playthrough Temple Exploration
My heart was pounding wildly. Everything happening around me felt so unreal.
In the distance, the desolate silhouette of Longshu Temple still stood, looking like a colossal black coffin waiting to devour anyone who dared approach.
Gao Tian forced himself to calm down as quickly as possible and assess his current situation.
The sky in the Inner World was nearing dusk. Lan Chu and the others weren’t dead yet. Jiang Yang hadn’t entered Longshu Temple to explore alone.
Time had reset.
’My guess was right. This temple’s time system is broken. Every day is repeating in a loop. Whether it’s the Monks inside or the visitors who come here, no one can ever reach the morning of the next day.’
No wonder those Monks in the temple were skin and bones. But from their perspective, they firmly believed only one day had passed and their master would be back soon.
’It’s just one day without food, so it’s normal to be a little hungry. If we just hold on a little longer, it’ll be over...’
But they didn’t know they had already turned into vengeful ghosts. Their perseverance through that "single day" had unknowingly stretched on for decades, perhaps even centuries.
From the perspective of Jiang Yang and the others, they had just bid farewell to the old man at McDonald’s and arrived at Longshu Temple. After Gao Tian sent the Wind Attendant Buddha to scout the temple, they were all about to enter and begin this green-text mission.
Without the interference of a Gao Tian who "retained all his memories," the four apartment residents’ second-round exploration wouldn’t be much different. They would trigger Longshu Temple’s death rules one by one, resulting in a total party wipe.
The third day, the fourth, the fifth... it would loop infinitely. Just like King Sisyphus, cursed by the gods of Greece, pushing a boulder up a mountain every day only for it to roll back down, forcing him to start all over again.
Even if, on one of those loops, they got exceptionally lucky and both Lan Chu and Wang Wenbo managed to escape their deadly fates...
...it would be meaningless.
In the middle of the night at Longshu Temple, a bear’s roar that swept through the Inner World would be heard from outside the temple—this was an inescapable death rule. Anyone spending their first night at Longshu Temple was doomed to die. There was no escaping a total party wipe.
Strictly speaking, Longshu Temple wasn’t a simple infinite loop.
With each cycle, their bodies would also undergo slight changes—perhaps aging, hunger, fatigue, confusion, or a strange sense of déjà vu.
The final outcome would be to become just like the starved ghosts of the Monks inside the Buddha statues.
They would believe they had only waited a single day, but upon waking, they’d find their bodies had become dilapidated, their hunger a raging fire scorching them from within. They would have long lost their original appearance, becoming withered prisoners trapped by time for millennia.
But there was still one problem.
Neither the starved ghost Monks in the temple nor Jiang Yang, Lan Chu, and the others had any memory of the previous day.
Gao Tian guessed it was because his method of death was different from the others.
After the four-person team had all died in Longshu Temple, time automatically reset, returning to the moment they first arrived.
However, Gao Tian possessed a resurrection item.
He died, but not completely. During the period of his "death," the flow of time reversed. The others reverted from corpses back to living people, while Gao Tian reverted from a living person back to a living person.
It was as if he had exploited a huge bug.
He was never truly dead, so he didn’t need the time reversal to reset his body. That’s why he retained all his memories.
Gao Tian’s heart began to pound.
The Longshu Temple instance, as the seventh mission for Yu Sheng, originally had a difficulty that was off the charts.
If an ordinary resident had come to do it, the completion rate would be almost zero percent. They would most likely be trapped in the eternal torrent of time, turning into a vengeful ghost in a sea of suffering, and meeting a fate worse than death.
But Gao Tian was different. After dying once, he could now learn about every Supernatural Artifact in Longshu Temple and the consequences triggered by every action with each subsequent death.
It was equivalent to gaining an omniscient, god-like perspective.
He was the only way to break through this otherwise fatal mission.
"Listen to me. This might sound completely absurd...
"I’ve been reborn. I’ve already experienced everything that happens inside Longshu Temple. You all died..."
Lan Chu walked over. The word "reborn" triggered her, and she automatically started reciting, as if reading from a script:
"I’ve been reborn. In my past life, I was buried alive by my husband and my best friend. They even live-streamed their wedding at my funeral!
"In this life, I have returned from the dead to take back everything that is rightfully mine."
Jiang Yang pulled Lan Chu away.
"Lan Chu, stop messing around."
He turned to Gao Tian. Though his eyes were filled with doubt and suspicion, he suppressed his confusion and asked:
"You were really... reborn?
"Are you saying that us entering Longshu Temple has already happened, and you’ve traveled back from a previous timeline?"
The situation was indeed difficult for him to accept.
He had just laid eyes on Longshu Temple when his teammate’s gaze suddenly sharpened, his eyes burning with intensity, as he declared that they had all actually died and were now in the second round.
No one could accept that immediately.
But Jiang Yang had been through many green-text missions and had encountered all sorts of strange things. He knew Gao Tian was a reliable person who wouldn’t just make up nonsense.
If Lan Chu had said the same thing, he would have slapped her across the face long ago to help exorcise whatever ghost had possessed her.
Gao Tian motioned for the others to sit down cross-legged, and as quickly as he could, he ran them through everything that had happened in the temple on the first day.
Jiang Yang’s brows furrowed as he listened.
Wang Wenbo fiddled with the digital watch on his wrist.
"If time is flowing backward, then according to the theory of negative entropy, you’d need to introduce the concepts of negative space-time and negative energy to counteract the positive curvature of space-time in known physics. The energy required would be beyond astronomical. Even the entire energy of the universe combined would struggle to make a palm-sized area reverse its timeline.
"Of course, this is the Inner World. Many things here are governed by idealism, so I can’t just rigidly apply macroscopic physics."
Jiang Yang glanced at him.
"You sure know a lot."
This time, before Wang Wenbo could speak, Gao Tian answered for him:
"That’s because he has three master’s degrees. His parents forced him into his first major. Computer science is his reality, but physics and geology are his life."
He said this without pausing for Wang Wenbo’s astonished look, speaking as fast as he could.
"In this second round, we need to avoid all the risks. First, Wang Wenbo, stay away from that damn coffin. Lan Chu, you stay away from that hole in the Great Buddha."
"Don’t just go sticking yourself into any hole you see. The way you died last time was disgusting—half your body smashed on the ground, guts spilled everywhere."
From Gao Tian’s description, Jiang Yang got a rough idea of what happened in the first round.
"How did the two of us die in the end? We just heard that strange bear roar and died?
"Gao Tian, are you sure the bear roar is the death rule? Could it have been something else that killed us? Like those starved ghosts? Maybe when night fell and their master’s appointed time arrived, they crawled out of the holes in the Buddha statues."
Gao Tian adamantly denied it.
"Absolutely not. I’m not an idiot.
"The spot you picked under that bodhisattva statue was excellent. We could see most of the main hall, inside and out. There weren’t any blind spots.
"If the starved ghosts inside the Buddha statues had crawled out, we would have seen them long before they had a chance to make a move.
"I’m positive that after we heard the bear roar, blood poured from your seven orifices and you turned into a desiccated corpse. And without touching anything, I slowly died too."
This was a huge problem.
Jiang Yang said:
"If that bear roar happens every night, then even if you are a ’reborn’ person who knows the ’future,’ you can’t escape the insta-kill rule at that specific time."
Of course, they could try to find something to plug their ears.
But ordinary grass and leaves couldn’t possibly block their ears 100% and prevent a single trace of sound from getting in.
The bear roar lasted for a long time. Doing that would only delay the deaths of the four of them; the outcome likely wouldn’t change.
The most extreme action would be to completely deafen themselves to avoid the bear roar.
But sound propagates through vibrations. Not being able to hear the roar didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He had a feeling that a deaf person would still die under this rule.
Wang Wenbo suddenly had an idea.
"Boss Gao Tian.
"Don’t you have a mirror that can hide people? If the four of us hide inside the mirror before the bear roar starts, can’t we make it to the next day?"
Gao Tian replied:
"That’s one way.
"But this Longshu Temple has a lot of taboos; some Supernatural Artifacts are restricted. Before the roar comes, I need to go into the temple first and test it out."
This Longshu Temple was like a living, thinking being filled with malicious intent.
Since it could use the chanting of Buddhist scriptures to interfere with his ghost luck, it was entirely possible it could use other methods to target his Mirror Ghost.
He looked toward the ancient temple, which appeared even more dilapidated and desolate under the twilight sky.
"Jiang Yang, you don’t need to go into the temple. There’s no point.
"I’ll go in first this time.
"The priority right now is to drag that Transparent Coffin out and put it somewhere Wang Wenbo can’t reach.
"Otherwise, as soon as you, Wang Wenbo, get even slightly close to the coffin, you’ll be forcibly sucked inside and become a sacrifice. This rule is absolute, it only targets you, and it’s impossible to guard against."
Then there were the starved ghosts in the Great Buddha.
He wasn’t in a hurry to deal with these vengeful ghosts, because their death rules were easy to avoid with prior knowledge. There was no need for special preparations.
Just as Gao Tian was about to set off, Jiang Yang, who had been deep in thought, looked up again.
"Gao Tian, you said before that the starved ghosts in the Buddha statues swore that their master would definitely return at night, right?"
Gao Tian:
"They did say that.
"But looking at it now, I suspect they were probably lying to us.
"They can’t leave the Great Buddha to come out and kill us, so they had to find a way to trick us into staying the night in the temple."
Jiang Yang:
"That’s not necessarily true.
"If what those starved ghosts said is the truth, it could very well be the next major breakthrough.
"I have an idea. Hear me out."
