Do You Know It

"Ah?!" The moment the young girl saw Ye Chuan, she seemed startled, but after getting a clear look at him, she calmed down. "Are you a player?"

A player?

Since she said that, it seemed she was a player from the eerie world.

Ye Chuan slowly lowered the greatsword in his hand. He hadn't expected to run into a player here. If that was the case—didn't that mean he could run into Gua Xiaotian?

The girl in front of him seemed to have recognized him by the clothes he was wearing.

After all, given the current environment of the eerie world, clothes resembling those from the real world were highly unlikely to appear.

"What's your name?" Ye Chuan asked.

"Me?" The girl hesitated for a moment before replying, "My name is Xiao Tian."

"Xiao Tian?" Ye Chuan's gaze lingered on Xiao Tian's face for a few seconds before withdrawing. "I'm Cai Kun, just a player passing through this eerie world. Why are you here?"

The raincoat Xiao Tian wore was still dripping constantly. The black rainwater slid down the raincoat and fell onto the floor, splashing to form a small puddle.

"I was here the moment I opened my eyes. I entered a random instance, so there are still a lot of things I don't know."

Xiao Tian paused and asked Ye Chuan,

"Um, Brother Cai Kun, do you know the name of this instance?"

"The Kingdom of Rain," Ye Chuan said.

"The Kingdom of... Rain, really? Could it really be that legendary instance?" Xiao Tian said in disbelief, her small face suddenly turning deathly pale.

Her lips began to tremble slightly.

"How could it be this instance... This is an S-rank instance! The highest difficulty rating in the eerie world!"

She stumbled back a step, her back hitting the dilapidated counter behind her, causing the broken glass shards on it to rustle down.

"I saw it on the player forums before. The Kingdom of Rain has been open for almost a year, and so far, absolutely no one has been able to clear it!"

"The players who went in either never came out, or only left behind a half-recorded audio of crazed gibberish, saying things like everyone is going to die..."

Xiao Tian gritted her teeth. "How could I randomly roll an S-rank... With this kind of luck, am I going to die here?"

Seeing Xiao Tian in this state, Ye Chuan remained perfectly calm, even raising a hand to stroke his chin.

"S-rank? No wonder the rule suppression is so strict. But as for dying or not, that depends on your luck."

To him, with the Chaos Indestructible Body as his safety net, along with the protection of Lilith and Ye Yue, even an S-rank instance was at most a bit troublesome. It wasn't exactly a guaranteed death.

Didn't he also clear the Academy of the Mute?

Ye Chuan continued to ask, "Do you have any other information? For example, besides not being able to get caught in the rain, is there anything else to watch out for? Or have you seen any other players or strange things?"

Xiao Tian shook her head. "I... I woke up in the utility room in the backyard of the church. There were a lot of old, torn clothes piled up there. I saw an intact raincoat in the corner, and then saw 'Don't touch the rain' written on the wall, so I quickly put it on."

"Other than that, I don't know anything, nor have I seen anyone else..."

As she spoke, her eyes unconsciously drifted toward the window. The pitch-black rain was still falling, and the shadows in the distance seemed a bit clearer than before, exuding an indescribable eeriness.

"Mhm," Ye Chuan responded. He was just about to say something when an abrupt sound suddenly broke the silence—

"Squish... drag..."

It was a muffled, sticky sound of something dragging across the floor, as if something heavy yet soft was slowly crawling against the cracked stone slabs.

The sound came from the direction of the church hall, accompanied by the sizzling drip of slime and the subtle rustling of fabric, inching closer and closer to the room they were in.

The air instantly became heavy. Even the sound of the rain seemed to be masked by this bizarre noise. Xiao Tian took out her weapon, her eyes fixed dead on the direction the sound was coming from.

As an S-rank instance, the monsters inside would definitely not be simple!

Ye Chuan also put away his casual expression.

He could clearly hear that as the thing crawled, there was also a muffled sound similar to the squirming of rotting tissue.

Soon, a dark purple shadow appeared at the edge of the doorframe.

It was a monster shaped like mud, its entire body a murky dark purple. Its body was as soft as melting asphalt, its surface constantly churning and dripping with sticky dark purple slime.

The monster had a distinct head, upon which were faintly visible several murky, half-open eyes. However, they lacked pupils, displaying only a dead, ashen white.

As it crawled, its entire body dragged along the ground, leaving a wet dark purple trail. Wherever the trail passed, the grime on the stone slabs was instantly devoured, emitting a nauseating stench of blood and decay.

Mud?

The moment Ye Chuan saw the bizarre entity before him, he swung his sword directly!

The heavy sword fell, sending the mud splattering everywhere. Ye Chuan pulled Xiao Tian back to dodge. The mud's bodily tissues landed on the walls, making a sizzling corrosive sound.

"Well, it's pretty fragile." Seeing that it had been instantly killed, Ye Chuan flicked the slime off his greatsword.

However, when his gaze fell upon Xiao Tian beside him, Ye Chuan paused.

It wasn't because something had happened to Xiao Tian, but rather because of the weapon Xiao Tian had just taken out.

A sword.

Normally, a sword wouldn't make Ye Chuan feel anything special, but this sword was very familiar to him.

"You... you actually killed the monster so easily. You're amazing," Xiao Tian said, but then noticed Ye Chuan's gaze was a bit strange and lingering on the weapon in her hand.

Xiao Tian immediately became vigilant, raising her sword and stepping back. "Brother Cai Kun, what do you want to do?!"

Xiao Tian thought Ye Chuan had seen the weapon in her hand and gotten greedy.

But what Ye Chuan said next stunned her.

"Where did you get this sword? Why is it in your hands?"

Hearing Ye Chuan ask that, Xiao Tian could tell the other party seemed very familiar with the sword in her hand, but she still didn't let her guard down, merely taking another step back.

"My... my mother left it to me! S-rank instances are dangerous, we only have a chance of surviving if we cooperate with each other!"

"Your mother?" Ye Chuan looked at Xiao Tian, remained silent for a few seconds, and simply asked,

"Is your mother named Tian Xiaotian?"

"You know my mother?" Xiao Tian was puzzled.

What was going on? Was this man in front of her an acquaintance of her mother's?

Xiao Tian could tell that Ye Chuan had no hostility toward her; rather, he looked very surprised.

"More than just know her." Ye Chuan pointed at the sword in Xiao Tian's hand. "I gave her that sword."

"..." Xiao Tian clearly didn't believe him.

Seeing her suspicious look, Ye Chuan took out five or six identical spirit swords from his backpack.

"This?"