Speaking

"A gimmick monster, huh, Creepy Bro. I can't kill you, and I can't use spells right now..."

Ye Chuan stared at the monster that had once again regenerated completely, rubbing his chin.

Hacking at it blindly was completely useless; it seemed he had to try a different approach.

He took a half-step back, dodging the monster's lunging claws, and freed up a hand to manipulate his inventory space. Soon, he pulled out a palm-sized small lamp.

Shrink! Ray! Lamp!

Let's test the power of anime science.

"Try this." Ye Chuan pressed the switch on the lamp, and a pale blue beam of light instantly shot out, shining precisely onto the monster.

"Ooooh-hooo-hooo-hooo~"

The monster acted as if it had been burned, letting out bizarre, raspy shrieks as its body convulsed violently.

Immediately after, its massive frame shrank at a visible rate. The bandages wrapped around it contracted as well, and the dark purple slime diminished.

In just a few seconds, the ferocious monster, originally over two meters tall, had actually shrunk to the size of a grain of rice. It squirmed haphazardly on the ground, its sharp nails and blood-red eyes becoming an indistinct blur. It completely lost its threat.

"Keep screaming, keep screaming, scream again and I'll shrink your willy." Ye Chuan glanced at the tiny speck on the ground, turned around, and dragged over a dilapidated bedboard from nearby.

He pressed the bedboard directly over it and stomped on it hard a couple of times to make sure the thing couldn't escape, then dusted his hands off.

If I can't kill it, I might as well seal it.

"Brother Cai Kun..." Not far away, Xiao Tian's eyes widened. She slowly crawled up from the corner, looked at the bedboard, and then at Ye Chuan, her tone filled with shock.

"Brother Cai Kun, how, how do you have such a weird thing? A Shrink Ray... I've never seen anything like it!"

She had nearly been scared out of her wits just now, never expecting Ye Chuan to pull out something so absurd and deal with the unkillable monster in just a few moves.

Ye Chuan said, "I have a lot of random junk in my inventory. I usually find it takes up too much space, but I didn't expect it to actually come in handy right now."

His inventory was full of item rewards he had obtained previously, most of which he never had the chance to use. However, after the lesson he learned at the Aphasia Academy, he kept them around to deal with situations where his abilities were restricted, and now they had finally proved useful.

Xiao Tian wanted to say something else, but her gaze suddenly fell upon the floorboards in the corner of the room.

"Brother Cai Kun, look at that!"

Ye Chuan looked in the direction she was pointing. He saw that a particular floorboard was different from the surrounding ones. The edges showed obvious signs of being loose, and a faint dampness seeped through the cracks. A patch of black mud on top of it had been rubbed off, faintly revealing the wood grain underneath.

He walked over and tapped it with the pommel of his greatsword, producing a hollow thump thump sound.

"What's this?" Ye Chuan raised an eyebrow. He bent down, grabbed the edge of the floorboard, and gave it a hard pull. With a creak, a wooden board about half a square meter in size was lifted up, revealing a pitch-black hole underneath. A wave of damp, musty odor mixed with a foul, rotting stench hit his face, and he could hear the faint sound of sticky crawling coming from inside.

The opening wasn't wide, only large enough for one person to pass through bent over. Looking down, it seemed bottomless, so dark it felt like it could swallow all light.

Xiao Tian leaned in and couldn't wait to take a peek inside.

"When I was hiding in the corner just now, I felt there was something wrong with this floorboard... Maybe we can find clues inside!"

"But it looks a bit dark inside."

Hearing this, Ye Chuan dug out a flashlight from his inventory. He pressed the switch, and a strong beam of light pierced the darkness, illuminating the secret passage.

The secret passage was very narrow. The walls were made of rough dirt and stones, covered in dark green mold spots, with tiny water droplets constantly dripping down. The ground was wet and covered with traces of dark purple slime, making it obvious that something frequently passed through here.

"Keep up, don't fall behind."

Ye Chuan took the lead, bending down and ducking into the secret passage. The beam of the flashlight swept ahead, illuminating the scene along the way.

Xiao Tian followed closely behind him, gripping the hem of Ye Chuan's clothes with both hands, not even daring to breathe too loudly.

After taking only a few steps, squelching sounds echoed from the darkness ahead. Several dark purple shadows squeezed out from the cracks in the walls. They were the slime monsters they had encountered earlier!

Only these were smaller than the ones outside. Their entire bodies were sticky, embedded with tiny fragments of cloth, and they crawled toward the two of them.

"In the way." Ye Chuan raised his hand and casually swung his greatsword a few times. Those small slime monsters were instantly chopped into pieces. The dark purple slime splattered against the walls, emitting a sizzling corrosive sound, and soon lost all movement.

Continuing inward and dealing with a few more slime monsters blocking the way, Ye Chuan's gaze was suddenly drawn to a slime monster corpse at his feet—

This one was a bit larger than the others, and embedded in its body was a torn notebook page that had swelled from being soaked.

He bent down to pick it up, using the tip of his sword to flick away the slime stuck to it. The paper of the torn page was already yellowed and brittle, the handwriting on it blurred and indistinct. He could barely make out a few lines:

[My dear, we can't get out...]

[The black rain keeps falling, and our bodies are melting...]

[We can't blame Lady Goddess, she has already done enough...]

Ye Chuan stared at those lines of text and remained silent for a few seconds.

Bodies melting?

No wonder the slime monsters outside all bore human features; it turned out they were formed after being corroded and melted by the black rain.

And Lady Goddess, it really was related to that headless goddess statue. What exactly did she do?

Was it protection, or destruction?

"Brother Cai Kun, what does it say?" Xiao Tian leaned in, looking curiously at the torn page.

"Nothing important, just some ramblings."

Ye Chuan stuffed the torn page into his inventory and continued forward. The flashlight beam shone toward the end of the secret passage, which remained pitch black.

"This secret passage looks pretty long. If there's nothing at the end, we'll head back so we don't waste our effort."

Xiao Tian said, "Let's go a little further... We're already here, we should at least see what the end looks like. What if there's a crucial clue?"

Her voice carried a hint of pleading, and her eyes were full of expectation.

Ye Chuan glanced at her and suddenly asked, "You seem very familiar with this place? What, have you been here before?"

"N-no, Brother Cai Kun, what are you talking about? How could I have been here before?" Xiao Tian immediately shook her head. "Besides, there's that terrifying monster outside. I definitely couldn't have made it alone."

Ye Chuan suddenly raised his greatsword, stopping it right in front of Xiao Tian's throat. He revealed a smile,

"Tell me, why are you lying?"

"From very early on, I felt something was off about you. You purposely lured me to this church, didn't you?"

Xiao Tian froze for a moment. Feeling the sharpness of the greatsword, her voice trembled slightly, "Brother Cai Kun, I don't understand what you mean..."

"Alright, leaving aside how you managed to see this church in the black rain, let me put it more clearly. Are you a player?" Ye Chuan said.

"..."

"Tian Xiaotian died in the dungeon, so how did her weapon end up in your hands? Shouldn't it have been left behind in that dungeon? If you went with her into that uncleared dungeon, how come you didn't die?"

The greatsword in Ye Chuan's hand pricked Xiao Tian's skin, causing a trace of blood to seep out.

"Speak."