Chapter 14: Mother, Rest Peacefully

Lin Zhe slapped the ground in frustration. "Lin Zhe, you really are useless!"

At this moment, he wasn’t even by Yan Yan’s side. Wasn’t it just his mother threatening to kill herself again? Ever since he and Yan Yan got together, she had played that trick countless times. Every time it was all thunder and no rain; he didn’t believe she’d really dare go through with it.

It takes courage to die, after all, and his mother was so timid she could never actually do it.

Yet, in a moment of weakness, he postponed his visit to his girlfriend that Friday night. He’d thought it would only cost him an evening, nothing more—surely he’d be with Yan Yan the next day. Who would have expected that this cursed instance world would descend upon him so suddenly and without warning?

Lin Zhe now felt as if he could die from regret. Yan Yan was the treasure of his heart.

If anything happened to her in Y City, what meaning would the rest of his life have? Was he to spend his days watching his own mother cry, make a scene, and threaten suicide, all just to force him to obey her every command, to be a puppet without a shred of self-will?

“No, Lin Zhe, you have to pull yourself together!”

“Yan Yan is still waiting for you to save her. And Yun Duo’er, too—she’s Yan Yan’s most precious child. If you’re late and something happens to Yun Duo’er, Yan Yan will be heartbroken.”

Lin Zhe wiped his face and forced his spirits up.

He stubbornly refused to consider the possibility that Yan Yan and her daughter might not survive long enough for him to find them.

In his previous life, that was exactly how things ended. Yan Yan died without ever seeing Lin Zhe again, and Yun Duo’er had perished early during the instance adaptation period.

But enough about Lin Zhe’s regret and self-reproach.

On the other side, the “delicate” little woman Yan Yan was struggling to drag out a massive corpse of a Gu Eagle from between the rocks.

This Gu Eagle was truly enormous!

It was more than twice the size of the highest-grade Gu Eagle Yan Yan had ever killed before. But that was to be expected—Yan Yan could feel the lingering aura of power from its body. Its rank definitely surpassed Earth-grade; at the very least, it was a Grade Seven.

Don’t be fooled by the single rank difference between Grade Six and Grade Seven—one is still Profound-grade, but the other is Earth-grade.

The gap between them was immense.

Instance beasts of Earth-grade almost always had blood crystals inside them, while with Profound-grade beasts, you’d be lucky to find one or two blood crystals in a hundred.

Yan Yan cheerfully tossed the Gu Eagle into her personal space—over the past few days she’d harvested an abundance of high-grade instance beast carcasses and materials, far more than her original two-hundred-square-meter space could accommodate.

Yesterday, she’d spent some time refining an extra hundred square meters of Lotus Mirage space.

Now, all the high-spirit, high-grade instance beast corpses and materials were carefully categorized and stored far away from the ordinary supplies—the motley assortment of food, drinks, household goods, and medicines she’d brought from home.

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The spiritual energy of instance rewards would gradually dissipate and be absorbed by these mundane items if stored together for too long. As a result, the grade of the instance treasures would slowly decline. Even if this process took years, Yan Yan was unwilling to accept such a loss.

These high-grade treasures had been acquired only through risking life and limb—if their grade were reduced, she’d have nowhere to cry.

“Forget it, I’ll stop excavating the rest.”

She clapped her hands, regretfully glancing at the mound of earth and rocks before her.

She’d only managed to dig up a few hundred Gu Eagle corpses, and there were at least a thousand more buried below. But Yan Yan was simply too exhausted and sleepy—if she didn’t find a place to sleep soon, she felt she might drop dead on the spot.

After all, she’d been working for a full two and a half days—over sixty hours! Including searching nests and digging up corpses, it felt like well over a hundred hours.

During all that time, she’d hardly rested properly—either she was performing grueling physical labor, or she was entering instances, battling life and death against all manner of creatures.

Even the easiest task, looting Gu Eagle nests, had become overwhelming after searching through nearly two thousand of them. She’d only persevered out of a stubborn unwillingness to miss out on any benefit, but now she was truly at her limit.

No matter how tough one’s body, working like this was unbearable!

Yan Yan took Yun Duo’er out of the instance and found an empty, abandoned house. She pulled out her own big bed from the Lotus Mirage space, dove into the soft quilt, and in no time was fast asleep.

“Snore… snore…”

Yan Yan, who had never snored before, now filled the house with the sound.

Yun Duo’er stood by in silence.

Mom must be utterly exhausted. Even when tired, Yun Duo’er could still nap from time to time, but her mother hadn’t closed her eyes for even a moment these past few days. Yun Duo’er didn’t know why her mother was working so hard, but she saw her efforts clearly.

With gentle hands, Yun Duo’er pulled the covers over her mother.

“Mom, sleep peacefully. Yun Duo’er will guard you and won’t let any monsters disturb you!”

She nodded solemnly to herself.

Mom had always protected her, enduring injury and bloodshed for her sake. Now, at last, it was her turn to stand guard. While her mother slept, she must stay awake—if she dozed off, what if a monster carried Mom away?

Even though Mom said monsters wouldn’t come out of the instances…

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But Mom had also mentioned that instances could expand. Who knew if some instance might accidentally swallow up this very house?

Yun Duo’er’s small face was grave and serious as she carefully tucked in the messy edges of the quilt.

Two days later.

“Auntie, please keep your voice down. My mom is sleeping.”

Yun Duo’er’s deliberately lowered voice drifted in from outside the room.

“What does your mom sleeping have to do with me?” the woman snapped. “This is my house. I’ll talk however I like. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re my son Wei Wenhao’s classmate, I wouldn’t have allowed you and your mom to stay here so long.”

“And your mom’s been sleeping for days without waking up. I bet she’s probably…”

“Don’t you dare curse my mom!”

Yun Duo’er scolded sharply. “Jin Jin, seal her mouth. I don’t want to hear her speak anymore.”

After a rustling commotion, the room fell silent. Then a timid boy’s voice sounded, “Yun… Yun Duo’er, I promise to behave, I won’t make a sound, so please don’t let that…”

Wei Wenhao didn’t know how to describe what he was seeing.

It looked like a vine, but what kind of vine could understand human speech, much less use its own advantages to threaten people?

His mother had been bound by the vine, unable to move a single muscle. At the tip of the vine, two leaves hovered menacingly near her mouth, as if the moment she dared to speak, the vine would unhesitatingly burrow inside.

If that wasn’t frightening enough, the vine was lined with upright thorns, each as long as a pinky finger—a truly terrifying sight.

Wei Wenhao could barely imagine what would happen to his mother if such a vine forced its way into her mouth. “Yun Duo’er, my mom didn’t mean what she said—she didn’t really want to curse your mom. Please don’t hold it against her. Let her go, won’t you?”

He swallowed nervously, pleading.

He was starting to feel as though he didn’t recognize Yun Duo’er at all anymore…