Chapter 72: The Werewolf Community 09

Chapter 72: The Werewolf Community 09

This sudden turn of events caught all the players off guard.

Among those present, apart from Lin Ye and his team, everyone else felt their hearts pounding with unease.

Xue Qijing's heart raced wildly. He was standing closest to Wang Mingming, and the displeasure that crept across the latter's face made every pore on his body scream with tension.

But behind him, a dozen pairs of eyes were watching him intently.

He couldn't back down.

In a split second, Xue Qijing took a deep breath.

Within these few seconds, he had already processed the situation.

Although Wang Mingming seemed very unhappy, he hadn't immediately taken action against the players.

Song Tian, who was the first to jump over the fence, was still unscathed, indicating that they probably hadn't made a fatal mistake.

Furthermore, based on the morning's experience, Wang Mingming was an NPC who could communicate and was quite approachable.

There was still a chance to turn the situation around.

Lin Ye stood on the side of the crowd, observing the array of colors on Xue Jiqing's face as he forgot all about controlling his expressions, openly revealing the internal struggle within him. A subtle twitch formed at the corner of Lin Ye's mouth.

If this group of people ever found out that the one they were dealing with now was not some guiding NPC, but merely a player pretending to be mysterious...

He dared not imagine, dared not even think about it.

The youth swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

This team, a blend of experienced and novice players, had maintained a relatively relaxed atmosphere during their journey. Now, however, each member was as silent as a winter cricket.

It wasn't until Xue Jiqing finally mustered his resolve, gritting his teeth and taking half a step forward, that the scene changed.

"I'm truly sorry, Student Wang."

Surprised by the youth before him, who was decades younger than himself, Xue Jiqing did not dare to show the slightest bit of negligence or underestimation.

Now, the age difference between them was utterly invisible in his eyes.

All he could see was that the other person held the strings to his life and death as an NPC.

In contrast, he was but a tiny, insignificant player akin to an ant.

Xue Qimai bowed down, offering Qin Fei a flawless 90-degree salute, impeccable in its precision.

"We merely had a sudden interest in visiting the kindergarten, and we have no intentions whatsoever to damage any of the facilities within."

He apologized loudly and clearly, enunciating each word.

Behind him, the players received their notifications and, in a fluster, hurriedly bowed along with Xue Jiqing.

"I'm sorry!"

"We absolutely won't do it again!"

A chorus of apologies echoed.

Qin Fei didn't answer right away. He continued to stare coldly at Xue Jiqing, standing in the half-light, half-shadowed shade, his expression unreadable.

Xue Jiqing dared not blink, keeping his gaze fixed on his toes until he was drenched in sweat before he heard a cool male voice from across.

"Nothing's wrong."

The casual tone carried an air of lofty forgiveness.

Everyone instantly breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Some were so tense that they even collapsed onto the ground.

Qin Fei asked nonchalantly, "Why did you suddenly decide to visit the kindergarten?"

In reality, he had already guessed the reason.

Although Qin Fei wasn't physically present at the Activity Center, he could see the changing scores of Team Red and Team White on his attribute panel.

With so many players now forming teams to head to the kindergarten, there must be something inside that was sufficiently alluring to them.

Perhaps those three points were earned during kindergarten.

Moreover, there might be other missions hidden within the kindergarten.

Qin Fei raised an eyebrow, not expecting that he would coincidentally intersect with this group of players at their destination.

In fact, Qin Fei had only recently arrived at the kindergarten himself.

The ghost infant had taken the human bone flute from the kindergarten, piquing Qin Fei's interest in the place.

Upon returning home, he happened to see Wang Mingming's mother preparing to weed the kindergarten. Thus, he "volunteered" for the job, earning both his mother's praise and a legitimate reason to enter the kindergarten.

Teacher An An was someone Qin Fei met after entering the kindergarten.

When Qin Fei came in through a side door, she was just leaving the first floor of the kindergarten. According to her, she had taken advantage of the summer break when no one was around to sort through documents.

Qin Fei was skeptical about this explanation.

He wanted to try and probe for more information from Teacher An An, but before he could say much, Song Tian suddenly descended from above.

"Are you all... interested in entering the kindergarten?"

From behind Qin Fei, the previously silent Teacher Anan poked her head out.

Teacher Anan appeared to be in her twenties, with a fair and lovable round face, and she spoke in a gentle tone.

This NPC's words immediately pulled the players back from the brink of death.

Cui Ran imitated Xue Qijiu's smile and nodded eagerly, "Yes, yes, we saw the nice environment outside the kindergarten and were very curious about what it's like inside."

Upon hearing Cui Ran praise the kindergarten's environment, Teacher Anan's face lit up with a proud smile. "Our kindergarten is the most well-equipped among several in this vicinity."

As she spoke, she took a few steps forward, clearing the way at the side entrance. "If you'd like to take a look, just come right in. There happen to be children in the kindergarten now."

There were children?

Qin Fei lowered his eyes, his long lashes hiding any unusual expressions in his gaze.

Didn't this teacher just tell him that she was here to work overtime because there was no one else during the summer break at the kindergarten?

Aside from Qin Fei, none of the other players noticed anything amiss. Instead, they were all excited, virtually pushing and shoving to get in.

Since Teacher An An was leading this time, Xue Jiqing didn't walk at the front as he usually did. He slowed his pace and walked alongside Qin Fei.

Xue Jiqing tried to strike up a conversation with Qin Fei. "Is cleaning up at the kindergarten also part of Wang Mingming's summer volunteer activities?"

Qin Fei gave him a fleeting, indifferent glance. He pursed his lips and offered a smile that was clearly perfunctory, nodding vaguely without saying a word.

Xue Jiqing was left hanging.

Teacher An An led the players around half of the main kindergarten building, soon arriving at the large activity area in front.

"Look, the children are right there!"

Following Teacher An An's pointing finger, the players saw, indeed, a dozen children sitting by the sandbox.

"We'll play hide-and-seek. I'll count to thirty, so make sure you all find good hiding spots!"

A little girl with a mushroom haircut adorned with a red bow said so.

"Alright—"

The other children chimed in unison.

Without notice, a breeze stirred outside. The drifting clouds softened the blinding sunlight overhead, and the rustling of leaves could be heard from the lush trees swaying in the wind. The children's laughter and playfulness echoed throughout the entire park.

"Our park facilities were all renovated just half a year ago."

Teacher Anan spoke with evident pride.

At the girl with the mushroom haircut's command, more than ten children scampered away laughing and playing, creating a heartwarming and delightful scene.

However, it was precisely this sense of normalcy that made Qin Fei even more vigilant.

Putting aside the inconsistency in Teacher Anan's explanations to him and the other players.

These children were clearly chatting and laughing, but their laughter and chatter seemed to have abruptly emerged the moment the players laid eyes on them.

Earlier, when he'd walked such a long way from the side entrance, not a single sound had escaped his notice.

Some players had already become vigilant, while slower-to-react low-level players were still in a daze.

Teacher An An said, "I'll return to my office first. You can wander around as you please."

With that, she turned and left.

Xue Jiqing exchanged a glance with Cui Ran, then led the group cautiously toward the nearby children's play area.

By the sandbox, all the other kids had already hidden themselves.

The mushroom-haired little girl turned back and saw several adults enter the deserted courtyard, looking puzzled.

She stared blankly at the players for a moment, tilted her head, and yelled into the air in a childish voice, "I'm coming to catch you all!"

The little girl laughed happily as she skipped and hopped between the playground equipment in the yard.

But soon, her laughter faded.

She had scoured the entire area, yet failed to find a single child.

Looking up at the players beside her, her bright black and white eyes were filled with confusion, as if asking, "Did you hide my friends?"

The little girl's lips moved a few times, and she walked around the area twice more, still finding nothing.

Finally, she couldn't hold back her tears any longer.

Her voice rang out loudly, and tears fell with a pitter-patter, "Wuwuwu... Where did you all go...?"

A silly player, pitying the child's cries, stepped forward to comfort her, "Don't cry, little one. Maybe your friends are well hidden. Let's search patiently and carefully—"

His words came to an abrupt halt.

The player's face subtly darkened.

He withdrew his hand that was almost on the little girl's shoulder, turned around, and swiftly ran back to the group of players without looking back.

This scene left the others utterly perplexed.

"What's the matter?" someone asked the player.

He grimaced and shook his head.

The players had been standing at a distance, so when they saw the child crying, they assumed it was due to poor eyesight, unable to locate their hidden companions, and throwing a tantrum out of frustration from losing.

But when he personally approached the sandbox, he realized that the issue didn't lie with the little girl.

There wasn't a single child in the vicinity.

Although the kindergarten had many playground facilities tailored to children's sizes, they were all small, offering no hiding spots for anyone.

Unless all those kids had somehow managed to squeeze into the interior of the tubular slide.

Otherwise, from an adult player's perspective, it would have been impossible not to spot them, regardless of where they hid.

Moreover, the players had been keeping a close eye on the area, and they hadn't seen any children running away from the clearing to seek shelter in the buildings.

Those children had truly vanished into thin air.

The player softly shared this information with the others, and their expressions quickly turned grave.

"What should we do now?"

Someone glanced at the still-crying NPC child and asked Ze Qi in a hushed tone.

Ze Qi pondered for a moment. "There's an eighty percent chance something is amiss."

Although Song Tian's previous mission was relatively simple, that didn't guarantee that the new mission they triggered would be just as effortless.

Should they accidentally stumble upon a task as challenging as a breakfast shop without preparation, it would indeed be a troublesome situation.

To be on the safe side, it would be best to first gain insight into the background story of this kindergarten.

Ideally, they should determine which class these young children belong to and what has transpired with them.

With these thoughts in mind, Xia Jiqing suggested, "Let's split up and investigate inside the kindergarten first—"

Before Xia Jiqing could finish his sentence, a voice suddenly rang out from the crowd.

"What does that mean? Could it be that all the teachers and students in this class are ghosts?"

The voice emerged abruptly from the midst of the crowd, with a neutral tone that made it difficult to discern whether it belonged to a male or female. Scanning through his memory, Qin Fei seemed to have never heard such a voice before.

Everyone froze for a moment, and their expressions dramatically shifted!

Qin Fei stood at the back of the crowd with his arms crossed, calmly observing everything as if he was an outsider unrelated to the situation.

The air suddenly turned chilly.

The white clouds above seemed to have been stained with ink, swiftly turning into a gloomy dark gray.

The little girl with a bow tie gradually stopped crying. She lowered her hands, and with her eyes as black and lustrous as grapes, she looked at the crowd in confusion.

"I'm a ghost?"

She raised her hand, pointing at her own nose with her short fingers.

"I am... a ghost?"

Her voice grew louder, her tone increasingly frenzied.

Any trace of tears on her face vanished as she abruptly lifted her head, her lips stretching wide into a grotesquely exaggerated grin that bordered on eerie.

"Exactly! I'm a ghost!"

"Right! We're all ghosts!!!"

"F*ck!"

Some players cursed inwardly, desperate to flee.

But looking around, where were the escape routes?

A dense fog, a mixture of ashen yellow and withered black, spread silently, isolating the kindergarten into a world of its own – a dead zone, a lonely island.

No one could escape.

Calm down! Calm down!

Players could only console themselves in this manner.

After all, weren't they here in the first place to hunt ghosts?

But damn it, who the hell was that person who suddenly spoke just now? !

The players drew closer to one another, their hearts filled with uncertainty as the cold system notification sounded in the void.

"Identification successful. Ghost-hunting round has begun!"

One after another, the players standing on the empty ground vanished.

Some disappeared alone, while others vanished in pairs or groups of three or four.

Qin Fei's brows knitted tightly together.

That voice which had abruptly appeared just now had said, "All the teachers and students in this class are ghosts."

The one who had spoken those words couldn't have been an ordinary player without any brains.

It could be either an insider with a special identity like him or a genuine NPC masquerading as a player.

That person probably wasn't lying.

Everyone they had encountered since entering the kindergarten, including the teachers and children, were all ghosts.

Due to their ghostly nature, they could turn invisible, teleport, and vanish right under the players' noses from open ground.

The vanished players likely entered different ghost's mission spaces.

There were a total of sixteen players.

It was uncertain how many would return alive and how many points they would bring back.

A minute ago, he was surrounded by people, but now Qin Fei was the only one left in the entire kindergarten playground.

Qin Fei: "?"

What's going on here? Are they discriminating against players pretending to be NPCs?

The system wouldn't have issued such a realistic NPC character card that it would exclude the player from completing missions, right?

Then what's the point of doing this dungeon at all?

Fortunately, the system wasn't that insane.

It already had numerous NPCs; Qin Fei was not indispensable.

It was more beneficial to let Qin Fei continue shining in his role as a streamer than to make him an NPC.

Soon, Qin Fei heard a new system notification in his ear:

"The Ghost Hunting Mission has begun."

"Current Task: Find Teacher An An's whistle."

"Mission Hint: Oh no! Teacher An An's whistle has fallen into the sandpit! Make a bet with the teacher and see if the lucky child can guess which pile of sand the whistle is hidden in."

Whistle?

Qin Fei's heart stirred.

It couldn't be what he was thinking, right...

Not far away, the round-faced female teacher emerged from behind a large tree.

Her condition was entirely different from before; her face as pale as a sheet of gold paper, her body stiff, and her chin slightly tucked in, wearing an eerie grin.

Qin Fei glanced at her head.

" Werewolf Community Kindergarten - Teacher An An: Affection - (Unattainable)"

But when he encountered her outside, the notification wasn't like this.

Just now, the notification above Teacher An An's head read "Affection 1%."

It was happening again.

When the System tried to conceal the NPCs' unique identities, Qin Fei found it challenging to obtain information from their affection levels directly.

Qin Fei felt somewhat regretful.

Teacher An stood there, staring intently at the young man before him with his pale eyes that had dark pupils, and spoke in a low voice, "Follow me—"

Qin Fei obediently followed Teacher An as they headed towards the sandpit.

Three sand mounds, each the size of a human head, had mysteriously appeared in the pit.

Teacher An pointed at the mounds and said, "Choose."

His words were concise, spoken with a dull expression on his ghostly face. Yet, a glimmer of excitement could be seen in the depths of his eyes when he looked at Qin Fei, as if he had spotted a long-awaited delectable feast, eager to pounce on it and devour it instantly.

But Qin Fei didn't follow Teacher An's lead and instead asked, "What does your whistle look like?"

Teacher An grew impatient. "Stop wasting time."

Qin Fei persisted, "But if you don't tell me, how will I know if I've found your whistle if I discover something in the sandpit?"

He was practically accusing Teacher An An of cheating, albeit not directly.

The female ghost grew even more frustrated, her expression turning grim.

Qin Fei was not worried that the ghost would lose her temper and kill him out of desperation.

Bosses in these instances couldn't simply take lives as they pleased. With someone like Teacher An An, it was clear that they were bound by certain rules.

Assuming Qin Fei's assumption was correct, there were no conditions for death during this mission to find the object.

There was only one way that could lead to a fatal outcome – "failing to locate the whistle."

Hence, he could afford to take a few risks during the game.

There was nothing Teacher An An could do about it.

Until he made his final choice, he would be safe.

Teacher An An glared furiously at the young man before her.

She found this young man annoying. Despite his mature and composed appearance, he seemed even more troublesome than those pesky children.

Teacher An An didn't want to answer.

But Qin Fei insisted on asking, standing straight and firm as if he wouldn't proceed with the mission until she replied.

Though both tasks involved finding items, Qin Fei assisting Teacher An An in locating the whistle was entirely different from Song Tian helping Little Sang find the ball.

There was no time limit for the whistle-finding mission.

Perhaps because the target was clear-cut - one of the three sand piles.

From the outside, the three mounds looked identical, making this a pure game of chance, a pick-one-from-three challenge.

"Fine, I'll tell you," Teacher An An gritted her teeth, producing an unsettling sound.

"It's a whistle made from a bone."

Her voice was deliberately lowered, exuding an eerie sensation that sent shivers down one's spine.

"Human bones, huh."

Qin Fei: !!!!

It was actually true.

Qin Fei really wanted to pull the ghost infant out of the space right now and roughly tousle its head in exasperation.

It was too good at its job!

So, could it be that the System left him behind last on purpose, just to assign him to this mission?

Otherwise, if someone else took on this mission but the mission item was in Qin Fei's possession, the task would become a guaranteed deathtrap.

Qin Fei once again vaguely grasped the mechanism behind the ghosts' killings within the werewolf community.

There wouldn't be any missions here with an inevitable death.

For the following ten days, no matter how dire the situation Qin Fei found himself in, there was always a chance for him to discover a path to survival.

Teacher An continued,

"The children in the class adored that whistle. Every time I took it out, they would all scramble for it, and before I knew it, it would end up in the sandbox."

"When the kids were playing, all I had to do was blow the whistle, and they would obediently stop to listen to me."

"If you like, I can turn you into a whistle after you die."

She stared at Qin Fei with an ominous gaze.

Qin Fei stood by the sandpit, deep in thought.

So that's how that human bone whistle was used.

According to this female ghost, the bone whistle held an extraordinary allure for children.

No wonder the ghost infant couldn't resist and rushed in to dig it up from outside the gate.

With minimal effort, Qin Fei had deceived his way into getting an item explanation, and now his conscience was slightly aching.

Qin Fei crouched down, focusing intently on the sandpit, while his right hand nonchalantly slipped into the pocket of his school uniform jacket.

The whistle was hidden within that pocket.

"Remember, you only have one chance. Think carefully," Teacher Ann tried to sow discord from the side.

"If you make the wrong choice..."

Her small eyes rolled around in their sockets.

"If you choose incorrectly, your head might very well be the next thing buried in that pile of sand," she said in a chilling tone.

"Oh...right."

It was as if she had suddenly remembered something.

"I forgot to mention that the whistle might not actually be here."

Miss An An had no idea that her casual remark had struck a chord.

In a normal scenario, her statement would have been nothing but a distraction.

The whistle was hidden within the sand, as hinted by the mission prompt.

However, under the current tense atmosphere, Miss An An's words carried immense power.

Players with weak determination would undoubtedly start to doubt at this point.

Was the mission prompt infallible?

Could the system intentionally provide false clues to deceive players?

Miss An An looked at Qin Fei with a smug expression.

Satisfied by the uncertainty she saw on the young man's face, she felt a sense of triumph.

In this straightforward and brutal game, the ghost's winning odds originally stood at 66.6%.

But if this person truly believed her words, her chances of victory would skyrocket to 100%.

And Qin Fei did not disappoint her.

He hesitated by the sandpit for quite some time before he finally gave his answer, just before Teacher An An lost all patience.

He pointed at the first sandpit.

"The whistle—"

Teacher An An fixated her gaze on his face.

Qin Fei pursed his lips and chuckled softly. "The whistle isn't in this sandpit."

Teacher An An: "…"

"Continue," she urged through gritted teeth.

Qin Fei shifted his position, standing before the second sandpit: "It's not in this one either."

He then moved sideways again and pointed at the third one: "There's nothing here as well."

"He isn't in any of them," he concluded.

Teacher An's eyes instantly sparkled!

He believed it!

He believed it, he truly believed it!