"The Mystic Pagoda opened? Why?" Yuan raised his eyebrows upon seeing the doors open automatically.

However, there was nobody to welcome them inside, so why did the doors open?

"Let’s go inside and check it out," Yuan suggested.

"W-Wait!" Wang Xiuying turned around, grabbed him, and quickly pulled him away from the Mystic Pagoda.

Once they were far enough, the doors to the Mystic Pagoda closed again.

"Don’t be so hasty, Yuan! What if it’s a trap? If you ask me, I think it’s too easy! There’s no way the Mystic Pagoda would open so easily for us when nobody has managed to open it for so long!" Wang Xiuying explained to him why they shouldn’t go inside.

Yuan nodded after hearing her words, "That makes sense. It’s quite suspicious how the place just opened."

"That’s right! What if we’re ambushed by traps the moment we go inside? That would be disastrous!" Wang Xiuying said.

"Then what should we do?" Yuan asked her.

"I say we wait until someone else goes inside and see what happens. I’m sure there are people coming to this place as we speak." Wang Xiuying responded.

"Okay. We can observe them from the skies, where we should be safe." Yuan agreed.

"What should we do in the meantime?"

"I don’t know. It’s getting a bit late, so I’m about to log off for the day."

"It’s also almost time for dinner for me as well."

Thus, the two of them looked around the Mystic Pagoda for a few more minutes before logging off.

In the real world, Yuan said to Meixiu, "I have arrived at the Mystic Pagoda."

"Really? Were you able to open it?" Meixiu asked him as she fed him dinner.

"About that... The Mystic Pagoda opened by itself, but it might be a trap, so we didn’t go inside."

"Wait... We? You’re with somebody?" Meixiu raised her eyebrows.

"That’s right. I’m with Wang Xiuying right now. I met her by chance, and we’ve been traveling together since then."

"I see..." Meixiu mumbled. copyrighted © content.

"By the way, are you responsible for killing the participants? A lot of participants had been disqualified after being killed by an invisible attack." Meixiu told him about the chaos that occurred outside the Mystic Realm because of his actions.

"Oh, yeah, that was me. I took care of everyone as we approached the Mystic Pagoda. There were a lot of them, but I made sure to kill all of them like the Sect Master had advised us to do."

"So Feng Feng and Xiao Hua were right about you being responsible for the attacks..."

"All of the participants were unharmed after they left the Mystic Realm, right?" Yuan asked her.

The only reason he could kill them so casually was because he was told that they wouldn’t die inside the Mystic Realm.

"Yes, all of them were fine. However... A few of them had lost a couple of levels for their cultivation after being killed." Meixiu revealed this to him.

"Well, at least they’re not hurt." Yuan casually said.

In his mind, it was much better to lose their cultivation than to die since cultivation can be restored through time whilst death was permanent— for the NPCs at the very least.

Meixiu also didn’t think too much of it since she was not a cultivator.

"Will you be playing tonight?" Meixiu asked him after dinner.

"Yes, I will."

"Okay."

Sometime later, Yuan returned to the game whilst Meixiu went to sleep.

Inside the game, Yuan flew towards the sky and began overseeing the Mystic Pagoda, patiently waiting for someone to fall for this ’trap’.

Once he realized that it might take a while before someone shows up, he decided to start practicing his flying skill in the sky.

Thus, Yuan proceeded to spend the entire night circling around the place, improving his flying speed and air maneuvers.

Wang Xiuying returned to the game in the morning.

"Welcome back." Yuan greeted her.

"Yuan? When did you come back on?" she asked him.

"Since last night."

"What? You spent the entire night playing? That’s not healthy, you know." Wang Xiuying sort of lectured him.

Then she asked, "Did anybody come through at all?"

"No, I didn’t see anybody."

"It might take a couple of days before someone—"

"Wait. I sense a presence not far from here." Yuan suddenly interrupted her.

"Really? Then let’s hide!" Wang Xiuying said.

Yuan nodded and carried her into the air, hiding inside the clouds.

About fifteen minutes later, a figure approached the Mystic Pagoda.

"Hm? That person looks familiar for some reason..." Yuan narrowed his eyes at this young man that had a goofy-looking face.

After pondering for a moment, he remembered where he’d seen this person.

"Ah, that’s the player who wanted me to show my face to him."

"He’s a player?" Wang Xiuying asked.

"Yes."

The two of them continued to watch this player’s every movement.

The player first looked around the Mystic Pagoda just like they did when they first arrived. Once he found nothing special, the player stood before the door and started knocking on it.

However, there was no response from the Mystic Pagoda.

"What’s happening? Why isn’t the door opening for him?" Wang Xiuying mumbled in a puzzled voice.

"Let’s wait a little bit longer," Yuan suggested.

A few minutes later, the player started kicking the door to the Mystic Pagoda, hoping to open it by force.

Once the player realized that kicking the door wasn’t doing him any good, he started hitting it with the ordinary sword in his grasp.

Ding!

The sword rebounded after striking the door, flying right out of the player’s grasp.

After retrieving the sword, the player tried hitting the door again multiple times.

However, in the end, the Mystic Pagoda remained unharmed.

"It doesn’t look like the Mystic Pagoda will open for him." Wang Xiuying said.

"Then there’s no reason to keep him alive," Yuan said, immediately controlling the Starry Abyss to fly at the goofy-looking player, creating a hole in his face a second later.