Chapter 237: The Mystery of Talisman and Spell

Although the city defense event had not yet ended, no players cared about the ruined fortress, half-collapsed and surely doomed to fall; at this moment, whether professional players who had been online since morning or casual players who had just logged in after work, all surged toward the northern edge of the map.

"Just saying 'north' is way too broad!"

"It's an open-world map! Only now do I miss those air walls."

"I'm not worried about him being on the map—I'm worried he's on the mountain! The northernmost part of this map is a cliff, then a range of mountains with zero interactivity; back then, some mountain climbers tried scaling it and either suffocated or froze to death halfway. If this village is hidden in those mountains, you'd never find it even if you searched till the sky cracked!"

Players muttered complaints on the world channel while conducting sweeping searches, all trying to locate the "Hidden Village" mentioned by the NPC.

Yet the Research Maniac, who usually obsessed over such matters, moved slowly, heavy with worries.

"What're you thinking about? New project?" Guan'er, an old friend of the Research Maniac, let his Four Bi Brothers go ahead and sidled up, asking casually with a grin.

"Nothing much—just noticed the Talisman and Spell the NPC brought up this time is different from the ones we collected before."

The Research Maniac spoke, then directly opened his game screenshots and sent them to the private chat channel—

"Besides this one with three horizontal lines, these three originally had two short lines but became zigzags, and the remaining four turned outright into characters: 【Turn】, 【Fix】, 【Transform】, 【Select】—these must be the Four Elements the NPC mentioned. But…"

(The Five Elements symbols resemble the Eight Trigrams quite a bit.)

"Yeah, definitely different!" Guan'er, unlike the overthinking Research Maniac, was an action type—he immediately opened the game forum, switched browsers, launched a visual search, and within seconds said:

"Earlier we saw the Eight Trigrams; this time it's the Five Elements pattern: three horizontal lines are Metal, the rest are Fire, Earth, Water. Aside from the yin lines shifting, it's basically the same as the Eight Trigrams. But the other four? No clue—maybe some spell technique?"

"You think you're the only one who checked AI?" The Research Maniac shot Guan'er an annoyed look, then said:

"I'm wondering why the NPC in the plot deliberately had us collect Talismans and Spells to restore the boss to full power, only to reseal him again."

"Isn't it just to introduce a new system? If the boss doesn't put on a flashy 【BEEP—】 show, how will players know he's awesome?" Guan'er said matter-of-factly, but the Research Maniac shook his head:

"The issue isn't the show—the whole story's logic is sound. If I were sealing a boss, I wouldn't rely on a previous seal that failed. According to the NPC, if we extract the final Wood Talisman, we could permanently solve the boss. Of course, that's clearly game design—but the real problem is these two sets of Talismans.

"If the goal was just to introduce a system, there'd be no need to first use the Eight Trigrams and Yin-Yang, then switch to the Five Elements. A single, consistent system would've made far more sense. Now, rewriting the Talismans isn't just a lore issue—it requires writing two separate code systems. Players have barely grasped the Eight Trigram system, and now they're hit with another? And judging by this, the Eight Trigram Talismans might even become obsolete. That makes zero sense for the game company's interests."

Hearing this, Guan'er finally understood his friend's point. Looking at the screenshots, he suddenly felt like he might need to grow a brain.

He shook his head hard and spread his hands:

"Why think so much? Just find the Hidden Village—then we'll see what the new Talismans do!"

……

As the focus of player discussions, Feng Xue was, in truth, inside the Hidden Village, giving anthropomorphic adjustments to each doll.

This village was built at his request by Mary; every villager was designed by him, and Mary used his ability to craft these anthropomorphic dolls. But Feng Xue would never entrust such vital things to a demon lord he'd only known for a few days—he was now using Little Xiao Lingdang and Seeing Mo Ying to reinstall the dolls' systems.

It sounds sci-fi, but it's no different from spirit substitution or paper doll techniques: set the persona, Seeing Mo Ying releases a wisp of ghostly energy to possess the doll, then Little Xiao Lingdang takes over that ghostly energy for remote control. With computing power from the previous civilization's mainframe, even without faith energy, Little Xiao Lingdang could precisely control these fewer than a hundred villagers via AI.

As for what if players arrived before completion…

There's a ghost wall!

The system update went flawlessly. Because he had condensed a "God of Destruction" divine office using a seed of faith, Gidora possessed pure destructive power—given sufficient energy, he could precisely destroy anything targeted. Waves of lightning surged, and the dolls reverted to factory settings. Only then did he take out his phone to retrieve footage captured earlier by the drone.

During the siege, the city gate was the best spawn point. At this hour, online players were either leveling up or farming battle merits at the gate, or farming gear in dungeons—so the open map had almost no players. The demon lords seized this opportunity to begin their moves.

But as Feng Xue reviewed the surveillance footage, his expression darkened.

He was certain the demon lords hadn't noticed his drone—but of the seven besides Bone Ash and Bone Powder, not a single one had been fully captured!

Merlo, the Mermaid Singer, dove into the Eastern Sea and vanished without a trace.

Mary, the Mechanical Puppet, entered the western mine, took a few side passages, and disappeared.

Shadow Demon Naven Muen simply melted into place—no one knew where he was.

Dark Elf Evelyn slipped into a forest; he risked crashing the drone to follow, but saw only dense, lush trees.

Werewolf Wolf and Demon Lord Dobby both slipped into the demon lord's basement—the drone couldn't follow.

Only Bi Gelei's movements were relatively transparent—this young lady had transformed into the nation's sweetheart and gone to Wang Cheng for a tea party…

"But at least we can confirm: each demon lord has their own plan. Everyone's not stupid—that's best. As long as they don't bother me, I won't… hmm, maybe just occasionally investigate!"

Feng Xue muttered to himself but didn't lower his guard—he kept Little Xiao Lingdang monitoring the others while he arranged his new home—

"It's about time to let one player in…"

(End of Chapter)