(For those who forgot, you can go back and review Chapter 37: when Qiu Yinong first appeared.)

The three woke up and tallied the points they earned from this Instance.

Total: 51 points!

Chen Ran finally understood. In the previous Instance, he had been wondering why they only got 18 points for killing eighteen people, including three Three-Star players.

So it turned out...

It was linked to the surviving player's star rank.

In the previous Instance, they were One-Star, and they killed eighteen players, therefore 18 points.

In this Instance, they were Three-Star, and they killed seventeen players: 3 * 17 = 51 points.

The higher the star rank, the higher the base multiplier.

But!

Lin Xuan personally earned 39 points.

However, thinking about it, it made sense. In this Instance, most of the players who were Judged to death were executed by Lin Xuan's Judgment.

As for those players who were pitted to death by various mechanics, it was a joint effort of the three, so the points from killing them might have been split equally among the three of them.

Having figured out the reason, Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong didn't care. A man cannot get rich without unexpected wealth, and a horse cannot grow fat without grass in the night. Relying solely on Instance rewards, it would take ages to advance to Six-Star.

But the 18th Level was different. Killing players would cause the points on them to burst out.

(For those who forgot, you can go back and review Chapter 37 when Qiu Yinong first appeared.)

The two glanced at Lin Xuan, who was cautiously inching his body towards the white light.

"Wah!" Chen Ran stomped his foot and startled Lin Xuan, who quickly ran away. His body submerged into the white light and disappeared from the Instance.

Chen Ran turned his head and gave Qiu Yinong a scissor-hand gesture. Immediately after, amidst Chen Ran's hearty laughter, the two also walked into the white light.

…

In front of the Gatehouse, the three appeared.

They first looked at their watches, and then surveyed their surroundings. Seeing everything was normal.

Thus, the three walked towards the Liar Slayer Alliance Ancient Tower. Firstly, they wanted to see if there were any Quests they could take; secondly, they wanted to confirm whether the Hell Great Escape had started.

"Chen Ran, how long do you think we'll be stuck at Three-Star?" Lin Xuan asked.

"I don't think we'll be stuck for long, right, Chen Ran?" Qiu Yinong said.

Chen Ran frowned, ignoring the two of them.

His gaze swept left and right.

'Previously, I counted. On the way from the Gatehouse to the Liar Slayer Alliance Ancient Tower...'

'There are exactly 360 stalls on both sides.'

He silently observed.

After an unknown amount of time, the Liar Slayer Alliance Ancient Tower was right in front of them, about five meters away. No anomalies were found along the way.

Moreover, there were exactly 360 stalls.

"It seems the Hell Great Escape hasn't started yet." Lin Xuan looked around and didn't find any clues, unavoidably breathing a sigh of relief.

"What should we do next? Should we wait for the Hell Great Escape, or..." Qiu Yinong also felt much more at ease, looking at Chen Ran and asking.

Chen Ran was about to continue walking, but the foot he stepped out hung in mid-air, frozen there.

'Walking from the Gatehouse to the Liar Slayer Alliance Ancient Tower takes roughly 5,384 steps.'

'But, I've already walked 5,384 steps just now, yet I'm still 5 meters away from the Ancient Tower.'

Thinking of this.

Chen Ran withdrew his foot, pulled out the Liar-Slayer from his waist, gripped it tightly in his hand, and alertly looked around.

Seeing that nothing happened for a long time.

He pulled out something from his backpack...

An empty plastic bottle.

He threw it on the ground in front of him. The empty bottle landed without being damaged.

'The bottle wasn't damaged, which means there are no traps ahead, but there's no guarantee...'

'That the real empty bottle was already destroyed, and the one I'm seeing is a fabricated one.'

Right at this moment.

Lin Xuan stepped forward, picked up the empty bottle Chen Ran had thrown ahead, and said with a solemn expression: "I will test it, you guys follow behind me."

Saying this, he was about to repeat Chen Ran's previous action and throw the empty bottle forward.

But Chen Ran didn't even think about it; he turned around and walked back towards the Gatehouse. The other two could only follow.

Qiu Yinong glared at Lin Xuan: "What were you thinking, daring to pick up the bottle?"

Indeed, the number of steps being wrong meant that they had unknowingly deviated from their direction along the way.

Then, there must definitely be relevant traps ahead, like cauldrons of boiling oil or something. In short, if they continued forward, they would highly likely trigger a mechanism.

In this situation, they definitely had to walk back, yet Lin Xuan dared to take the 5,385th step.

He was simply courting death!

The three returned in front of the Gatehouse. Qiu Yinong pondered: "The step count being wrong means we walked off course. And in our memories, the path from the Gatehouse to the Liar Slayer Alliance Ancient Tower is a straight line. We can use our watches to walk in a straight line, which is setting both hands on the watch to the 12 o'clock position and holding the watch face flat in front of our eyes. This way, we can walk in a straight line based on the direction the hands point."

Chen Ran nodded.

But he didn't execute it immediately. Instead, he looked at the time on his watch: it was 8 AM.

He lit a cigarette and smoked silently.

Lin Xuan and Qiu Yinong looked suspiciously at Chen Ran, not knowing what he was waiting for.

After waiting for about half an hour.

Chen Ran snuffed out the cigarette butt and walked towards the Skull Gate for matching Instances. Seeing this, Qiu Yinong didn't hesitate to follow. The two arrived in the white world for selecting Instances.

Although Lin Xuan was their special teammate, he wasn't a true teammate after all.

Therefore.

Lin Xuan couldn't possibly appear here.

They didn't choose to enter an Instance. Chen Ran raised his eyebrows and looked at Qiu Yinong. The latter understood, and took out a thin rope from her bag, about two meters long.

One end was tied to Chen Ran's wrist.

The other end was tied to Qiu Yinong's wrist.

The two returned to the Gatehouse once again.

"What are you guys doing?" Seeing the two come out, Lin Xuan pointed at the rope on their wrists and asked curiously. Seeing the two didn't answer, he continued: "It's very dangerous here. Do what Qiu Yinong said before and use the watch hands to determine a straight line."

Hearing this, Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong, who were adjusting their watch hands, obviously paused for a moment, but very quickly continued adjusting the hands.

After adjusting them.

Chen Ran stood on the left, and Qiu Yinong stood on the right. Both held their watch faces flat in front of their eyes. The two pulled the thin rope taut, and simultaneously took out something similar to an extendable baton from their bags. Like blind people, they tapped the ground lightly as they walked forward.

Seeing the two walking side-by-side in such a strange manner, Lin Xuan scratched his head and had no choice but to follow.

Along the way, none of the three spoke.

When they reached the 4,251st step, there was a stall ahead. If they wanted to continue forward, they had to cross the stall. Chen Ran carefully extended his extendable baton. The next moment...

The tip of the baton was sliced off by something, the cut extremely smooth. Fortunately, the part that was cut off was very short. Chen Ran probed to the right with the baton, and this time the baton wasn't sliced off.

He continued probing to the right, while calculating in his mind: the safe passage...

Was about 1.5 meters wide.

Thus, he gave Qiu Yinong a look. The latter understood and stood behind him.

Just like that, the two of them.

Probed while walking forward, their bodies passing right through the stall in front of them as if it were transparent.

They continued following the watch hands in a straight line, but the direction the hands pointed was...

There was a storefront ahead, with front and back doors.

After confirming it was safe.

The two continued walking forward.

However...

Just as the three entered the storefront, a person appeared at the back door blocking the entrance, and another person appeared at the front door blocking the entrance. The two people were holding Liar-Slayers.

When they saw clearly what those two people looked like, Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong's eyes instantly widened.