Chapter 294: The Shadow Is Gone (5/10, Autumn Subscription)

Although a herd of ten thousand grass-mud horses galloped through his heart.

But that was his mother—could Hai Ming possibly overturn the heavens?

Pulling on his tracksuit and running shoes, he set off in low spirits down the nearly pre-dawn street, jogging slowly.

At first, the wind was strong, and he was freezing.

As he jogged, he gradually warmed up.

Soon, he arrived at his classmate's doorstep.

He ran into a classmate with an equally sullen face; after asking around, he learned this guy had also been dragged away from his game by his family and forced to go running.

No choice—the school long-distance race was coming up, and this was the critical moment for emergency training.

The two ran together and started chatting about the game.

"Let me tell you, this time I was awesome—guess who I ran into in the game?"

"Who?" The classmate pricked up his ears curiously.

"Yese Liming!"

"Holy shit!!"

The classmate couldn't help crying out.

"For real?! You ran into that number-one player everyone's talking about on the forums?"

"You bet! I told you before, I'm in Mo Cun, and that guy's in Mo Cun too—bound to meet! And sure enough, this time we did!"

"H-he, is he strong? Tell me quick!"

Hearing the classmate's anxious tone, Hai Ming was this close to growing a tail and sticking it straight up in the air.

He immediately bragged about his own experience to his classmate—of course, he also made sure to describe the tail as his own admirer, flipping the script from a simp into a mature man radiating irresistible appeal to the opposite sex.

"Awesome! Sworn brothers with the game's number one! A stunning beauty as your soulmate—you're taking off!!"

The classmate's eyes turned red with envy, and Hai Ming thoroughly enjoyed it.

But then he remembered he could only run at night now and couldn't log in right away, not knowing whether his game character was alive or dead—his face immediately fell into gloom.

Speaking of which, his in-game character's shadow had run off for no apparent reason.

That was just too freaking weird and terrifying.

Luckily it was only a game—if it were in real life…

Hai Ming's thoughts suddenly jerked to a halt, his pupils contracting violently.

At that very moment, the two of them had just run under a streetlamp.

The light fell right onto Hai Ming.

And beneath the streetlamp's glow… he actually couldn't see his own shadow!!

How could that be?!

How could that be!!

Hai Ming's whole body was trembling, his mind nearly blank.

Under his buddy's puzzled expression, he sprinted home like a madman.

On the way out, it had taken him a full half hour to run here, but on the way back, he made it in just fifteen minutes!

It was the first time in his life he had run with everything he had—sprinted like his life depended on it!

When he got home, he used his key to open the door and rushed straight to his parents' room.

Luckily, his family didn't have the habit of locking their bedroom door from the inside when they slept.

He flung open the door, ignored his parents' screams, snatched back his Game Watch that belonged to him, Hai Ming bolted to his own room, turned on the light, locked the door from inside, and took one last look at his feet—his shadow was truly, completely gone. Trembling, Hai Ming put on the Game Watch and went straight into the game!

This game… there's something wrong with it!!

……

In the game.

Hai Ming had gone offline.

At first, noticing Hai Ming suddenly go blank-eyed, Fang Yue thought Hai Ming had been attacked by the shadow.

But after looking more closely—wow! What the heck, suddenly logging off and vanishing?!

Fang Yue's face darkened; the two women also realized at this point that Hai Ming hadn't been affected by the shadow, but had gone offline/zoned out just like before.

"Useless trash!!" Liao Moran clenched her small fists and moved a few steps closer to Fang Yue.

The tail shook its head slightly: "Running away is shameful, but it works."

If she weren't so attached to this character, the tail would have wanted to log off too.

The current situation was both bizarre and terrifying.

They had no idea where to find the shadow, and at any moment they might suffer inexplicable injuries.

The three seemed to have fallen into a predicament.

"Moran, you look after the two of them—I'm going to find the shadow."

After guarding here for quite a while, Fang Yue noticed the tail's health bar had already climbed back up, though her body was a bit weak, so he decided to set out and find the shadow.

If the shadow wasn't found, the tail's chances were slim.

The tail hesitated, then stopped trying to hold Fang Yue back.

As Fang Yue walked farther and farther away, disappearing from the two women's line of sight.

The surroundings grew silent.

Even though only one person was missing, both women inexplicably felt a certain sense of security had vanished.

The thick darkness around them seemed as if something might rush out at any moment and tear them apart.

"Hey… you, you suddenly coughed up blood earlier—what did it feel like?"

As if to break the silence, Liao Moran couldn't help but speak up to find a topic.

She was only a Hunter's granddaughter, unable to defeat even an ordinary Xiao Guiyi, yet now she found herself in such a dangerous situation—the fear in her heart was self-evident.

"The feeling? It's like… something bit a huge chunk of flesh out of my chest. That kind of pain was very real, and I can still recall it now. And the lingering ache is still there in my chest, even though no actual wound has appeared."

Hearing Tail's words, Liao Moran grew even more afraid.

She couldn't help but sob quietly.

"I, I want to go home, I want to go back to Mo Cun… wuu wuu wuu…"

Without Fang Yue guarding her nearby, she had become fragile.

Tail had no choice but to offer her a couple of words of comfort.

Time slowly passed. During it, they seemed to hear some heavy booming sounds, crashing sounds, but all very faint, as if coming from a position far from them, and they quickly faded back to calm.

"Tail, what if Captain Ye… doesn't come back? What should we do?"

"Find a way to survive, obviously." Tail said matter-of-factly, then thought for a moment and added: "But I believe in Ye Ge—he's not the kind of person who dies so easily. Before, a mid Black Grade Guiyi couldn't do anything to him, Shuilian Men couldn't do anything to him, and the shadow this time, he can definitely deal with it too!"

Tail had great confidence in Fang Yue, but when she tried to send a message to Fang Yue, it couldn't be delivered because the distance was too far.

This was almost impossible, because although Huanggui Yiji was large, it was still within the range for sending messages.

Unless… Fang Yue had run into that kind of special situation from before—the little black room of the Guiyi, where distance and space both seemed to be stretched out.

But Tail couldn't do anything either, and could only wait on the spot for good news from Fang Yue.

Yet the first person the two of them waited for was not Fang Yue, but Hai Ming.

"Hss—ha! Ha! Ha!"

Hai Ming looked like someone who had just been rescued after drowning, taking huge gulps of breath. His whole eyeballs were bulging wide, his expression and features all twisted, looking somewhat horrifying at a glance.

"Well, look at that! You still know how to come back to your senses!"

Liao Moran immediately put her hands on her hips and glared furiously at Hai Ming.

But Hai Ming completely ignored Liao Moran, only staring tensely at his own hands, then frantically groping the ground beneath his feet.

"The shadow… the shadow hasn't come back! My shadow is gone!"

(End of chapter)