Legend of the Heroes of Another World's Divine Tower

"Damn, I didn't expect it to smell this bad!" As soon as he stepped into the camp gate, an indescribable stench hit him, causing Zhou Yanyu, who was controlling Lin Chi's body, to stagger. He felt as if he had swallowed a pound of swill, and his stomach was churning.

"Can't even handle this?" Lin Chi's soul, which was floating to the side, saw Zhou Yanyu's discomfiture and his tense face finally relaxed a little, a faint disdain curling at the corner of his mouth.

"How could that be! A man never says 'no'!" Zhou Yanyu suppressed his nausea, deliberately flicked his slightly oversized black cloak, and walked into the camp with a hunched back.

The camp's front yard was the standard scene after every "party," with drunken bandits sprawled on the ground, snoring and mumbling in their sleep. A few more presentable ones were sprawled out in their tattered tents.

Zhou Yanyu quietly passed through the group of drunkards lying around and arrived at the main gate of the mansion. He stopped and turned his head slightly to look at Lin Chi, who was floating beside him.

"Kid, it's still five or six hours until dawn... I reckon. With your skill level, how many hallucinogenic grenades can you make in that time?" he asked in a low voice, his eyes gleaming with calculating intent.

"Heh," Lin Chi's soul drifted down a bit, his face showing undisguised disdain, "You're so capable, why don't you do it yourself? What, do you not know how to do it? Or do you have to wait for me to 'possess' you and teach you step by step?" He deliberately dragged out the word "don't know".

"Are you kidding me!" Zhou Yanyu immediately retorted, sticking his neck out. "I was just asking! I'm afraid I might just casually produce seventy or eighty of them later, which would scare you to death!"

After stubbornly finishing his statement, he realized he had let something slip, so he quickly coughed and stopped asking questions. He then continued to imitate Eli, tiptoeing towards Lin Chi's room.

As I passed by Shangguan Qiluo's room, I vaguely heard some unusual noises coming from inside, like soft, pleasurable moans—it was a man!

"Whoa!" Zhou Yanyu stopped immediately, his ear almost pressed against the door, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. He turned to the floating soul of Lin Chi and winked, "Could it be that old bastard Lin Feng? Tsk tsk, not suitable for children, kids shouldn't listen."

"Boring! Let's go!" Lin Chi's face darkened, and he urged impatiently, "Tell me, how exactly are you planning to use hallucinogenic grenades to take down the BOSS? We haven't even seen a glimpse of the BOSS yet, and all we've heard is your bragging!"

"What's the rush? I'll tell you now." Zhou Yanyu then stopped joking and quickened his pace to slip into Lin Chi's room.

So, after Zhou Yanyu entered the room, he awkwardly made a hallucinogenic grenade while lowering his voice and beginning his deduction.

"Do you remember that strange noise in the valley?" Zhou Yanyu seemed to be wearing Conan-style glasses and a bow tie at this moment.

"I know, what's wrong? Is the BOSS really down there?" Lin Chi floated to the worktable, looking at him with a puzzled expression, while at the same time feeling that some strange but inexplicably catchy background music was playing around them.

"No, no, no, young man, the key to the problem is not the 'location'," Zhou Yanyu held up a finger and shook it, "but the 'sound' itself."

"Let's review the 'crime scene'," Zhou Yanyu mimicked a detective's tone. "You threw several grenades of different capacities, right? Why were there no explosions at first, but starting from 'one-third' capacity, that strange sound 'reported' right on time with every subsequent explosion?"

"This shows that the 'one-third' capacity is a key 'node'!" Zhou Yanyu said confidently.

"I know that," Lin Chi replied thoughtfully, arms crossed.

"The key isn't the location, but because—" Zhou Yanyu stopped what he was doing, turned around, his gaze seemingly piercing through the wall to the boundless darkness outside the window, "that sound likely didn't come from some 'creature' in the valley, but from this entire expanse of 'darkness'!"

"Darkness?" Lin Chi frowned, not quite understanding. "You mean...air?"

"No, it's 'Darkness' itself!" Zhou Yanyu's eyes gleamed. "'Mechanical Level' means that there is a unique puzzle in this level. Only by solving it can we defeat the BOSS. The people of your world have not discovered the BOSS in this level because they are trapped in a fixed mindset—believing that the BOSS must be some kind of 'entity'."

"But is it possible that the boss of this floor isn't a physical entity at all, but rather this omnipresent, ethereal 'darkness'?" He pointed to the impenetrable darkness outside the window, "and what can restrain, or even 'defeat' this darkness, is what you've been researching—'hallucinogenic sunlight'!"

"The Sunflower is the medium, but it must release a sufficient amount of hallucinogenic sunlight for it to have any effect on the BOSS!"

Lin Chi was stunned for a few seconds.

"But I reached that 'one-third' point, and it only produced a sound, without any other changes, right? Then..." He suddenly slapped his forehead and excitedly floated in front of Zhou Yanyu.

"It's 'time'! The hallucinogenic light doesn't last long enough! So we need 'bouncing grenades' that can extend its duration? But I haven't even successfully developed that myself! How are you going to do it?"

"Kid, not bad! Your thinking is quite agile, you can keep up with the pace of my 21st-century most powerful brain!" Zhou Yanyu nodded approvingly, but then put on a senior's air and pretended to stroke his chin.

"But that's not enough! Why get hung up on 'bouncing'? If we just have enough ordinary hallucinogenic grenades, and throw them out one after another without any gaps, like setting off firecrackers, wouldn't we be able to artificially create the effect of 'continuous illumination'? Simple, brutal, and effective!"

"Tch." Lin Chi curled his lip, not wanting to see Zhou Yanyu's smug look with his face on it anymore. He turned around and wanted to float to the bed to "lie" for a while, but he forgot that he was in soul form and passed through the floor and fell to the first floor.

"Squeak—"

Just then, the room door was pushed open very slowly and slightly!

Zhou Yanyu reacted extremely quickly, instantly extinguishing the Soul-Suppressing Lamp! The room was plunged into complete darkness.

"Who's in there?!" Shangguan Qiluo's alert voice rang out. She held up the Soul-Suppressing Lamp in one hand and a gleaming kitchen knife in the other!

Using the light, her sharp gaze quickly swept across every corner of the room.

However, outside the halo of the Soul-Suppressing Light, the darkness was so thick that no details could be seen at all.

But suddenly she pointed the knife at the table where Zhou Yanyu was hiding, her voice icy: "I see you! Come out!"

Zhou Yanyu's heart skipped a beat, and his body instantly froze. This girl saw me?!

"Stop pretending! It's under the table!" Seeing no movement, Shangguan Qiluo took a step forward, her cleaver gleaming coldly. "Come out now, and there's still room for explanation!"

Zhou Yanyu broke out in a cold sweat. How could they see that? They opened it, didn't they?! They didn't even bother to act!

Left with no other option, he raised his hands and crawled out from under the table.

"Uncle Ming?" Shangguan Qiluo recognized the distinctive black cloak and hunched figure in the lamplight, but then frowned. "Wait! Who are you?!"

"It's me, Sister Qiluo!" Zhou Yanyu imitated Lin Chi's usual tone, slowly removing his hood and mask as he spoke. "It's Lin Chi! I left something important behind, and my mother asked me to come back and get it."

However, when Lin Chi's familiar yet somewhat unfamiliar face was fully exposed to the light, Shangguan Qiluo was shocked, her pupils suddenly contracted, and goosebumps instantly covered her arms!

"Lin Chi? How is that possible? You were already..." She took a half step back in disbelief, her voice trembling slightly.

"Yes, yes, Sister Qiluo~! It's your adorable Chichi who's back~!" Zhou Yanyu blinked, deliberately using an even sweeter tone to act younger, and even made a pouty face.

But Shangguan Qiluo quickly recovered from her shock, her eyes suddenly becoming sharp as knives! She made a judgment almost instantly—this "Lin Chi" in front of her was definitely not Lin Chi!

"Stop playing tricks!" she hissed, flicking her wrist as the kitchen knife whistled through the air and slashed at Zhou Yanyu without hesitation! At the same time, a clear energy fluctuation erupted from her body—level twenty-three!

"Holy crap! Ah Zhen? You're serious?!" Zhou Yanyu exclaimed. Luckily, he was a parkour master and managed to dodge the fierce attacks by rolling and scrambling, finally hiding in a corner of the room.

"Lin Chi! If you don't come back and take over the 'business' soon, your brother Yu and I are really going to die here!" Zhou Yanyu shouted hurriedly to the bottom of the room as he saw Shangguan Qiluo's second slash coming down.

Before he finished speaking, Lin Chi's soul instantly returned to his body!

"Sister Qiluo!" The familiar voice and eyes that belonged to the real Lin Chi appeared at the same time.

Just as Shangguan Qiluo was about to swing her knife for the second time, she suddenly stopped, abruptly withdrawing her strength, and the cleaver fell to the ground with a clatter.

She looked at the boy who had suddenly "changed" back in front of her with surprise and doubt.

"Lin Chi? Your soul state... what happened just now?" She took two steps back, her eyes still full of vigilance.

"Ouch, that little brat really went all out!" Zhou Yanyu's soul, now floating back into the air, touched his neck with a look of lingering fear. He then instantly appeared in front of the still-shaken Shangguan Qiluo, extending a semi-transparent finger to poke her cheek. "But you reacted pretty quickly; thankfully, you didn't actually cut her off!"

"Ah—!!!" Shangguan Qiluo was terrified when she saw the semi-transparent uncle's soul floating in mid-air, grinning at her. She let out a short and shrill scream, jumped back, leaned against the wall, her face ashen, and pointed at Zhou Yanyu with a trembling finger.

"There's a ghost!!"