A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

Zhou Lang glanced at her. When Han Yingying said "above average," her eyes darted to the left.

She was being modest.

The three entered the safe zone. It looked like a dilapidated town, with various stalls lining the streets selling weapons, information, and skill books. Players came and went, and many would glance at Han Yingying twice—the live stream's popularity had clearly spread.

"Isn't that the person who cleared the S-rank dungeon?"

"Is that her? She looks pretty ordinary."

"Normal? Why don't you try an S-rank dungeon?"

There were also less friendly voices mixed in with the crowd:

"I heard she offended a blood pact; isn't that courting death?"

"Those who team up with her are also doomed; they'll be hunted down by the blood pact."

Han Yingying slowed her pace.

She walked to a dead tree in the corner of the safe zone, turned around, and looked at Zhou Lang and Zhao Qiang.

"I have something to tell you."

Zhao Qiang blinked: "Go ahead and say it."

"Let's unbind," Han Yingying said. "I'm ending our team relationship."

Zhao Qiang was stunned.

Zhou Lang's expression didn't change much, but he spoke up: "Why?"

"You saw the comments. Blood Pact won't let me off the hook. I killed their people in the dungeon, and they'll definitely settle this score." Han Yingying's voice was soft. "My teammates A, B, and C... I've already sent them away too. If you're tied to me, you'll only get dragged down with me."

"You told them to leave, and they left?" Zhou Lang retorted.

Han Yingying choked for a moment: "...He hasn't replied yet."

"That settles it then." Zhao Qiang suddenly interjected, "You told people to leave before they even left, and now you're telling us to leave first. I may be a little timid, but I'm not so timid as to run away just because someone scares me a couple of times."

He was stunned for a moment after he finished speaking, probably not expecting that he could say such a thing.

Han Yingying looked at Zhou Lang.

Zhou Lang was flipping through the map on his terminal, not even looking up: "If you really wanted to shake us off, you wouldn't have come to this corner to say it; you would have just disappeared."

Han Yingying opened her mouth, but said nothing.

Three messages pop up on the terminal, from A, B, and C.

A: [Sis, what kind of melodramatic act are you putting on? If I wanted to leave, I would have left already.]

B: [Blood pact? I'm afraid of them? I even beat up one of their support staff in the arena last time.]

C: [B, stop bragging. That logistics guy is just AFK. Sis, we're not leaving. Don't rush us; the more you rush us, the less we'll leave.]

Han Yingying clipped the terminal to her lap.

After a while, she stood up and dusted off her skirt.

"Let's go then."

"Where to?" Zhao Qiang asked.

"Let's find a place to rest first." Han Yingying turned around and walked quickly. "We don't know when the next dungeon will open, so we need to prepare."

She walked ahead without ever looking back.

When Zhou Lang followed her, he noticed that her ears were a little red.

White light.

It was white light again.

The moment Han Yingying sprang out of bed, the alarm clock showed 3:17 a.m.

The light filtering through the curtains was unusual—not the orange glow of a streetlamp, but a bluish-white. She walked barefoot to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain, and looked outside.

The streets were deserted, but the streetlights flickered on and off at an extremely slow pace. On, off, on, off, with intervals of about four seconds.

Han Yingying's fingers tightened slightly.

She'd seen this rhythm before. In the corridor of the third instance, on the path leading to the forbidden area, the overhead lights flashed just like that.

She put on her coat and pulled a folding knife from under her pillow—the only thing she brought back to reality from the bizarre world. After the S-rank dungeon, her physical abilities underwent a qualitative change; three or four ordinary people couldn't stop her. But what truly alerted her wasn't her physical strength, but her perception.

After returning from the dungeon, she began to be able to "smell" strange odors.

It was a smell similar to the rust of metal mixed with humus; the higher the concentration, the more eerie it smelled. And now—

She took a deep sniff of the air.

Yes. It's very faint, but it's definitely there.

"Something's happened," she muttered, grabbing her phone and heading outside.

The hallway was quiet. The neighbors' doors were closed, but warm light shone through the cracks. Han Yingying went downstairs, pushed open the unit door, and the cold early morning wind rushed into her collar.

The streetlights are still flashing.

She walked east along the street, noting a coordinate in her phone's notes every so often. The eerie smell lingered, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, as if something was moving underground. She stopped at the third intersection.

Right in the middle of the intersection, a crack appeared in the asphalt pavement.

The slit wasn't wide, about two fingers thick, but a very thin wisp of bluish-gray smoke rose from it. The smoke dissipated after rising half a meter high, and it was almost invisible unless you looked closely.

Han Yingying crouched down and approached the crack.

The smoke stung her skin. Goosebumps rose on her arms as the terminal—the one that should only exist in the bizarre world—vibrated in her pocket.

She took it out to look.

There is only one line of text on the screen:

[Warning: An unusual concentration anomaly has been detected in the real space. Current area concentration: 0.3%.]

0.3 percent. It doesn't sound like much, but Han Yingying remembers it clearly: when she first entered the eerie dungeon, the concentration indicator at the entrance was 1 percent.

In other words, the level of eeriness in the real world has reached nearly one-third of that at the dungeon entrance.

She stood up and walked further away.

The second crack appeared at the base of a primary school's wall. The third was next to an abandoned power distribution room. Each crack emitted that bluish-gray smoke, and the concentration readings on the terminals were slowly rising.

0.4 percent.

0.5 percent.

When she reached the seventh crack, Han Yingying suddenly stopped.

It wasn't that she wanted to stop—she simply couldn't walk anymore.

It felt like stepping into asphalt, my feet were stuck to the ground by something. The surrounding air became viscous, and the streetlights suddenly started flashing more frequently, once a second, once every half second, faster and faster, until finally they went out completely.

A sound like a sigh came from the darkness.

"Stop investigating."

The voice had no source; it seemed to appear directly in her mind. The temperature plummeted, and her exhaled breath turned into white mist.

Han Yingying gripped the folding knife tightly and forcefully lifted her foot—the sole of her shoe made a tearing sound, and the sticky feeling on the ground broke. She jumped abruptly, landing three meters away.

"Trying to stop me?"

She flicked her blade. The skill she awakened after the S-rank dungeon covered the blade with a pale blue light. This light was effective against eerie creatures; she had tested it in the basement of the haunted manor—one strike and a level three eerie creature was instantly destroyed.

That voice disappeared.

The sticky feeling underfoot disappeared. The streetlights came back on, and their frequency returned to normal.

But Han Yingying didn't relax. She stared into the darkness in front of her, slowly took a few steps back, and only after confirming that there was nothing unusual did she sheathe her sword and turn around.

On her way back, she sorted through her discoveries from the evening.