It's time to become an evil god.

Splash, splash.

Ripples spread across the calm water, and a familiar figure slowly climbed ashore from the depths, lying on the ground panting heavily from exhaustion.

The anxiety and worry in the witch's eyes vanished instantly. She strode forward and demanded urgently and angrily, "W-what were you doing just now?"

"It's nothing."

Bai Ge raised his eyelids and said weakly, "I just had some sake from my hometown with some fellow villagers in the water."

The witch said irritably, "So, are you a mermaid or a water monkey?"

"neither."

Bai Ge paused for a moment and then explained, "I am a Deep Diver."

"..."

Unexpectedly, the most terrifying demon was still alive. The boatman hurriedly tried to leave, but Bai Ge grabbed his paper shroud. He turned around and saw a pair of seemingly harmless smiles. "Boatman, please wait here for a moment. We'll take your boat back later."

After a pause, Bai Ge added confidently, "Of course, we still won't give them any money."

The boatman gritted his teeth in anger, but finally said quietly, "It's a real pity you didn't take the civil service exam for the underworld."

At the end of the riverbank stands an old marble archway, inscribed with the three sinister and ominous characters "Gate of Hell".

Separated by life and death, the gates of hell.

Both Wenliang and the witch felt a jolt in their hearts.

Only Bai Ge looked excited and rubbed his hands together.

"I don't know why, but I feel a sense of familiarity when I see this archway."

He turned his head and said earnestly with deep emotion, "It feels so good, just like going home for the Chinese New Year."

Chapter Sixty-Seven: Killing the Dark Dragon

This is the fourth update; there will be a fifth update from the underworld later.

The steps beneath their feet were made of bones. As they slowly ascended, a magnificent yet eerie marble archway appeared before them. Ahead lay a dark and desolate wilderness, filled with old graves and tombstones amidst a thick white fog.

Bai Ge walked to the gates of hell, tentatively stepped out with one leg, then pulled it back, stepped out again, and pulled it back again.

The witch looked at the other person with a bewildered expression and asked, "What are you doing?"

While dancing, Bai Ge explained in a serious tone, "I'm constantly teetering on the edge of courting death."

"..."

After several attempts, the dense, pale arms that had been watching him recklessly reach out from the gates of hell didn't actually try to pull him away, as he had imagined.

Bai Ge took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and walked straight in.

In a flash, like a scene transition, the scene changed instantly.

The surrounding fog began to gradually thin, and from the outside, it was a completely different scene from actually entering the Gates of Hell. Bai Ge was shocked to find himself standing in a bizarre and strange city, a black and white, gloomy world, deathly still.

There are old, deep courtyard houses with white walls and black tiles dating back to the Republic of China era, with two lanterns, one red and one white, hanging above the gate. There are also Khrushchev-style family compound buildings constructed in the 1970s and 80s, and even reinforced concrete skyscrapers.

The streets were deserted; there wasn't a single person in sight.

The deserted streets were like an old, desolate forest in the deep mountains, with only a few rickety streetlights providing a faint, green light.

At that moment, the third phase of the mission echoed in the minds of the three.

[Mission 3: Hunt the Dark Dragon 0/1]

"Hunting the Nether Dragon?"

The three of them simultaneously raised a question mark, looked at each other in silence for a long time.

Bai Ge broke the silence first, saying, "If the Nether Dragon the system is referring to isn't the flying black mantis shrimp in the Child of Light (He Zhong), then it must be a real dragon, right?"

"impossible."

The witch stated firmly, "Even in the evolution game from the beginning until now, we have never encountered any so-called dragons in the dungeon games. Such legendary creatures cannot exist."

"Here I am."

Bai Ge seemed to recall something unpleasant, and said with a pale face, "My father, when I was very young, once saw a dragon."

The witch was stunned, and asked in return, "Did your father really see a dragon?"

Yes, in Dongguan.

"..."

After confirming three times that the mission would indeed block damage from teammates, the witch started looking for blood pressure medication in her inventory.

"Wait, there's a corpse up ahead."

As an assassin, Wenliang possesses exceptional insight. She grips her longsword in one hand, always ready to strike. Recently, she purchased dozens of sword technique scrolls from the flea market to compensate for the weaknesses of the Longfin Serpent.

However, before she could finish speaking, Bai Ge had already scurried over, patted the desiccated corpse in the corner, and asked in a sincere tone, "Friend, judging from the stench of your corpse, you're not a local, are you?"

"Sigh, it's not easy to leave your hometown. To be honest, I've been thinking of selling my house and moving to this beautiful place with its lovely environment and scenery, but the landlord just won't agree."

Watching Bai Ge chatting happily with a corpse in a foreign land, the witch's lips twitched. Could you be any more hellish?

"Huh? What's this?"

Bai Ge pried a jade pendant off the corpse and waved it in front of his two teammates.

The witch strode over, took the cold jade pendant from Bai Ge's hand, frowned, and looked back at the corpse, whispering, "Could this person be a member of the apocryphal school?"

"Wait, why are they in this godforsaken place? Could it be that they also have designs on the things of the underworld? Wait a minute!"

Recalling the information she had researched earlier, the witch instantly understood and revealed a surprised expression. "I get it! So the so-called 'walking the underworld' is the reappearance of the residual consciousness mixed in the world of the dead in the human world through the mysterious methods of yin and yang, feng shui, and qimen dunjia. And the place we are entering now is a world specially constructed by man!"

"What? Someone actually managed to do that?"

Bai Ge and Wen Liang both showed expressions of shock. According to the witch, this black and white world was another version of Silent Hill or Evil Spirit Possession.

So what exactly is this Nether Dragon they're looking for in this world?

The witch rested her chin on her hand, lost in thought. "Such bizarre and magnificent methods cannot be devised by ordinary people. The only one I can think of is the School of Prophecy."

"The School of Apocryphal Texts?"

This was the third time Bai Ge had heard the name of this mysterious organization, and he asked, "What exactly is the apocryphal school of thought?"

Wen Liang explained, "The Prophecy School is an ancient and mysterious organization that is skilled in all sorts of strange and unusual arts. No one knows its true intentions. This group has grand ambitions, and it was only after the Evolution Game began that this school gradually became active in the players' field of vision. Moreover, this organization is skilled in memetic infection and has released a lot of true and false information. Once someone tries to track down their whereabouts, they will be locked onto by the memes they have spread."

Membrane infection?

Bai Ge thought of the scene where he was attacked by a vengeful ghost after observing the scene before. Could it be that those guys were also people from the apocryphal school?

"If this underworld city was built by the apocryphal school, then at least we can find clues about their schemes here. The Special Affairs Bureau has been trying to find evidence against this group."

Yea.

Suddenly, the gate not far away opened a crack, and Wen Liang made his move in the blink of an eye before anyone could react. The hidden weapon in his hand flew over and stuck into the wooden door.

"Don't kill me, please don't kill me!"

The sudden sound made the witch stop her spell to summon a fireball to burn down the entire building. The three of them warily watched as a haggard, pale face peeked out from inside, timidly examining them. He asked weakly, "Excuse me, are you... alive?"

Instead of answering his question directly, Bai Ge used a different question: "Who are you?"

"My name is Wang He, and this is my friend Zhang Guan. We are hikers who came to Yinyuan Mountain for an adventure, but we got lost in a maze and ended up in this ghostly place without knowing why."

The two survivors looked at the uninvited guests with trepidation and asked weakly, "Can you rescue me?"

Bai Ge looked at the survivors in front of him with curiosity and asked, "Wait, how did you two get in?"

"We don't remember either..."

Wang He patted his head, trying hard to recall everything that had happened, and slowly said, "I only remember that we encountered a ghost wall and got separated from the rest of the team. We only had one pack of Master Kong braised beef noodles left, so the two of us had a dark duel. When I got my hand, I thought I was sure to win. But then my opponent gave me Ash Blossom, which I couldn't use, and then gave me Lava Demon, saying it would bring me a smile. It instantly turned from a turn-based game into an action fighting game."

"..."

"Oh, right."

Standing behind them, Zhang Guan seemed to remember something and whispered, "Besides the two of us outsiders, there are other local 'residents' living here. Would you like to pay them a visit?"

Chapter Sixty-Eight: If You Don't Go to Hell, Who Will?

This is the fifth update since yesterday.

You're saying there are still people living in this godforsaken place?

Bai Ge and the witch exchanged a glance, both seeing shock in each other's eyes.

“She lives in the heart of this ghost town.”

Wen Liang's eyes were full of suspicion. As someone who spent all day in dungeon games scheming and seeing all the deceit and treachery, he didn't seem to believe it. "Then take us there."

Wang He said with unease, "It's not that I can't take you there, but this place is full of evil things. You might not be able to get through it. Really, I advise you not to take the risk."

"Hahahaha."

Everyone heard a little girl singing a nursery rhyme in her sweet, childlike voice.

"One, two, three, the fifteenth of the seventh month, the gates of hell open on the fifteenth of the seventh month..."

"A child sits in a coffin, the moonlight shines as they visit a grave..."

"There's an old lady in the grave..."

Under the deathly still and gloomy night, all the shops on the quiet and dimly lit street corner had already closed, but suddenly a little girl's voice echoed in the air. Everyone stopped and looked in the direction from which the voice came.

In front, several children dressed in ancient-style ruqun (a type of traditional Chinese dress) stood hand in hand in the white mist.

Seeing that everyone was motionless, the child in the mist let out a strange laugh.

pat, pat, pat.

Holding hands, they took three more steps forward, then stopped and continued singing the eerie nursery rhyme.

"Four, five, six, my heart is in turmoil, the drowned girl wants to go home."

The child turned back to look at the others, letting out another eerie laugh. As the thick fog dissipated, Bai Ge seemed to have closed the distance between herself and the others considerably.

Bai Ge said in a friendly tone, "Little friend, come here, uncle has some lollipops here."