"There's one body missing." Lu Mingze and Wu Zishu said in unison.
Cao Qian looked around and nodded, "The City Lord's body is indeed missing."
Guan Ling and Qian Jinlai looked at each other and asked, "Tell us what you three have concluded."
Lu Mingze: "Although I don't know how many people there are, I think the city lord must still be alive. He must be the villain who gave the statue the mirror, so there is one person missing."
Cao Qian: "According to Yuna's description, the city lord is 185cm tall or taller. Judging from the skeletons, the people here are all under 180cm tall, so the city lord must not be here."
The Wordless Book said: "First, I don't see any diamonds. Logically, after everyone dies, the diamond heart should split into eight pieces and remain where it was, but there are no diamonds here, so someone must have taken them. Second, although the pattern on the ground has eight standing positions and several bodies are lying in the corresponding positions, there should be another person in the middle of the formation. There are different bloodstains here, but no one is there. Based on these characteristics, the person who presided over this ceremony may still be alive."
Very good, Guan Ling and Qian Jinlai nodded, and decided to just listen to the conclusion in the future and not try to find the answer anymore.
The hall was clear at a glance. Apart from a few dry bones, there was only a book in the corner and a pair of blood-stained boots lying next to the book.
Lu Mingze picked up the boots and heard the narrator's prompt: "Obtain the boots. Current boot quest progress is 0.81, total quest progress is 46."
"Why is it 0.8?" Lu Mingze asked curiously, "Does it mean it's finished only after the boots are cleaned?"
The wordless book said, "The bloodstains on the boots seem to have been stained during a ritual. They are not ordinary bloodstains and should be purified."
"Even so, I still think the process of finding the boots is too simple." Lu Mingze felt something was wrong. After all, it was five times more difficult.
The Wordless Book said, "It's normal for these staged quests to reveal clues to the next quest and the main storyline after completing one. After we convinced Yuna, we got a clue about a demonic ritual on the third underground floor. We originally thought this was a clue to the Diamond Heart. But the Diamond Heart is the Little Prince, and we didn't find the Diamond Heart underground. Instead, we found the combat boots. So the clue we got from the ritual on the third underground floor didn't belong to the Diamond Heart, but to the combat boots."
"But I still feel something is wrong..." Lu Mingze muttered, "Actually, it's not just the combat boots. I think getting the golden armor is too easy... And we didn't encounter any difficulties with the clue to the Ocean Blue Eye. The most serious problem is that Yuna doesn't want to see us because we're short. But it's not a big deal. Yan Hebi's height can solve the problem. The game prompts that the difficulty is five times greater. Is it really that simple?"
He recalled how, in the church, if he had rashly destroyed the door, the seal would have been lifted, proving the game itself was difficult and full of traps, with the slightest carelessness leading to failure. Following this principle, it followed that both the golden armor and the boots must harbor hidden dangers, but what exactly was it?
Unable to figure it out for the time being, Lu Mingze picked up the book next to his combat boots and found that he could unexpectedly understand the handwriting in the book. The book recorded a ritual to summon demons. The specific procedure was to obtain a divine object and prepare eight scapegoats as sacrifices. The person standing in the middle of the formation would become a demon capable of trampling on God after the ceremony.
Lu Mingze read the contents of the book to everyone and said, "Judging from the formations in this book, the city lord's goal from the beginning was not to become a god and gain eternal life, but to become a demon. The divine object was the Diamond Heart. He used the nobles in the city to perform a ritual, and the demon descended. The bishop noticed this in time and sealed the demon with his life and the Holy Sword. I took the Holy Sword away, and the seal only lasted for three days. So in three days, will the demon that the city lord has become awaken?"
Cao Qian asked, "Where is the demon sealed? In the church's formation or here?"
"It should be sealed here." Lu Mingze pointed to the center of the devil ritual.
"That must be this place." Cao Qian said in agreement.
The others did not refute or ask, and if Lu Mingze said yes, it was definitely yes.
Lu Mingze put down his boots, squatted down with the book in his hand, and stared at the summoning ceremony intently. After watching for a while, he felt a little dizzy, shook his head, and looked up to see that the expressions of his companions were not very good. Cao Qian clenched her fists, as if she was enduring something?
"What's wrong with you?" Lu Mingze asked in confusion.
"I'm upset," Cao Qian frowned. "The evil energy here is the same as what we encountered last night. It can amplify people's negative emotions. Aren't you affected?"
"No, but let's go upstairs quickly." Seeing that everyone was feeling unwell, Lu Mingze picked up his combat boots and book and suggested that everyone go upstairs.
Everyone readily agreed, and they left this depressing place and went to the basement.
The captured bandits never woke up and remained in a coma. Lu Mingze had worried about their food problem, but the statue told him that bandits were different from the residents. They were half-demons and could absorb demonic energy at night to fill their stomachs, so they didn't need to be fed.
Several people came to the City Lord's Mansion, but did not go out. They saw Yuna working attentively through the wall. Yan Hebi was originally accompanying Yuna, but when he saw everyone waving at him in the City Lord's Mansion, he ran over to join everyone.
At this time, the progress of Lu Mingze's golden armor has reached 0.6. At this rate, the golden armor can be installed tomorrow.
Lu Mingze said, "I always feel like something's wrong. Let's go through the missions here. We have six missions in total. The bandits have been caught and imprisoned. The holy sword is in the hands of the statue. The golden armor is being repaired. The combat boots have been found and just need to be cleaned and exorcised. At night, we should find clues to the Ocean Blue Eye. Finally, I, the Diamond Heart, will return to the statue, and the mission progress will reach 66. What will happen after this?"
Cao Qian said: "The Son of God statue is restored, the evil spirit is eliminated, the residents return to normal, and a new system is established. Under the supervision of the statue and the self-government, everyone works together to build the town?"
"That seems to be true, but..."
Lu Mingze's intuition has always been accurate, but he couldn't figure out why he always felt uneasy, so he puffed up his face and pondered.
Xing Ye saw that he was thinking too hard, so he reminded him: "All your tasks, although the progress is apparently complete, there are hidden dangers."
"What hidden danger?" asked Yan Hebi, who finally understood the situation. His eyes fell on the wordless book and he was reluctant to look away.
"The bandits are half-demons. Although we have killed the flying monsters they formed, according to the statue, they can survive on demonic energy, which means that the bandits are still monsters. And underground is the summoning ceremony. Will they absorb the demonic energy from the underground ceremony and become stronger?" Cao Qian raised a question.
"Based on my personal experience, which is based on reading melodramatic stories about scumbag men and bitches, can a woman who has been deceived so deeply easily give up her love for that scumbag city lord?" Qian Jinlai's face was full of disbelief. "I'm surprised why Yuna is acting so calm. Doesn't she hate the city lord? Doesn't she want to burn the man who deceived her and killed her father to ashes? When we were about to enter the third underground floor, she didn't even want to come down to see the city lord's whereabouts. I think it's so weird!"
"Guga, guga, is it because you've watched too many melodramas?"
"What's that sound?" Qian Jinlai was startled. "Am I hallucinating? Why do I seem to hear Linlin's voice? And the quacking of ducks?"
Cao Qian took out the swan crystal pendant and said to Qian Jinlai, "Linlin, our other roommate. The three of us currently share a three-bedroom apartment. In this world, Linlin is a swan crystal prop."
"The prop is a person..." Qian Jinlai blinked and couldn't help but look at the book in Lu Mingze's hand. She had never seen Xing Ye's true form.
Wu Zi Shu felt everyone's gaze and said calmly, "Qian Jinlai's words make sense. Yuna's eyes were the only thing that was demonized, which is her own account. As someone at the center of the story, whether her heart has also been polluted is unknown, but this is indeed a hidden danger."
His tone became so serious that the others also returned to their mission from the melodramatic plot. Guan Ling said, "I, I might be used to repairing things. I always feel that the connection between the hilt and the blade of that holy sword is a bit poor. When Cao Qian was suppressing the bandits, I seemed to see the sword sway, but I'm not sure if Cao Qian's strength was too great and broke the sword."
Cao Qian pointed at the boots and said, "For the fourth mission, there's blood all over the boots. It could be from the demon-summoning ritual, or even the City Lord's. We might not be able to clean the blood off them, and we don't have proper methods to exorcise the demon, so it's a potential risk."
"The specific situation of the Ocean Blue Eye is unclear, but Yuna said that a noble lady got it. The eight victims who fell on the third floor underground were also nobles. Could they be related?" The Wordless Book raised a new question.
Yan Hebi raised his hand and said, "I was just chatting with Yuna, and she mentioned the noble lady who took the Ocean Blue Eye. Yuna said that this lady has always been dissatisfied with her status as a commoner and may not want the city to be restored. According to Yuna, the noble lady might be more willing to follow the city lord."
"And me," Lu Mingze pointed at himself. "Once all five of these tasks are completed, I'll give up my life and transform into a diamond heart. That doesn't sound happy at all."
Seeing everyone fall silent, Wu Zi Shu offered a hint, "Generally, games have a main ending and a true ending after a reversal. The true ending often overturns everything in the main ending."
"Subverted..." Lu Mingze's mind flashed with inspiration after being prompted by the wordless book. He flipped through the book that contained the details of the ritual. "It says that once the ritual is complete, the eight sacrifices will be reduced to ashes, their souls and bodies no longer existing. But the bodies of the eight sacrifices are still there on the third underground floor, which means the ritual is not yet complete."
"One more thing," the wordless book suggested, "those who wish to become demons must possess a divine object and find eight sacrifices. Both Yuna and the statue mentioned that the diamond heart was divided among eight nobles by the city lord."
Cao Qian clapped her hands. "If the diamond heart is a divine object, why would the city lord divide it among eight nobles? What the victim gets must be insignificant."
"Then what is the object that truly possesses divinity?" Guan Ling asked.
Everyone had the answer in their hearts at the same time: "Son of God."
Xing Ye breathed a sigh of relief when everyone finally guessed what had happened. He concluded, "It was the Son of God whose golden armor hadn't been removed, whose eyes and body parts had been taken away. During the ceremony, the city lord believed the diamond heart possessed divinity. But after he obtained the diamond heart, he realized that the Son of God's divinity had been lost long before people's faith gradually faded."
"So he must wait, until someone comes to repair the statue and awaken the Son of God, so that he can restart the ceremony.
"We appear to be completing the mission, but in fact, we are providing the city lord with an opportunity to complete the ritual!"