Chapter 207: Heredity
Lu Jinzhao temporarily had no plans to modify tonight’s mission.
Even though she knew very well there would definitely be danger tonight, she only planned to go and personally test what kind of danger she would encounter.
She knew the life-buying money on her was certainly not much compared to passengers with more experience, and modifying the time for the first mission had cost 500, while tonight’s mission clearly had many places that could be modified, so randomly modifying before determining the most critical point might just be wasting life-buying money.
What’s more, she couldn’t confirm how much money modifications would cost, and this was only the second mission; as time passed, future missions would surely become increasingly dangerous, forcing her to use life-buying money even more cautiously.
For now, let’s try with her own power.
Her mission start time was 12:30, while Tian Lei’s was 1:10; from the time, Lu Jinzhao guessed that tonight’s mission also started from midnight 12 o’clock, and combined with the no teaming up in the mission, it was clear that this mission still required the passenger to enter the ancestral hall alone to complete.
Therefore, there was no need to modify her time slot.
What felt most dangerous in the mission description wasn’t those prohibition commands, but [placing the tablet 5 meters away from herself].
On the night she got the tablet, she had experimented with Tian Lei; the tablet would automatically start deducting fees once 5 meters away from her, but now with the mission requiring it to be away from her body, it naturally wouldn’t deduct fees, though that might not be a good thing.
She had a premonition that perhaps the most expensive modification in this mission would be that 5-meter range.
“No rush to modify for now.” Lu Jinzhao looked at the time gradually approaching 12 o’clock and reminded Tian Lei.
“Okay.” Tian Lei nodded; with nothing to do for the moment, she told Lu Jinzhao about today’s observations.
The information gathered in the village was mostly the same as what Lu Jinzhao had learned; some details filled in Lu Jinzhao’s guesses, making her even more certain of her thoughts, but what surprised Lu Jinzhao was that Tian Lei said she saw infighting break out at the platform with the most people, and one person died.
What surprised Lu Jinzhao wasn’t the death, but that the woman chose infighting, won, and was unexpectedly seen by Tian Lei.
Tian Lei looked somewhat ashamed and said, “But I saw it by peeking, um… probably wasn’t discovered.”
Lu Jinzhao was aware of this; Tian Lei had quite a few supernatural props, mostly for survival and tools, including but not limited to tracking, peeking, eavesdropping, and so on.
The kind that sounded very ominous just hearing about it.
But information gathering was quite convenient.
“No one stopped their infighting?” Lu Jinzhao asked.
“Um,” Tian Lei tilted her head slightly in thought: “Seems not, I can’t be sure, I only saw two supernatural powers flickering.”
“Ah, where were you standing when you peeked?”
Tian Lei smiled shyly: “Pretty far away.”
As soon as she got off, she used her supernatural props to leave a mark on everyone present; the mark didn’t have much effect—one was sensing supernatural power, the other was sensing life status.
Beyond that, it had no other function, so it was extremely concealed and hard to detect, and it itself wouldn’t emit supernatural fluctuation, just like quietly sticking a small piece of paper on someone’s back.
But it did have a shape—a dark blue finger mark left on the back; however, at the platform, few passengers would be naked with others, so it was hard to notice.
When Tian Lei left the marks, she remembered the person each mark represented; that afternoon, she sensed supernatural fluctuations from the mark holders of two marks—they had used their fate or supernatural props, she couldn’t tell which, but soon, one of the mark holders died.
It wasn’t that the mark was erased, but that the person died.
She immediately went nearby to check and didn’t sense any ghost’s aura remaining.
Combined with what Lu Jinzhao told her after they met up, she could confirm it was probably because of the tablet that infighting occurred.
She didn’t tell Lu Jinzhao about this supernatural prop, but she did tell her what she discovered; Tian Lei thought this didn’t count as hiding it.
Lu Jinzhao clearly understood her and didn’t pursue how she “saw” from afar, which let Tian Lei breathe a sigh of relief.
After all, if Lu Jinzhao insisted on asking, she felt she would probably explain honestly, but she didn’t want to be that honest.
Time passed bit by bit; this time, Lu Jinzhao didn’t leave the room too early, but opened the door and walked out of the courtyard about five minutes before her mission time.
When she stepped out the door, the “life-buying money” from the blood script mark on her arm clearly decreased by 1, but the decrease was slow, probably because she went out late enough, close enough to the mission time.
And when time reached two minutes before the mission, the money stopped decreasing.
At this moment, standing at the intersection to the ancestral hall was only Lu Jinzhao alone.
It seemed people from other platforms also judged that tonight’s mission didn’t need to be “rushed.”
“After all, no one here is stupid,” Lu Jinzhao thought with some regret.
Time was about right; she stepped toward the ancestral hall, arriving at the ancestral hall entrance just one minute short.
According to Lin Lin and the Divine Calculator, missions with explicit time requirements allowed about 5 seconds of error; completing within the error wouldn’t cause issues, but exceeding 5 seconds could trigger uncertain “punishment”—some deducted money, some direct mission failure, severity depending on the mission requirements.
5 seconds was enough for Lu Jinzhao.
The ancestral hall door was closed; Lu Jinzhao raised her hand to push it open.
A slight creaking of wood came from the door crack, and the door opened easily.
At 56 seconds, Lu Jinzhao looked up into the ancestral hall; she saw a silhouette, a trembling one kneeling on the kneeling cushion—she recognized it as a passenger.
At 57 seconds, that passenger fearfully left the kneeling cushion, crawled forward a few steps in panic, grabbed the tablet she had placed on the ground, then tremblingly stood up quickly and ran toward the ancestral hall entrance.
She crossed paths with Lu Jinzhao, who was entering the ancestral hall; Lu Jinzhao saw this person’s face distorted by fear, the trembling pupils in that instant as they brushed shoulders, and the panic covering her whole body.
What did she encounter inside the ancestral hall?
At 59 seconds, Lu Jinzhao had placed the tablet on the ground; after a brief thought, when 12:30 arrived exactly, she didn’t choose to kneel on the kneeling cushion but stood in the center of the ancestral hall—she wanted to see what would happen.
—Bang
It was the sound of the ancestral hall door slamming shut.
Not closed by the passenger who ran away; Lu Jinzhao heard her panicked footsteps already running far away.
And at this place, at this moment, there were no other living people, so this door closed by itself?
