"Two skeletons equal Twelve-String?"
Hearing Chen Yuanye's words, Lin Yu rose without showing emotion.
"I understand, Senior Brother, it seems this map really is outdated."
Saying that, he folded the map and walked straight to Little Fire Dragon, Deadshot, and Squirtle.
"Tell me, what kind of demon did you encounter? How did you escape? Tell me every detail, from start to finish!"
Lin Yu asked bluntly, his tone more serious than ever.
But the three stared at each other, still hesitant.
"Well..."
Little Fire Dragon hesitated, and Lin Yu looked at him coldly.
"No matter what reason you have for not wanting to explain, now tell me everything from start to finish. This dungeon has major problems—this Taoist temple under our feet and the demons in this mountain are both very wrong."
"If you want to leave this dungeon alive, you'd better speak up."
At those words, Little Fire Dragon and Squirtle remained uncertain, but Deadshot spoke.
"Members of the Psychological Society, you're not trying to scare us on purpose, put pressure on us, are you?"
"If you personally think this dungeon has no problems, you don't have to believe me."
Lin Yu said lightly, and Deadshot nodded.
"Fine, I'll tell you—after we got lost, we accidentally wandered into the territory of a powerful demon and disturbed it..."
"At first we didn't even realize we had disturbed a demon. That demon disguised itself so convincingly as an ordinary human that we all assumed she was a pitiful local from the Prison Mountain Realm," Deadshot sighed, "then she tricked us and lured us into a trap..."
"The trap was a seemingly harmless cave. She said it was where her family stored things and asked us to retrieve some items for her... Luckily Little Fire Dragon had a warning item, so we didn't completely fall into it!"
Hearing this, Lin Yu roughly understood why the three had been hiding things—the experience of being deceived was probably too humiliating.
Even Deadshot's current wording was a little evasive. He didn't state the disguised demon's gender, but the use of the word "pitiful"... whether it meant "down-and-out pitiful" or "innocently pitiful," Lin Yu already had an idea.
"Are you sure it was a disguise, and not... a puppet or something?"
Lin Yu looked at Deadshot and asked seriously.
Deadshot frowned. "If you think that demon is connected to Chen Family Fort, maybe... but the one we met felt different from the people at Chen Family Fort, and she..."
"She vanished into thin air suddenly, right?"
Lin Yu asked softly.
"Yes, just like the escort guards who disappeared earlier," Deadshot said, astonished. "How did you know?"
"Summary and analysis... Right now, the methods the demon displays fall into two types: one makes people mysteriously disappear and affects the memories of related individuals, and the other manipulates the actions of puppets."
"And I'm speculating... could these two abilities actually be two stages of a single ability?"
Lin Yu said quietly.
"'Disappearance' might actually be the process of turning someone into a puppet."
This bold theory stunned Deadshot, Little Fire Dragon, and Squirtle.
"Th-then is this thing truly something we can fight?"
Lin Yu nodded. "Of course—since it needs such a long, convoluted method to create puppets, and we've already taken such extreme actions without much other reaction, that suggests that, aside from this method, the mastermind behind it might not have many other powerful techniques."
Lin Yu stood and looked outside the temple.
"Plus, the reason the location of the temple changed... I have a conjecture."
"This map is a map from a hundred years ago, and the temple you came out of is the temple's location from a hundred years ago. So could the mastermind's ability be related to time," Lin Yu said softly, "Of course, it might not be able to directly travel through time or manipulate time wildly, but perhaps its power can pull up the state of any 'object' at any time node it can manipulate or control."
The three players were surprised by this line of thought.
Deadshot asked, "What are you trying to get at?"
Lin Yu raised one finger. "Simple—some people in this temple appear fine, but actually, before they disappeared, they had already become that mastermind's 'puppets.'"
He turned to look at the escort guards. "If you consider the Chen Family Fort villagers as the mastermind's final-state mastery over a person—fully controlling a person's past and present—then 'disappearance' might be the penultimate stage, meaning it starts by controlling a person's present."
"And going backward further, 'memory' being affected could be an earlier stage," Lin Yu said with pity and a sigh, "Given that I confirmed their minds are intact, what has been altered is... their 'past.'"
"The reason they forget certain information isn't because their souls were tampered with, but because their 'past' no longer belongs to them."
Little Fire Dragon gasped in horror. "You mean these escort guards are beyond saving?!"
"Not only those guards, but also Chen Yuanye, who is deeply entangled with Chen Family Fort," Lin Yu paused and looked at the three players.
"Of course, that includes the three of you."
"What?!"
Deadshot exclaimed, and Lin Yu said quietly, "Act now, A Nian."
"Received, received."
Without them realizing when, Li Nian had quietly circled behind them and spoke softly.
The three instinctively reached for their weapons, but suddenly felt their bodies go limp.
They were all paralyzed.
Li Nian picked up the empty Paralysis Potion bottle on the ground and smiled widely.
"Sorry, sirs, my apologies for offending you."
Little Fire Dragon hurriedly protested, "You must have the wrong idea, we really didn't cause trouble..."
"You people from the Psychological Society, I think you're just looking for an excuse to take us down!"
Deadshot said angrily.
Lin Yu sighed. "How pitiful, still trapped in the past, huh, everyone... I'll ask you one question."
"What is the objective of your dungeon run this time?"
Lin Yu asked, and the three looked at each other.
"Why are you asking that? Aren't we all in the same one?!"
Lin Yu shook his head.
"I think maybe not, because one big reason I judged this game to be a Competition dungeon is that our instance is called Escort the Darts."
"So not long after starting, we met up with an escort team, and the mastermind here shows a strong interest in the escort cart."
"But the three of you," Lin Yu stroked his chin, "you didn't seem to show any interest in the escort team from start to finish."
"So I have a bold guess..."
"You three might not be in the same dungeon as us."
