Chapter 40: The Death of the Poet (5)
Inside the instance, Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng boredly set off fireworks for half the night, finally welcoming a sunrise.
After resting for a bit, the two headed to Cecilia’s Bakery to eat some bread and line their stomachs before continuing to wander blindly around the city like headless flies.
“In the end, we might not be beaten to death by the boss, but rather die of thirst,” Jin Cheng remarked.
There was no water in the city. Let alone washing up, they had to be extremely careful just eating bread to avoid choking to death.
Tang Cuo didn’t want to waste his saliva, so he wisely chose to shut up and switch to energy-saving mode. Jin Cheng didn’t say much more either. He carried a glazed lantern in his hand and didn’t put it down even when day broke.
For the better part of the day, the two continued to spend their time on side quests. Repairing a roof, finding a few items, running errands from the west side of the city to the east, and taking a quick detour to the central palace.
If the players didn’t attack, the vines wouldn’t suddenly come alive. The two smoothly walked up to the palace gates and tested all their side quest reward items, including the Nightingale ring, but none triggered any effects.
The reward items they currently had and hadn’t used yet were: a glazed lantern, a palm-sized small round mirror, a handkerchief, and a quill pen. Several other things, like Cecilia’s key, had disappeared after unlocking the Greenvine Alliance office.
Refusing to believe it was a dead end, Jin Cheng circled the palace again in an attempt to find another breakthrough point, but still found nothing. It seemed this instance absolutely required them to finish all the side quests. Thinking this, Jin Cheng tilted his head and exchanged a glance with Tang Cuo.
The two unlucky ghosts with no water to drink conserved every drop of moisture in their bodies, relying on mutual understanding instead of speaking, and continued doing quests.
About fifteen minutes later, Jin Cheng couldn’t hold back anymore and said, “This Mark is pretty useless. He actually needs a ghostwriter to pen a love letter to his beloved girl. No wonder Cecilia prefers Lancelot.”
Tang Cuo: “You’re writing it?”
For the side quest “Mark’s Love Letter,” the players needed to write a love letter to his beloved Cecilia on his behalf. Poor Mark had nearly lost all his hair trying to write this letter.
There was paper and a pen on the desk in Mark’s cabin, and the floor was littered with countless crumpled balls of paper—all his failed attempts. Jin Cheng picked up a few to read, his expression hard to describe. After a while, he roughly grasped Mark’s writing style. He picked up the quill and was about to write on the paper, but surprisingly, the pen didn’t produce any ink.
He changed pens, but still no ink.
He changed it again; still nothing.
Understanding immediately, Tang Cuo took out their reward item—the quill pen.
This time, the quill dipped into the ink and wrote incredibly smoothly. Jin Cheng didn’t even draft it; with a smile on his lips, he scribbled out the love letter in a few quick strokes.
Dear Cecilia:
The Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight has no flowers,
So the bard must bring back the most beautiful one in the world,
Searching across the continent, with no date of return.
But I am so incredibly lucky,
For in my heart, you are the most beautiful flower in the Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight.
— Yours lovingly, Mark
Tang Cuo offered no comment on Jin Cheng’s incredibly sappy poem. His focus was entirely on one detail: “Mark also mentioned Lancelot’s wish?”
“Exactly,” Jin Cheng said. “I’m guessing Lancelot was so famous that the entire continent knew about his wish.”
Tang Cuo: “…”
“Aunt Anna’s son Louis, the previous king, and now Mark have all mentioned the matter of bringing flowers back here. It proves that the Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight truly had no flowers. The climbing roses blooming here now can only be the ones Lancelot brought back.”
Tang Cuo looked thoughtful. “Lancelot thought climbing roses were the most beautiful?”
Jin Cheng crossed his arms. “Climbing roses and regular roses look very similar, but if you compare the two, people usually think the regular rose is more beautiful. It represents love, intense and passionate. But in this story, the rose represents evil. If regular roses were blooming all over the Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight, then I’d have to suspect that Lancelot is the ultimate boss behind the scenes.”
The clues the love letter could provide were limited. Jin Cheng put the letter into an envelope, completing the quest, which rewarded them with a paper knife.
For the next three hours, the two continued sweeping through the side quests in the city. Using the reward item from one quest to complete another was like solving a series of interlocking rings; no one knew what the final ring would reveal.
Sometimes they received a side quest but couldn’t complete it due to lacking a key item, so they temporarily shelved it. At their peak, they had six side quests hanging in their quest panel at the same time, completing one on the way to doing another, bustling all over the city—just without any water to drink.
By the time the moon rose again, the total number of side quests they had completed reached 59, having circled the entire Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight three times on foot.
With a dark expression, Tang Cuo no longer knew if triggering this hidden mission was his good luck or misfortune. But true experts can always find a new path in adversity, such as—drinking a healing potion to quench their thirst when there is no water.
Jin Cheng was the first to do this. He was wealthy and didn’t lack healing potions.
Seeing this, Tang Cuo also expressionlessly pulled out a potion he had swiped from the magic shop. Drinking medicine when you aren’t sick actually didn’t taste too bad.
Drinking a potion while eating bread tasted even better.
But they didn’t know at the time that this situation would last for a full three days. The further they went, the harder it was to trigger side quests. Sometimes they had to wander the city for over four hours just to find a single side quest.
Because it might be hidden under some inconspicuous broken stone slab in a forgotten corner.
Serial Side Quest #98: Charlie’s Pocket Watch.
Under a broken stone slab lay an old pocket watch. Engraved on the watch was an audio-recording magic array capable of recording any beautiful music in the world. The watchmaker Charlie wanted to give this pocket watch to his uncle as a birthday gift, but he was missing one specific piece of music.
If there was anyone in this world whose music could most touch people’s hearts, it was naturally the continent’s most popular bard, Lancelot.
But Lancelot was already dead.
Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo looked at each other and said in unison: “Little Jack.”
In the very first side quest, “Cecilia’s Bakery,” one of the customers, Little Jack, had a small lap harp and Lancelot’s sheet music hidden under his bed.
Fortunately, Jin Cheng happened to know how to play the lap harp.
The two returned to Little Jack’s house and found the wooden box under the bed. Jin Cheng picked up the small harp and plucked it a few times; the tone was quite good.
He looked at Tang Cuo, who took out the pocket watch, pressed the small button on it, and said, “This needs magic power injected into it to work.”
For some reason, seeing Tang Cuo’s deadpan expression as he seriously said “inject magic power” suddenly reminded Jin Cheng of Balala the Fairies. He turned his head away, stifling a laugh.
Tang Cuo narrowed his eyes, seeing right through him on the spot.
He wanted to hit someone.
Forget it, my lips are so dry they’re peeling. I should save my energy.
Tang Cuo continued studying the pocket watch, trying to inject his own limited magic power to activate the magic array. But he was a beginner and knew very little about how magic arrays operated. Although Jin Cheng was a veteran player, he hadn’t taken the magic route, so he couldn’t help much either.
The two pulled out small wooden stools from the house and sat in Little Jack’s doorway. One crossed his legs and studied the sheet music, while the other kept his head down, tinkering with the pocket watch. The climbing roses crept over the windowsill, brushing against Jin Cheng’s shoulder. In the distance, the golden sea welcomed another sunset.
Jin Cheng cradled the lap harp, plucking it gently, looking completely at ease.
Looking out from here, the watchtower on the west side of the city stood tall, and the rose-covered city walls and the bakery’s chimney were faintly visible. When the rose-colored sunset cascaded all the way down from the spire to Tang Cuo’s feet, he finally successfully activated the magic array.
Tick, tock. The hands revived, and the face of the pocket watch began to slowly rotate like a vinyl record on a gramophone.
Tang Cuo looked at Jin Cheng, shooting him a questioning glance.
Jin Cheng raised an eyebrow, and as his fingertips plucked the strings, a melodious tune flowed out into the rose-colored sunset. It was the sound of a foreign land on a distant continent—mysterious and melodious, carrying an unknown sense of being moved that filled the heart.
Tang Cuo couldn’t help but remember the harp music from that bonfire night, when Jin Cheng had played an unfamiliar Nordic folk song. Across the firelight, nothing could be seen clearly.
Jin Cheng played to his heart’s content. It had been a long time since he sat in the sunset this relaxed, quietly playing the harp or doing anything else.
A place like Yong Ye City was very far removed from normal life. Although Jin Cheng had companions—the kind he could entrust his back to—they hadn’t been part of his past, so it always felt like something was missing.
With the music, the streets of the Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight gained a few traces of vibrant life. The flowing wind no longer carried the scent of long-sealed dust, and the pure white roses swayed gently in the breeze. It felt as if in the next second, a young girl lifting her skirts would come jogging around the corner, returning from the Flower Festival.
This piece by Lancelot was called “Lovers at Dusk.”
Tang Cuo listened quietly until he finished the song, then pressed the button on the pocket watch again. “Ding.” The side quest was completed. The reward item—a key.
Another key.
Tang Cuo looked at the key in his palm and frowned slightly. After a few seconds, he suddenly felt the shape of the key looked familiar. A flash of insight hit him: “The bronze statue!”
Lancelot’s bronze statue had a keyhole right over its heart.
The two quickly got up and rushed to the small plaza where the statue was located.
About twenty minutes later, Lancelot’s bronze statue appeared in their line of sight. It was still wearing that smiling, string-plucking expression, only now, bathed in the sunset, its face looked even gentler.
“Ding!”
“Side Quest Triggered—Lancelot’s Heart.”
The moment Tang Cuo stepped into the boundaries of the small plaza, the system announcement chimed again. This hadn’t happened the last time they were here, so the key was the trigger.
“Travelers from a foreign land, welcome to the Kingdom Hidden in Moonlight, having finally crossed the long river of time. Are you ready to listen to the final story?”
“Please take away Lancelot’s heart.”
“Let the continent’s most popular bard tell it to you himself.”
Serial Side Quest #99.
Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng looked at each other. Without a word, they walked to the bronze statue in perfect mutual understanding. Holding the key, Tang Cuo crouched down in a half-kneel and solemnly inserted the key into Lancelot’s heart.
Click. A perfect fit.
Opening the door to the heart revealed a red gemstone inside. The gem was very small—small enough to be inlaid into Tang Cuo’s ring, as if it had always belonged there.
“Ninety-nine side quests, and the ultimate reward is this,” Jin Cheng said. “I think we can go to the central palace now.”
They still had a few side quest reward items left, as some quests didn’t require extra items to clear. But Tang Cuo agreed with Jin Cheng’s perspective; ninety-nine was a special number, and this was a special quest.
He placed the red gemstone onto the ring, and the gem automatically fused with it, concluding the side quest. In that instant, Tang Cuo finally felt the flow of magic power in the ring. With a single thought, he could immediately use its engraved skill, “Moonlight Tide.”
The quest reward was a small golden pair of scissors.
“Let’s go.”
Neither wanted to wait any longer, rushing toward the palace at full speed.
By now, the moon had risen. The city full of climbing roses bathed in the moonlight, quietly exuding its fragrance. Wearing the complete version of the Nightingale ring as he walked, Tang Cuo distinctly felt a different kind of aura swirling around him—it was goodwill.
The roses filling the city were releasing a gentle goodwill toward him.
This was perfectly verified before they even reached the palace. When Tang Cuo approached the palace gates, the tangled vines seemed to sense something, automatically retreating to the sides to reveal the heavily obscured doors.
Jin Cheng couldn’t help but tease, “This is the kind of treatment reserved for the main character.”
Tang Cuo: “I can let you open the door.”
Are you sure you aren’t just afraid an arrow might suddenly shoot out from inside?
Jin Cheng grumbled about the little rascal in his head, but his body honestly stepped forward. Creeeak— The heavy doors slowly opened, and the dust-sealed time finally began to flow once more.
However, there was nothing inside the palace except a well right in the center, and a climbing rose growing inside it.
Tang Cuo: “The Well of Time.”
