With Qiu Xuerong's departure, the entire Plague Garden returned from a blanket of pure white to its original colors.

Watching monster after monster climb to its feet, Mo Bai took out the cards Ant Nest and Spider Silk.

One was an area-of-effect attack card, while the other provided crowd control. They were perfect for these monsters, which were neither particularly intelligent nor powerful but came in overwhelming numbers and were difficult to kill.

Ant Nest was a particularly sinister card.

It had two methods of use.

The first was to place it on the ground. A small ant nest would automatically appear, from which countless red ants about eight centimeters long would emerge. Their mandibles were sharp, and they secreted a mildly acidic fluid with anesthetic properties. The effect lasted for one hour. During that time, the number of ants produced by the nest was unlimited. But once the hour expired, the nest would disappear, and all the ants would die.

The second method was one that Mo Bai found deeply repulsive.

A woman would first need to be anesthetized or knocked unconscious. The card would then be placed on her lower abdomen, transforming that part of her body into a living nest, from which countless ants ten centimeters long would emerge. These ants possessed extremely sharp mandibles and forelegs and secreted a strong acid with anesthetic effects.

The woman transformed into the Ant Queen would die after one hour.

The card itself, however, would not disappear. It could be used on another woman to create a new Ant Queen, allowing the process to be repeated up to five times.

Clearly, the second method was more practical.

The woman serving as the Ant Queen could be either a player or an NPC. If another player obtained this card, they might choose a female NPC from an instance as the nest, maximizing its usefulness.

But Mo Bai would never use the second method.

She was also glad that Du Heng had given the card to her.

She herself despised the second method and was willing to forgo the stronger ant army and the advantage of repeated uses. But she could not demand Du Heng to make the same choice.

After all, the second method was more effective and could save lives in a crisis.

Some things could not be forced.

When it came to friendships, Mo Bai's philosophy was to select people rather than change them. She respected everyone's choices.

If Du Heng had truly used the second method, Mo Bai would have gradually distanced herself from him, even if he had only ever used a female monster NPC as the Ant Queen.

When Du Heng first obtained the card and Mo Bai learned how it worked, she had felt a wave of disgust.

But she had said nothing.

Fortunately, Du Heng had now given the card to her.

That proved he was not a person without moral boundaries.

And she no longer had to struggle with whether the card's use might one day cost her a friend.

Mo Bai placed the card on the ground.

A tiny hole three centimeters in diameter appeared, and an endless stream of red ants, eight centimeters long and one centimeter wide, crawled out.

Guided by Mo Bai's will, they surged toward the rotting corpses and surrounded them completely.

There were at least eight hundred corpses, if not a thousand.

That sounded like a lot.

But the number of ants reached into the tens of thousands.

The ants themselves were extremely weak. Against a player like Sheng Yan, all he would need to do was cover himself in flames. The ants would burn to ash before they could even approach him.

The corpses, however, possessed no special abilities. Their strengths lay only in their numbers, their inability to die, and the corpse poison within their bodies.

Hundreds of ants swarmed each corpse.

The ants died continuously from exposure to the poison, while the corpses were gradually eroded by the mild acid the ants secreted, becoming more and more damaged.

Mo Bai could direct the ants' attacks to a general area.

She instructed them to focus specifically on the corpses' legs, preventing them from moving.

After using Ant Nest to restrain the corpses, Mo Bai continued forward.

At the center of the garden stood a four-story Western-style mansion.

The area around it was filled with sweet-smelling flowers.

It looked remarkably similar to Mo Xiangyou's villa, and Mo Bai instinctively felt that the house might contain some of his secrets.

But after only two steps, her path was blocked by rapidly growing roses.

Dark energy seeped from the centers of the deep-red blossoms.

This dark energy was the curse permeating the instance.

Anyone contaminated by it would contract a strange disease and eventually end up just like these rotting corpses, one more skeleton buried beneath the rose garden.

The true monsters of the Plague Garden were not the corpses but the roses that spread the curse.

The corpses were supposed to have remained peacefully asleep beneath the flowers.

Based on what Qiu Xuerong had said, Mo Bai concluded that the cause of the corpses' mutation was related to Mo Xiangyou. Qiu Xuerong's suppression of the corpses was also a way of protecting him.

The roses grew wildly, blocking Mo Bai's advance.

She took out the second card, Spider Silk.

This card was much simpler to use.

A single strand of spider silk would descend and attach itself to the chosen target. The card would then release webbing that expanded into a net and trapped the target.

The web had two modes.

The first was single-target capture.

In this form, the web thickened into a cocoon-like mass of silk, binding a single target tightly. Without tremendous strength, escape was impossible.

Of course, it was useless against fire users like Sheng Yan.

The second mode was area control.

The web became thinner but expanded rapidly, continuously extending its coverage and sticking to all designated targets.

In this mode, the web was not particularly strong, only about as sturdy as nylon rope. Players or monsters could tear through it with enough force.

But it was ideal when paired with attacks like Ant Nest, since ants lacked the strength to break free.

And it was perfectly suited to dealing with roses that could grow endlessly but possessed little physical power.

A strand of silk attached itself to one rose.

The web immediately spread outward from that point, weaving at incredible speed.

Using the rose bushes as anchor points, it formed a gigantic web that stretched over the entire manor.

Occasionally, a falling corpse would tear through part of the web.

Each time, the damage quickly repaired itself.

The card lasted thirty minutes and could be used three times.

The roses were entangled in the web.

They tried to approach Mo Bai but could not break free from the silk's restraints.

Even so, they still blocked her path.

The roses grew so densely throughout the garden that there was nowhere for her to step.

Any attempt to walk between them would expose her to more and more of the curse. By the time she crossed the garden, she would likely be poisoned by the roses herself.

Fortunately, Mo Bai had Shadow World.

Shadow World allowed her to enter the realm of shadows and travel through them.

While in this state, Mo Bai could not use her abilities.

However, she could not be attacked either.

The shadows formed a world of their own.

Unless a creature also possessed an ability like Lone Shadow, one that let it enter the shadow realm too, then even an S-rank monster would be unable to harm her.

Shadow World had the shortest duration of the three cards.

Each use lasted only five minutes, and it could be activated three times.

It was fundamentally an escape card, though it could also serve as a short-range teleport. For an ability this overpowered, a five-minute duration was already quite generous.

Only after actually using these three cards did Mo Bai truly realize how powerful the five Super A-rank monsters from Biological Research Institute No. 7 had been.

Likewise, the Phantom Butterfly was incredibly powerful. It possessed multiple abilities: it could mimic others, release Scale Poison, and subtly influence players' emotions. The ant swarm that had trapped Mo Bai back then had been wiped out by the Phantom Butterfly's poison.

A monster that troublesome, turning into an S-rank creature... There was no telling how powerful it would be.

Mo Bai suspected that Gu Tiandong and the other two had been lured away by the Phantom Butterfly. She had no idea what it was trying to accomplish.

The monster was certainly strong, and its only weakness was its brain.

Its mind was filled with nothing but romance and love. As someone whose romance stat was practically nonexistent, Mo Bai found it difficult to understand the goals of a love-brained monster.

Now was not the time to worry about her three teammates.

She needed to get into that house as quickly as possible and find Mo Xiangyou. Or the card that Mo Xiangyou had become.

Mo Bai activated Shadow World, transforming herself into a dark silhouette and merging with the shadows on the ground.

She moved through the shadows cast by the giant web.

Using Shadow World, she bypassed the curse-infested rose bushes and arrived directly at the mansion.

Worried that even the flowers outside the mansion might be poisonous, she skipped the front entrance entirely and entered the building directly.

In the reception hall on the first floor sat a skeleton dressed in traditional Hanfu.

The outer robe was deep blue silk embroidered with dark purple flowers. It looked expensive and matched the style of clothing Mo Xiangyou often wore when burning incense.

There was no flesh left on the skeleton, only white bones.

It sat upright in a chair with remarkable elegance.

Remaining within Shadow World, Mo Bai approached carefully and examined the skeleton.

At first, it was completely motionless.

But as she drew closer, it suddenly began to move with a series of sharp clicks and clacks.

The skeleton turned its head toward the spot where Mo Bai was hidden.

The empty eye sockets of its skull faced directly toward her, as though it were staring at her.

It gazed at her for a moment, then pointed toward the incense burner on the table.

Mo Bai was not afraid.

She stepped out of Shadow World and opened the lid of the incense burner.

Inside was no incense.

Instead, there was a piece of fresh flesh that gave off a fragrant aroma.

Mo Bai picked up a match from the table and touched it to the flesh.

Like incense, the flesh caught fire and released a rich fragrance.

She closed the lid and watched as a wisp of fragrant smoke drifted toward the skeleton and wrapped itself around the bones.

Gradually, flesh began to grow over the skeleton.

The form of Mo Xiangyou slowly emerged.

The weight hanging over Mo Bai's heart finally settled.

She knew now that Li Ming had not lied.

Mo Xiangyou truly died long ago.

After regaining his human appearance, Mo Xiangyou spoke softly.

"I only have the time for one stick of incense. Ask whatever questions you have."

"How much did you lie to me about?" Mo Bai asked, lowering her voice to keep it from sounding choked with emotion.

"Where should I even begin?" Mo Xiangyou thought for a moment. "There were too many lies. Truth and falsehood became intertwined. Even I no longer know which things were real and which were fake."

Mo Bai took a deep breath.

"Fine. Then I'll ask the questions. Who killed you?"

"A player from Avici named Xie Xingchen. His goal was to turn me into a card. I never foresaw through my prophecy that high-level members of the Observation Group could be turned into cards. He told me himself, before I died."

Mo Bai asked, "You were only a mid-level player. How could someone turn you into a card?"

"I wasn't a mid-level player," Mo Xiangyou replied. "Inside that instance, I became a high-level player for a short time, all for Sheng Lei's sake.

At the time, Li Ming and Xie Xingchen of the Avici organization pretended not to know each other. They befriended Sheng Lei and me separately.

Li Ming was tall and powerfully built. He and Sheng Lei got along very well. They had a lot in common, and Li Ming even invited Sheng Lei to join Avici someday.

Sheng Lei had all but become sworn brothers with Li Ming. Then Li Ming happened to mention that he'd once sold a card called Information Extraction, and Sheng Lei said he was the one who had bought it.

At first, they both thought it was a funny coincidence.

But as the conversation continued, Sheng Lei seemed to realize something. Suddenly, he started shouting that he was going to avenge Xu Qirui and attacked Li Ming like a madman."

Li Ming was powerful, reckless, and loose-lipped, so it was entirely plausible that he had slipped that he was the one who had killed Xu Qirui and turned him into a card.

Mo Xiangyou continued.

"Sheng Lei and Li Ming fought fiercely, but he was no match for Li Ming. Li Ming captured him and subjected him to repeated electric torture, tormenting him over and over.

My relationship with Sheng Lei was only average. I didn't particularly care whether he lived or died. But torturing someone like that offended my aesthetic sensibilities.

I wanted to give Sheng Lei a quick death, but I couldn't get close enough. That was when the exceptionally friendly Xie Xingchen spoke to me.

He said he didn't want to make an enemy of Li Ming, but if I truly wanted to help Sheng Lei, he could assist me in secret.

He told me that he had a card called Forced Growth, one that could let an Intermediate-9 player break through their limits and temporarily become a high-level player. The effect would last only ten minutes.

He asked whether I wanted to use it, and I agreed. You already know what happened after that.

I used the card and temporarily became a high-level player. Just as I was preparing to rescue Sheng Lei, Xie Xingchen killed me from behind with one fatal strike.

I really shouldn't have meddled in someone else's affairs. I died in such a stupid way."