Chapter 5: Cold Moon Witch
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Faced with the oncoming Inner Door Disciples from Thousand Bird City, Lin Nan naturally couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the show.
She immediately made a choice: to run away, as far from the Spider Cave as possible.
Lucky for her, she was born with a lightness skill, and once activated, it only required a smidgen of stamina to maintain. Looking at her long stamina bar, she figured she could keep this up for at least an hour.
So Lin Nan swiftly activated her escape mode—because who in their right mind would stick around and fight those goody-two-shoes disciples? She was no clueless NPC, ready to take a break after killing a wave of players, just waiting for the next bunch of enemies like she was at a bus stop.
With the second skill, “Flowing Wind,” boosting her speed, she moved gracefully like a swallow, her feet barely brushing against the branches as she leaped forward.
In no time flat, Lin Nan escaped the area around the Spider Cave on Wu Yun Mountain.
But at the foot of the mountain, she stood in confusion, staring at three paths stretching out in different directions.
What a useless system! Besides occasionally popping up some random notifications, it didn’t even possess a basic map! Call for help, and it just played dead—totally ignored her.
Seeing she couldn’t rely on the system, Lin Nan reluctantly picked the middle path to descend the mountain.
Meanwhile, a gigantic crane had landed at the entrance of the Spider Cave.
A grim-looking Tang Tong followed the Inner Door Disciples as they jumped off the crane’s vast wings, feeling weak in the knees and as nauseous as someone who just rode a roller coaster.
Not only was he afraid of heights, he was also suffering from crane sickness… or rather, crane dizzy spells.
Just as he was regaining his composure, Luo Xiu strolled over, looking disdainfully at him. “Hey, did you encounter that demoness here?”
Tang Tong swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, forcing a reply, “N-no, it was halfway up the mountain, coming out of the Spider Cave.”
“Got it.”
Inside the cave, the spiders had respawned, but the NPCs from the spider cult that Tang Tong and his group had taken out were nowhere to be seen. This aligned perfectly with the game mechanics—any human NPC that bit the dust wouldn’t come back.
Those Silk Spinning Spiders that had once given Tang Tong trouble were now just pathetic little critters in the eyes of the Inner Door Disciples.
They didn’t even need to lift a finger! As those spiders approached, they explosively burst into green goo, as if they had hit an invisible barrier, leaving the Inner Door Disciples completely unscathed. Unlike Tang Tong and his crew, who emerged from the Spider Cave covered in disgusting smells.
The audience in the live stream was utterly stupefied.
To be honest, since the game launched over a month ago, they had rarely seen high-level NPCs in action.
The earlier shock of the hidden female boss one-shotting Tang Tong and his team was already mind-blowing, and now the sight of the Inner Door Disciples effortlessly wiping out spider monsters was making it clear just how distant the gap was between ordinary players and these high-level cultivators.
Especially when they compared it to Tang Tong’s group, who had nearly lost twenty players just to get through the challenge, while these Inner Door Disciples looked like they hadn’t even brushed against the smell of spider guts! It illustrated the vast chasm between inner and outer disciples.
As a result, viewers were buzzing with anticipation for the impending clash between the Inner Door Disciples and the hidden boss.
“Hey, who do you think will win between the high-ranking disciples of Thousand Bird City and the hidden boss?”
“That’s hard to say. They have the numerical advantage, after all. In a one-on-one, I’d bet on the hidden boss.”
“I think so too. That hidden boss is a big shot with teleportation skills; no matter how powerful the Inner Door Disciples are, they’ll struggle in a duel. What worries me is if they form a group and pull some sneaky sword array—then it might get messy!”
“Don’t you think calling her the hidden boss all the time sounds a bit clunky? Let’s give her a nickname!”
“Ha, I thought of that too! Her signature skill is snow, black snow to be specific. How about we call her the Black Snow Fairy?”
“……”
“……”
“That sounds absolutely terrible! Try again.”
“And she’s a villain NPC! How can we call her a fairy? Clearly, that’s not the right stance here.”
“Alright, let me think. Her presence is as cold as moonlight and as frosty as ice and snow… how about we call her the Cold Moon Witch?”
“Cold Moon Witch? That sounds pretty classy! I like it!”
“Let’s go with Cold Moon Witch.”
“Agreed!”
Before long, the chat in Tang Tong’s livestream was united in their newfound nickname for the hidden boss.
After all, when the Cold Moon Witch first appeared, the system didn’t reveal her title. Even Tang Tong could only retrieve a pile of question marks for information about her.
Videos of the hidden boss in the Spider Cave drew many players who had missed the live stream, with comments echoing buzzwords like “hidden boss is amazing” and “I think I could be a fan of this female boss.”
After the name Cold Moon Witch spread across the internet, a pinned post updated its title to “Shocking! The first-ever video of Cold Moon Witch annihilating Thousand Bird City Disciples!”
One couldn’t deny the allure of the Cold Moon Witch’s name.
Male players and female players alike found themselves unable to resist clicking to see what all the fuss was about.
Especially her last move, “Illusory Sea,” which summoned countless zombies from the ground to bind the Thousand Bird City Disciples… well, that just cemented her status as a villainous mage and made players curious about her true identity.
As a result, Tang Tong’s livestream was once again on fire.
To the regular players, the fact that the lofty Inner Door Disciples had sent ten members to deal with the Cold Moon Witch suggested she was no ordinary foe. This clearly painted her as someone with a mysterious background.
Thus, players eagerly anticipated the showdown between the Inner Door Disciples and the Cold Moon Witch.
To them, the divisions between good and evil in the game were merely constructs; they didn’t take them too seriously, but this was a spectacle they absolutely had to see! Unlike single-player CG animations, this was a live event that wouldn’t fade away after a single viewing, and thankfully Tang Tong was there to witness the very first clash of good and evil since the launch.
Wow, just thinking about it was thrilling!
They were, after all, witnesses to history in “The Right Path.”
But soon enough, reality threw a bucket of cold water on their excitement, crashing their enthusiasm like a swift defeat.
As the Thousand Bird City Disciples quickly passed through the Spider Cave only to stumble upon where Tang Tong and the others had been wiped out, they found that the hidden boss had already vanished without a trace.
In fact, it had only been about half an hour since Tang Tong and his crew were eliminated.
They had arrived at lightning speed, but to their dismay, that villainous mage had already left the Spider Cave without a second thought, unlike the other bosses who usually lingered around.
Gongsun Ding certainly wasn’t about to return empty-handed. He focused his senses, convinced that a faint fragrance lingered in the air.
Could it be some charm left behind by that demoness?
“Big Brother, what should we do now?” Luo Xiu asked.
“If we return empty-handed, it won’t sit well with the Sect Leader. Here’s the plan: we split up immediately and search for traces of the demoness. If anyone finds something, let off fireworks as a signal. I’ll stay mounted on the celestial beast to coordinate us.” Gongsun Ding commanded.
“Understood!” the group replied in unison.
