Having said what needed to be said, I released Yashu. Her cheeks tinted with a rosy hue as she looked away in embarrassment, but she quickly regained her composure.
Suddenly, a crisp "Crack" echoed - the sound of a crushed can. The stalker had accidentally slipped up. I immediately darted my eyes toward the sound, where a narrow, dark alleyway crouched beside the road. A dark silhouette was looking down at its feet in confusion before glancing up. Realizing their presence had been compromised, they instantly turned and bolted.
Yashu and I locked eyes, nodding in perfect sync. Both of us lunged forward, giving chase to the stranger vanishing into the shadows of the alley.
Seeing us in pursuit, the figure accelerated. From behind, they appeared quite lean and relatively tall, likely around my age. Yashu and I hurriedly picked up the pace to keep close. Since it was only about 5 AM, the alleyway remained shrouded in darkness, preventing me from clearly seeing the stalker's face.
They were incredibly fast; there were moments when we thought we had almost lost the trail. After a long chase, I looked ahead and realized we had run into a different alley-one that felt utterly strange and eerie.
A bizarre scene unfolded before our eyes. Along both sides of the path, stalls were lined up side-by-side, but the most chilling part was the vendors. Every single one of them was draped in pitch-black robes, shrouded from head to toe, leaving absolutely no gap to reveal their faces.
The space grew chaotic with the bustling crowd moving back and forth. With a quick glance, I was stunned to notice they were all bristling with various types of weapons. As it turned out, everyone present here was a Player - just like us.
A strange, thick, and oppressive aura radiated from the goods scattered across the stalls, making the air feel heavy and suffocating. Taking advantage of the crowd's commotion, our stalker swiftly ducked into the flow of people. We lost their trail completely.
But at that moment, an even bigger question consumed my mind and Qing Yashu's: Just what kind of hellish place had we stumbled into?