Did the Top-Ranked Girl Get Exposed Today? [HoloVerse] - Chapter 12

Xian Yun glanced at her green-tier weapon Lotus in hand, then looked enviously at Feng Xiaoxiao’s purple-tier silk ribbon before batting her eyes wildly at Wang Mo wielding her feathered bow.

Wang Mo: ?

Xian Yun put on a cutesy voice: “Sis Mo, I want a high-tier weapon like that too~”

“Didn’t your main account have a gold-tier weapon?”

Raising her eyelids slightly, Wang Mo remained unmoved by Xian Yun’s complaint.

Danhuang Liuxinbao finished her third bun with a world-weary sigh, patted her hands, and stood up.

As the party leader, she felt it was necessary to boost morale.

“Even though the enemy is a level 65 boss, and we’re only three level 45s and two level 25s, still!”

Danhuang Liuxinbao energetically raised her hand and gripped horizontally, the long spear adorned with a red silk tassel materialized in her grasp once more.

“As members of Homeward Bound, our guild’s motto is to never give up easily!”

Top Fan Shang Xianyue was completely taken in by Danhuang Liuxinbao’s impassioned speech, while the other two fellow Homeward Bound members were utterly unfazed.

Xian Yun blew on her nails. “Alright, how much did Imperial Hometown pay you?”

Danhuang Liuxinbao smiled bashfully and held up two fingers.

Wang Mo: “Two hundred gold?”

“Two thousand gold.”

“That’s not fair.”

Wang Mo tapped the air where the “Leave Party” button would be. “Why do you get 250 more than me?”

Xian Yun patted her shoulder reassuringly. “It’s fine, it’s fine! Even though you’re 250 short compared to her, you’ve already got your own 250 to make up for it!”

“You think I can’t tell what you mean by that?”

Turning her gaze away from the domestic dispute, Danhuang Liuxinbao took a deep breath.

After all, she was the top-ranked player in Guardian Light, she’d faced tougher situations than this and wasn’t afraid of a little challenge.

[Party Chat]

[Guardian Light] Danhuang Liuxinbao Alt: Same as usual, I’ll pull aggro and tank. Wang Mo and Xiaoxiao Yue, DPS from behind me. Xian Yun, watch my HP. Save single-target heals for me whenever possible, and time your AoE heals carefully.

[Healer’s Realm] Xian Yun Alt: Got it, trust me as your healer! Mwah mwah.jpg

[Celestial Feather] Wang Mo Alt: Roger.

[Flower Guardian] Xiaoxiao Yue: Roger.

Top Fan Shang Xianyue timidly raised her hand. “What about me?”

Danhuang Liuxinbao began walking toward the boss, lantern in hand.

“Just try not to die. The boss’s state seems off, be ready to use your Sword Dream Clone to light the lanterns if needed.”

“Healer’s Realm’s resurrection cooldown gets longer each time. We really can’t afford to lose anyone, it’ll get harder later.”

A faint, eerie song drifted from the distance, yet seemed to come from the mouth of the Ghostly Flower Maiden herself.

The closer the lantern got, the dimmer its light grew, swallowed by the thick darkness shrouding the Ghostly Flower Maiden.

[Endless Night · Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Outsiders, have you seen the princess?

No one answered her.

The Ghostly Flower Maiden already knew the answer. She sighed deeply, and her health bar lit up above her.

[Endless Night · Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Go seek her in the depths of the netherworld!

A massive swarm of dark purple butterflies came rustling out of the darkness, blotting out the sky, each one as large as half a person, far beyond what the party’s basic attacks from the first stage could easily handle!

“Holy crap!”

Faced with the butterflies’ antennae and mouthparts, Xian Yun’s macrophobia kicked in hard. “This wasn’t like this when I was a newbie!!”

Danhuang Liuxinbao’s eyes sharpened as she tossed the lantern back to Xian Yun with a backhanded motion. Gripping her long spear horizontally with both hands, she ignited it into roaring flames, reducing every butterfly in its path to ashes.

“These minions are weak to fire!”

Danhuang Liuxinbao fired multiple arrows at once, their glowing trails piercing through the swarm in an instant. Wherever the light reached, the butterflies’ wings dissolved along with the darkness.

“Light-based attacks work too.”

She rolled up her sleeves and shot several more radiant arrows as she spoke.

Top Fan of Shang Xianyue knew her limits well and didn’t recklessly charge out of the team’s formation. She only used her skills on nearby minions.

Xiaoxiao Yue started off a bit clumsy but soon grew adept at chaining skills seamlessly, occasionally even helping Top Fan of Shang Xianyue deal extra damage or block butterfly assaults.

After all, she was her fan.

The opening butterfly onslaught from the Ghostly Flower Maiden went smoothly, easing the tension for the team members who had been wary of the dungeon’s difficulty.

As the butterfly swarm gradually vanished, the real battle was just beginning.

[Flower Sea Hide and Seek ·Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Outsiders, this is your last chance to leave.

Xian Yun couldn’t help but complain, “We’d love to, but we can’t get the breakthrough item without defeating you!”

Seeing that further talk was futile, the Ghostly Flower Maiden fell silent and merely raised her skeletal hand toward the group.

The dark lantern, which devoured all light, swayed beneath her bones. The lantern in Xian Yun’s hand dimmed further, and as the light faded, the team’s health bars began to fluctuate.

[Party Channel]

[Guardian Light] Danhuang Liuxinbao’s Alt: @Xian Yun Alt. Focus on healing.

Too busy controlling enemies and casting skills to check on her teammates, she mentally converted her thoughts into text visible to all in the party channel.

As soon as Danhuang Liuxinbao’s message floated above, Xian Yun reacted swiftly, casting the group heal “Fragrance” from the Healing class.

Birds chirped amid blossoms, evoking a vibrant spring scene.

Once the spring aura from “Fragrance” faded, all five members’ health bars had returned to safe levels, except for Danhuang Liuxinbao, who was tanking at the front.

Every time the Ghostly Flower Maiden raised her hand, a phantom slash struck, each swipe cutting Danhuang Liuxinbao’s health by a quarter.

Xian Yun didn’t even have time to curse, keeping a close watch on Danhuang Liuxinbao’s health bar. She applied a healing buff to her while urgently tending to the others losing health behind.

Her Healing skills were on constant cooldown, the moment one was ready, she’d cast it to heal her teammates. Even so, all five health bars remained precarious.

Xiaoxiao Yue, with the frailest health pool, was dangerously close to death, her bar glowing crimson.

Xian Yun stayed hyper-focused on her movements, ready to resurrect her the moment she fell so she could rejoin the fight.

Fortunately, despite her low health, Xiaoxiao Yue relied on agile footwork to narrowly evade most of the Ghostly Flower Maiden’s attacks.

The three damage dealers continued attacking the boss while steadily losing health. By the time Wang Mo had used up a third of her arrows, the Ghostly Flower Maiden’s health bar finally dropped to two-thirds of its original amount.

She halted, ceasing her phantom attacks, and raised the dark lantern high.

[Endless Night·Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Slumber eternally in darkness!

The lantern in Xian Yun’s hand began rapidly losing its glow, while a crimson warning symbol appeared above everyone’s heads.

[System Prompt: Quickly replenish the lantern’s light source before it extinguishes!]

Three golden butterflies with trailing light emerged from the darkness. As planned, Xiaoxiao Yue, Top Fan of Shang Xianyue, and Wang Mo moved to collect the fuel.

With a few light leaps, she followed the glowing butterfly, its golden trail illuminating the darkness ahead. Dozens of meters away, a flower bud was gradually blooming as Feng Xiaoxiao approached.

The butterfly alighted on the opening flower, transforming into a golden stream of light that scattered across the petals.

Feng Xiaoxiao snapped the flower stem.

[System Notification: Golden Butterfly Flower has been recorded in the guidebook!]

Just as she was about to retrace her steps, she realized that without the golden butterfly’s guidance, the surroundings had returned to darkness, making it impossible to distinguish the way back.

From the thick black curtain, skeletal hands occasionally reached out, attempting to drag her into the darkness.

[Team Channel]

[Guardian Light] Danhuang Liuxinbao_Alt: Hurry back!!! The lantern is about to go out!!

[Sword Dream] Top Fan of Shang Xianyue: Ran into a bit of trouble…

[Celestial Feather] Wang Mo_Alt: The way back is gone.

[Flower Guardian] Xiaoxiao Yue: That’s the situation.

[Guardian Light] Danhuang Liuxinbao_Alt: …At this point, there’s only one move left.

[Healer’s Realm] Xian Yun_Alt: ??? Vice-leader, why are you going through my photo album? Girls shouldn’t invade each other’s privacy like this!!

Whatever Danhuang Liuxinbao did, before long, the three trapped in the darkness saw a patch of white light piercing through the night sky.

Feng Xiaoxiao instinctively rushed toward the white light, occasionally swatting away the skeletal hands reaching for her.

The closer she got to the light, the clearer the object within became.

It was a one-meter-wide personal portrait photo. The person in the photo was wearing a mermaid costume that covered them from head to toe.

The lower body was a colorful fish tail, while the upper body was…

Uh, Feng Xiaoxiao took a closer look, the upper body was a fish head that not only appeared cross-eyed but also looked as if it had died with grievances, gazing melancholically at a 45-degree angle toward the starry sky.

Beneath it, written in bold red font, were the words: “Xian Yun’s Absolutely Stunning Private Photo.”

Feng Xiaoxiao: “…”

Wang Mo, who arrived shortly after: “…”

Top Fan of Shang Xianyue, who came rushing over last: “…”

Xiaoxiao Yue, who had never witnessed such a scene, and her top fan fell silent for a moment before slowly typing “66” in the team channel.

[Team Channel]

[Guardian Light] Danhuang Liuxinbao_Alt: No choice, only Xian Yun’s main and alt accounts share the same photo album. Every one of her photos has been specially blessed by an NPC. It was an emergency, so…

[Healer’s Realm] Xian Yun_Alt: So you violated my portrait rights.

[Healer’s Realm] Xian Yun_Alt: Danhuang Liuxinbao, I curse you! May you never eat a bun with runny egg yolk filling in your life!

[Celestial Feather] Wang Mo_Alt: Let’s be reasonable, your photo doesn’t even have a human form. Can we really call it a violation of portrait rights?

[Flower Guardian] Xiaoxiao Yue: Are there more photos?

[Sword Dream] Top Fan of Shang Xianyue: @Xiaoxiao Yue. You’re not right in the head.

[Healer’s Realm] Xian Yun_Alt: @Wang Mo_Alt. Stop pretending to be the voice of reason!

Despite the banter, it didn’t stop the three from successfully relighting the lantern in Xian Yun’s hand.

The Golden Butterfly Flower transformed into a stream of light and filled the lantern. As the light returned, the Ghostly Flower Maiden’s ability to snatch away light gradually slowed.

[Endless Night · Ghostly Flower Maiden]: The princess loved this Golden Butterfly Flower most in her lifetime.

[Endless Night · Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Since the princess passed away, it has been a long time since we’ve seen a sea of Golden Butterfly Flowers here.

Nostalgia aside, it didn’t stop the Ghostly Flower Maiden from mercilessly attacking the five of them.

Health bars rose and fell wildly, keeping Xian Yun frantically busy. As the Ghostly Flower Maiden assaulted the group, she demonstrated what it meant to have your “health bar vanish on the spot.”

During this period, aside from Feng Xiaoxiao’s fragile health bar causing her to be wiped out once by the Ghostly Flower Maiden’s palm strike, everything went smoothly until the second lantern-lighting phase.

The photo of Xian Yun’s fish head floating mid-air once again pointed the way for the three of them.

Too many absurdities to even comment on, the three wooden-faced players placed the Golden Butterfly Flower into the lantern and continued their cold, emotionless monster-slaying routine.

When the Ghostly Flower Maiden’s health bar finally dropped to the last third, everyone’s spirits sharpened. As Danhuang Liuxinbao had mentioned earlier, the boss would now enter a frenzied state!

The surrounding singing never ceased, melancholic and drawn-out, piercing through the layers of darkness-shrouded flower fields, clearly reaching their ears.

“Look there, the weeping flowers face the east wind…”

The Ghostly Flower Maiden hummed softly in harmony with the distant song, “Golden butterflies fade away, the lone grave faces the waning moon…”

She sighed softly, as if traversing millennia, countless cycles of life and death standing vividly before them.

“I only wish to be a green lantern, illuminating that glimpse of reincarnation.”

The melody of the song abruptly shifted, and the dark purple flowers clinging to the Ghostly Flower Maiden like barnacles burst into full bloom, wildly spreading to cover her face.

The only intact eye, veiled in mist, slowly pushed through the blossoming stamens and opened.

[Endless Night · Ghostly Flower Maiden]: Burn the soul to ashes, becoming the eternal night,