CH 405

405: Desert City

Ze Ye woke up because someone was slapping his face. The first person he saw upon waking up was Feng Wu. He wanted to ask her some questions, but she had already moved on and was slapping the other girls awake as well.

“What is this place?”

“How did we get here?”

“Oh my god! So many bones!”

“I want to leave! I don’t want to stay here!” Mayleen shouted in fear.

Yifu was so scared, she was almost in tears. To think she had been laying on top of all these bones; the whole thing made her ill. “I don’t want to stay here either! It’s terrible! I’m leaving!”

“This is the desert city.” Feng Wu’s clear and unwavering voice was calming.

“The ancient desert city? This is the ancient desert city?!”

They were shocked. No one thought the ancient city was a city full of bones.

“What do we do now? Are we going to leave Xiao Cheng?” At this point Yifu was crying. The fear was obvious in her eyes and her entire body exuded a listless energy.

“No, if this is the desert city, then we can’t leave.” Zi Cheng was firm.

That wasn’t to say Zi Cheng was unaffected; no matter how calmly she behaved, the bones still bothered her. Even if she did have a golden cheat, she was still an ordinary girl from another world.

But she was the main character, and as such, she adjusted her mental state and quickly regained her composure.

In contrast, it was a lot harder for the others to calm down, especially the girls, who were quite spooked.

Determination flashed in Caesar’s eyes. “Yes, we finally found the city. There’s no reason for us to leave.”

Yifu’s heart was uneasy but she didn’t say anything else after that. She could only hang on to Zi Cheng’s hand as tight as she could and hope to get a little courage from her friend.

As they stood there, fog coalesced and formed words.

-Welcome to the second level. Please find the exit and leave the ancient desert city.-

“Find the exit and leave!”

“Wow, then this really is the right place!”

It was good news, but it also meant things would get more dangerous.

“Strange, there are bones, but no evil qi. This shouldn’t be possible!” Rui Baby looked around at the bones confused.

It was reasonable to expect a high density of evil qi in a place filled with so many remains. It was abnormal for there to be none at all.

Just because evil qi was absent didn’t mean it was a good place. On the contrary, it made Rui Baby even more suspicious. The danger level had to be higher than the first tomb Feng Wu visited.

“Senior Ming Xi, what are you looking at?” Yifu noticed Ming Xi inspecting the bones on the ground. It was surprising enough for her to ask.

Ming Xi looked at her and answered frankly. “I’m inspecting the cause of death. These people died very strangely.”

“Strange? Ming Xi, did you find something?” Ze Ye leaned over out of curiosity.

Most of the other guys did the same.

The girls were still a little scared. Only Feng Wu, Zi Cheng, and Fang Li dared look.

Ming Xi answered without looking back. “Look at the bones. Do you see problems with them?”

“Problems?” Ze Ye picked up a bone and inspected it, but he didn’t see anything strange. It wasn’t until he looked at the other bones from head to toe that he realized something was indeed odd.

“There isn’t a single injury on any of these bones. This way of dying, it’s just to weird.” Ze Ye’s face was solemn now.

“What, no injuries?!”

“Then how did they die?”

“Did they succumb to a plague?”

“No, it must have been poison!”

The group began making guesses about how the people died.

“Let’s get out of here first. There’s a gate up ahead; we can talk after we get there.” Ming Xi pointed to a city wall up ahead that was about ten meters (32 feet) tall. The city had to be beyond the walls.

And indeed the name of the city was engraved above the gate.

They all knew, that in order to leave, they would have to find clues inside the city. So with that in mind, they lifted their feet one in front of the other and walked forward.

Ming Xi took Feng Wu’s hand and walked in front as usual. The king kept glancing at the city gates, an unsightly expression on his face.

“I never expected he would use this method to get eternal life.”

Feng Wu missed the king’s mutter.

As they walked, they saw that there were several people already at the gates. It was clear the group had been there for a while, so the fact that they remained outside signaled trouble.

“Oh good! There are more people coming up. Everyone’s been trapped here.” A middle-aged man spoke up.

“Hey!” An expressionless young man called out a greeting to them.

The other people just looked strangely at them without speaking.

“You guys are all here for the city right? Why aren’t you going in?” Xier asked.[notes]

“Huh? How would you know we didn’t go in? We did you know. Nearly half of us died too. We’re the left-over survivors.” The middle-aged man said.

“You entered?! Is it that dangerous?!”

“What is it like? Are there are lot monsters?”

“Tell us about it! The more we know, the higher our chances of getting through it together.”

They were peppering him with questions trying to learn as much as they could.

“Uncle, can you tell us what happened in the city?” Ming Xi asked.

Everyone turned to look at the middle-aged man.

“My temporary team and I got here two days ago. We were the first ones to get here so we entered the city as fast as we could. Obviously there shouldn’t be anyone alive inside, but we felt like we were being watched the entire time.

Later on people started disappearing. We decided to withdraw because the city felt too strange, but then something even worse happened. . . ”