Chapter 74

Editor: Kat

Proofreader: Junyans

“Don’t be afraid, those people with broken necks are definitely dead.”

Wei Xun enlightened and comforted Xu Yang, “It is only worth fearing if there are living people in the soil. What is there to be afraid of dead people, right?

“Unless they could bite you?”

Xu Yang: ??

“Right, that’s right.”

Xu Yang was led astray by Wei Xun’s delusional statements, so he was not as afraid when he regained his senses. After comforting himself sufficiently, he took the initiative to pick up the walking stick again and went back to the place where the corpses had been discovered just now with Wei Xun, carefully probing the surroundings.

“They’re at least ten meters deep. In this position, the most I can perceive is their upper bodies.”

Xu Yang gestured at his waist. “I can’t see the rest.”

The title of [A Blind Man’s Perception] had a maximum perception depth of ten meters, and if he tried to probe further, everything would be pitch black. Xu Yang had been frightened just now and hadn’t looked carefully. However, now it seemed that from the corpses’ waist down, everything sank into the darkness as if only the corpses only had their upper bodies. But this way, it seemed more terrifying to Xu Yang.

“The corpses should have been laid into the soil. Probably within this range.”

Xu Yang used his walking stick to roughly draw a circle on the ground as he walked, and the scene appeared like Sun Wukong drawing a circle for Tang Seng before his almsgiving. He roughly drew a circle with a diameter of five meters.

“Further down, all I can see is pitch darkness. But maybe there are more beneath.”

Xu Yang walked into the circle he drew, tapped with his walking stick, and muttered, “There is one here, there is one here, and there is another here.”

If people who didn’t know what was happening observed the two of them, they would definitely feel creeped out.

“My sight can’t reach this area, it’s blocked by something like a pyramid.”

Xu Yang circled a range at the center of the circle, roughly two meters in length and width.

“It’s triangular, like a tower, and I can’t decipher the material.”

He could perceive things underneath the ground, but if the thing was packed in a box, he could not perceive it.

“Graveyard? Altar?” Xu Yang guessed.

After all, those mummified corpses were surrounding the pyramid-shaped object, standing straight on the soil, their necks were broken, and their faces were all looking upwards. The scene was too weird and terrifying, and it really seemed like they were conducting some kind of religious ceremony.

“Come, take a look here.”

Wei Xun didn’t hurry to make assumptions. He took Xu Yang to the ruins with the dual-cultivation murals and the secret room with the strange Buddha statues, so that Xu Yang could perceive it with his cane. The ruins with the murals were actually a secret passage that sloped downward. The direction at the end of the secret passage that Xu Yang could perceive was towards the strange place with standing mummies. It was more inclined to the direction of the right peak of Qianzong..

There was a huge underground cave behind the hidden room where the strange Buddha statue was, but Xu Yang could not detect the end of the underground cave.

That was to say, the secret passageway that had the murals was likely to be connected to the altar-like or cemetery-like place, while the strange Buddha and the underground cave could be considered another ruin.

“I can’t see any further, my perception distance is too short.”

Xu Yang was a little embarrassed. He’d originally thought that he would be very useful when they were exploring the ruins, but he had not expected that most of the hidden rooms near the surface had collapsed due to the earthquake in the past. Many ruins were deeper underground, and he could not fully perceive the bottom. In addition, he couldn’t perceive whether there were any dangers underground.

After seeing how Wei Xun had acted, he should have long since known that there were ruins here. As he understood this, Xu Yang felt admiration for Wei Xun. At the same time, he felt that he was really not very brave, because he’d acted like a child and was easily frightened when he got a shock from the sight of the corpses just now.

Brother Wei won’t think I’m useless, right?

“Have you completed your task?”

Wei Xun was quite happy. For him, it was enough to know that there were ruins somewhere underground, and it was exciting to explore the unknown by himself.

“No, the Travel Services only reminded me that I’ve found the ruins. The task likely has to be completed by touching them with my own hands. The Travel Services will not let people take advantage of such loopholes.”

If he could explore the ruins by tapping the walking stick on the ground, it would be too heaven-defying. The Travel Services would not allow this kind of situation where one could easily pass the scenic spot with only one title.

Xu Yang was apprehensive, but he secretly made up his mind to build up his courage. He carefully probed the surroundings with a straight face, and even took a hard look at the faces of each corpse. But that made him discover something that was awry.

“These corpses have a bump-like bulge on their foreheads.”

Xu Yang was not sure. “It’s too small, so I thought it was a stone in the soil or something, but if I look closely at the place between the eyebrows, there seems to be a shriveled bulge? Every corpse has it.”

Xu Yang gestured between his eyebrows. “It’s here. The largest is the size of a soybean, and the smallest is like a pimple.”

“Is it here?”

Wei Xun pondered, thinking of the gold-headed wet corpse. The gray-red fleshy membrane on its head had also had a sarcoma on the thickest part of its forehead, but it had been the size of an apricot, which was larger than the bulges on the foreheads of the mummified corpses that Xu Yang had described.

Was there any connection between them?

“Don’t worry.”

Wei Xun saw that Xu Yang was panting so badly that he was a little out of breath, as if he was forcing himself to carry on looking. Wei Xun simply forced him to go to the campsite to rest. Then, Wei Xun returned to the ruins by himself.

He had already sorted out the information Xu Yang had said in his mind just now, and roughly drawn the map of the underground secret passageways in his heart.

Everything was prepared. Wei Xun began to call dog IV-1 in his heart.

Since moments ago, dog IV-1 had an ominous premonition in his heart! Sure enough, the next moment, Wei Xun ordered it, ‘You go down and have a look first.’

Could it be that Wei Xun was going to kill him!

IV-1 felt despair and resentment in his heart. He felt his body turn into ice, and he cursed Wei Xun 1,800 times.

Such a vicious person, such a cruel heart. This Wei Xun was obviously going to let him risk his life to explore the way!

But——

IV-1 sneered. He had long expected this and had a coping strategy to deal with it. Wei Xun could be considered to be/as someone who had a shallow understanding about tour guides.

‘I will definitely do my best to complete Master’s task, bark, bark.’

Dog IV-1 pretended to be worried and considerate of Wei Xun. ‘But I am still a tour guide in a tour group, and the difficulty level assigned by the Travel Services to tour guides and tourists is different. If I enter the ruins as a tour guide, the difficulty level of the ruins will not only be Difficult-level, but there may even be supernatural enemies!’

He wanted to let him risk his life to explore the ruins? No way!

IV-1 laughed in his heart, and the dog seemed to have a cunning expression similar to that of a human.

The dog was indeed right. The tourists would face different difficulty levels when the tour guide and the tourist traveled together, and when the tourists traveled alone. When the tour guide acted alone, the difficulty level of the ruins was no longer limited by the tour’s original limit, because the tour guide was an employee of the Travel Services. As long as they were not tasked with opening up new attractions, most of the monsters in the ruins would not attack the tour guide.

But it was different for tourists.

Haha, let me see what you will choose.

If Wei Xun tried to sit back and enjoy the success, letting IV-1 head down to explore, and then going down by himself after IV-1 cleared the danger, then he would be very wrong.

As soon as IV-1 went down alone, he would activate the difficulty of the ruins. And the monsters would be so strong that tourists like Wei Xun and the others were completely unable to deal with them. And because of this, the ruins would be considered “useless” to them because they couldn’t access them to complete the task.

Even if Wei Xun took him to the ruins, he would definitely keep IV-1 outside the scope of the livestream. IV-1 knew from the moment Wei Xun had blocked the livestream thathedidn’t want him to be exposed. Of course, IV-1 didn’t want to reveal his devil dog form either.

In this case, if IV-1 went down to the ruins together with Wei Xun, IV-1 couldn’t appear in front of Wei Xun. Otherwise, the audience outside would definitely suspect something if he brought a little black dog down to the ruins. But if IV-1 walked too far ahead and wasn’t beside the tourist, it would be considered as a tour guide acting alone, which would also activate the difficulty.

As long as Wei Xun didn’t want to take risks, he must not let IV-1 come into contact with the ruins, otherwise it would definitely not be worth the loss. As long as he was slightly smart, he would definitely clearly understand——

‘Great.’

Wei Xun happily urged, ‘You can stroll around the two ruins below. Remember to rub around more everywhere, don’t miss any spots.’

IV-1 : ???

Was Wei Xun nuts?!

Or was IV-1 crazy? Wei Xun was speaking a human language, so why couldn’t he understand it?

IV-1 was shocked and dazed, and he didn’t even know how to respond. Wei Xun looked at his dumbfounded expression and thought that this was probably the aftermath of losing SAN value. IV-1 might have partly become an idiot, so he repeated his words again.

‘I want you to activate the difficulty of the underground ruins, understand?’ Wei Xun solemnly asked.

He was not polite at all. ‘If I go down later and feel that the difficulty isn’t right, you will receive the most severe punishment.’

‘Quick, go!’

Dog IV-1 was agitated. Because he was instinctively obedient and felt danger from Wei Xun, the dog quickly slipped into the cracks of the ground. It ran downwards for a while before it barely recovered its senses. No matter how much he thought about this matter, he still felt that it was strange.

Could it be that Wei Xun would rather give up these two ruins than kill him?

That was not right. It was not that IV-1 was arrogant. Wei Xun had completely controlled his life and death, and even if IV-1 was unwilling or disloyal towards Wei Xun, as long as Wei Xun wanted him to die, he would kill himself and die. Why would he go to this trouble to waste the ruins to kill him?

Or was Wei Xun trying to scheme against someone? The other tourists didn’t know about the removal of the difficulty limit of the ruins. If Wei Xun wanted to harm someone, as long as he deceived the other party, he would be able to unknowingly——

IV-1 felt that he had discovered the truth. Yes, yes, that must be the case.

Wei Xun was as vicious and cunning as he thought. Someone who was being targeted by him wouldn’t have a good end.

However, IV-1 had no idea why he felt a twisted dissatisfaction in his heart. Who else in this tour group was stronger than him? Who else was so strong that Wei Xun still had to carefully plan and scheme against them, and even waste the ruins to set a trap? And Wei Xun even had to trouble him, IV-1, to “explore a path”?

He, IV-1, had never had someone set such an elaborate trap for him!

Buzz, buzz——

There was a gust of wind in the depths of the dark tunnel, and there was a faint smell in the wind. Dog IV-1 shrank his neck, and the sense of crisis and fear made him not dare to think about anything else. It summoned a few poisonous snakes to explore the way, trembling and probing forward.

After half a day, the tourists returned to the camp at 4:30 in the afternoon, and all of them had gained some insights.

“In this area, we found the remains of a cave with many murals.”

Ji Hongcai took a small sip of the precious water they had and panted. “I don’t understand them either. Apart from the murals, there were some pottery fragments or something when we walked into the cave. The murals probably recorded the history of the Xiangxiong Kingdom, because all three of our basic tasks have been completed.”

The tasks of the exploration type tours were not as specific as the folklore type tours, which involved a specific task such as driving corpses and the crying marriage. It was probably because most of the tourists discovered that the Travel Services would provide an exploration progress bar for them. The experienced salted fish tourists concluded that as long as the exploration progress reached 30%, the basic task of the scenic spot would be considered completed, and they could receive rewards.

“Cough, cough, cough, cough.”

No one knew if Ji Hongcai had choked on something, but he coughed a series of times, and his face was flushed like he had a rash on his face. “The hole was not deep. I chiseled it with a shovel, but it was very brittle. I shoveled off a bunch of stone chippings in a few seconds, but there was a strange insect in the stone chippings. Be careful, I almost got bitten by it. Old Qin kept its corpse, cough, cough, cough.”

Ji Hongcai couldn’t stop coughing even after drinking a few sips of water. He muttered that his throat was itchy. Afterwards, he covered his mouth and coughed, refusing to waste any more water. The other tourists saw Qin Xinrong take out a palm-sized airtight bag and hand it to Wei Xun.

Inside this bag was the corpse of a smashed worm. Wei Xun saw that the worm was really weird. It looked a little like a caterpillar called parasa consocia, which was densely covered with black hair but Ji Hongcai had slapped it, so a large area of the hair on its back had fallen off.

The exposed patterns on the insect inexplicably looked like a human face with fresh blood flowing on it.

[The Insect of Evil]

Wei Xun saw the name of this worm with just a glance, and he felt something was wrong. Ji Hongcai and the others had explored a place that IV-1 had never been to. That was to say, the difficulty level shouldn’t have been activated. But there were countless dangers one would face when exploring ruins.

“Ji Hongcai, did you ever touch this bug?”

Following Wei Xun’s gaze, the tourists all looked at Ji Hongcai, who couldn’t stop coughing, and saw Yin Baitao giving him his water bottle. Ji Hongcai’s face was flushed from coughing. He was unable to speak, and reached out to pick up the water bottle.

However, Yin Baitao shuddered violently and almost dropped the bottle on the ground. With a terrified expression, he stared straight at Ji Hongcai, panicking. “Ji Hongcai, you’re coughing blood!”

The author has something to say:

Little Angels, please have a read at this chapter first! There will be more updates at night, mua, mua!

T/N: I’ll update more when I’m back on the Sat of the first week of Jan. If anyone is worried about it: Don’t worry about me dropping the novel-I have a lot of chapters in the stockpile, it’s merely that I’m very busy recently-I just have to find time to post it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone. And happy 2023 in advance!