Chapter 228: A Sleepless Night
White Feather Gang stronghold.
As Mihos quickly disappeared from the battlefield, the entire field fell silent. Not only the captains of the garrison who were still fighting, but even the players who had been planning to fight to the death all froze for a moment.
“Can this boss actually run away?” Fang Zhen stared, dumbfounded, at Mihos shooting past not far from him.
They had really planned to gather together to raid Mihos, and had even decided they would feed themselves to Mihos one by one, so that Luo Wu Shang and Ye Qinglu could use extraordinary martial skills to take them along.
As long as they could keep dealing damage to Mihos, they could keep resurrecting and grinding Mihos down again and again until his last drop of health was gone.
They had not expected that Mihos, having just been injured, would run without a word, leaving them at a loss instead.
Twilight of the Gods, who had rushed over, watched Mihos blasting out of the battlefield like a missile and analyzed, “I guess this boss must be a plot boss. As soon as he’s hurt, he leaves.”
“What a pity.” Fang Zhen looked at Mihos disappearing from view, a trace of regret on his face. “This boss is so strong. If we could kill him, the drops would definitely be great.”
“Brother Zhen, stop staring. Let’s quickly clear out these elites. If we let them run, we’ll lose big.” Twilight of the Gods pointed at the garrison captains fleeing everywhere, seeing Fang Zhen still reluctant to let go of Mihos.
At this moment on the battlefield, whether it was the remaining garrison captains or the White Feather Gang members who had been fighting, after Mihos fled, they scattered like startled birds and beasts. After a brief daze, they went crazy and fled in all directions, no longer offering any resistance.
With everyone focused solely on escape, especially the high-level martial artist captains of the garrison, aided by B6-grade battle armor, their speed reached nearly one hundred meters per second. Even Luo Wu Shang, whose strength had reached that of a high-level martial artist, found it difficult to catch up and intercept them, to say nothing of the players, whose strength was generally only at beginner and intermediate martial artist.
Outside the cave, the White Feather Gang members who had been watching the show also panicked one by one.
“How could this happen? That was a Bone Forging Realm intermediate level expert!” Mans stared at the vanished Mihos, unable to believe his eyes.
The three monsters of the garrison being taken out was already shocking enough, but he had not expected the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples to actually repel Mihos, a Bone Forging Realm expert, and not just any Bone Forging Realm expert, but one who had already reached the intermediate level.
If someone had told him such a ridiculous thing before today, he would have thought that person had not woken up and was talking nonsense in broad daylight.
Yet such an absurd thing had happened right before his eyes, and he could not help but believe it.
“What do we do now? Even Mihos ran. There’s no way we can hold this place.” The Dark Guard Captain could not help asking Mans, who managed the stronghold.
Since even an intermediate level Bone Forging Realm expert had fled, then although the White Feather Gang had improved their strength a lot recently and even had several martial artist elders who had learned secret techniques, they clearly were no match for the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples.
Even with less than half of the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples remaining, they were still not something the White Feather Gang could oppose.
“Have everyone run.” Mans thought for a moment and ordered directly, “Everyone scatter and flee. Run as far as you can. We’ll regroup in the city later.”
“What about the stuff in the stronghold?” The Dark Guard Captain asked grimly. “Those are our capital for rising in the City of Light Chasing.”
“That’s exactly why everyone has to run,” Mans explained. “The things stored in the stronghold are hidden very deep. They can’t be found under normal circumstances. But if we stubbornly resist, we’ll make the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall suspicious. And this stronghold is useless to them. After they search and take the supplies, they’ll naturally leave. Then we can quietly come back for them.”
“Alright, I’ll have everyone withdraw immediately!” After hearing this, the Dark Guard Captain felt it made a lot of sense.
They had always hidden those things very well, otherwise they would not have felt assured letting others come here. As for the stronghold itself, it was just an ordinary wilderness gang stronghold. For the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall, which could already develop in the city proper, controlling a wilderness gang stronghold was meaningless.
In no time, the more than one thousand White Feather Gang members stationed in the cave surged out like headless flies, fleeing madly in all directions without putting up any resistance.
Mans and the other martial artists fled along with the White Feather Gang members, intending to use the crowd to escape the stronghold.
There were only a bit more than twenty Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples. Even though they were powerful, it was unrealistic to chase down and kill over a thousand people in one go.
However, although Mans and the others had planned well, once they scattered they quickly discovered that the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples had gone crazy. When they saw fleeing White Feather Gang members, it was as if they were watching treasures run away. They refused to let a single one go, even ignoring the garrison captains.
Some of them used picked up bows to snipe fleeing White Feather Gang members from a distance, while others unleashed all kinds of ultimate moves.
Luo Wu Shang in particular swung her long sword in a single horizontal slash that extended for hundreds of meters, slicing off a good portion of the cave and felling the surrounding trees within hundreds of meters.
With that one move, she killed hundreds of White Feather Gang members. Luo Wu Shang herself, due to excessive qi and blood consumption, collapsed and fainted on the spot.
Li Tianxing, amid the crowd, charged strength in midair, then sacrificed an arm to unleash Heaven Shaking Fist into the White Feather Gang ranks. Within a radius of one hundred meters, everyone was killed by the immense impact, instantly leaving fewer than one hundred White Feather Gang members alive.
“Are these Obsidian Martial Arts Hall people insane?” Mans, fleeing within the crowd, watched this and felt only confusion and terror.
The White Feather Gang had already fled. Even if they were pursued, there was no need to go this far.
One person risked everything to use a sword move with severe side effects, another abandoned an arm just to keep more of the White Feather Gang from escaping.
What kind of grudge was this?
“That was close. We almost let them all get away.” Fang Zhen fired rapidly with a looted B6-grade longbow while complaining, “I never thought this dungeon would be a timed battle royale. If we had been any slower, the treasures in the cave might all have been carried off by these people.”
Mans, not far away, was completely stunned when he heard this.
Although the distance and some human language made parts hard to catch, he clearly heard the part about the treasures being taken away.
“Could it be they know?”
Looking at the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall disciples around them whose eyes were glowing, Mans felt they must have discovered the treasures the White Feather Gang had hidden.
But before Mans and the other martial artists could react, arrows rained down from the sky, shooting straight toward them.
“Damn it!”
Faced with the incoming B6-grade arrows, Mans immediately used the secret technique he had learned, unleashing all his potential. His body bulked up noticeably, his qi and blood surged several times over, and his physical fitness skyrocketed. He was no longer comparable to a beginner martial artist and could even rival a high-level martial artist.
Under normal circumstances, Mans would never have used this secret technique, because its use meant a rapid loss of life and would make breaking through to higher realms much harder in the future.
But now he had no choice. The other elders in the gang did the same, using secret techniques to barely raise their physical fitness to the high-level martial artist tier to deal with the falling B6-grade arrows.
However, the B6-grade arrows were far too fast, like a violent storm, and they did not come from just one direction.
In less than a second, Mans and the others were pierced through vital points by B6-grade arrows. A graceful figure then stepped down from midair, using the arrows as footholds.
By the time that figure landed, all remaining White Feather Gang members within range had collapsed, their bodies riddled with arrow holes. They were utterly dead.
“At last we’ve cleared them out. There should still be plenty of treasure left in the cave now.” Ye Qinglu swept her gaze around and, seeing that everyone who had rushed out of the cave was dead, let out a sigh of relief.
A timed battle royale dungeon was all too common in virtual games. If the fleeing monsters were not cleared in time, every monster that escaped would reduce the final dungeon rewards. Let them all escape, and there would be no rewards at all.
The sudden escape of the boss, followed by the monsters in the dungeon going crazy trying to flee, had instinctively made them think of a timed battle royale dungeon.
Fortunately, they reacted quickly and did not let the monsters from the cave escape, or the loss would have been huge.
After Ye Qinglu and the others briefly cleaned up the battlefield, they excitedly rushed into the White Feather Gang’s stronghold cave to investigate.
They were stunned by what they found.
“These rewards are insane. Is this the full-clear reward?” Fang Zhen looked at the various supplies in the cave warehouse. Leaving aside the type 1 potions, there were actually more than a hundred bottles of type II potion.
But more shocking to him than the potions was the large amount of energy ore in the warehouse and the energy vein found inside the cave.
“No wonder this dungeon was so tricky. Even without talking about the potions, just this energy vein alone is enough to make us rich!” Twilight of the Gods stared at the mined energy vein in the cave, eyes shining.
Although this energy vein clearly was not great, at most a miniature energy vein and far worse than the small energy vein in Chiyue Town.
But the small energy vein in Chiyue Town belonged to the Obsidian Martial Arts Hall, while this miniature energy vein belonged to them as players.
And these players consumed a lot of energy ore. Especially after becoming martial artists, type 2 energy potions were scarce and not everyone could afford them, so most people still used energy ore.
“This dungeon actually rewards an energy vein. We have to occupy this place as our stronghold as soon as possible,” Luo Wu Shang, who had recovered a bit, said as she looked at the White Feather Gang stronghold with growing satisfaction.
Now that more and more quotas for High Martial Arts Descend were opening up, more and more guild members would enter. Relying only on their points and contributions, it would be impossible to cultivate too many people.
But if they had a stronghold with an energy vein, they just needed to hire players or have their own guild members do the mining, and they could generate a large amount of points and contribution every day. After all, the martial arts hall not only rewarded points and contribution for some ores, it also bought energy ore and energy crystals, which likewise granted points and contribution.
The price the martial arts hall paid was much better than what it charged them for purchases, only twenty percent of the purchase price, which was far more profitable than mining energy ore directly for the martial arts hall.
“I agree.” Fang Zhen nodded. “We have to secure this place as soon as we can. Once we have this stronghold, we can use energy ore freely, and our team’s growth speed will increase by a huge margin.”
As the players discussed how to quickly become core disciples, a flying transport vehicle sped over from the City of Light Chasing.
“Are we there yet?” Wu Zhuoqun asked anxiously from the passenger seat.
Although they had set off as soon as they received the news, if they had not contacted Mihos first and those three monsters had already made their move, then even if they rushed over and invoked their clan elders it would be useless, since the elders were not here in person.
They needed to tell Mihos that the clan elders already knew about this, so that if Mihos helped those three monsters, the clan elders would not stand by doing nothing. That way Mihos would have some scruples.
Since Mihos had broken the rules first, if the clan elders later taught him a lesson, he would have no one to blame.
“Almost, just over ten kilometers left.” Lin Yan glanced at the map and relaxed slightly. After hurrying all the way, they were finally close.
But just moments after Lin Yan spoke, the life detector on the flying transport vehicle sounded an alarm.
A single red dot with an unusually powerful life signal appeared on the radar of the life detector.
“A Bone Forging Realm martial artist?” Wu Zhuoqun looked at the display. With such a terrifying life force, it could only be a Bone Forging Realm martial artist or a lord monster. Lord monsters, however, were enormous and would appear as a large circle, not a single red dot.
“That looks like Vice Leader Mihos!” Lin Yan looked at the figure sprinting through the forest below the vehicle and said in surprise, “He seems injured!”
Wu Zhuoqun looked out the window and saw that the figure running through the forest was indeed Vice Leader Mihos.
But Mihos’s face was pale, and blood flowed from one arm. He was clearly injured and seemed to be fleeing from something.
“What is going on? Did someone fight Mihos?” Wu Zhuoqun was baffled as he watched Vice Leader Mihos heading back to the City of Light Chasing.
Mihos, as vice leader, was not just any Bone Forging Realm martial artist, but an intermediate level expert. It was hard to imagine who could have injured him. As for a monster attack, that seemed unlikely. If it had been a lord monster, Mihos would certainly have informed them as soon as he saw them, since such an attack was no small matter. He would not, like now, just run back to the city alone without even acknowledging them.
While Wu Zhuoqun and Lin Yan were still confused, the scene outside the flying transport vehicle soon shocked them both.
The former White Feather Gang stronghold was in ruins. Corpses lay everywhere, and several humans in silver-gray clothing were cleaning up the battlefield.
What nearly made Wu Zhuoqun and Lin Yan cry out, however, were the three spots on the battlefield where three corpses lay, each a figure all too familiar to them, known throughout the garrison as the three monsters.
“Dead?”
“They’re all dead?”
Wu Zhuoqun stared at the three figures, completely stunned.
Those three monsters had always been his goals, people he felt he might never surpass in his life. Yet now, those three so-called monsters were all dead…
