Chapter 88 - Escaping from Burial Grounds (XIX)
Editor: Kitty
The ultimate boss was not easy to deal with. Luo Jian and company had long made preparations for a bitter battle, but they still didn’t expect that the other party would be such a difficult opponent.
As one knows, the god’s entire tomb was covered with tree vines and roots, and as if they were living creatures, these parts of the tree completely heeded the god’s instructions on how to move, so what happened next was not hard to imagine. When the god, who was lying on the ground looking like a mess, waved his arm, a thick vine reached out from the tree, wrapped itself around the weak god, and suspended him as he gazed at the people below him.
“Kill all the ‘players’ in the secret chamber. This is my final task. If I finish it, I will be able to obtain everything I want.” The god bowed his head, gazed at the people down below, and said in a low voice, revealing a dreadfully pale and creepy smile.
At this very moment, Specter raised his gun and pointed it at the god. With a serious expression, he said loudly, “What if you can’t manage to do it? If the devil you made a deal with fails to fulfill his promise, how will you deal with it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” The god had been stabbed several times by Luo Jian, so his face was weak and pale, his voice was unsteady, and his limbs were almost motionless. The vines around his waist twisted once or twice occasionally. The whole scene appeared as if the bizarre god was a corpse hanging on the tree.
There was a sense of desperation in the god’s voice: “I have no way of retreat; you are right, I really can’t die. Regardless of whether I will succeed in the end or not, if I die now, I will have given up any chance of saving him—so for the sake of my wish, please die!”
Something abnormal occurred!
Luo Jian and company found that the roots and vines under their feet began to twist wildly. There was almost no empty space that was not filled in the entirety of the god’s huge tomb. All the space was filled with dark, twisted, ugly roots and vines of all kinds of sizes and thicknesses. Akin to horrifying tentacles, they began to wriggle towards Luo Jian and company. It seemed that they wanted to strangle them alive!
Duan Li embraced Feng YuLan’s waist with one hand and began to chop the disgusting roots and vines flexibly with his tang sword in the other hand. After all, he was a veteran player. He did not feel flustered when he encountered this sort of attack that appeared to surround them and surged in from all directions. His sword was surprisingly sharp, and he immediately opened up a circular empty space around them, but no matter how hard he tried, there were always innumerable vines surrounding them!
Compared to Duan Li and Ah Lan, Specter and Luo Jian were in a more dire situation. When this huge amount of vines surged forward, they did not react in time and were separated. Now, they were separately fighting against the enemy. Luo Jian was not strong enough and could only escape those terrible vines while he retreated. There were too many vines, and the vines were too dense. Luo Jian could hardly see where his companions were, so he could only turn around to look for the exit of the tomb. It was disadvantageous for him to battle in this kind of terrain. He had to leave here first.
In fact, Luo Jian had always been accompanied by Xing Yan, but Xing Yan did not help him at all. He just stood beside him, and for some unknown reason, these vines didn’t attack Xing Yan—or rather, they completely ignored his existence as if they didn’t even perceive such a person.
Compared to Luo Jian, his paternal cousin’s situation was not much better. After all, he was a long-range fighter. Surrounded by so many vines, his current situation was dire. However, Specter did not panic at all. He found that his pistol attacks were very weak in the face of such a wide range of targets, so he paused and did something shocking.
Yes, Specter’s two pistols could be disassembled.
His weapons were two silver pistols, but their shape was a little strange because these two guns were much bigger than ordinary pistols and seemed to have many redundant structures on them. Specter had extraordinary control over his weapon and could completely dismantle and reassemble the two guns in a few seconds, and in the meantime, it seemed that Specter also took out a lot of components from his carry-on secret chamber.
So in a few moments, the two ordinary-looking pistols morphed into heavy rocket launchers that could be carried on his shoulders! When Specter placed his rocket launchers on his shoulders, he raised his head and aimed directly at the god hanging in the air. He had completely forgotten the goal of not killing the enemy that he previously mentioned, especially since he was at the risk of losing his life! Living was his first priority.
So when Specter aimed at the target, without much deliberation, he decisively pressed on the trigger, and with a bang, he shot!!
This extremely violent fighting style immediately caused a disaster in the tomb!
Although the god had never seen anything like a rocket launcher before, with mere deliberation, he could deduce that these stupid things would not be anything good. Therefore, he instructed the tree vines that were wrapped around him to avoid it, but with the speed of the rockets, how could any humans avoid them? However, a new problem cropped up. God was already not human.
Therefore, he dodged the attack perfectly. However, the rocket blasted toward the big tree behind him. Unexpectedly, the defense of the big tree was unbelievably strong, and almost no traces of the single shot were left on the trunk, but the fiery light caused by the explosion seemed to make the poor tree vines tremble with fear.
Specter immediately noticed this point, and he reloaded a new armor-piercing bullet into the rocket launcher. This time, the target of the attack was no longer the god suspended in the air, but he randomly fired his rocket launcher. He did not care whether he would hit his companions or not. The place he bombarded immediately exploded, and fire ignited there. The plants were afraid of fire and did not dare to move toward the scorched areas. Instead, Specter had blasted a safe area where they could stand upright.
Specter had caused such a huge commotion with sound that could be clearly heard no matter how far they were, so Duan Li led Ah Lan as they cut a bloody path through the tangled roots and vines. They fled hurriedly toward where Specter was in an attempt to join their companion.
The god floated in midair as he paid attention to everything happening below. He originally thought he could use tree vines to solve the problem, but now it seemed…… the power of these people was really a little weird. The god knew that ordinary people could not possibly have such abilities. So it seemed that they also got some strange power from somewhere, or…… did they make contracts with some devil to gain such power?
But now, the god had no time to think about these things. He must get rid of these people as soon as possible because he felt that there was another group of people approaching the tomb, and it was way more troublesome to get rid of that many people. Although the god did not lack time, he did not want to continue to waste time and energy in endlessly waiting.
He had been waiting for a thousand years and had become numb from waiting. Since he had endured the torture of waiting for such a long time, he should be more patient. However, for some reason, the god had gradually started to erupt in anger from waiting. He urgently needed a way to vent his anger, and the way he would do so was by killing this group of people of unknown origins in front of him.
He would get rid of them one by one.
The god reached out his hand, and with his action, some of the vines began to heed his will. In the sea of tree vines below, Duan Li was pulling Ah Lan along as he headed in Specter’s direction. In such a situation, they could not disperse. If they separated, sooner or later, they would be drowned by the tree vines!
But it was obvious that the god would not allow them to gather that easily. With a wave of his arm, he seemed to pass down his orders. All the vines surrounding Duan Li and Ah Lan began to have some strange changes. They soon found that sharp spikes started to grow on these vines!
“Ah!” The tree vines that were crazily wriggling around them had surrounded them with their sharp spikes. The sharp edges and corners of the tree vines soon caused many ghastly wounds on Ah Lan’s arms, and Ah Lan could not help but yelp in pain. Following that, he used a short knife to cut the tree vines from around his arm as he turned back to look at Duan Li, who had blocked the vines from him.
Duan Li’s two fists could not beat four hands. With a single sword, he could not chop all the vines that could freely hop and wriggle around everywhere, especially after the vines had grown spikes, so Duan Li had become soaked in blood due to him being scratched.
They were in a very disadvantageous situation.
Ah Lan looked at the blood on Duan Li’s body, sighed helplessly, and suddenly turned around to hug Duan Li’s waist tightly. This action startled Duan Li, but he did not respond. He heard Ah Lan murmur something in his ear, and shortly following that, his body started to rise in the air. All the wild vines around him rushed up, but Ah Lan carried out his actions swiftly. He carried Duan Li as they ascended up into the air.
“I can’t hold on too long…… The weight of two people is too much for me.” Ah Lan tightly hugged Duan Li, who did not speak and just slightly turned to look at him. Duan Li was still wearing an evil ghost mask on his face, and Ah Lan can only see his livid mask.
Ah Lan flew towards where Specter was. High up in the air, he could see Specter raising his rocket launcher to crazily bombard some place not far away! Even though the vines had spikes, they were still afraid of fire. The temperature and explosion caused a large, circular area around Specter to empty.
“This guy is really crazy.” Ah Lan started to evaluate Specter in the distance while he was flying, but soon he noticed a problem and frowned: “Wait, where’s Luo Jian?”
Luo Jian was not by Specter’s side. They had been separated by the sudden outbreak of tree roots and vines. Moreover, Luo Jian was neither able to fly in the sky like Ah Lan nor had super strong defensive abilities. There was only Xing Yan standing by his side but who was not doing anything.
Those vines did not attack Xing Yan for some reason but also spontaneously bypassed him and kept a certain distance from him, so there was a circular vacuum belt encircling where Xing Yan was standing. When Luo Jian was entangled with those vines in a life-or-death situation, he suddenly raised his head to look at Xing Yan, and Xing Yan looked back at him expressionlessly.
Wasn’t this a living shield?!
An idea popped out of nowhere in Luo Jian’s mind. Therefore, he jumped up nimbly, leaping over the vines that were trying to strangle him, and jumped directly to cling on Xing Yan’s body. Like an octopus, he stuck onto Xing Yan tightly and refused to budge even if he died.
Xing Yan did not move at all, but there was a smile on his previously expressionless face.
Those tree vines saw Luo Jian climb onto Xing Yan’s body and were all stiff momentarily. They circled around Xing Yan and Luo Jian. The vines were like a host of demons dancing in revelry, but they could not attack Luo Jian now.
Xing Yan also seemed to ignore Luo Jian. He did not push him away or embrace him. He allowed Luo Jian to hug his waist with his two legs, hug his neck with his hands, and rub his face into the cranny of his neck.
Xing Yan did not speak and stepped forward to move. With every step he took, the tree roots and vines around him also moved along with him. In other words, in an area of about two meters around him, there were no trees and vines attacking him. It was also unknown how he managed to do so, but he was able to do it.
Since Xing Yan would not be attacked, Luo Jian, who laid on his body, was naturally safe and reassured. In broad daylight, he began to carry out some unsightly actions such as gnawing his neck and collarbone, and like a water snake, he kneaded here and there against his body.
Poor Xing Yan could not speak, so he could not protest Luo Jian’s behavior, but he seemed to enjoy the process. He took Luo Jian as he headed towards where the other’s brother was. The commotion his brother caused was too loud, and the sound of bombs exploding would echo in the entire tomb for a long time.
In fact, the god did not mean to hurt Luo Jian because Luo Jian still had the ‘ghost identity,’ so there were no spikes on the vines attacking him. The god originally wanted to separate him from them and catch him, but there was a Xing Yan beside him.
Xing Yan was a stalker.
The secret chamber held preferential treatment toward stalkers. They were set as ‘part of the secret chamber,’ similar to props in the secret chamber. Moreover, props were also set as ‘cannot be destroyed in any way—players can temporarily destroy but it is recoverable,’ etc.
Props, doors, keys, story lines, NPCs, and so on were all components of each secret chamber. The components of the chamber could not attack each other, so all non-player creatures in the chamber would not attack a stalker.
But stalkers could attack any ‘components’ of the chamber.
There was no reason for this because the existence of stalkers was set by the secret chamber as a tool to ‘destroy.’ Since they were used to destroy, the secret chamber allowed them to destroy both players or other things.
However, although the secret chamber allowed stalkers to destroy, it did not allow them to do anything other than that.
For example saving a player in deep water and scorching fire.
Therefore, Xing Yan would never take the initiative to save Luo Jian. No matter what kind of environment Luo Jian was in, even if he was going to die, Xing Yan could not take the initiative to save him.
However, since he could not take the initiative, he could just be tactful and passive. There were many ways to save a person. If he looked for the loopholes in the regulations set by the secret chamber, he could save the player without violating the regulations.
For example, at present, when Xing Yan was not doing anything, Luo Jian could jump on him and take advantage of his identity to seek shelter, and this was not within the scope of ‘taking initiative,’ so the secret chamber would not punish Xing Yan.
And in another example, when they were in the ghost ship secret chamber, Luo Jian fell off the observation platform, but in fact, he was not caught by Xing Yan. Xing Yan just stood there waiting to be smashed by Luo Jian.
The stalker was a kind of prop driven by the will of the secret chamber, but obviously, the secret chamber also left a window of opportunity for the players. As long as the players found the right method, the players could also order and use the stalker.
The secret chamber would not leave anyone at an absolute dead end.
T/N:
Kitty: Haha this kind of reminds me of “Global University Entrance Exam,” if you’ve ever heard of it, where the MC and ML just keep taking advantage of the loopholes of the system they’re stuck in and making the administrators angry.
Fleur: Lol yeah, GUEE is a great UL novel. I love how they take advantage of the system too(as well as how the sexual tension is sometimes…almost exploding)