Chapter 166: Chapter 166: The Kingdom of Demon Cultivators
Not until the slate-gray shell once again enveloped the golden, flowing light did Mu Qiu finally realize that it had, in fact, blinked.
There was something outside, something she couldn’t identify—and it was alive!
The creature’s size must have been terrifying. The golden surface right in front of her was clearly its eyeball.
Its pupil alone completely blocked the opening, which meant it was staring right at her.
At the thought, Mu Qiu’s heart began to pound uncontrollably in her chest.
She wasn’t afraid of zombies, nor was she afraid of the demon beasts of the Yunzhou Continent.
But an unknown creature, one so large it defied imagination? Of course she was afraid.
’I’m only a Late-stage Qi Refining Cultivator!’
Some truths were universal in the Cultivation World. For example, when it came to any kind of beast other than human Cultivators—be it a demon beast or a legendary spiritual beast...
...the larger its size, the more Spiritual Energy it absorbed, and the more terrifying it was bound to be.
’The eyeball alone is beyond imagination; how terrifying must its actual body be?’
’And what exactly is it?’
Whatever it was, Mu Qiu knew she couldn’t possibly face it.
So, Mu Qiu froze.
She remained frozen in the opening, her gaze locked with the golden pupil. As she stared, for some unknown reason, the light around her grew brighter.
It allowed Mu Qiu to clearly see her own reflection gradually appearing within the flowing light of its pupil.
She was crouched there, the puppet’s somewhat misshapen face now exuding a trace of terror in the face of the unknown—which only made it look uglier.
Mu Qiu had the uncharitable thought that the Sect Master had probably crafted this puppet herself.
’Her craftsmanship really is terrible.’
A few seconds later, the golden pupil vanished.
The light grew even brighter, as if her presence had triggered some kind of switch. She could even see a faint, blurry scene outside through the opening.
Mu Qiu froze.
She asked the System, "There’s clearly something out there. Should I go out?"
The System replied, "That’s your choice. You might not be able to complete this mission anyway. You could just stay here for three days and wait for the map to change."
Mu Qiu asked, "If I die here, is it a true death? I won’t be able to teleport back to the Sect?"
"Correct," the System replied.
You could exploit a glitch, but it wasn’t that game-breaking.
If it were possible to teleport out of a Secret Realm at any time, even Song Jiulai wouldn’t have needed to go through so much trouble.
As the saying goes, fortune favors the bold. Mu Qiu now faced two choices.
One: go out. She might be killed, or she might get lucky and discover something, but she would risk losing her account.
She had already quit her job; this account was now her livelihood, the basis of her employment with Han Tian.
Two: lie low here, wait three days for this small world to be replaced, and look for opportunities in the next one.
The former had a death rate of nearly 99 percent, while the latter sounded a bit cowardly.
But being cowardly was the very foundation of survival in the Cultivation World.
Being a coward wasn’t so bad, really.
The scary part was that her curiosity and stubbornness were gaining the upper hand. If she didn’t go, she might never know the secret hidden here.
At the end of the day, it was a gamer’s mentality, and in her bones, she still had a trace of the innate daring of the Huaxia people.
Mu Qiu finally understood why people in horror movies loved to court death.
Sometimes, it wasn’t about wanting to die; it was just that you couldn’t rest easy without going to see for yourself.
—You’d definitely be resting easy once you were dead.
Instead of just agonizing in the hole, Mu Qiu also sent a message to the world chat.
[Mu Qiu: I’ve got a problem. I’m in a secret room for a hidden quest, and there’s a beast outside that’s bigger than I can imagine. There’s a high chance I’ll die if I go out, but if I don’t, I probably won’t get anything out of this small world. What should I do?]
[Gu Yunxi: What else can you do? Make cold-tossed scrambled eggs.]
[Qi Dazuo: What kind of evil dish is cold-tossed scrambled eggs? Heretic, get out of the Yunzhou Continent!]
[Su Daqiang: Dammit, I don’t like scrambled eggs.]
[Han Tian: Be serious, you guys. @Mu Qiu, think it over. I definitely hope you don’t go out.]
Mu Qiu was the top fighter in his studio, one he valued greatly. Han Tian certainly didn’t want her to court death in the game and lose her account.
[Daoist Wang: In an Immortal Cultivation Game, everything comes down to destiny. Luck is important, but courage is even more so. If you encounter something like this and back down, you may never come across another great opportunity in your lifetime.]
[Zhou Nvzi: Logically, you should lay low, but in this game, I agree with the Daoist.]
A jolt went through Mu Qiu.
’That’s right. The account is important, but an Immortal Cultivation Game is all about destiny.’
’The System already chose me. If I don’t even have the courage to walk out at a time like this, maybe my account’s luck will just dry up completely in the future.’
Even so, it still took Mu Qiu a long time to steel herself for the decision.
In the end, one thought sealed her resolve: ’If the worst happens, I’ll just snatch another account!’
’If Zhen Weida could get his own ID back, why couldn’t she have the same luck?’
Mu Qiu took a deep breath and finally decided to crawl out.
She extinguished the flame on her finger and began to crawl cautiously toward the outside, inch by inch.
The light from the opening grew closer, and her surroundings were utterly silent.
It was so quiet that Mu Qiu could hear her own faint breathing and the sound of her heart beating like a war drum.
In such an intensely quiet environment, one’s senses were magnified countless times, making one’s nerves even more frayed.
Her Spiritual Energy was still present, but she couldn’t sense any movement in her surroundings.
If the giant beast’s eye hadn’t been an illusion, it could only mean the creature was so powerful that she was utterly incapable of detecting it.
As she crawled to the very edge of the opening, a faint breeze suddenly washed over her.
She instinctively turned her head, her heart clenching painfully again.
’Is there wind underground?’
But she saw nothing.
She could now see the full picture of what lay outside.
Light from some unknown source allowed her to see everything clearly.
She was taken aback.
It was a vast, man-made underground plaza.
It seemed to be cast from bronze, laid out in a perfect square. To her left, at the plaza’s sacrificial center, stood an enormous bronze cauldron.
And she now knew where she was.
An eye!
She was inside the eye of a bronze statue, an eye that, unlike a human’s, was a square frame.
She knew this because directly opposite her was another identical bronze colossus. The eyes of that strange statue were also square, and the pupil in the center was a hole just like the one she had crawled through.
’Such terrifying colossi. Who knows how many years they’ve been buried here, or what they were used for?’
Mu Qiu was reminded of the Sanxingdui relics she had once seen in Huaxia.
Sanxingdui also featured various bronze statues, but this one in Yunzhou looked stranger. Besides its square eyes, it had a pair of wings on its back and an exceptionally robust, seemingly unclothed body.
The ancient, profound, and mysterious civilization carried a trace of primitive brutality.
It reminded Mu Qiu of something the Spiritual Body had said.
"This was once the kingdom of Demon Cultivators."
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