226 Underground Maze
The underground passage reminded Cao Mao of the Silver Phoenix Sect's tunnel to the sewer. It had similar pillars, reinforced brick walls, and size as if the builder of these emergency escape routes was the same person.
It was noticeable because of the unnecessary atheistic sense. The structure was too similar to one of the dungeons in many RPG games. For a moment there, Cao Mao thought that he had driven into a dungeon.
The group of three moved quietly in the dark passage. Mao Xueyan, Dandan, and Cao Mao didn't need light to see the surroundings as their red pupils gave them night vision.
Three pairs of glowing red eyes kept moving through the underground path. After running through the tunnel for two minutes, they stopped inside a square room, which was also an intersection with 3 doors.
They could either go forward, left, or right as three doors led toward a different direction.
The girls sniffed and followed the scent of Tang Deming. They could also smell the other employees, but they went in a different direction. Tang Deming took the right turn while his men went the other ways.
"This way!"
Mao Xueyan and Dandan entered the right door. Cao Mao only looked around in confusion before he followed them.
But after passing through the door, they found themselves in a long underground corridor. When they had reached the end of the corridor, they stumbled into another similar square room with 3 doors. The room was also the same as the previous one.
"I can see the pattern. This might be Tang Deming's little maze, but it won't work against us!"
Mao Xueyan sneered. She activated her domain sense as she followed the scent of the fat merchant. This time, she picked the middle door.
The next room was the same as the previous two as well.
Then, the fourth
The fifth
The seventh
The tenth
For 20 times in a row, they had gone through square rooms with the same appearance. Yet, none of them lost their confidence or panicked.
"Nice maze. It's large enough to trick humans to lose their sense of direction. But it's useless!"
Mao Xueyan laughed. The smell of Tang Deming got stronger, and she could sense him nearby.
He was just 200 meters away!
The two girls were so eager to get their hands on the merchant and get their revenge. They charged toward another room, where Tang Deming's presence came from.
"YOU FATTY SCUM! IT'S PAYBACK TIME!!"
Tang Deming could hear the shout from far away. He shrieked in shock and tried to run away.
However, the small cat and the tall beastwoman caught him within a few seconds.
In fright, Tang Deming tried to negotiate, but he was too panicked to come up with the right words.
"WHO ARE YOU!? Wait, a cat!?"
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO I AM! DIEEEE!!"
The claws cut through Tang Deming's skin as if they were tofu. The fat man was sliced into three pieces of meat in an instant.
Mao Xueyan grinned, believing that she had scored an easy kill and completed her revenge. But a second later, her smiling face distorted.
Tang Deming's body slowly repaired itself. His blood, guts, and severed parts were rearranged and reconnected automatically. Then, all of his wounds were healed.
The fat merchant's eyes regained light again. However, his demeanor was odd.
Tang Deming collapsed to his butt and wet his pants. He screamed in fear.
"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! I HAVE A FAMILY! I HAVE A SON!"
Mao Xueyan and Dandan's face grimaced. They had thought that Tang Deming had used some sort of self-resurrection skill or a rare life-saving skill. However, his current action contradicted his ability.
Something was odd, too odd.
"What did you do? How did you resurrect yourself?"
Tang Deming looked back and forth between the cat and the tall woman, "I-I don't know anything! What self-resurrect?"
"I killed you, and you come back to life."
"I-I-I have no idea, really!"
At this moment, Cao Mao had caught up with the girls. He looked at Tang Deming and Mao Xueyan in confusion, "What's wrong?"
"I killed him, but this fatass bastard self-resurrected. I'm asking him how he did it."
"Maybe he has a treasure that he can use to self-resurrect?"
Hearing Cao Mao, Tang Deming remembered something. He pulled out a talisman from his sleeve pocket.
"T-That's right. I have this divine-grade talisman. It's a one-time use, though."
The yellow-paper talisman no longer had any energy. Its ink was dimmed, and nobody could sense a Qi strand from the paper.
"Bullshit. No talisman can resurrect people!" Mao Xueyan still didn't believe in Tang Deming.
"But I'm speaking the truth! A dungeon cultivator from the holy land exchanged it for a beautiful mermaid slave! H-Here, you guys can have it. Could you let me go?"
Mao Xueyan snorted and ignored Tang Deming's nonsense. She glanced at Dandan.
The tall woman nodded. She bore her fangs and kicked Tang Deming's chest.
The fat merchant fell to the ground. But then, Dandan stomped his belly and stunned him.
Dandan reverted back to her white tiger form. Then, she pressed the merchant on the ground with her front paw.
ROAR!
As if Dandan was mocking Tang Deming, telling him, "Do you remember me?"
Tang Deming screamed in fright. He begged and pled.
"Don't kill me, please! I'll give you everything! I have essence cores and many auction treasures on me! You can have everything. Please let me go!"
Without letting Tang Deming convince her, Dandan slowly opened her mouth.
Then
CHOMP
KRUK
The scene became gory. Dandan bit Tang Deming's head off and began chewing.
The tiger ate the fat guy!
"Yikes," Cao Mao covered his mouth in disgust. For a moment, he was on the verge of vomiting, but he had managed to control his bowel.
Mao Xueyan glanced at Cao Mao and sneered, "You'd better not trying anything funny to me or my sister in the future. Otherwise, we'll eat you. Do you know that orc meat tastes like beef? We won't only eat you, but we'll eat your children."
Had it been him during his early days, he would have been scared stiff. But dying in Isolation Training Space so many times, he no longer feared a simple death threat.
Moreover, he knew exactly how to deal with a stronger cocky expert.
"That's good to know. So, by that logic, my children are pigs. Can I eat them, too?"
Mao Xueyan was taken aback. She was disgusted, "You're a disgusting cannibalism orc! How can you say that you'll eat your children!?"
"Well, you said that orc meat tastes like beef. I can't help but think of my children as little farm pigs."
"… You sick bastard. They're your children!"
"Yes, I know. So, will you eat me and my children? Can I eat my children first before you eat me?"
"… I've changed my mind. You're a disgusting sick bastard. I won't talk to you again."
"Sure."
The trick always worked. When someone had threatened him or interrogated him, he usually grossed them and stopped the conversation midway.
Of course, Cao Mao never wanted to eat his children. He simply sacrificed his non-existence reputation to avoid some uncomfortable conversation.
Now, Mao Xueyan didn't want to talk to him anymore. The annoying cat finally got quiet.
"Oh, by the way, can you tell your sister not to eat everything? We still need to loot his body and his spatial rings. My essence cores should be in there."
"Fine, fine. I'll tell her."
The cat rolled her eyes and walked toward the giant white tiger. They talked in meowing language for a moment.
A minute later, Dandan vomited what she had eaten. Pieces of nasty red meat and chewed organs scattered on the floor.
Then, Mao Xueyan used her domain power to extract all spatial rings from the meat goo, which had been vomited out by Dandan. She tossed them to Cao Mao, "Here you go. Happy now?"
The rings were still dripping in Dandan's saliva and Tang Deming's blood, and Cao Mao caught them with bare hands.
Yet, Cao Mao didn't mind the mess as he had been through worst.
'At least, they are better than going through that shitty sewer.'
…
They managed to share their gain from Tang Deming.
Cao Mao got his 60,000 essence cores and Ma Moxi's gold element pallet back. He also got a bundle of weird talisman papers without an inscription, an unidentified book, and all cash in Tang Deming's possession, amounting to 2 million refined stones and 10,000 essence cores.
As for the girls, they didn't take essence cores as they wanted only a few items. They asked for the immortal-grade goblet with a sealed cover, which was scheduled to be auctioned before the gold element pallet, and all pills in Tang Deming's spatial rings.
The medicines and pills that Tang Deming had been mostly high-grade cultivation pills for cultivators in the muscle tampering realm and bone refining realm. Cao Mao didn't know why this merchant had stocked over 100,000 pills in there, but the girls seemed happy with them.
Strangely, the pills that Cao Mao had sold to Tang Deming weren't in the spatial rings. The merchant might have already sold them to the black market.
"Are you sure you only want those artifacts and the pills?"
Cao Mao was surprised that Mao Xueyan and Dandan didn't take a single essence core as their share. They seemed to be satisfied with the items.
"No, these items are enough," Xueyan laughed as she clung to the metal goblet.
"What can this do?" Cao Mao was curious. He thought of the Holy Grail in Fate series, but he didn't think that this goblet could be that omnipotent.
"This goblet can infinitely produce any material or liquid that we put in there. It can only be registered once, and the liquid must be lower than an immortal grade. Well, we can use it to copy weaponry or armor, though. They're too big to put it in the cup."
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