Chapter 331: Friend or Foe?
10 minutes after Ling Tianlong and Ling Cao had left, the Yang Monarch snake woke up inside the strange dungeon.
"Bah, damn that stupid rock…"
The Yang Monarch finally regained his consciousness after he had swallowed a tank shell, coated with a soul stone and strange metal material. Had it not because of his unique immortal physique, he would have died there.
The snake looked around, searching for his comrade.
"Where are Tianlong and that stupid snake?"
He flickered his tongue and glanced left and right. Upon sensing that his main body was several kilometers away on the surface, he realized that Ling Tianlong and the Yin Monarch had left him here.
"DAMN TIANLONG!! DAMN THAT ASSHOLE!! I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!!"
The snake faded and became invisible, planning to fly through the ceiling to get to the surface and return to Ling Tianlong's side.
RUMBLE
As the snake was about to leave, he noticed the thunderous footsteps of giant golems with massive rifles, which Ling Tianlong had seen when they had first encountered the ambush.
'Were they always this big? The guys we met later on were a lot smaller…'
After Ling Tianlong had been attacked, these giant golems went missing and were replaced with human-sized golems with sentry guns. Though his master hadn't paid attention to the detail, Yang Monarch spotted the irregularity of this place.
He was interested in the secrecy. The yang snake had a change of heart as he stayed in the dungeon, observing the activities of these giant golems.
The snake checked the weapons in the golem's arms. Then, it figured out something.
'These weapons and the giants must have been precious. The puppeteer might have switched these guys out and used the expendable ones as pawns to wither down Ling Tianlong's strength. If it were me, I would have done the same and used these guys as finishers.'
RUMBLE
The dungeon's walls and ceilings flipped, rotated, and moved around as if they were a part of a jigsaw puzzle or a puzzle cube. Even the room he was in sometimes trembled as if it was being carried on a colossus forklift.
The four giant golems with rifles patrolled in a square formation while twenty others carried pickaxes, shovels, and mining carts as if they were miners. They stayed in the room for 20 minutes, waiting for the living dungeon to finish its room adjustment.
BOOM
The ceiling dropped several piles of dust as the room finally reached its destination. Only then, one of the sealed walls receded to the ground and revealed another path to a dark cave.
The golems started marching toward the cave. Then, the miners began shoving and digging through the soil.
All soil, stones, and minerals were loaded into the mining carts, and the sentry golems helped the miners push the carts into the room. As soon as the carts returned to the room, everything in the cart disappeared, after which the sentry golems returned the carts to the working miners to reuse them.
The cycle went on as the underground dungeon continued to expand.
The snake used this opportunity to follow the miners to the cave. He rechecked his position and compared the distance between him and Ling Tianlong's presence.
Surprisingly, the snake got a lot closer to the Mount Hua Sect. They were only less than a kilometer away!
Moreover, it seemed that these golems had been digging in the direction of Mount Hua, where Ling Tianlong and others were!
The snake had a scare, believing that the golems had been planning to raid the sect. He rushed back to his master to report about the potential crisis.
…
Mount Hua Sect, historically in Miaomiao's world, was a Taoist School with nothing to do with martial arts. Moreover, it was found several hundred years later after the Three Kingdom Period.
But in this world, this martial art sect existed as one of the orthodox sects. They primarily focused on cultivating, martial arts, fencing, and sword daos.
Mount Hua Sect's signature was the renowned Plum Blossom Sword Techniques. Though the teaching of the sect contained only 24 moves, many elders and top disciples added almost a thousand variations to these techniques and created their own styles.
As such, everyone had a different comprehension of the Plum Blossom Sword Techniques and came up with unique skills and abilities.
Mount Hua was separated into five peaks, each housed a division, governed by one elder and their inner disciples. One mountain peak only accepted 20 inner disciples at a time. As for outer disciples, they stayed at the sect's central building at the foot of the mountain, training and competing to earn their position as inner disciples.
Ling Tianlong had already finished his early story arcs, and he had been acknowledged as one of Mount Hua's top inner disciples. Although he still had a feud with his cousin, who had the same surname, he had no trouble living in this sect and solidify his foundation using Ling Cao's resources.
As soon as Ling Tianlong and Ling Cao, the elder of the 3rd Mountain Peak, had returned, the inner disciples came out to receive them.
Ling Tianlong had already reverted back to his human appearance and put a new uniform on. As such, no one but his mentor was aware of his transformation ability.
14 men and one gorgeous maiden bowed to Ling Cao.
"Welcome back, 3rd Elder!"
"Welcome back, father!"
The only female disciple greeted the elder first, then she beamed a smile when she saw Ling Tianlong's handsome face.
"You're back, senior brother Ling!"
Ling Tianlong nodded at the girl, "I'm back, Chen'er."
The girl was Ling Chen, Ling Cao's daughter. She was also his cousin as their parents were relatives.
Like common heroines, she was a peerless beauty. She had a gravure idol sexy figure, white jade-like skin, silky smooth black hair, and inhumane charm that could fall a nation. Moreover, everyone in the sect yearned for her, hoping to win her heart one day.
Unfortunately, her heart had already been captured by this protagonist.
"How's your day?" Ling Chen inspected Ling Tianlong's condition since his facial expression seemed exhausted.
Ling Tianlong patted his robes and shoulders, "So-so, I guess."
As soon as Ling Tianlong touched his left shoulder, he sensed something missing as his body weight was unbalanced.
The Yang Monarch wasn't with him. Also, his immortal-grade sword wasn't in his scabbard as both Yin and Yang Monarch hadn't transformed back into the sword yet.
Currently, the black snake was hiding within Ling Tianlong's robes, pretending to be one of his belts.
Ling Tianlong glanced inside his robe and saw the black snake's face, who showed a wry smile.
'Where is Yang Monarch?'
The black snake tilted his head, 'You forgot him in that underground dungeon!'
'I did?'
'Yes, you do, you dumb fuck! Luckily, that guy can phase through material obstacles, so he should be able to come back here shortly. Just don't let the others know about our existence, okay?'
'I know.'
Ling Tianlong patted the black snake and continued the wear a fake smile, chatting with his colleagues and the love-struck maiden in front of him. He also ignored a group of inner disciples, who had been glaring at him in anger ever since Ling Chen started talking to him.
Ling Tianlong's story continued to progress, and he was about to deal with the last group of rivals in his sect. Soon, he would start an adventure and travel to more advanced places with stronger foes like how protagonists in wuxia novels did.
…
Six hours later, the Yang Monarch returned to Ling Tianlong's side. He reported what he had found to his contracted master when the protagonist was alone in his private chamber.
"So, they're coming here?"
"Aye. They're digging a tunnel to here as we speak. I saw those giant monsters that attacked us, and I think I know about the dungeon's mechanism now."
"Do speak. I'm listening."
"Alright. First, it's about the maze and the rooms we had been through. It seems that…"
The snake continued to inform the protagonist about the dungeon's characteristics.
…
Meanwhile, Liu Guang and Fogan had exited through the passage that the golems had used. As they had expected, they found themselves inside the ruined city, Xuan City.
This place used to be the hometown of Ma Moxi and Qiang Han. However, the city lord had died, and the Ma Clan had moved to Siren City. Without commoners, local powerhouse clans, or local cultivators, this place became an ideal location to hide armies behind the tall city walls.
As Liu Guang and Fogan got out, they found over 20,000 giant golems with rifles and 10,000 unknown vehicles and cannons. Each of them had a black knight armor on and a tower shield was hung behind their back.
That was not all. As they got out of the passage, they saw several holes in the city, and more golems had been marching out of the exits.
They were astonished by such a large army. They began to question who their master and what their connection with the dungeon master was.
As Fogan and Liu Guang stared at the golem army in a daze, a dark-skin cultivator approached them.
They recognized the person. He was CJ, the guy that Miaomiao had spoken to in the dungeon.
"Hey, girl. Whachu doing here? Oh, excuse my accent."
Fogan coughed and took over the role of negotiator, "Please excuse us for intruding on your city and your army. We were just passing through."
"Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. Oh, my master told me to put a good word to your bosses at Siren City. Tell them that we would like to help you in this upcoming war, but we hope that they can share a portion of the west coast as compensation. My boss wants to create a blood salt mine or something. I don't know what's he thinking, but he's damn smart."
"… This monk shall relay the words."
"Thank you. Oh, hey. Tell the guy that purchased my guns that the shipment will arrive in a few days since we've moved here."
"Understood."
Fogan and Liu Guang bid CJ farewell and left in a hurry as they didn't want to mess with the people behind this large army.
As they left, the corner of their eyes spotted a short black hair man in strange clothes on top of a wall, waving his hand at them. His cultivation base was non-existence, but he emitted a strange aura, which couldn't be measured.
Liu Guang and Fogan had goosebumps as this person had a similar air as Lu Fengxian. They rushed back home to inform the seniors about this place and their findings.
…
Inside the vault, Miaomiao still counted the number of heaven-grade items that he had managed to find.
After six hours, he secured three heaven-grade weapons, two heaven-grade robes, one set of heaven-grade battle armor, and three heaven-grade artifacts. Meanwhile, he had only gone through 10% of the vault's content.
Miaomiao had a high hope. He could have collected everything and teleported out of here right away, but he needed to make sure that the items he would tribute to Macho Joshua were the weakest or useless ones.
As greedy as he was, Miaomiao didn't want to throw useful stuff away, such as a dragon scale bracer, which had been made from an elder dragon's skin with an elder dragon's soul. Such an item shouldn't be thrown away since it was too valuable, and Miaomiao could gain a lot of information about the dragon race by forming a contract with it.
Unfortunately, the gate guardian didn't give him that much time to scan through everything.
[Guardian of the Liu Clan's descendant. You have 18 hours remaining in this place. After that, you shall be ejected with whatever item in your hand.]
[A reminder, you can only take one item! If you take more than one item with you, you cannot leave this place!]
"I know… Dammit!"
Miaomiao grumbled. With the time limit, he needed to move faster.
For once in a while, Miaomiao racked his brain and thought of a way to scan through this place as quickly as possible.
After getting inspiration, he put it to work.
By gathering his life essence into his dantian, he activated a system skill and took the reference from the technique that Wei Yuan had taught him.
Shadow Clones!
20 Mao Miaomiao emerged from his shadow. They copied his outfit, look, physique, and obnoxious expression. However, they could only exert 50% of his real strength.
This was the max number of clones that Miaomiao could project as his life essence wasn't compatible with shadow techniques.
"Go, my clones. Scan through this place and fetch me heaven-grade items! Place them here, so I can inspect them!"
"SIR, YES SIR!!"
They saluted and went to work right away. One of them even dove into the mountain of essence cores and disappeared. A second later, Miaomiao received feedback that the clone just now found a heaven-grade orb among the piles of essence cores.
Miaomiao grinned and clenched his fist. At this rate, he might finish going through every item before the deadline.
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