Ancient Ruins

Before leaving, Liu Xuan discussed the matter with Zhang Meng and the captains of the twelve squads.

They decided that from then on, they would tally everyone’s level gains, completed quests, NPCs rescued, contributions to the manufacturing industry, and so on once every five days. Wages would then be distributed based on those statistics.

The payment would come from the gold and silver articles Liu Xuan had obtained by opening the secret chamber.

As the campaign progressed more and more smoothly, quite a few people on the battlefield had begun to slack off. They felt that as long as Liu Xuan charged ahead, they could simply lie back and do nothing.

Everyone now had more than a hundred times the normal experience bonus, not to mention the Destruction Aura, yet their enthusiasm for leveling was still low.

It was hard to blame them for being lazy. Ever since they entered the battlefield, there really hadn’t been much room for their efforts to have an impact.

Liu Xuan had handled the entire campaign, and during the defensive battles, he had practically killed everything by himself.

Once people lost their sense of danger, their motivation to grow stronger naturally diminished.

In fact, quite a few people had even clamored to become life players, feeling that handling logistics would be enough.

So after discussing it with Zhang Meng and the others, Liu Xuan decided that it would be appropriate to offer some material rewards as an incentive.

Those who wanted to improve could use the money to buy skills and equipment.

Even those without much desire to grow stronger would have other wants. Perhaps they wanted to eat better or live more comfortably.

There were more and more NPCs in Orenburg now, and the city had gradually taken on the feel of a settlement.

There were already seven or eight places selling food alone. They ranged from the most common and cheapest hardtack sold by the roadside to restaurants supposedly opened by chefs who had once worked for nobles.

The former cost only a few copper coins. It was practically like eating wood shavings; it hurt your throat just swallowing it. All it could do was fill your stomach. As for the taste and texture, those were not even worth thinking about.

The latter, however, would cost at least several gold coins if you wanted to order a few of the finest dishes.

The flavor was something many people might never have experienced even in the real world.

There was not quite as much difference when it came to lodging, since the city had only just been restored and construction was still incomplete.

There were still distinctions, though. The worst option was to buy a sleeping bag, find an abandoned house, and lie down on the floor for the night.

Spend a little more money, and you could get a clean, comfortable bed—or even soak in a hot bath to relax.

Who wouldn’t want to eat better and live more comfortably?

The exact reward system still had to be finalized before it could be announced, but once word began circulating, the channel erupted in cheers and praise.

Most Chinese people had probably never suffered like this before entering the battlefield.

At the very least, not many had experienced eating dry rations every day and sleeping on the ground.

Now, putting in a little more effort to level up would benefit them personally, and they would even receive “wages” for it. That was practically getting paid to study.

What a great deal!

One after another, they confidently declared that they would work hard at leveling up and eat lavish meals and live in the finest houses every day from then on.

…

The letter left by the curator contained the location of the book warehouse.

Given how urgent the situation had been at the time, it had naturally been impossible to move the books somewhere too far away. The warehouse was not far from Orenburg.

It was inside a mountain. The place had originally been an ancient ruin, but after it was discovered, anything of value inside was carried away, leaving it abandoned.

At first, some bandits and criminals would hide there after committing crimes. After it happened too many times, the lord of Orenburg simply had the entire ruin sealed off.

It remained sealed for many years, until the curator went looking for a place to hide the books a few years ago and remembered it.

When Liu Xuan arrived, he circled the mountain two or three times before finally finding the entrance.

From the outside, it looked like nothing more than two large, ordinary rocks, with a gap between them about as thick as an arm.

He reached his hand inside and felt around for a while before finding a small hole. Then, following the instructions written in the letter, he tapped on the hole five times at a specific rhythm.

A low hum rang out, and the two rocks slowly parted, sending dust billowing into the air.

Liu Xuan waved away the dust and looked at the passageway, which had widened to more than three meters across. Without hesitation, he walked inside.

The ruin had been discovered many years ago and had later been used as a book repository. Under normal circumstances, there should not have been any danger.

However, once Liu Xuan entered the passage, he immediately noticed that something was wrong.

Several books lay scattered across the floor, with obvious footprints on them.

He casually picked one up and discovered that the pages pressed against the ground had been badly scraped. The scratches in the paper were filled with bits of gravel and dirt. It looked as if someone had pressed the book against the ground and dragged it all the way there.

The curator certainly would never have allowed such a thing to happen. He had moved the books there to protect them, so how could he have treated them so carelessly?

“Could someone have come in afterward?”

When the Destroyers had attacked, it was not impossible that some people who knew about the ruin had taken shelter inside.

Liu Xuan’s heart tightened. What if the books inside had also been damaged? What if the second half of the travelogue had been destroyed?

He quickened his pace.

At the end of the passage was a great hall.

According to legend, this place had once been the secret headquarters of some heretical cult many years ago. Its believers had secretly worshiped an evil god there, so they naturally could not have made too much noise.

Thus, although it was called a ruin, it was really just a modest temple excavated inside the mountain.

At most, it could accommodate thirty or fifty people.

Even in the passage, Liu Xuan had already seen several book chests lying overturned at the entrance to the hall. Books were scattered all over the floor, making him even more uneasy.

Fortunately, after entering the hall, he discovered that only the few chests near the entrance had been disturbed. Farther inside, the chests were all stacked neatly in rows.

They were also still properly sealed, so the books inside should not have been damaged.

Liu Xuan breathed a sigh of relief, then roughly surveyed the hall.

Since everything originally stored in the ruin had been removed, the entire hall was now filled with book chests at a glance.

The walls on both sides had originally been decorated with reliefs, but they had all been deliberately smashed to pieces.

At the very front stood a huge stone platform. It appeared to have been the base of a statue, but the statue itself had been completely removed. Only four stubs, each just a few centimeters high, remained on the platform where the feet had not been fully chiseled away.

They looked like the feet of some kind of beast.

Was that the evil god worshiped by the believers back then?

With so little remaining, there was no way to tell what it had originally looked like.

This lair of the evil god had been thoroughly cleaned out when it was destroyed, and the damage was extensive.

People had later taken refuge here from time to time, so Liu Xuan had never expected to find any treasures. He decided to focus on the task at hand.

He took out the two proofs. Sure enough, they began glowing once again, pointing toward a chest in the corner.

Liu Xuan moved the chests stacked on top of it aside, opened the chest underneath, and rummaged through it for a while. At last, he found The Travels of Erix, Part Two.

He quickly flipped through the pages and soon found the lower half of the map tucked inside.

At first, Liu Xuan’s attention was focused solely on the map. Then he suddenly realized that the page holding this half of the map also happened to contain an illustration.

Above it was a gigantic tusked elephant. Unlike ordinary elephants, it also had a ring of fur around its head, like a lion’s mane.

Liu Xuan’s heart stirred. Wasn’t the target of that legion precisely to hunt down all kinds of powerful creatures? Perhaps the contents of this travelogue weren’t fabricated after all—the two monsters in the illustrations might actually exist.

That was why whoever had hidden the map had deliberately split it into two halves and tucked them into these two pages.