The newcomers were a man and a woman, both wearing ragged leather armor and carrying bows and arrows.
Staring at the tunnel entrance as it sealed itself shut again, the woman drew the dagger from her waist and wedged it into the crack. “Brother, who do you think that person was...?”
The man shook his head. “Maybe another survivor.”
“We come to this village every month to observe the situation in Orenburg, yet we never knew there was a tunnel here.”
“It was probably an escape route the nobles built for themselves. If I’m not mistaken, it should lead straight into the city.”
The young woman’s eyes lit up as an idea occurred to her. “Why don’t we use this tunnel to go into the city and take a look?”
Her brother hurriedly stopped her, his expression turning stern. “Gina, are you insane? Don’t you know how dangerous it is in there? The entire city is crawling with monsters!”
“But that person just went in,” Gina protested, clearly dissatisfied. “Besides, the area near the tunnel’s exit must be safe. We could use it as a base.”
“Forget it!” Her brother shook his head firmly. “We don’t even know whether that person was friend or foe. I won’t allow you to do something so reckless. We’re going back to report to Kyle first.”
“Brother! What’s the point of coming here every month to observe Orenburg? Can we reclaim our homeland just by watching from the sidelines?”
The man looked deeply at his sister and sighed.
She was already eighteen, yet she was still so naïve.
Perhaps there were some things he should have told her outright long ago.
“Gina, you still don’t understand, do you? We don’t come here looking for an opportunity to reclaim the city.”
Gina froze. She had always believed that was their purpose. “Then... why do we come here?”
“We’re just checking whether the monsters in the city are going to migrate south in large numbers. If they do, we may even lose the last place we have to hide.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Have you never thought about going home?!” Gina cried emotionally.
“Of course we have! But it can’t be done. No matter how many of those monsters we kill, they never seem to run out. We’re no match for them. Gina, listen to me. Stop thinking about going back. Unless the gods descend themselves, there’s no hope.”
“But... all right.”
Gina’s shoulders slumped, her face filled with disappointment.
Her brother felt terrible seeing her like that, but all he could do was pat her on the shoulder and signal for her to leave with him.
...
After Liu Xuan entered the tunnel, the opening above him sealed shut again.
The section near the entrance was pitch-black. Fortunately, every few steps, blue transparent crystals had been embedded in the walls on either side of the passage. They emitted a faint glow that barely illuminated the way ahead.
Liu Xuan followed the tunnel forward. After walking for a while, he discovered that there was a relatively spacious room every so often. Several large chests had been placed inside each one.
When he opened one, he found that it was filled with water and food stored in special containers.
It seemed that whoever had built the tunnel had also considered what would happen if the other end proved impossible to escape through and they became trapped inside.
After passing through several rooms and making a few turns, Liu Xuan spent more than twenty minutes in total before the tunnel suddenly came to an end.
A staircase hung down from the ceiling. Liu Xuan had only climbed a few steps when his head bumped against a stone slab.
He pushed against it with all his strength, but it did not budge at all.
There had to be another mechanism.
Liu Xuan felt around the walls for a while and quickly found a raised section. He pulled and pressed it, then finally turned it a full circle. Only then did the stone slab above him slowly slide aside.
He looked up and saw the sky overhead. It appeared that the tunnel’s exit was not inside a building—or perhaps the building had already been destroyed.
It was only after climbing out of the tunnel that Liu Xuan realized the exit had been hidden beneath a stone mill.
Once he emerged, the millstone closed up on its own again.
There was a small hole beneath the millstone where a key could be inserted. This was how the village chief had escaped from Orenburg back then.
Liu Xuan surveyed his surroundings. It was a small courtyard with several dilapidated houses beside it.
Scattered bones lay between the courtyard and the houses. Not far away was a stretch of ruins that had been burned down, but judging from the surviving remains, it had once been far more luxurious than this area.
Shadowy figures moved within the ruins. They were probably monsters.
Before coming here, the village chief had told Liu Xuan that he was currently in the area where the servants of their family had lived.
The tunnel had originally been built as protection against their enemies. At the time, they had assumed no one would expect a noble family to construct its escape route beneath the servants’ quarters.
As it turned out, that decision had indeed played a significant role during the disaster that followed.
When the monsters attacked, they happened to assault the luxurious residences where the family’s main members lived. That was what gave the village chief a chance to escape.
If the monsters had come through the servants’ quarters instead, it was likely that not a single person would have gotten away.
They could only say that their luck had been fairly decent.
“But what exactly is the objective of this battle?” Liu Xuan muttered.
They said they were going to reclaim Orenburg. Surely that didn’t mean they had to kill every monster in the entire city, did it?
There were so many buildings. Would he have to search them one by one?
Just as Liu Xuan was wondering about this, a notification suddenly appeared in front of him:
[You have arrived in Orenburg.]
[The Third-Stage Core Battle is about to begin. The battle objectives are as follows:]
[First: Clear out the monsters within the city, reducing their numbers to below 20% of the current total.]
[Second: Recapture the town hall.]
[Third: Ring the great bell in Orenburg’s northern tower.]
[The next objective may only begin after each preceding objective has been completed. Completing all objectives marks the end of the battle.]
As the notification appeared, Liu Xuan noticed a progress bar in the sky as well.
It still displayed 100%.
This must represent the number of monsters remaining.
“Fortunately, I don’t have to clear out every last one.”
As long as he reduced their numbers to 20%, there would be no need to search every nook and cranny.
Otherwise, if a single monster were hiding in some ruined building and he failed to find it for half a day, leaving him stuck at 99%, he would probably go insane.
Now that he had his objectives, Liu Xuan charged out of the courtyard and entered the noble residential district beside it. There, he got a clear look at the monsters wandering among the ruins.
They were humanoid creatures with green skin and fleshy wings growing from their backs. Their mouths resembled locust mandibles, while their forearms were shaped like mantis blades.
[Novice Destroyer]
Level: 20
Attack: 300
Health: 4,000
Armor: 50
Magic Resistance: 38
Skills: [Rapid Slash: Delivers a rapid series of slashes, dealing 300 physical damage 3–5 times to enemies.]
[Carve: Uses its forelimbs to unleash a powerful attack, dealing 500 physical damage to the enemy and inflicting an additional 800 points of physical damage over time within 10 seconds.]
For a low-level monster, this thing actually had two skills. It was the first time Liu Xuan had encountered anything like it.
Its damage was frighteningly high, too. If he were unlucky enough to take all five hits from Rapid Slash, he would suffer a full 1,500 damage!
The key point was that these creatures did not fight alone. On the ruins of just the building Liu Xuan was currently looking at, there were already six or seven of them.
They were all clustered close together, so one hit was enough to draw them all in.
“Let’s save time and hurry up with the grind!”
Liu Xuan hefted [Celestial] and charged over.
“-4881!”
“-4881!”
“-4881!”
Although the monsters were much higher level now, [Nightmare Avatar] was still powerful enough to kill them in one hit.
“Killed [Lesser Destroyer]. Gained 1 experience point.”
“Killed [Poisoned] monster. Base HP +1.”
“Killed [Frightened] monster. Intelligence +0.1.”
Liu Xuan casually glanced at his status panel and suddenly noticed that killing these [Lesser Destroyers] had added a buff to his status bar. It had already stacked to seven layers.
[Destroyer Pheromone ×7]: Pheromonal substances left behind by slain Destroyers cling to your body. The higher the concentration, the more likely it is to attract other Destroyers nearby. Duration: 4:58/5 minutes.
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
