The Secret Hidden Beneath the Silt

More than an hour later, Liu Xuan finally opened his eyes.

He had no choice but to wake up—he was already Level 20.

With the experience bonus gone, these puny Level 14 [Minions] no longer gave him even a single point of experience.

But the rewards from that hour or so had been astonishing.

Name: Liu Xuan

Faction: Human Empire (Blue Star—Huaxia)

Class: Pacifist

Level: 20

Strength: 71

Agility: 359

Intelligence: 2,174

Armor: 200

Magic Resistance: 100

Health: 334,000/334,000

Mana: -/-

Experience: 0/21,500

Skills: Giant’s Blood, Plague Source, Corpse Explosion, … Adaptive, Money Offensive, God of Fire, Tenacious Contract, Peace Protocol

As for his attributes, farming had given him approximately 160 points of Intelligence and 1,600 points of base health—which became 16,000 health after the bonus from [Giant’s Blood].

As for passive skills, Levels 19 and 20 had granted him [Tenacious Contract] and [Pacifism], respectively.

[Tenacious Contract: Multiplies the health of your summons by 1,000%.]

When Liu Xuan saw this, his expression became rather strange.

The first passive he had obtained was [Giant’s Blood], which multiplied his own health by ten. He had never expected to draw another skill that increased health by ten times—this time for his summons.

The problem was that he currently had only one summon: [Eagle Spirit Companion].

But that little fellow had no health bar. It was a pure energy entity.

That had originally been a good thing. He didn’t need to worry about his little companion being killed.

But now, it also meant that this health bonus was completely useless.

His companion didn’t even have a health bar. It had never been afraid of being killed in the first place.

So, for Liu Xuan, [Tenacious Contract] was effectively useless for now.

All he could do was wait and see whether he would obtain any other summons in the future.

Next was the Level 20 passive, [Peace Protocol].

[Peace Protocol: If an enemy warrior launches an attack against you, each attack or skill they use reduces 5% of their current experience. Upon killing them, all the equipment they are wearing, as well as the items and money in their bag, will drop.]

After seeing this passive, Liu Xuan could only say, “Now this makes sense.”

It made perfect sense!

He was a weak, pitiful, helpless [Pacifist] who couldn’t take the initiative to attack anyone. Every time, it was the other party who attacked him first.

Did being a good person mean you deserved to have a gun pointed at you?

That wasn’t fair either. The one who provoked the other was in the wrong, and bad people should pay the price!

One hit would cost them 5% of their experience.

Of course, Liu Xuan didn’t think many people would get the chance to hit him a second time…

But that didn’t matter. Once they died, everything on their bodies—including everything in their bags—would drop.

Even their money would be lost.

Now that was a punishment with enough bite.

As it happened, the promotion defense battle would begin in a little over two days.

Although the rules stated that being killed in the defense battle would not result in true death, if you were killed, then you were still killed.

The people could leave, but all their equipment and money would stay behind!

……

The [Demonized Fish Spores] had completely stopped giving experience, so there was naturally no reason to keep farming them.

Liu Xuan planned to wipe out all those lairs in one go and leave.

Come to think of it, those creatures had contributed three levels’ worth of experience to him, yet he still hadn’t seen the true form of a [Demonized Fish].

He walked over to one of the mud holes. Before he could react, something suddenly bit down on his foot.

When he lifted his leg, he found that he had pulled a strange-looking fish out of the mud.

The fish was entirely pale, with two front legs and a mouth full of sharp teeth. It looked just like some kind of alien monster from a movie.

Even though it was already dead, its teeth were still clamped onto his shoe and refused to let go.

At the exact moment the [Demonized Fish] was killed, [Corpse Explosion] was also triggered.

A series of muffled explosions rang out from beneath the mud surrounding the hole, as if firecrackers had been buried underground and then detonated.

“Defeated [Demonized Fish]. Gained 15 experience.”

Judging from the experience notification, there had to be more than twenty [Demonized Fish] beneath the mud hole.

Combined with the spores they emitted, the setup was genuinely terrifying.

They used their spores to daze their prey, then sent more than twenty fish swarming in at once.

It was a perfect trap.

Unfortunately for them, they had run into Liu Xuan. To him, they were nothing but free experience.

He simply stepped on the holes one after another, causing large groups of fish to explode with every stomp.

The holes they had deliberately left behind to release spores had now become the instruments of their own destruction.

Even when some holes were hidden among the village’s collapsed walls and ruins, making them difficult to spot with the naked eye, Liu Xuan could still use the direction he had been moving in while under the control of the [Demonized Fish Spores] to deduce their locations.

Before long, every demonized fish lair in the village had been wiped out.

Although these monsters were low-level, each nest contained twenty or thirty of them. After clearing the entire village, Liu Xuan’s experience bar had risen to 16,500/21,500.

For Liu Xuan, leveling was incredibly easy as long as he could find a place with a sufficiently high concentration of monsters.

However, the [Demonized Fish] only appeared within the village.

After clearing the final lair, Liu Xuan checked the first nest he had attacked. To his surprise, the monsters still hadn’t respawned.

It seemed their spawn rate was quite slow.

Liu Xuan couldn’t be bothered to wait for them to respawn and prepared to find somewhere else.

Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly heard the roar of enormous waves coming from the south.

“That’s the direction of the Orchid River. What happened?”

Liu Xuan gazed south in confusion, then suddenly jumped in fright.

Two- or three-meter-high waves were surging toward him from the river.

In the blink of an eye, they had already submerged half the village.

“What the hell?! Don’t tell me this cursed battlefield has natural disasters too!”

Liu Xuan hurriedly looked around, then climbed onto the broken pillar he had previously used while idling and wrapped both arms tightly around it.

The moment he had secured his grip, the waves crashed into him.

The pillar itself wasn’t very tall, and less than two meters of it protruded from the mud. Liu Xuan was completely submerged beneath the massive wave.

The tremendous force nearly swept him away, and he could only grit his teeth and cling to the pillar with all his strength.

“What a shame. If I’d finished making that giant salamander pack, I’d have been able to breathe underwater.”

Fortunately, the flood came quickly and receded just as fast.

In no more than ten seconds, the water had retreated back into the Orchid River.

Liu Xuan let out a sigh of relief. But when he opened his eyes, he was so stunned that he couldn’t speak.

All the thick mud that had covered the village had vanished, swept away by the flood.

The ruins of the village that had been buried beneath it were now exposed—the stone roads stained black with sludge, the walls equally dark and grimy.

And scattered among them lay filthy skeletons.

“Does the environment change after all the monsters in an area have been cleared?”

Liu Xuan guessed that clearing every demonized fish lair within a certain period of time had triggered the event. In other words, the monsters in the first lair he cleared had to remain unrespawned for this to happen.

He observed his surroundings from atop the pillar.

Then, all of a sudden, he heard the clacking sound of bones colliding.

When he lowered his head, he saw several nearby skeletons slowly rising to their feet before him.

Some were wearing nothing but a few scraps of cloth, with nothing in their hands.

Others wore armor covered in rust, though not all of it was still intact. Some had nothing left but a pair of boots, while others had only a helmet.

Some of them even picked up the weapons lying nearby as they got to their feet.

They were all so rusted that they were practically “Blades of Tetanus.”

[Low-Level Undead]

Level: 17

Attack: 100

Health: 1,500

Those without any equipment at all were called [Low-Level Undead].

Their stats were horrendous. They had absolutely no defensive capabilities, and both their attack and health were pitifully low.

The equipped ones, on the other hand, were identified by Liu Xuan as [Undead Soldiers].

[Undead Soldier]

Level: 18

Attack: 200

Health: 2,400

Armor: 20

Their stats could only be described as mediocre at best.

They did not even have any skills.

They were both called “soldiers,” but their stats were utterly outclassed by those of the [Hamovi Soldiers].