A Little Monster With A Wife Is Amazing – CH41

Chapter 41: Jian Tang Had Once Encountered One in a Dungeon…

The scares Jian Tang had experienced in his entire life combined didn’t amount to what he faced in these few short minutes.

It was a matter of life and death, hanging by a thread.

He was going all out!

Suddenly, Feng Xun felt a loss of weight in his hand. The little vine he had been gripping left behind only a short, severed stalk.

The other party had actually shed its tail to save its life, fleeing without a trace!

Once the severed tail detached from the main body, it instantly dissolved into a pile of thin, tiny leaves, scattering from his palm like a flurry of drifting petals.

—It was exactly identical to the scene of the other party’s escape in the dungeon back then.

At this point, Feng Xun was one hundred percent certain: the other party was the little monster he had been looking for.

It. Was. Him!

Concealed within the dense fog, the three Realm Lords had been biding their time. When they saw the Bloody Butcher’s attention completely captured by the item in his hand, their eyes lit up simultaneously.

“An opening!”

Taking advantage of his vulnerability to take his life, the three Realm Lords struck ruthlessly, launching an all-out assault. Three billowing streaks of black light, packed with ferocious attacks, bore down directly upon the Bloody Butcher’s back.

Feng Xun snapped out of it in a split second. Just as he was about to dodge, he suddenly remembered he was standing right in front of the light film.

Little Tang was still inside the barrier bubble!

The teleportation countdown had already begun; it absolutely could not be interrupted at this moment. With a grand sweep of his long arm, Feng Xun flung up the trench coat behind him.

The black fabric reflected a sinister, dark sheen, resembling the carapace of some eerie creature as it extended outward boundlessly. Simultaneously, the man slammed his feet down forcefully, his soles plunging into the cracking ground, nailing his body firmly to the spot.

With a thunderous boom, the entire space shook violently. Feng Xun bore the combined strike of the three BOSSes head-on, a trace of fresh blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

At the exact same time, the little snails on the light film finally coated the entire bubble with their slime. Letting out a chorus of “gu-ji gu-ji” cheers, a flash of white light sparked, and the six rows of audience seats enveloped by the bubble vanished without a trace.

All normal humans had been cleared from the field, returning to the original reality space.

The raised black trench coat slowly drifted down, settling smoothly behind the man like ordinary fabric.

The man wearing the Shinigami mask slowly turned his head, and the three Realm Lords subconsciously took a few steps back—they felt an ominous premonition, as if… as if the Bloody Butcher at this moment was exceptionally furious.

Feng Xun was indeed furious.

The attack just now had not only almost caught Jian Tang inside the barrier in the crossfire, but it had also caused him to lose the prime opportunity to pursue that eerie monster.

He had watched with his own eyes as that escaping strand of vine squeezed into the bubble and was teleported away along with the other humans.

Even if he pursued them to the real world right now, the other party would have long since vanished without a trace. It was already too late.

The man’s freezing gaze swept across the three culprits opposite him, and he lifted his left hand.

His razor-sharp skeletal claws began to transform. Along with his entire left arm, it began to expand, harden, and chamber, turning into a rigid cannon barrel gleaming with a metallic dark sheen.

His right hand also began to shift. His modified body was a mobile armory; the massive Shinigami scythe merged into his right arm, the blade becoming even more exceptionally sharp and brilliant than before, its malevolence forcing its way through like a massive curved crescent of death. The hilt gradually turned dark and aged, as if it had been drenched in the foul blood of countless powerful enemies on ancient battlefields. The thick, bloody aura roiling and spreading out from it made one shudder uncontrollably.

“I am,” he said coldly, “going to get serious now.”

—

On the other side.

Having escaped by pure luck, Jian Tang was left dizzy and disoriented by the violent displacement of the spatial teleportation.

Suddenly, his vision brightened vastly, followed by a sudden influx of a deafening roar of human voices, along with rising and falling screams and gasps of surprise.

At this time, Jian Tang was still in his true monster form. After fleeing into the barrier bubble earlier, he had picked a tricky corner beneath a chair to hide, and right now he was still hidden perfectly well.

Outside was a complete mess. He carefully poked out a fraction of a tiny vine tip to inspect the environment, discovering that they had returned to the performance hall.

The sudden disappearance of the stage and the first six rows of audience members had initially been taken as a stage effect by the others remaining in the performance hall. As time passed, however, they gradually realized things were somewhat amiss.

Some attempted to leave the performance hall, only to discover that all four massive doors were entirely locked, and the heavy doors couldn’t be broken open at all. Others tried to contact the outside world, only to find that everyone’s phones had zero signal.

They were trapped here.

Panic spread rapidly through the crowd. Just as everyone was at a loss and emotions were running high, the first six rows of audience seats abruptly materialized again out of nowhere.

People who had been perfectly fine ten-odd minutes ago were all unconscious and unresponsive upon their reappearance, their bodies covered in splattered blood and wounds from brawling. This single scene terrified everyone. The already chaotic performance hall instantly exploded into a frenzy. People wailed and cried as they rammed and smashed against the doors, wanting to escape this horrific place, while others simply fainted from sheer terror.

Jian Tang observed from the shadows, thinking uh-oh.

Such a blatant unnatural phenomenon, coupled with the repeated fluctuations of the exact same spatial coordinate, would undoubtedly draw the attention of the Eerie Creatures Investigation Bureau.

Sure enough, in less than five minutes, a sweet female voice broadcast suddenly resonated throughout the performance hall.

[Respected audience members, we are very sorry that a minor accident has occurred during this performance show. Please do not panic, do not panic, do not panic—]

[Please return to your respective seats immediately. Door maintenance personnel will arrive at the scene shortly. Please wait patiently in your seats, wait patiently, wait patiently—]

Under such chaotic circumstances, this kind of superficial broadcast shouldn’t logically yield any results. Incredibly, however, the panicked and frantic crowd actually began to quiet down gradually.

Under the guidance of the sweet female voice, everyone returned to their seats one after another, beginning to wait patiently for the “maintenance personnel” who were about to arrive.

…There really are experts within the Bureau as well.

Jian Tang swallowed his saliva nervously.

He had to escape the performance hall before the massive force of Bureau personnel arrived.

He scanned the surroundings vigilantly, wrapped his vine tightly around the pink little dolphin in his embrace, and slid through the gaps of the seats onto the floor. Like a nimble little serpent, he zipped swiftly along the ground toward a nearby ventilation duct.

Mercifully, no terrifying task-taker like the Bloody Butcher appeared to intercept him this time. Jian Tang successfully slipped into the ventilation duct, advancing rapidly through the pitch-black piping.

[Little Yu, Little Yu, can you hear my voice?]

As Jian Tang fled, he called out softly using a specific soundwave that only eerie creatures could hear.

[Where is the nearest safe location from here?]

When passing a fork in the duct, Jian Tang felt the tip of the little dolphin’s tail give a listless, weak twitch.

He executed an immediate emergency brake, swapped directions, and advanced toward the other path of the fork.

A light soon appeared ahead. Jian Tang stopped cautiously, peering out through the mesh screen of the vent.

He saw the massive sign for the “Deep Water Pool” standing not far away.

Huh?

Jian Tang suddenly remembered that when he was diving in the deep water pool earlier, he had heard Little Yu’s voice.

It looked like this place, just like that small door in the underground parking lot, could also lead to the entrance of Weijiu Monster Town.

It was currently noon, and there weren’t many people over by the deep water pool. Taking advantage of the moment no one was paying attention, Jian Tang dove swiftly into the deep pool.

Everything proceeded smoothly.

He dove all the way. Soon, he sensed that abnormal current of freezing water again. Jian Tang swam upstream, and after an unknown length of swimming, his vision brightened suddenly, and with a splat, he tumbled down into the vast, empty room.

On the opposite wall hung that massive and bizarre oil painting of the ocean.

Jian Tang used his vine tentacles to lift the little dolphin up with absolute care, placing it into the oil painting.

The seawater within the oil painting possessed a nourishing effect on the townspeople it protected. Floating in the water for a while, the dying little dolphin finally opened its eyes slowly.

“Thank you, Little Tang.”

After being rescued from the black coffin by Jian Tang, Little Yu had actually remained conscious all along, but its vitality had been severely depleted, leaving it excessively weak. Forget about moving a muscle, even emitting a monster soundwave had been difficult.

Only upon returning to its own front door and receiving nourishment within the seawater of the healing ocean did it painstakingly catch a breath of relief.

“Little Tang, are you alright?” The little dolphin directed its gaze behind the little vine. “Your tail…”

With an eerie monster’s aesthetics, the little dolphin felt that Little Tang’s true form looked highly similar to his human form, both being thoroughly adorable. The surface of the vine was dotted with tiny leaves resembling petals, crisp, green, and supple, bursting with life and vitality.

But now, the fresh and soft tail end of the vine bore a torn, severed cross-section, and the tiny leaves nearby had mostly fallen off, looking bare and highly tragic.

“I’m sorry, Little Tang,” the pink little dolphin wept tears. “I brought this trouble upon you. You don’t have a tail anymore.”

“Psh, what does that matter,” Jian Tang comforted it. “My tail is meant for shedding. I’ve long since grown used to shedding it, and a new one will grow back in the future anyway.”

The little dolphin still had tears in its eyes, but was instantly amused by Jian Tang’s completely nonchalant tone: “How can anyone grow used to something like that? Do you frequently encounter crises that require shedding your tail to save your life?”

“Uh… occasionally, I guess,” Jian Tang said evasively. “I used to work in dungeons, you know—and an S-rank dungeon at that—so… you understand.”

In truth, it had only happened that one time, and it was pure luck. For some reason, the system had actually approved his job application, allowing him to sneak into a high-level dungeon by a stroke of fortune, and the result…

Sigh, it was genuinely far too complicated to describe in one word. He had encountered a highly bizarre fellow inside that dungeon whose personality was utterly wicked. He had escaped from that party’s hands with immense effort, and later an accident occurred in that dungeon, causing all monsters and task-takers to be forcefully kicked out by the system.

When Jian Tang checked up on it later, he discovered that the system had frozen that dungeon’s number, closing it to the public permanently.

His dream of being a “long-term contract worker in dungeons” terminated right there. With his F-rank résumé, he couldn’t get hired by either public or private dungeons, leaving him with no choice but to honestly continue acting as a bottom-tier corporate slave in the trash factory.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll recover very quickly, really!” Jian Tang said.

This was the beauty of being a plant-type monster: if you got hurt, just sleep more, drink more water, get more sunshine, and take care to nourish yourself, and you’d recover just fine.

However, his tail was gone, so after reverting to his human form, his butt would likely hurt for a few days. The date plan he had agreed upon with his wife for tomorrow… uh, might highly likely fall through…

—

Meanwhile, within the water curtain space.

After the body of water was cleared out, this temporarily constructed alternate space was already hanging by a thread.

Right now, it couldn’t even be called a space anymore—

The exterior walls of the space were riddled with countless holes, exposing the nether-like abyssal torrent outside. If one took a single wrong step out, they would undoubtedly fall into eternal damnation.

The situation inside the space was a complete wreck. Several terrifyingly massive craters marked the original location of the stage, the black coffin had long since crumbled into powder, and the previously rampaging Evil Seeds were entirely missing, leaving behind only countless remnants of “rotten mud” that densely blanketed every single corner.

Although the three Realm Lords were still alive, their conditions were far from optimistic:

A’nie, the Eye of Hell, had completely lost the dense fog that concealed him, exposing his source vessel—a single-eyed infant, curling up into a tiny mass on the ground, unable to even crawl.

The black dress on the evil god Heramis had become tattered and torn, and the writhing monster tentacles on her lower body had been sheared down to bare, severed stumps, leaving her virtually crippled.

Fila, the Nightmare Duke, was admittedly still standing perfectly fine, but his body had already assumed a semi-transparent, dream-like state, drifting as though he could dissipate at any moment—this was a manifestation of an avatar’s power running completely dry.

Looking at the other side, the hem of the Bloody Butcher’s trench coat had a long tear ripped into it, and a corner of his mask had been chipped off. Any other damage, at least right now, wasn’t discernable to the naked eye.

—A monster.

This was the collective thought of the three Realm Lords at this moment.

That the Bloody Butcher was a perverted, stat-check monster had long been a consensus among all eerie creatures. But even knowing that going up against the Bloody Butcher with merely an avatar’s strength meant zero chance of victory, they still hadn’t expected a three-on-one fight to end in such a tragic defeat.

At this moment, they actually felt a bit fortunate: that the system confined the top-tier combatant Realm Lords within public dungeons might not necessarily be a punishment, but rather a form of protection.

If they could roam outside of dungeons from time to time like other eerie creatures, they would have long since been hunted down, killed, and absorbed by the Bloody Butcher one by one.

After all, inside a dungeon, the Bloody Butcher’s abilities would still be restricted by rules, preventing him from unleashing one hundred percent of his power. Outside of a dungeon, however, with the absence of constraints like rule-based weird tales, proving his path purely through absolute force allowed a fellow with such perverted combat power to completely sweep the entire monster realm.

“Speak.” Feng Xun stood atop a jutting stone wall of ruins, looking down at his three defeated opponents. “Why were you able to leave your dungeons?”

Not long ago, He Mengxing had mentioned that the eerie BOSSes who were supposed to be permanently stationed in public dungeons were exhibiting unusual movements. Today, he had encountered three BOSSes all at once. How could he possibly pass up such a piece of intelligence that had delivered itself straight to his doorstep?

The three Realm Lords exchanged a glance. The Bloody Butcher had also asked this question during the fight, and their refusal to confess back then had resulted in them being beaten even harder.

…If they still refused to speak now, aside from continuing to get beaten until their avatars collapsed—causing their main bodies to suffer massive damage to their vitality—there was absolutely zero benefit.

“It’s a system mission,” A’nie was the first to speak. “The system intends to officially enter the first floor of the ‘Abyssal Prison,’ and wants us to act as the vanguard force to go inside and clear the wilderness.”

The description tag for the Abyssal Prison was “a deep abyss space specifically for detaining Evil Seeds.” However, according to Feng Xun’s observations, rather than calling it “detainment,” it was closer to the system merely setting up a layer of barrier to block the Evil Seeds within the Abyssal Prison from invading the eerie world and various planes of existence. Over the space and territory of the Abyssal Prison itself, the system held no authority of deployment or control.

It was highly analogous to a civilized nation building a tall wall along its perimeter to block the barbarians outside the wall from invading their country.

And right now, the system seemed to plan to lead the most ferocious thugs under its command to orchestrate some new movements on the barbarians’ turf.

“The system relaxed the restrictions on public dungeons, allowing us to use avatars to move around outside to prepare for the upcoming wilderness clearing,” Heramis said. “Task-takers are supposed to participate in this clearing as well. What, you guys haven’t received the notification yet?”

Feng Xun didn’t know if other task-takers had received the notification, but his reason for not receiving it was highly sufficient: “I retired.”

A retired personnel stepping back to the second line, not inquiring about worldly affairs and remaining unaware of the changes in the system’s new version, was perfectly logical.

“…”

Your so-called retirement is just shifting from fighting BOSSes inside dungeons to fighting BOSSes outside dungeons, isn’t it?!

What kind of retirement is that! This is pure fraud!

“The wilderness clearing mission issued by the system—what are the specific details?” Feng Xun asked.

“Territory construction.”

“Elaborate.”

“That’s all.”

Feng Xun narrowed his eyes slightly, lifting the Shinigami scythe in his hand.

“That really is all!” Heramis hurried to take a step back, staring tensely at the violent maniac opposite her. “If you don’t believe it, you can ask other Realm Lords. The mission received by all BOSSes consists of just that single phrase!”

“Constructing whose territory?” Feng Xun asked.

The three Realm Lords froze simultaneously, not expecting the Bloody Butcher to be so sharp, instantly discerning the core aspect of this mission.

Heramis hesitated for a brief moment, but still spoke the truth.

“Constructing… our own territories.”

“This is both a mission and the reward promised to us by the system,” A’nie added. “If we want to secure a firm footing inside the hotbed of the Evil Seeds, our own outposts and territories are indispensable. As long as we can stabilize our own territories, it will be deemed a successful wilderness clearing by the system, and we will obtain permanent operating rights over that territory.”

In the past, they could only stay inside public dungeons, which was no different from being imprisoned. But if they successfully cleared the wilderness on the first floor of the Abyssal Prison, their avatars wouldn’t be restricted in their range of activity when operating the new territory, which equated to regaining their freedom.

Faced with such an enticing reward, not a single Realm Lord could refuse.

Feng Xun’s gaze swept across the three Realm Lords one by one. He didn’t fully believe the BOSSes’ rhetoric; for more comprehensive and accurate information, he would probably still have to let He Mengxing and the others investigate to find out.

“Next question,” he spoke slowly.

“That vine monster that escaped just now—the three of you and it, you know each other, don’t you?”

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