Chapter 69: A Weirdo Is Looking for a Plant-Type Monster…
Jian Tang was sweating bullets.
He knew that “President Feng” had actually suspected there was a mole in the company, but judging by Feng Xun’s current tone, it wasn’t just a suspicion anymore—he had solid proof?!
[Little Sugarheart]: R-really? How do you know?
[Wife]: I know everything.
Jian Tang trembled, his fingers shaking as he typed.
[Little Sugarheart]: Then… then who is this mole?
[Wife]: I don’t know yet.
Jian Tang: “…”
Scared the life out of me! I thought I’d already been made!
[Wife]: I’ll root them out sooner or later.
[Wife]: Keep an eye out too. If you suspect anyone, let me know right away.
Jian Tang: Heh, I will absolutely never tell you.
[Little Sugarheart]: Okie-dokie! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for you! O(?_?)O!
—
The massive gossip about the marriage on the forum gradually lost its heat after a few days. Replacing it was a major event that every resident of the supernatural world began to focus on—
The system had begun mobilizing the collective strength of the entire population to advance toward the “First Floor of the Abyss Prison.”
Initially, this matter was restricted to the Realm Lords of the monster world. However, as the Realm Lords began to mass-produce territory constructions, conscript larger monster armies, and the task-takers received wilderness clearance missions, the news constantly spread. Soon, everyone knew.
While this seemed like just an expansion game launched by the system to the task-takers, to the native monsters of the supernatural world, it was an all-out war.
Everyone had suffered under the Calamity Seeds for far too long. Those annoying things were like cockroaches that couldn’t be killed; they scampered everywhere, and once they parasitized a host, they were incredibly difficult to eradicate. Left unchecked, they would destroy planes, leaving many supernatural monsters as homeless refugees. Everyone had long wanted to wipe out this pack of detestable parasites once and for all.
Train an army for a thousand days to use it for an hour. Through prolonged trials in the dungeons, both the supernatural monsters and the task-takers had given rise to quite a few T0-tier terrifying powerhouses. The Main System probably felt the time was ripe. It finally stopped letting the Calamity Seeds run rampant and decided to clean out these guys who were vying with it for resources.
To stimulate everyone’s enthusiasm for the struggle, the system set out an expansion leaderboard. Points were calculated based on the expansion progress and map exploration completeness of each territory, ranking them from highest to lowest.
This leaderboard did not differentiate between supernatural creatures and task-takers. As long as a territory was built within the “First Floor of the Abyss Prison,” it could make the list. For a time, it set off a frenzy of competition between the monsters and the task-takers.
When dealing with the Calamity Seeds, the two factions were in a collaborative state. But competing on the same stage on the leaderboard, the two sides were still rivals. Naturally, they scrambled against each other, neither willing to fall behind or lose face for their camp.
Because the monster Realm Lords received the system mission first, they held a first-mover advantage, firmly occupying the top thirty spots on the leaderboard for a while. But the elites among the task-takers were no slackers either, and they caught up quickly.
Unlike the monster Realm Lords, who had an intense sense of territory, preferred to develop their own enclaves, and rejected collective cooperation, the task-takers might be proud, but they knew when to bend. Furthermore, many of them were good friends. After thoroughly figuring out the system’s point calculation formula, they quickly played the “Territory Recruitment” function to perfection. Through a cycle of “you recruit me, I recruit you,” they disguisedly achieved resource complementarity and point-sharing across various territories, causing their rankings to skyrocket.
The monster Realm Lords cursed the task-takers for being utterly shameless, while the task-takers mocked the monster Realm Lords for being stubborn and inflexible. The war of words between the two sides was fierce. Every day, the flame threads attacking each other on the forum were wildly popular, shouting across the digital void, exposing each other’s shortcomings back and forth in a battle of tongues, giving the onlookers more gossip than they could stomach.
—
The new version’s expansion mission was progressing rapidly and in full swing, practically mobilizing the entire populace. Feng Xun, of course, had also received an invitation.
He Mengxing had taken the lead in forming a “Starry Alliance.” Its development momentum was incredibly fierce, and it had already squeezed into the top ten of the expansion leaderboard, making that group of Realm Lords grit their teeth in hatred every day. He Mengxing worried that a tall tree would catch the wind and felt they needed a supreme weapon to hold down the fort to feel secure, so he came to frantically lobby Feng Xun.
“It won’t delay your marriage!! You don’t have to move your safehouse, and you don’t have to come and stay long-term in the Abyss Prison. You just need to put your name down with our alliance!”
Those ranked in the top fifty of the overall task-taker leaderboard possessed territory construction authority granted by the system, which would automatically teleport the builder’s safehouse to the new territory. He Mengxing and his group had already executed the safehouse teleportation operation. If the expansion mission succeeded, the territory they built would become a permanent safe zone, and they planned to settle down here for good in the future.
Feng Xun already had a plane where he could settle down long-term and a cute wife to keep him company, so his enthusiasm for building a new home was truly not high. However, helping a friend support his prestige was perfectly fine.
Thus, he transferred the safehouse teleportation authority given by the system to Jian Tang’s side first. In the capacity of an “independent individual,” he responded to He Mengxing’s recruitment. This way, he would only hold a nominal title in the alliance and wouldn’t be automatically judged by the system to open up a territory when entering the “First Floor of the Abyss Prison,” which would send him along with his safehouse into the Abyss Prison for the expansion mission.
When “Killer 444” appeared on the member list of the “Starry Alliance,” it instantly drew the attention of numerous eyes. However, everyone quickly discovered that the other party had only joined under an individual name and actually hadn’t opened up a territory!
Is he really retired? People discussed animatedly.
Not only did he stop entering dungeons, but he also didn’t do expansion missions. Was he truly planning to live a retirement life with his wife, kids, and a warm hearth?
Fila and the other two Realm Lords watched for a while. Upon discovering that the Bloody Butcher was indeed just holding a nominal title rather than moving into the Abyss Prison, they all breathed a sigh of relief.
Their feelings toward the Bloody Butcher were quite complicated now.
As for hatred, they naturally still hated him enough to make their teeth itch, feeling that working for the guy was the absolute worst luck of their lives. But in all fairness, despite the thirty-seventy split in this collaboration, they still made a fortune, to the point of absolute ecstasy.
Because the supply transportation channels of other planes had all been mugged by the Calamity Seeds.
Although the Calamity Seeds were greedy and mad, they still possessed intelligent leaders. Facing the system’s massive army blocking their doorstep to engage in heavy infrastructure development, they certainly wouldn’t sit around waiting for death. The Calamity Seeds of the Abyss Prison fought hard against the frontline armies on one hand, and on the other hand, leveraged their plane-shuttling advantage to lurk into many planes of the supernatural world, destroying the logistics supply lines of the Realm Lords and task-takers.
Because the sneak attacks caught them completely off guard, many planes were thrown into utter chaos. The task-takers and supernatural monsters fed by the system’s resources became lethal weapons turned against their own people once controlled by the Calamity Seeds. A large number of plane supply chains were destroyed, and frontline materials were in short supply. Even the system couldn’t replenish the stock. Only Plane A90442 kept a stable supply, making Fila and the others’ materials highly sought after and incredibly hot commodities.
While counting their money, the three Realm Lords lamented: As detestable as that fellow the Bloody Butcher is, he really does get things done, and he’s truly useful!
—
Today was another delivery day.
At midnight, the entire city had already fallen asleep in the deep dark night.
Inside an abandoned factory on the outskirts of City A, a burst of eerie blue light flashed within the tightly closed gates, only to return to silence immediately after.
Half an hour later, the same eerie blue light appeared once more, and the man who had escorted the goods away returned to his original plane.
Feng Xun dusted off his clothes. He wasn’t in a hurry to leave, instead standing within the empty workshop of the abandoned factory, pulling up the system panel.
Familiarly, he brought up the electronic map of this city. On this spatial, three-dimensional map, quite a few conspicuous red markers had already appeared—all of them spatial coordinates from each delivery.
Feng Xun slid the map. After observing for a long time, he used his finger to make a blue marker on a certain coordinate.
That place was a dried-up riverbed one kilometer away from here.
Ten minutes later, a man dressed in a black trench coat appeared before that section of the riverbed.
The night was exceptionally thick tonight, devoid of moon or starlight, and without a single breath of wind.
The man hidden in the dark night wore a simple black mask and held a seemingly ordinary black steel blade. He was like an eerie, ethereal ghost. After patrolling the riverbed for a moment, he suddenly, silently vanished on the spot.
—
The gatekeeping monster guarding the spatial entrance of the monster town was dozing off in a daze when it was suddenly startled awake by a loud roar, and immediately blasted away by the oncoming explosive airflow.
The spatial entrance was forcibly breached by an outsider, instantly alarming the residents of the entire monster town. The monster guards patrolling the streets immediately rushed toward the blasted spatial entrance, as though facing a formidable enemy.
But before they could even discover where the enemy was, they found themselves entangled at some point by a strange kind of thread. The more they struggled, the tighter it bound them. Once it reached a certain tightness, it would cut through flesh and draw continuous blood, scaring them out of resisting any further. They could only stand frozen rigidly on the spot.
“Where is this?”
All the monsters widened their eyes, looking around in all directions, but failed to find who was speaking—their old nest had been infiltrated, yet they couldn’t even see the other party’s shadow!
The threads bound around their bodies suddenly tightened. Several burly monsters shrieked in pain and scrambled to answer.
“It’s… it’s Weiyi Town! We are the guards of Weiyi Town!”
A town?
Feng Xun lightly tugged the fine steel thread in his hand, lost in thought.
A monster gathering place situated on the main corridor of the spatial pathway was only of a “town” scale, indicating that the total number of monsters living in this remote plane was actually not very large.
“How many monster towns are there locally?” he asked again.
“There… there are thirty-six.”
“Hand over their spatial coordinates,” Feng Xun commanded coldly.
Many people didn’t understand why “Killer 444” wanted to give up the expansion mission, but Feng Xun had always been very clear-headed and knew exactly what he wanted: spending an ordinary, peaceful human life with his lover was what he desired; finding that supernatural monster and unraveling the mystery that had plagued him for nearly a century was also something he had to do.
The former, he had basically achieved; the latter, he had finally touched the edge of—as long as he checked the monster towns one by one, he could root out that vine monster, and then his problems would have a possibility of being easily resolved.
“We don’t have them!” The guards pleaded for mercy repeatedly. “With the Calamity Seeds running rampant lately, many towns have already changed their spatial entrance coordinates to avoid danger. We don’t have their latest spatial coordinates either!!”
Feng Xun frowned. He applied some methods and interrogated them strictly, finding that these guards indeed weren’t lying, so he changed his strategy.
“Call your mayor out,” he said coldly.
“Have him bring your town’s resident registry to see me.”
—
The next day, a piece of news spread like wildfire through the underground monster circle of City A.
It was said that a guy suspected to be a task-taker had broken into Weiyi Town. The other party had forcibly ruptured the spatial entrance, single-handedly floored all the monster guards, and even had people tie up the mayor of Weiyi Town, fiercely demanding the town’s resident roster.
Supposedly, the mayor of Weiyi Town was scared witless at the time, thinking this task-taker was possessed by a Calamity Seed and intended to slaughter the entire town according to the list. In the end, the other party flipped through the resident registry at lightning speed, demanded the old spatial coordinates of other towns, and then just left.
This matter was quickly transmitted to the monster forum, drawing quite a bit of attention.
Because while this matter sounded thrilling, it truly was thrilling—the spatial entrances of monster gathering places had always maintained a very high level of confidentiality. Even if the spatial coordinates were exposed, it was extremely troublesome for an outsider to break in through brute force. That task-taker being able to achieve this indicated that his strength was utterly terrifying, and he fully possessed the capability to truly wipe out an entire town.
But being bizarre, it truly was bizarre—spending that much effort to break into a town, only to demand a resident registry and an expired spatial entrance coordinate? What was this guy after? Did he have nothing better to do?
When Jian Tang saw this news, he also found it strange, unable to figure out what the other party actually wanted to do.
Many monsters suspected the other party was possessed by a Calamity Seed, which was why his behavior was so bizarre. However, Jian Tang had witnessed task-takers who were truly possessed; he knew their bloodlust was incredibly heavy. This task-taker who broke into the town was definitely different from them.
He scrolled through the threads on the forum but found no further information. However, because this matter belonged to local news, there were still many monsters discussing it in Jian Tang’s local chat group.
He clicked on his waste factory group. The monster colleagues inside just happened to be discussing this exact matter. Jian Tang took a casual glance, and his gaze suddenly froze.
Little Spider 11: [I have a friend who works as a guard in Weiyi Town. It was scared to death last night, saying it had never seen such a terrifying task-taker! The other party didn’t even use real force; he just hooked his fingers, and they were thrown all over the place and knocked unconscious. Oh my god, it really was too terrifying!]
Large Poison Mushroom 22: [Lmao, talk about bragging without drafting. Why didn’t your friend just say the person who broke in was the Bloody Butcher? That would be even more terrifying, have better entertainment value, and the brag would blow through the roof.]
Little Moss: [Hahahahaha.]
Little Mushroom: [Hahahahaha.]
Little Dandelion: [Hahahahahah.]
Little Spider 11: [Believe it or not! Anyway, it was just really terrifying!]
The atmosphere in the group remained jovial. Because it didn’t concern them, everyone maintained the attitude of a gossip-loving monster; no one took the little spider’s words seriously.
Probably feeling that the authority of its information had been challenged, the little spider couldn’t swallow its anger and crawled back up to post another paragraph.
Little Spider 11: [You plant-type guys better watch out: I heard from my friend that when that weirdo was flipping through the resident registry, his speed would slow down slightly when he got to the section for plant-type monsters.]
Little Spider 11: [I think he might just be looking for some plant-type monster. You guys can laugh all you want now, but when he finds his way to you plant monsters’ heads, don’t cry too ugly!]
