Chapter 999 - 92: The Embers Awaken in the Tomb
The Food God and the others were absolutely the decisive, fast-acting type; they immediately started heading back to the mountain villa to get a batch of first-generation, high-infectivity Embers Virus.
Increase the dungeon difficulty!
Activate hidden Hell-story mode!
Just these two classic gaming phrases were enough to make them incredibly excited.
Every player knows: hidden dungeons, insane rewards.
If there’s a hidden route and you don’t take it, what kind of dumbass player are you? Just go hardcore, charge, charge, charge!
That said, they were a bunch of crafty freaks, and not brainless.
Bold, yet cautious.
First I won’t release the Nine-State Embers Virus to test the waters, I’ll release the neighboring Golden Core Mutated Embers Virus and test it first.
Release the special virus from that Celestial Destiny World, which condenses a Life Box—Golden Core—after death, and see if it works.
Before long, a batch of ironsmiths finished handling the Embers Virus and switched characters to come back here.
"Got the stuff?"
"Yeah, I snuck over to the clinic and bought a few virus vials from that Medical Fairy who’s researching Golden Cores. That bastard didn’t even ask what we needed them for—take the money, hand over the goods. I used the villa’s new tech—space logistics transmission—to bring them over."
After all, Ning Zheng had, as usual, silently unlocked the two big features: [Game Equipment Slot] and [Item Mail].
Game Equipment Slot: can store materials.
That enormous storage space was made using that Immortal Venerate’s Space Throne.
Item Mail: can send materials.
Sending materials was done using that Immortal Venerate’s Supreme Treasure, the space dagger.
All you can say is, that Space Immortal Venerate was literally covered in treasures.
Nowadays, Ning Zheng was also a qualified game designer, of course she would add a ton of game functions to the server to benefit her little ironsmiths under her command.
"Hmph, I told you that damn clinic is irresponsible, didn’t I? A doomsday virus that dangerous, capable of wiping out an entire world’s civilization, and she secretly sells it as long as you pay. She doesn’t even have a medical license! I’m going to report her!"
"We’ll talk about reporting her to be hung from the streetlights later, let’s look at this virus first."
"How do we deploy it?"
"Just smash it. Throw the bottles so they break, then we can run. We’ll come back tomorrow to check the situation."
"Nice, perfect time to go back and watch today’s mural-shooting VCR."
"Yeah, drop the virus, go back and tidy up the set layout, edit the info, and start filming the ancient movie."
They nodded solemnly.
People saying they were tomb robbers, that was just wrong.
They were archaeologists. They brought cameras to document ancient history and turn it into a documentary, "Taoist Origin."
Bang!!
A string of bottles were thrown and shattered, attracting the patrolling guard soldiers outside the labyrinth.
"Let the world taste fear!"
"Go, go, go, head back and sort out the story, re-study every detail on those murals one by one, and upload them to the Forum while we’re at it."
At seven in the evening, they logged off directly.
The Forum was in an uproar; some dungeon-running players had acted first and reported later, secretly infecting the place with the virus, leaving Jiucai Rong and the others utterly speechless.
Medical Fairy: "Are you all insane? You actually stole virus from me! I’m going to sue you and hang you from the streetlights!"
Food God: "You clearly sold it yourself and still won’t admit it. The one who should be hung from the streetlights is you, for selling any virus to whoever asks!"
Shao Chaikun: "Everyone, don’t panic. Upgrading into an Embers Tomb is actually a good thing. We can use our Embers-strategy methods to攻略 them."
Crayon Shin-Chan: "I think it’s great. Those brainless Gravekeepers only know how to fight; it’s hard to beat them with brute force. But once they turn into Embers, they’ll have intelligence... then we can use the Embers攻略 approach. Might even be smooth sailing, who knows?"
After he said that, everyone felt it made sense.
The Embers’ logical flaw is that they don’t believe they’re already dead, and still think they’re hiding in the tomb... these factors allow for communication.
At least they won’t just rush in swinging the moment they see you!
—Raise their intelligence, then crush them with IQ.
Everyone secretly rejoiced.
Could this, by any chance, be the proper攻略 route designed by that rat-bastard dev?
Beautiful play! This move was truly wild, very interesting, and super gamey!
Very soon, after a noisy debate and detailed analysis, they reached the same conclusion as Ning Zheng.
1. If we don’t do it, the artists will.
2. The tomb is sealed. Even if something big happens, it won’t spread out.
3. Immortal Venerate dungeon, Ancient God, start!
...
...
Ancient Tomb.
After the ironsmiths logged off.
The Embers Virus was spreading, quietly diffusing.
The virus infiltrated the bodies of the soldiers patrolling around the labyrinth, but there was no reaction at all.
Obviously, at its current stage, the Embers Virus could only target Mortals; it had no effect whatsoever on this elite Immortal unit.
But these soldiers were dull and vacant, seemingly with extremely low intelligence. The virus parasitized and spread within their bodies, yet they didn’t notice and didn’t resist.
Whooshhhh!
This special soul toxin divided and drew out vitality, using the living flesh and blood in their bodies as a seedbed to continue spreading outward, while also penetrating into their Soul Consciousness and merging with it.
It spread all the way outward.
Very quickly, it reached beyond the entire labyrinth.
What the ironsmiths saw in the corridor as a huge labyrinth was, in fact, a massive Immortal Emperor Palace.
Beyond this patrol Guard Team’s palace lay a vast kingdom of land.
Ancient houses stood in dense rows, and similar living-dead citizens shuffled about. There were mountains and rivers, small towns and great continents, forming a vast ancient world.
Never underestimate an Immortal Venerate’s burial tomb.
If the Nine-State could let Embers take root one country at a time and build Imperial Mausoleums as funerary accompaniments—
Then how could an Immortal Venerate not bury a whole region of mountains and rivers as grave goods?
In fact, this world, comparable in size to a Celestial Destiny or the Nine-State, was itself a gigantic world-sized Immortal Venerate Tomb.
To take a world as a tomb—that is the proper burial standard for an Immortal Venerate after death.
Whooshhhh!
The virus spread outward.
In the cities of this world-tomb, many citizens had never become Immortals; they were still at the Mortal Realm, and had been turned into ceremonial, sightseeing-type Tomb Guardian Puppets, shuffling woodenly through the streets.
These special Puppets lacked the resistance of Immortal soldiers. In life they had been ordinary people, and now they began to show parasitic reactions to the virus and started getting infected.
Whooshhhh.
Some of the weaker living-dead Puppets, who were already half-dead to begin with, had their balance disrupted by the Embers Virus, which drained their last sliver of vitality...
They began to die.
Those dull, vacant figures toppled over, seemingly with an expression of release, slamming into the ground and kicking up clouds of dust.
Bang!
Bang!
They kept collapsing.
Then, scattered here and there, some figures slowly stood back up, staring blankly and in confusion at their surroundings.
Kong Jinghong was one of them.
"What... happened to me?"
He swayed unsteadily and looked at the scene around him.
One half-dead human puppet after another wandered back and forth.
"I’m... still alive!"
"But they’re all already..."
Memories long absent came surging back like a tide.
Kong Jinghong was a citizen of Kong Country, a disciple of some mid-sized family.
They had once been one of the greatest Civilizations, overlooking endless ages of living beings. Even though he was only from a small Sect within that Civilization, knew nothing of the secrets of the Civilization’s upper echelons, and didn’t know the truth of that war...
He had never once doubted the origin of their Civilization’s Ancestor, that Immortal Venerate’s power.
"But how could we possibly have lost?"
"Did the Immortal Venerate turn us all into funerary Tomb Guardian Beasts?"
His expression was full of confusion.