LWGP - Chapter 173
Chapter 173: Buzz Cut
They had finally dug through the entire mineral vein, and at its core were five Mutated Dark Crystals.
"Lord A Gali will be absolutely delighted…"
"I'm absolutely delighted, too."
Before the goblins could even process who had spoken, they were enveloped by a terrifying, dark, and evil power.
Within ten minutes, Wang Jiu had slaughtered all three hundred-plus goblins. After their deaths, all the ore they carried fell into her hands.
She wondered if it would be enough to activate the flying device.
Just as Wang Jiu was picking up the last five Mutated Dark Crystals, she suddenly dodged, raising her blade to slice through a jade-green beam of light that shot out abruptly.
Looking ahead, she saw a chilling, jade-green eye that had appeared in response to the goblins' call for help.
"Human, it's you again. Still harboring larcenous intentions. How audacious." The voice was hoarse and ancient. It was clearly Elder A Gali.
Moreover, this creature had spied on her before and remembered her.
Wang Jiu glanced at it and uttered two words.
"You psycho."
Then, right in its face, she stored away the five Mutated Dark Crystals.
Elder A Gali was enraged. The jade-green eye instantly transformed into a burly, old goblin holding a staff. With a wave of its staff, it launched an attack.
Wang Jiu checked its stats.
A Golden Boss with 6,000 in all stats.
Hmm… Wang Jiu held her blade in her right hand while a Witch Bolt spun in her left palm, imbued with the power of Universe Reversal.
Boom! A Gali was horrified as it vomited blood from the blow.
What kind of treasure did this human consume? How could she grow so strong so quickly? It's only been a few days!
No wonder she called me a psycho. With such a massive power gap, running out here was no different from serving myself up on a platter.
Terrified, but already locked in combat and unable to teleport back to its tribe, it turned and fled.
Blade in hand, Wang Jiu gave chase.
One chased, the other fled. The terrified old goblin ran with incredible speed, but Wang Jiu was far stronger. Even though the underground was the goblins' domain, the distance between them closed rapidly.
However, A Gali soon realized the person chasing it had vanished.
Had she given up?
A Gali saw the path ahead was a dead end. It paused for a moment, and as it turned to look back, its scalp prickled with dread.
Oh no!
Horrified, it saw a blade suddenly emerge from the darkness behind. Trapped with no way forward, it could only activate its racial talent and charge at the sealed passage ahead.
Bang!!
The moment the wall shattered, A Gali shot through the opening.
Hmm? Wang Jiu hadn't expected it to actually break through. The space beyond was pitch-black, and as A Gali burst out, it let out a terrified shriek, as if…
Wang Jiu unleashed a Flowing Water skill. The three-meter-long blade qi, amplified by the Universe Reversal, created a vacuum explosion that blew A Gali's body apart with a single strike. Just as its mangled corpse began to plummet, Wang Jiu flashed forward.
She reached out, and a Spirit Tentacle coiled around the corpse. But in that instant, having reached the edge of the opening, Wang Jiu herself was startled. Below was a terrifying abyss!
It was too dark for her to see clearly before. But the bloody light from her blade qi had given her a fleeting glimpse, revealing the abyss below. That must have been why A Gali had shrieked in terror.
Startled by the abyss, Wang Jiu hastily planted her feet on a stone slab. With a crack, the slab shattered violently beneath her. The broken stones tumbled down, but Wang Jiu didn't fall. In that split second, she had driven Weeping Blood into the wall, leaving her dangling from the cliff face. One hand gripped the blade, while the other controlled the Spirit Tentacle holding A Gali's corpse.
She looked down. The bloody light had already faded, and all she could hear was the eerie echo of the falling stones finally hitting the bottom long moments later.
With a clang, she pulled out her blade and hauled herself back onto the ledge. Holding A Gali's corpse in one hand, she conjured a Flowing Light with the other and tossed it down.
As the light descended and spread, she finally got a clear view of what lay below.
It was at least four or five hundred meters deep. The bottom was a pile of rubble, but she could occasionally glimpse a round, lumpy structure. She couldn't make out what it was, as a tide of black qi quickly shrouded it.
Wang Jiu frowned, staring intently for a moment before deciding against exploring further.
She retreated, melting back into the tunnel and disappearing from sight.
A wise retreat.
The game had just updated, and she wasn't sure how dangerous the new 'materialized' dungeons would be.
Underground areas were always more mysterious and unpredictable than those on the surface, just as the goblins had said.
She was wary.
"That roundish thing just now… looked like a grave mound?"
Wang Jiu mused as she moved quickly toward the exit.
Wang Jiu didn't know that not long after she left, the round grave mound at the bottom of the abyss remained silent. However, over a hundred meters away, where the pieces of A Gali's body had landed, the black qi seemed to drag them across the ground. The chunks of flesh were pulled to a stop right in front of the grave mound, where they lay, solitary and dusty.
Suddenly, with a strange, crisp crack, a corner of the grave mound split open. Then… bang!!
A skeletal hand, nothing but skin and bone, shot out and snatched the pieces of flesh, pulling them back into the unfathomable depths of the mound.
A moment later, a gruesome chewing sound echoed from the bottom of the abyss. And beyond this grave mound… the floor of the abyss wasn't solid. The ground was hollow, and looking further in, one could see many more mounds just like it.
The black qi swirled between them, omnipresent.
Wang Jiu emerged from the underground passage into the bright sunlight. She glanced at the well-dressed corpse of A Gali in her hand. This old fellow ought to have some good loot. For that, she needed someone.
"Are you guys done?" Wang Jiu asked in the group chat.
There was no reply for a long time. Finally, Xie Lu responded, "Sorry, we were just in a fight."
Fighting monsters was one thing; 'a fight' usually meant other players.
"Who?" Wang Jiu asked.
Zhao Shanxiao: "People from the Mo Jiang Territory to the south."
Wang Jiu: "You couldn't win?"
Couldn't win? How could she ask that!
"As if!"
A chorus of denials erupted. They told Wang Jiu they hadn't lost, even though they were outnumbered.
Wang Shu was excited. "Master, Master, they had twice our numbers, but we still got the final boss! I want to see if they call for backup. If they do, we'll call for backup too! We'll see who has more experts!"
In Luoyang right now, who was there besides Gobi?!
They had every right to be this confident!
"Oh, when you're done, come back and loot this corpse for me…" Just as Wang Jiu said that, Wang Shu suddenly interjected, "Master, their leader is here."
Hmm?
The leader of Mo Jiang Territory, Fang Cun?
Southwest of Luoyang, in front of White Sun Canyon on the edge of the mangrove forest, the two sides had already clashed for several rounds. Many players had died and respawned on the spot multiple times.
The dust had just settled, but Fang Cun's arrival changed the situation.
Xu Baiyan, following behind, exchanged glances with Leng Rong and the others, but his own stance didn't waver.
After all, given the current situation, the two territories were bound to face off sooner or later.
Unexpectedly, this Fang Cun, who had a buzz cut and a rather fierce face, was surprisingly amicable. He opened with, "Your leader isn't here?"
This bastard, he didn't come here just to see our leader, did he?
Wang Shu was now a finely tuned radar for his master's potential unwanted suitors. He immediately grew wary. "It's just a skirmish. Who calls their parents over? You think this is a grade-school spat in Honor of Kings and you're making some grand comeback?"
The people from Mo Jiang Territory: "???"
Who is this damn fatty being so sarcastic to!
Fang Cun chuckled. "I just think that since our two territories are the strongest in Luoyang, we should get acquainted. It would help avoid future misunderstandings, conflicts, and unnecessary losses like today."
His words sounded reasonable, but they also revealed his ambition not to remain second to Gobi.
Xie Lu glanced at Fang Cun. "Let the facts speak for themselves. If the leader of Mo Jiang has no further business, let's part ways here."
He paused, looking pointedly at Fang Cun. "Let's avoid a real misunderstanding between our sides. Because if that happens, our leader might actually show up."
Fang Cun narrowed his eyes and smiled. "You've got a point. In that case, we'll meet again."
Gobi had clearly won the previous battle. Since Wang Jiu hadn't come, he wasn't about to get involved and escalate the conflict.
Just as he was about to leave, he heard the sound of an engine. Looking out, he saw a car pull up on the abandoned road beyond the mangrove forest. Wang Jiu got out, carrying a corpse. She tossed it to Wang Shu, then turned her gaze to Fang Cun.
This wasn't their first meeting.
Fang Cun smiled, about to greet her.
Drawing on her experience as a doctor, Wang Jiu said with concern, "That buzz cut… has your hair not grown back yet? That's a bit risky, you know. You could easily go bald later on."
The elites from both territories quickly glanced at Fang Cun's neat, handsome buzz cut.
The more they looked, the more they thought it looked prone to baldness.
Fang Cun: "…"
The rumors were true. Gobi's leader, Lao Wang, was indeed a social gremlin.
Perhaps fearing Wang Jiu would continue her unsolicited medical diagnosis, Fang Cun had no choice but to get straight to the point. "News came from Zhengzhou. They want us to relocate there, to concentrate our forces…"
This 'relocation' sounded civilized, but in reality… Wang Shu and the others exchanged glances.
Move there just to be absorbed?
Luoyang wasn't weak, but it couldn't compare to the population and power of Zhengzhou, the provincial capital.
This Fang Cun clearly had sources in Zhengzhou and had gotten the news ahead of time.
Wang Jiu sat on a nearby rock, casually twirling a foxtail grass between her fingers. "They're suggesting it now? I thought they'd wait until the other races got restless and started attacking human settlements before making their move."
Fang Cun smiled. "Perhaps they're also biding their time. But while Zhengzhou has an official territory now, the ones clamoring the loudest are the other, non-official territories."
Three days had passed since Wang Jiu had claimed her large territory. In that time, gaining Prestige had become even harder. The old Wilderness Unknown Dungeons had four difficulty levels and awarded a good amount of Prestige upon completion, but the new materialized dungeons were a different story.
It wasn't that they were harder to find—the unknown dungeons had been much more elusive. But the materialized dungeons were open to everyone, which meant greater competition. This made gaining Prestige even more difficult than before. Even so, many players had still managed to accumulate a lot of Prestige. The reason was simple: territory wars.
The past three days had seen the most frequent territory wars yet, but the Luoyang region was strangely quiet. The formidable Gobi Territory was lying low, and consequently, Mo Jiang also made no moves.
Luoyang's tranquility attracted the attention of several neighboring cities. Zhengzhou was interested, and it was likely that Taiyuan and Xi'an were as well.
They probably all assumed that Gobi, Luoyang's most prominent territory, wasn't actually skilled in warfare, or perhaps was dealing with internal chaos and couldn't rally its members.
This was a normal assumption. Being good at conquering territory and construction didn't necessarily mean she was a good leader.
A few sexist leaders even posted veiled comments on the social forums, implying that a woman was, after all, just a woman.
Wang Shu, who was lurking on the forums, thought: Where did this idiot come from? You're so screwed.
Of course, as soon as that comment was posted, many people on the social forums responded with the classic, passive-aggressive smile emoji.
They were all people who had suffered greatly at Wang Jiu's hands, who hated her so much they gritted their teeth, but who hadn't dared to openly oppose her.
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