Page 31

Sorry for not updating in the past few days. I was editing and changing some chapters to prepare for the contract. Thank you for your support, and have a great time~

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...

"This is really strange."

"Could it be that the Mountain Temple glitched?"

"Where's that big bug that Gu guy raised in the game?"

"That thing's whole body is a treasure. If it died, it would drop a ground full of [Scales of Life]. Later, we can find a blacksmith from the Full Moon Sect to forge a set of high-grade armor..."

Yino circled the dungeon several times, carefully studying every mechanism, and even triggered all the traps at one point, but still couldn't find the condition to trigger the boss battle.

He now stands again in front of the nine-colored deer's cage, feeling somewhat confused.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the nine-colored deer in the cell becomes further frightened as Yino does not come to rescue it, shaking its chains:

" Bleat! Bleat Bleat —!"

Look, the little deer has become so anxious it's turned into a whining monster.

Yino still ignores it, frowning in thought.

He's not heartless, and he certainly knows that the nine-colored deer is the most valuable thing in this dungeon.

But now the key problem is that without defeating the boss, the seal on the cage imprisoning the nine-colored deer naturally can't be broken!

"Mie! Mie mie!!"

Seeing Yino unmoved, the little deer changes to another strange sound.

Yino's forehead pops a vein—

"Hey, you silly deer, be quiet! Can't you see I'm trying to figure out how to save you?"

"I'm at a loss right now."

"I was originally thinking of letting that fox help you defeat the monster guarding this place, then I'd take advantage of the chaos to carry you away..."

"But now, great, the monster boss has glitched and won't come out, and Jinyue has mysteriously disappeared!"

"How do you want me to save you?"

Yino raises his eyebrows, points with his small hand, and starts lecturing the little deer in the cage.

The legendary nine-colored deer isn't actually anything special, just a small deer with albino fur.

If you had to say where it's related to [nine colors], it's probably just that its antlers have nine colors.

Although Yino doesn't know if it can understand human speech, at least Yino is in a bad mood now and won't indulge it.

"Ying... ying ying..."

The little deer, scolded with tears in its eyes, can only lower its head and make pitiful sounds.

"As expected of a divine beast, it knows a bit of shame."

Yino relaxes as he observes its good behavior.

He stares at the little deer's pair of nine-colored antlers and curiously asks, "By the way, can you use your antlers to sense Jinyue's aura?"

"I remember in the game story, even ordinary deer spirits had this skill, something called [Nature Resonance]..."

"As the top-tier divine beast among deer, you should be at least a bit more powerful than ordinary deer spirits, right?"

Towards the end, Yino narrows his cold eyes, looking at the little deer with a suspicious gaze.

When the small deer hears these words, it quickly stands up, dragging its chains, holding its head high and chest out, its bright eyes flaming with unbreakable stubbornness.

"Ying!"

It calls out once, then closes its eyes.

Under Yino's gaze, the nine-colored antlers gradually become iridescent, shimmering brilliantly.

However, it's evident that the little deer is struggling while activating the skill.

Yino has an idea and nonchalantly takes out a few pills Yuyan has given him, throwing them into the cage with a perfect parabolic arc.

"Take it easy, these pills are very nourishing. My senior sister says eating too many damages the kidneys."

"If a silly deer like you really eat yourself to death, my trip to the Mountain Temple tonight will have been in vain."

Yino says with his hands on his hips, quite helplessly.

But before he finishes speaking, the deer has already swallowed the pills in one gulp, too hungry to be picky.

It raises its small face, letting out a coquettish sigh, then closes its eyes again to resume the nature resonance.

Although Yino's cultivation isn't high, he can still feel the spiritual energy ripples in the air, like an ultrasonic radar from his previous life. In a sense, it's very scientific.

"Mie! Mie mie!"

At some point, the little deer suddenly widens its eyes and starts calling out to Yino, who is sitting cross-legged on the spot.

Yino curiously raises an eyebrow. He observes the deer's gestures and finally focuses on the floor tiles beneath his feet.

"You're saying that fox woman is beneath my feet?"

Yino asked curiously.

The little deer nods repeatedly: "Mie! Mie mie!"

"By the way, are you really a deer, not a sheep?"

The repeated weird sounds cause Yino to tease.

But jokes aside, he doesn't have time to dwell on the deer's lineage now, staring intently at the direction below, lost in thought.

Below this dungeon is the hiding place of the boss monster [Breeding Worm].

In the game, the [Breeding Worm] would burst out from under the floor tiles after the protagonist unlocked the stone door and entered the dungeon, then roar and engage in a spectacular boss battle with the protagonist...

And now, the nine-colored deer says Jinyue's aura is down there.

-By the way, when did she go down to fight the boss?-

-Earth Traversing Technique?-

Thinking of this, Yino suddenly widens his eyes: "Is there a possibility that because Jinyue violently broke the door, it triggered the formation's punishment mechanism and forcibly teleported her to the [Breeding Worm]'s boss room?"

"—Oh my~!"

"If that's the case, it would explain why both Jinyue and the boss monster have disappeared!"

Yino awakens as if from a dream, suddenly sitting up.

No wonder he couldn't figure it out before. In his previous life in the game, he had tried every solution except violently breaking down the door, so Yino naturally didn't know what punishment mechanism there would be for violently breaking the door!

Jinyue is really impressive.

Before opening the door, a series of operations as fierce as a tiger, but after opening the door, she didn't last three seconds before being arrested.

"Now I have two choices."

"Either I stay here and wait for Jinyue to kill the Breeding Worm, then I can easily clear the Mountain Temple..."

"But the problem is, what if Jinyue doesn't win?"

"If she dies, wouldn't she just feed the Breeding Worm? By then, if the Breeding Worm's cultivation surges and it comes up to kill me, I'm done for."

"Or, I could trigger the punishment mechanism again and go down to help Jinyue fight the boss together."

"But that's the boss room, who knows what else is hidden there. We might both die down there."

Yino's mind races through thoughts, but his body is already instinctively walking towards the broken stone door.

Actually, he has a third, most stable choice, which is to run away directly, then secretly spread the news, letting Gu Wanglan return to the Mountain Temple to clean up the mess, leaving Jinyue to die.

If it were a few days ago, Yino would have chosen the last option without hesitation.

But now... Yino doesn't want Jinyue to die here.

-Well she still has here uses-

Half because he's softened, and half because he wants to take a gamble, to maximize future benefits.

After all, if he can help Jinyue defeat the Breeding Worm, Yino can not only repay the life-saving favor from before, but also rightfully take away more spoils.

And in the future, if the relationship with Jinyue improves, he could even use her to deal with the protagonist!

-The enemy of my enemy is my friend!-

Thinking of this, Yino pauses before the ruined stone door. He puts his hands in his pockets, recalling and calculating the strategies for fighting the boss from his previous life.

"The Breeding Worm itself isn't much to fear. I could recite its combo moves and weaknesses backwards in my previous life. As long as I have enough output, I could speed-run it with my eyes closed..."

"If it hasn't mutated, I'd be confident, but I'm afraid Gu Wanglan might have hidden some monster I don't know about in that boss room."

"Moreover, I can't waste Yuyan's jade pendant in a place like this."

After a moment of calculating the pro and cons.

Yino opens his eyes, placing his palm on the broken stone door, gradually infusing spiritual energy.

He feels the resistance and changes of the door-guarding formation.

And just as the white light appears, a melodious deer call comes again from the depths of the dungeon—

"The blessing of the nine-colored deer?"

Yino looks back. But in the next second, his body falls into the chaos of space-time.

...

...

...

"Where is she?"

In the dark dungeon, the sword-wielding boy lands from a white light screen.

He looked around, only hearing strange writhing sounds from not far away. Apart from the pungent smell of blood, there's no trace or life aura of the fox woman in the boss room.

Meanwhile, the huge intertwining worm also turns its head, eight strange red eyes staring straight at the white-clad boy under the light screen.

He sees large patches of blood staining the worm's scales.

"You ate her...?"

His face was expressionless, with a flash of absolute coolness traveling through the depths of his dark pupils.

The worm naturally doesn't understand human language.

It shakes off the blood on its body, turns and burrows into the ground, as the floor beneath cracks like a tortoise shell and rushes towards the boy—

*Squelch—!*

The worm bursts out of the ground, not only missing its target but also getting precisely stabbed in one red eye by a dagger.

The terrible pain made the worm convulse and twist.

It shakes its tail to break free, but Yino pull out the dagger, jumps and dodged.

The worm burrowed again.

After a moment of cracking sounds, the worm changed its angle, rising from Yino's blind spot, roaring as it attacks.

*Clang!*

This time, it's a crisp collision sound. Yino simply sidesteps, then turned with a reverse angle, switching to a long sword to stab under the worm's scales.

The worm again howled in pain. It repeatedly swinged its tail in sweeping attacks, but as if every move is precisely predicted, Yino dances lightly with the wind, dodging continuously.

As the combo attack ends, the worm again flips and burrows.

"Three, two, one..."

Yino expressionlessly stands there, gripping his blade and waits for it.

He counts down silently. When he reaches the last second, Yino's cold eyes flashed, and he leaps into the air at an unexpected angle.

At the same time, the giant worm's body rushes out from beneath his feet, missing again.

Enraged and humiliated, its eight compound eyes focus on the boy in mid-air, endless life energy gathering in the worm's fanged mouthparts.

Yino's front foot touches the ground, and with his back foot, an elemental light beam bursts from the its mouth.

*Boom boom boom—!!!*

The straight-line sweep like a laser, explodes the entire dungeon into dust.

The laser continues for a long time.

And just as smoke rises from the worm's mouth and it lowers its head to catch its breath, that sharp little dagger once again pierced one of its compound eyes.

It's all like solving a formula problem.

Although there's no weak point popup like in the game, Yino didn't waste a single post-attack moment of the worm, precisely piercing its weak points.

"Hiss hiss hiss—!"

The worm's eyes bleed as it writhes in misery.

It angrily swings its tail, but was still nimbly dodged by the boy.

Then, when the worm's combo technique ends, he turns and blinds another eye.

This formulaic battle continues for several hours.

Burrowing, rushing, charging, laser, struggling, triple tail swipe, burrowing...

Until the worm's eighth compound eye was also blinded, it eventually collapses on the ground, unable to move and gasping for air.

At the same time, a strange pattern appears on the worm's abdomen.

Yino unhurriedly walks forward, manually pries open its scales, and thrusts the iron sword into the strange pattern on its abdomen.

The worm again struggles and swings its tail, but is dodged by a pre-anticipated jump.

After a long period of panting. The worm almost epileptically convulses as it stands up.

Yino stands still and sheathes his sword. He glanced up at it with pity in his eyes.

"I'm only at the Foundation Establishment stage, I really tortured you."

"To still have breath after having all weak points stabbed... If it were my max level account from my previous life, you would have dropped equipment the moment you emerged from the ground."

Yino plays with the dagger in his hand, speaking casually to himself.

The worm opens its bloody maw and roars, struggling once more to burrow into the ground.

Yino sighed and continued to accompany it through the final series of combos.

A second later, after the worm spits out a final laser and collapses on the ground, gasping for air, Yino prys open the scales and thrusts a dagger deep into its abdomen, thereby ending the battle.

This time, the giant worm was completely lifeless.

*Clang—!*

Yino throwed away the now-blunt dagger, sitting down wearily against the worm's body.

"I don't know if performing a -C- on you now would still save Jinyue."

He grabbed his hair with a gaze that was complex, regretful, and melancholic.

If he had been less thoughtful and acted on instinct to save her immediately, just as Jinyue had saved him before, perhaps he could have arrived before Jinyue was eaten.

And just as Yino was sighing deeply, he sees a familiar pair of blood-red enchanting eyes on the roof in the darkness—

"Holy cow!"

Yino sit up startled.

"Am I dreaming? I swear I'm seeing Jinyue's ghost ascending to heaven!"