Chapter 1450: Easy Clearance
Xu Huo didn't rush to meet up with Duan Cheng and Li Kun. Instead, he took Yan Jiayu and used "Destination Arrival" to get far away from the castle.
After finding a place to settle down, he began to talk about what he had seen in the rose garden.
"Those craftsmen who disappeared in the castle should have died at the king's hands," Xu Huo said. "'The bodies were buried under the rose trees."
"Blame the puppet for killing the subjects?" Yan Jiayu said. "Is he that afraid of the transaction being leaked? The ones who saw the puppet with their own eyes are all gone. Most of the people in Gem City are oblivious. I don't think it has that much influence."
"Maybe the king thinks he needs to be cautious," Xu Huo said. "In the story the king told, the black gem that brought the puppet to life was given by the puppet master. If the puppet master really played the brutal role the king described, this transaction wouldn't be equal, especially since the puppet master also brought props."
Given the number of props collected, it couldn't have been scavenged from players who were executed. Besides, the king couldn't even identify props.
He pulled out a piece of clothing that didn't look very new from the bag: "The cuff is also a prop. If the king or someone in the castle could identify props, they wouldn't have left this cuff behind. They just took the items from the players that looked like they might be props."
"This is where I don't understand," Yan Jiayu said. "According to you, the gem might not have been brought by the puppet master. The puppet master used props to buy those living puppets. The king doesn't know how to use props, so why would he want so many of them?"
"Besides, he says he's worried about information leaking, but after getting the gem, he doesn't care at all about where the thief went or whether he's dead. That doesn't look like someone trying to keep a tight lid on things."
"That's the strange part," Xu Huo nodded. "The story the king told has obvious holes. The real focus is still on that black gem."
They couldn't operate freely inside the city, so after dodging several attacks, they made it outside and took themselves into a forest some distance from Gem City.
"Could it be like the other gems in the castle? That the black gem originally belonged to the king, so the puppet master used props to trade for it?" Yan Jiayu guessed.
The clearance task for Gem City was already over. Taking advantage of the city's uproar, Xu Huo altered his appearance and went to the old lady's house from the previous night. He roughly explained the whereabouts of the damaged puppet—lying was pointless. Whether the two brothers, Eli and Eshan, would go to the castle to find their father was their own choice. He just omitted the detail that the residents of Gem City were transformed from puppets.
There was still some distance between them. Xu Huo was the first to release the Cube Space. After his second Spatial Evolution, controlling Space Rays through the Cube Space became much easier. The Space Channels and Space Blades he created were tougher. The player charging at the front didn't know the strength of either side. He didn't even use a defense prop, relying only on his protective suit. Unsurprisingly, he died from his own speed.
Because they had discovered that the king's transaction with the puppet master had been dealt with by burying the bodies in the rose garden—this was the whole process of the craftsmen's disappearance. Additionally, the stolen gems had been returned to the king. The instance should be clearable now.
...
"It's hard to say if it belongs to the king, but it might belong to this fairy tale world," Xu Huo paused and said. "Anyway, the side quest 'Mystery of the Craftsmen's Disappearance' is solved."
Besides the king's announcement, the game probably also notified the players who entered the instance. Some players had already started causing trouble in the city, probably thinking that since they couldn't clear it anyway, they might as well try to grab something.
Yan Jiayu had come specifically to block them. Her speed was astonishing. In the blink of an eye, she was in front of the two players, and one punch slammed into one of their defense barriers!
The cracked barrier pressed the player back at high speed, but before he could adjust his stance, another large shadow suddenly loomed over him!
Sure enough, after a moment, Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu received the game notification.
Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu, who had already cleared the instance, were naturally among the targets. Before they even reached the city gate, besides Duan Cheng and Li Kun who had caught up, three other players surrounded them, attacking to kill.
Xu Huo's rating was also A.
"Get away from the crowd," Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu stopped at the same time, then split left and right, turning to wait for the players to approach.
"The rewards are pretty generous, but the rating is A," Yan Jiayu said.
His blood revealed a trace of the invisible Space Ray Blade, forcing the two players behind to change direction urgently and head toward Yan Jiayu.
"The difficulty of a law-abiding instance is being law-abiding," Yan Jiayu said. "But since we returned the gems, no one else should be able to complete the first task, right?"
As soon as she finished speaking, noise erupted in the distance. Guards in the castle were running around, informing all residents that the stolen gems had been found. The city gates were immediately unsealed, and everyone was called to a banquet that night.
So this was another difficulty... Xu Huo exchanged a glance with Yan Jiayu, somewhat helpless. They had to leave now, whether they wanted to or not. But before that, he had a small matter to wrap up.
"Lion...!" The player exclaimed in shock as he was heavily pinned to the ground, then his shoulder was bitten through—it should have been his throat. If he hadn't reacted quickly enough, he would have been done for.
This fairy tale instance's rules left some players helpless, and coincidentally, his Super Evolution power circumvented the instance rules, allowing him to clear it smoothly in such a short time without much difficulty.
But being caught in the stone lion's mouth, he couldn't escape either. Low-level props were useless against a living prop like the stone lion, and this person couldn't produce a better removal prop. So he could only force the prop into the stone lion's mouth, trying to pry its jaws open!
The stone lion, annoyed by the poking, fully learned its master's straightforward brutality. It shook its head, leaped, and slammed the person to the ground. A hundred-plus-pound man hit the dirt like a broken sack, making a "thud" as bones cracked. Before the sound of shattering bones ended, Yan Jiayu, coming in for the kill, stomped both feet vertically onto the player's chest. He spat blood and died on the spot.
What seemed like a lengthy process took only a few seconds. Just then, the corpse hanging in mid-air slid down. Both battles ended simultaneously. The two, who had each killed their opponent in one move, turned their gaze to the remaining third player.
A wise man knows when to retreat. The third player turned to flee, but his use of the prop was too slow. Xu Huo intercepted him in advance, and then Yan Jiayu, riding the lion, charged head-on into him, sending him flying right in front of Duan Cheng and Li Kun, who had just caught up.
(End of Chapter)
Hai Yan Shan