Chapter 300 – Guardians of the Shrine
Purple Bell’s Yin Yang Phantasm Realm could allow a small number of people into it, but the entrance and exit would only be opened at the same place. The Sun Dynasty players already had her detailed information on their desks, so unless it was absolutely necessary, this method wouldn’t be used.
Therefore, they could only turn to the Elemental Mystery Realm.
Spending some elemental energy to stuff them all inside, Fatty swaggered back to West River Field’s stationed area.
Nodding to the guy, Fatty leaned on a tree and closed his eyes to rest.
Roughly ten thousand Sun Dynasty players carried out an inch-by-inch search for three days, practically flipping the entire mountain range upside down, but were unable to find any trace of the outsiders.
The clan heads who organized this pursuit were so angry their noses nearly burst. Thinking of Purple Bell’s Yin Yang Phantasm Realm, they a.s.signed people to monitor every corner of the mountain range, trying their best not to leave out a dead angle.
“We should stop wasting our time here.” Fatty opened his eyes with a yawn.
“Mister Grubber is right, this is a waste of time.” West River Field nodded in approval. Since there was no trace of the opponents, he intended to take his people to grind.
“You can go level, leaving a few people here to monitor will do.” They were father and son after all. West River SoaringCrane instantly agreed to let West River Field take his people and leave.
“You guys want to train at Fire Cloud Ridge? I’m not going.” Fatty shook his head. “I need to take a trip to the capital.”
“You want to go to the imperial capital?” West River field was greatly surprised. “That will cost a lot of Reputation points. It’s so not worth it unless you plan to train there for a very long time.”
“It’s no big deal, I just have something important to do there.” Fatty turned down West River Field’s effort to keep him.
After some thought, West River Field felt that forcing Fatty to stay wasn’t good, so he agreed to Fatty’s request and even gave him a map.
At the cost of 1000 Reputation points, Fatty arrived at the imperial capital of Sun Dynasty, which was much smaller than Xuanhuang’s Imperial Capital, even smaller than Black Tortoise City. However, this wasn’t surprising. The population of Sun Dynasty wasn’t large; it’d be too wasteful to construct a main city that was too big.
The famous shrine was located inside the imperial palace, wors.h.i.+pped and nurtured by the belief of its people.
After the group came out from the Elemental Mystery Realm and looked at the towering palace wall in front of them, TheFugitive suddenly laughed.
“Whatcha giggling about?” HeadofG.o.d smacked him on the head.
“Do you think it’s better to just burn that d.a.m.n shrine or directly set fire to the entire palace?” TheFugitive rubbed his head.
“Burn the palace? With our numbers, very hard,” concluded Fatty after he stroked his chin and pondered. “Let’s go. To be able to burn that shrine is good enough.”
Including Fatty, they had seventeen individuals in total, fourteen of which were rogues alongside one mage, one knight, and one warrior.
“The defense is too tight, it’s impossible to Stealth inside. Moreover, they have s.p.a.ce-restricting magic formations lying around. Even my pinpoint teleportation skill doesn’t work here,” Purple Bell informed them after some observation.
“Last time we snuck in by following an expert. Such a good thing won’t happen twice, though. Let’s first think of a way to get inside,” said LittleLi’s Flying Dagger Han Shen.
“You guys stay back a bit, lemme try.” Fatty walked to a discreet corner and used Earthwalk. In a flash, he appeared inside the palace.
Last time in Iron Chain Town, the Mutated Fire Kite had utilized the Divine remnant Spatial Tray to imprison the s.p.a.ce around the townlet, yet Fatty’s Elemental Movement Arts was unimpeded. It was the same this time.
Returning outside with another Earthwalk and throwing everyone into the Elemental Mystery Realm, Fatty then began to roam around the palace.
If the Brutal Saddle wasn’t occupied by the Violent Ox King, riding Wheat to travel underground below the palace would have been the most appropriate course of action.
After twists and turns, Fatty followed Purple Bell’s instruction and arrived before a structure.
This was like a normal room in a temple, not very big, and not at all magnificent. The vicinity was cold and deserted. On the plaque at the entrance were some letters in a language that Fatty didn’t know. However, this was, without a doubt, the shrine that everyone in the CN region wanted to burn.
“Heheh, we’re here at last.”
After Fatty released the group in an empty spot, everyone stared intently at the shrine.
“Let’s act according to our plan. Six Undying Souls, one for each of me, Purple Bell, and Lil’ bro RighteousBlood, three to Fatty,” DukeGarrison whispered.
“Alright.”
The group of 17 split up. G.o.d Familia naturally acted together, discussing a way to set fire to the place, while Fatty, Purple Bell, Duke Garrison, and RighteousBloodCleansestheSilverSpear crept into the shrine. Only Han Shen remained outside to stand guard.
Due to the last event, the defense around the shrine had been considerably fortified. At the gate stood two rows of ten guards. Judging from their equipment, they were at least at the 6th cla.s.s enhancement.
Getting in was easy. Fatty Earthwalked in with the others inside his Elemental Mystery Realm.
“Be careful. We won’t be attacked for walking around, but if any object is damaged, the guardians will attack us. If even they can’t stop us, the slumbering souls will be awakened. The six Divine Undying Souls are among them,” DukeGarrison warned in a whisper.
“Are there any Legendary Undying Souls?” Fatty suddenly asked.
“Legendary?” Maybe, but we don’t know any yet,” DukeGarrison hesitantly said after some thought.
Last time, they abruptly charged in and set fire everywhere. It happened so quickly that the guards couldn’t stop them. In the end, six G.o.d-tier Undying Souls appeared just when they were so close to success, and killed six people. Only four escaped the capital alive.
Entering the shrine was like entering an entirely different world altogether. There was only absolute silence. The noise from the outside was completely blocked out.
The area was neither large nor complicated, with only one table with a dense distribution of memorial tablets on it. According to a rough count, there were several hundreds of tablets.
“This trash should be dumped in the garbage and not here being wors.h.i.+pped,” Fatty mumbled.
Everyone spread out, readied their skills, and nodded toward HeadofG.o.d. With a wave from HeadofG.o.d, a barrel of fuel appeared in their hands, which they then quickly splashed onto the memorial tablets. Finally, Purple Bell conjured a small fireball.
BOOM!
Heatwaves swept in all directions along with crackles and rumbles of explosions. Several tablets were immediately reduced to ashes in the fire.
“Seeking death!” Furious roars echoed as a few black figures flew out from some tablets. They waved their hands, sending out a thick icy air that nearly snuffed out the fire.
“Pounce!” RighteousBloodCleansestheSilverSpear was the first to attack. His silver spear turned into a silver streak that shot at one figure.
Whoos.h.!.+ Everyone followed suit and made their moves, each chose a figure to be their opponent.
These black figures were the souls of the memorial tablets here, and also the guardians of this place, t.i.tled ‘Guardian of the Shrine’ plus their own names. However, their power varied greatly, ranging from the 5th to the 8th cla.s.s enhancement.
There were seriously too many souls that they seemed to be endless. There were already over a hundred flying out now.
“Kill! Don’t bother with them. As long as the tablets are destroyed, they’ll disappear.” DukeGarrison was quite familiar with the place after having come here once. He ran around, narrowly dodging the attacks of two guardians to get to the table. The stone stele in his hand suddenly expanding, Duke Garrison smashed it onto several memorial tablets.
Crack! Two tablets crumbled to pieces, immediately followed by two shrill screams. Two guardian figures distorted into whiffs of smoke, vanis.h.i.+ng into the air.
“The lowest-ranked are easy to kill, but the higher-rank is a little troublesome, the defense of their tablets is much higher,” said DukeGarrison as he flung his stone stele at another tablet.
“Bell, don’t bother with them, just tend to the fire,” Fatty instructed. The Elemental Skill Book flew out and flipped to a certain page, casting a skill that Fatty had replicated from West.
Hooo… A fire dragon appeared from thin air, baring its teeth and claws as it pounced on the memorial tablets. Meanwhile, Fatty didn’t stop moving his hands and continuously flung out fire magic spells.
Back when West pursued Aliya, the bored Fatty pestered him to keep casting magic so that he could replicate them. This earned him quite a number of fire skills.
A slew of fire magic flew out as tablets burned and black figures squeaked. Scared out of their wits, several guardians hastily returned to their tablets to put out the fire.
“Master, watch out, there’s movement outside.” Han Shen informed via the communicator. The NPCs of Sun Dynasty had been quick to get wind of the situation inside. Currently, the twenty guards outside the gate were already charging in.
In fact, the most powerful guards were the guardians in the tablets, so Sun Dynasty didn’t bother to station many guards here. These twenty guards were still the result of the last disturbance.
Over a hundred souls equal to over a hundred experts of the 6th, 7th, or even 8th cla.s.s enhancement were ganging up on them. Very soon, the players began to feel the strain. The situation was growing risky.
“Setting fire is the priority!” HeadofG.o.d growled. He ran wild around the place while splas.h.i.+ng fuel right next to the opponents’ attacks.
One flame was quickly extinguished, but another soon blazed somewhere else. The guardians lost this while taking care of that, until they finally decided to send several souls to handle the players, while the rest tightly protected their own tablets for fear of incineration.
“Burn the walls!” shouted Fatty. With the guardians here, it was simply impossible to burn this many tablets. The only thing left was to burn down the walls and earn themselves some face this way.
The rest of the fuel was splashed on the walls, which soon burned very fiercely. Although some ice guardians ran over to put out the fire, it would take a while.
“d.a.m.n it! If we burned the walls from the start, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble!” HeadofG.o.d said in regret. Everyone finally realized that as long as they didn’t touch the tablets, these shrine guardians wouldn’t come out.