More and More Bugs

"The Ruler of a Fallen Nation has been cleared? That dungeon's difficulty was pretty brutal—the first-clear rewards must be lavish, right?" "Isn't it expected that it got cleared? With Fu Qingyang, Yuanshi Tianzun, and the Demon Eye Heavenly King, no dungeon below S-rank could hold them back." "A quasi–level-9 yin creature and a level-9 Ancient God of War... Even for them, it was a close brush with death. How could it be easy? Elder Sword Immortal, your flattery grows more blatant by the day—you've lost the pride of a swordsman." "Tomorrow I plan to take my subordinates in for training. The great catastrophe draws near; we must raise our strength as quickly as possible." "Old Huo, you're swamped with official duties lately. Focus on your work first; I'll go ahead." "Stop arguing, everyone. Let's draw lots to decide." Dungeons where members could bring subordinates along to level up were unique to the White Tiger Guards' guild dungeons. Not only did they foster superb team coordination for large-scale battlefields, but the rewards were also considerable. Not every Spirit Realm walker had the chance to match into an A-rank dungeon. Even if a dungeon had already been cleared, it still offered Spirit Realm walkers an abundance of experience points. Fu Qingyang set down his wine glass and typed a reminder: "Against a level-9 Ancient God of War and a level-9 yin creature, even with a strategy guide, the final battle is still a hair's breadth from death. It is best to ensure at least three Dominators enter the dungeon, and no fewer than two should be level-8 Dominators." After sending this message, he texted Fu Qingxuan: "I'm out of the dungeon. Let's meet." When no reply came for a long while, Fu Qingyang tapped Elder Jiange's profile icon and sent a message: "I need to enter the Grand Marshal's study." The fact that Fu Qingxuan wasn't answering meant she was holed up in her study again—either cultivating or hiding away eating sweets. Gaining access to this guild instance required the guild master or vice guild master to open it. Elder Jiange was the vice guild master of the White Tiger Guards. Elder Jiange did not text back, but about a dozen seconds later, a Spirit Realm prompt chimed in Fu Qingyang's ear. Shortly, his vision blurred and rippled. Two or three seconds later, he arrived in a vast, stark-white expanse. —The Grand Marshal's study! Fu Qingyang instinctively looked up and saw the sky filled with swords. Willow-leaf swords, eight-faceted Han swords, shortswords, greatswords, Tang swords, mother-and-child paired swords... It encompassed every variety of sword in human history. Fu Qingxuan sat on the ground with her arms hugging her knees, head tilted up toward the sky of blades. Her thick white hair fell over her shoulders and back like a heavy blanket. She looked remarkably like a little girl stargazing. "What are you looking at?" Fu Qingyang asked as he walked over to his elder sister, the Grand Marshal. "Looking at swords," Fu Qingxuan said, her head still turned upward. "What's so interesting about swords?" Fu Qingyang asked. "I'm pondering the essence of swords, the essence of sword qi..." Fu Qingxuan murmured. Fu Qingyang said calmly, "And what have you figured out?" "Not telling you. You wouldn't care to listen anyway. Aside from practicing slashes, you look down on every other form of swordplay your whole life..." Fu Qingxuan spoke as she turned her head. "Huh? Why has your hair turned white too? Copying me?" Fu Qingyang replied impassively, "Your hair turned white because your sword qi is too overwhelming and your metal-attribute spiritual power cannot be contained. Mine turned white because I burned through too much lifespan, aging from exhaustion." Fu Qingxuan's delicate white brows furrowed at once. "Excessive loss of lifespan?" "A sword intent I comprehended in the Ruler of a Fallen Nation dungeon," Fu Qingyang brushed it off, shifting to the purpose of his visit tonight. "I find the difficulty of Ruler of a Fallen Nation abnormal. How could two level-9 bosses appear in an A-rank dungeon? Even combined, Demon Eye, Yuanshi, and I could at most match a single level-9 Dominator. And the only NPC in the dungeon who could become our ally was merely a level-7 Fire Stealer. "Such difficulty has already exceeded the ceiling of an A-rank dungeon, as well as the upper limit of the team. Surviving and clearing it this time came down to luck." Fu Qingxuan tilted her head and frowned. "Walk me through the dungeon in detail." Fu Qingyang then gave Fu Qingxuan a detailed account of how they had cleared Ruler of a Fallen Nation. "It really is abnormal..." Fu Qingxuan said slowly. Fu Qingyang continued, "Yuanshi told me that a friend of his, the sole-heir Knight of the Holy See, entered an S-rank dungeon for no apparent reason a while back. That Knight had kept his hidden score under control; the probability of him matching into an S-rank was practically zero." "You mean Ruler of a Fallen Nation and that Knight's dungeon are of the same nature?" "Yes. Both are anomalies, but I don't know the cause." Fu Qingxuan fell silent. After a long moment, she said contemplatively, "It's not entirely unprecedented. Remember Sheling Tunnel? Because it couldn't be cleared, it was classified as a bugged dungeon. That proves the Spirit Realm itself has similar flaws." Fu Qingyang nodded slowly, accepting this explanation, and said, "These occurrences began appearing after Ling Tuo cloaked the Merit Roster. The Spirit Realm is developing more and more bugs. A situation like cloaking the Merit Roster cannot be allowed to happen a second time. "What do you demigods plan to do?" *** Beneath the night sky, a bright, clear moon hung overhead. In the Holy City of late-eighteenth-century Europe, broken walls and crumbling ruins were strewn everywhere. Black smoke drifted up from the collapsed rubble, and the desolate devastation of war stretched as far as the eye could see. Half a month ago, fighter planes had carried out carpet bombings over the Holy City. Most residents had fled, and government forces rallied able-bodied men to wage guerrilla warfare through the streets and alleys. They stubbornly resisted for a week. Until a special group of people descended upon the Holy City, bringing the war of ordinary mortals to an end. The war among Spirit Realm walkers began. *Rustle, rustle...* Clad in silver knight armor, Zhai Cai walked through the ruins. His face was gaunt, dark circles hung heavily beneath his eyes, and his silver cuirass was scarred with blade marks and caked in blood. He did not carry a kerosene lamp, holding only a knight's longsword as he vigilantly scanned his surroundings. "Sigh, if only I had a Night Wanderer's night vision," Zhai Cai exhaled a breath of turbid air and glanced back at the cathedral protected by an array. The dungeon he had entered was the very battle in which the Holy See fell. The Covenant of Freedom had rallied the evil faction and unaffiliated wanderers to rise up, laying siege to the Holy See just as the Six Great Sects had once besieged Bright Summit. In this battle, the orthodox faction's—and the entire world's—mightiest organization came crashing down. Zhai Cai had been in the dungeon for over half a month. During this time, the two factions clashed constantly, and both the Knight Order and the Bishopric suffered heavy casualties over several battles, steadily bleeding manpower. Through his participation in this war, Zhai Cai had come to understand why the Holy See fell. For one thing, the Holy See had acted far too overbearingly, breeding resentment among unaffiliated wanderers and local forces long beforehand. For another, the Covenant of Freedom possessed a potion capable of mutating Spirit Realm walkers into powerful monsters while allowing them to maintain their sanity. This allowed everyone on the evil faction's side to unlock explosive power. It was likely what Yuanshi Tianzun had described: the bathwater of the Demon Seed (a deity). Still, the Holy See possessed profound foundations, repelling wave after wave of attacks from the evil faction. Having suffered greatly from a disadvantage in demigod-level combatants and failing to take the city by storm, the evil faction shifted to waging guerrilla warfare against the Holy See throughout the urban streets. Zhai Cai's current mission was to patrol a radius of thirty li across the southern district of the Holy See, ensuring the evil faction did not covertly assemble or plot an operation. "I don't know when these days will end—no, I don't know how much longer I can stay alive!" Zhai Cai sighed. Right then, a languid voice drifted from behind a broken wall beside him: "That depends on when you master your divine arts." Hearing this, Zhai Cai's tense muscles gradually relaxed. He looked over and forced an unsightly smile. "The manual you gave me is too hard, Mr. President. Couldn't we switch to a safer, easier way? For instance, you could just take me out directly?" Around ten days ago, the president of the Merchant Guild had suddenly materialized inside the dungeon, tossing him a manual and claiming it was a cultivation method of ancient knights. Mr. President had told him that he only came because Yuanshi Tianzun had wailed, clung to his thigh, and begged for help, but this was as much aid as he could offer. Whether Zhai Cai could ultimately clear the dungeon alive depended on his own luck and destiny. Mr. President reached into the void to pull out a glass of brandy. Sipping it leisurely amid the rubble, he shrugged. "How boring life would be without challenges! You are the sole-heir Knight of the Holy See; this is your tempering." Zhai Cai's mouth twitched. "Can I pass this tempering opportunity to someone else? Over the past few days, I've watched knights fall one after another—there were Transcendentals, Saints, and just the day before yesterday, a Dominator-level knight died. "The intensity of the war keeps escalating. I'm only a level-7 Knight. In a war where demigods take to the field to slaughter, I could die at any moment." Mr. President didn't respond to his complaint, asking instead, "You've been in the dungeon for half a month. What are your thoughts on the fall of the Holy See?" Zhai Cai instinctively glanced around. Seeing no activity, he leaned against the crumbling wall and said, "From what I can tell so far, the Covenant of Freedom has at most one demigod—at least, I've only seen one. In theory, even with the Demon Seed's bathwater, it should be impossible for the evil faction to overthrow the Holy See. "I suspect..." The President chimed in, "You suspect the Demon Seed itself will make a move?" Zhai Cai nodded. "That's the only possibility. But I shouldn't be around to see it. After all, I'm only a Dominator. As long as I endure through the Dominator-tier clash, I should be able to exit the dungeon." If he were forced to participate in a battle of demigods, even merely as a small part of that battlefield, his survival rate would be virtually zero. No matter how brutal an S-rank dungeon was, such an impossible situation wouldn't occur; there had to be a sliver of hope to survive. The President fell silent for a second, then sighed. "Just as I thought. When I saw the Hunter Guild's president mutate into a Smoker back then, I already guessed as much." He drained the brandy in his glass, looked at the expectant Zhai Cai, and shook his head. "Give up on that thought. There's no way I can pull you out of this dungeon. For a Dominator-level S-rank dungeon, if I were to forcibly take you out, I wouldn't be able to bear the punishment of the Spirit Realm's mechanisms. "Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't matter as much. But now, the decisive battle between the orthodox and evil factions is imminent. I cannot weaken myself at such a crucial moment. Once the final battle comes, I might fall. Returning to the Spirit Realm doesn't matter to me, but I can't let it jeopardize the final showdown. Your entering an S-rank dungeon this time isn't normal. "Of course, you have another option: give me enough flesh, tissue, and spiritually enriched blood. I can make an avatar for you, and in the future, find an opportunity to resurrect you with the Mother Goddess's Womb." Zhai Cai's eyes lit up, and just as he was about to agree, he heard the President add: "However, the Mother Goddess's Womb is in the Soldier Master sect's headquarters. Whether we can take it back remains unknown." *That's as good as saying nothing!* Zhai Cai let out a soft breath. "Looks like I have no choice."