GAMMT - Chapter 61
Chapter 61: Tombstones
Prison 002. Everyone was shackled, but the Coffin Carrier had also appeared.
Who could break free?
One, two, three.
Bang, bang, bang!
Seven or eight people forcefully broke their chains. Some wielded the chains themselves, some picked up sharp fragments from the ground, and some even grabbed their high heels…
As soon as the Coffin Carrier entered, the crowd swarmed it. These were individuals who could break free through sheer strength and constitution, their close-combat skills far surpassing Fu Chuan's. She was, after all, an outsider—originally a pampered boss who had never undergone formal combat training from a young age. Her previous reactions and skills relied heavily on her genetic talent and high agility; in other areas, she truly wasn't as formidable as these people.
The gap had always been there.
However, their fighting style was the norm, unlike her bizarre and unconventional techniques. And in a normal fight, the crowd finally saw the Coffin Carrier's true combat prowess.
Thump, thump, thump!
The floor and walls were smashed to pieces, especially when it lifted its coffin lid and began to slam it around wildly…
Ferocious!
Amidst the chaotic brawl, someone who had been hiding on the side suddenly moved. They leaped up, using the Coffin Carrier's shoulder as a springboard… their hands grabbed the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, using their own weight to pull it down.
The chandelier's tip consisted of a hanging glass bulb and a sharp finial.
With a crash, it fell… the finial pierced through the creature's head, and the potent lamp oil from the shattered bulb sprayed all over the Coffin Carrier's head and body.
Flames instantly incinerated the cloth sack covering its head, then spread across its entire body.
The Coffin Carrier let out a howl.
Lin Hangjing had already landed with a backflip and joined the others in a coordinated assault… After just three waves of attacks, the Coffin Carrier collapsed heavily, its coffin toppling with it…
The Gnome Merchant appeared, but they saw through its trick on the first round. Why? Because they had been monitoring the situation in Prison 001. Those with high agility had overheard the faint sounds of an argument.
They had heard Lan Chenshuang's final questions.
The advantage of being in Prison 001 was that they were the first to experience it, getting a head start. But they had zero information and had to figure everything out on their own.
As for Prison 002, they were one step behind 001, losing the initial advantage. But the benefit was that they could eavesdrop on information, plan ahead, and increase their survival rate.
Prison 002, 40 survivors. The first stage is over!
Lin Hangjing +1000 points.
Mo Ruijing +600 points!
…
Prison 003 begins!
Lan Luoqi was a little disappointed. He knew that Lan Chenshuang was no match for Xie Keli, no matter what. This kid was far more formidable than they had anticipated; he had hidden his abilities too well.
He just didn't know if Xie An was aware of this.
According to his investigation, Xie An seemed to harbor murderous intent towards this son. The assassins from last night were most likely sent by Xie An. Although the reason was unknown, seeing how powerful Xie Keli was now, Xie An would surely not be able to sit still.
Just as Lan Luoqi had this thought, he turned to observe the Xie Clan's area, only to find that Xie An was not there.
He had no idea where he had gone.
Outside the education center.
Xie An sat in his airship, using his connections to check on Xie Siyi's situation at the research institute. He quickly received a reply confirming that she was indeed at the institute, with her researcher colleagues vouching for her presence.
"Aren't you on good terms with her? Why don't you just ask her yourself?"
"No, the child has grown up. I'm not her real brother, and she's a high-ranking noble from the main branch, after all. Her status is significant. How could a branch family member like me dare to get too close? It might cause misunderstandings."
"You, you… If it weren't for your constant care back then, she might not have survived. Although there's a considerable age gap, she's just an ordinary person now. The main branch of the Xie Clan has no place for her. It wouldn't be a big deal if you really took her for yourself. Besides, it would indirectly elevate your status and that of your branch. Wouldn't that be good?"
"Don't talk nonsense. I'm not that kind of person."
Xie An spoke with righteous indignation, but his eyes glanced at a photo on his optical computer screen, a hidden desire in their depths…
After hanging up, he felt a sense of relief. He hesitated for a moment before deleting a certain person's contact number.
If there were no problems on her end, there was no need to contact those people.
He didn't want them to fleece him again.
But his recent feelings had been too unsettling; a constant sense of unease plagued him. His genetic talent was special, related to premonitions and warnings, and he was currently at a bottleneck in breaking through to the Blue Blood level.
Such a strong sense of foreboding couldn't be a mere illusion.
It was either coming from that little bastard Xie Keli, the threat from Lan Xuanyu, or…
He was naturally suspicious. After mulling it over, he suddenly gritted his teeth and took out a parchment map.
He had obtained this secret scroll six months ago. It contained a treasure that could help him advance his bloodline, increasing his chances of success to at least 75%.
This was too important.
"I have to go early… while everyone's attention is focused on the exam."
Once the idea took root, Xie An began to make arrangements.
What he didn't know was that on the other end, after the call ended…
The communicator was gently placed on a table. The person who had answered the call turned around to face a massive tank filled with formalin behind them.
A certain "friend" was soaking inside.
Fu Chuan closed and broke the last door.
Turning around, she looked ahead… The crowd's cursing suddenly fell silent as they, too, saw the scene before them.
It was a vast, desolate land.
Scattered graves, fluttering corpse banners, and paper money offerings littered the ground. Occasionally, bone fragments were half-buried in the foul-smelling soil.
The tombstones were crooked and askew, ancient and dilapidated, exuding an air of desolation and deathly silence.
Fu Chuan frowned, her fingers twitching.
There were elements!
But only a very small amount.
Such a small quantity meant either there was no source for elemental regeneration, or the source was weak and released very few elements to begin with.
Regardless of which it was, she had to capitalize on her advantage of being the first one out from Jingyang City.
Fu Chuan stuck one hand in her pocket, gathering some elements, and released the little locust.
"Go invisible, devour elements, and store them for me. Hide well, you must hide well. Stay near me and don't come out without my command."
She wanted the little locust to be her final trump card.
"Okay, sister."
The little locust quietly turned invisible, crawled off Fu Chuan's body, and flew deep into the burial ground, beginning to absorb as many elements as it could.
Fu Chuan didn't remain idle either. While gathering elements, she slowly released spider silk from under her feet, inching it forward to explore.
This burial ground should be the second stage of the dungeon. If the core of the first stage was a game of puzzles and prison escape, testing skills and personal attributes under the premise of suppressed Arcane arts, then the second stage must be focused on actual combat.
"But the elemental concentration is still so low. It either tests skill mastery and application, just like the second stage, or the elements can be obtained from other sources."
"But no matter what, if they restrict energy in one aspect, they must also prevent us from easily replenishing it in another. Otherwise, such a design would be meaningless."
Fu Chuan's mind worked quickly. She directly took out a real, ordinary backpack from her inventory and transferred some items into it.
Although taking out the backpack meant bearing its actual weight, it had its pros and cons. She would rather be prepared.
Her equipment was already on her body; she couldn't wear any more. She had to take medicine. As for the rest…
She sat on the ground, sorting through her things. As she picked and chose from a pile of items, the people watching from outside even caught a fleeting glimpse of the underwear from before.
She still hadn't given it away?
What to do? She really wanted to pack everything. Fu Chuan experienced the agony of shopping—wanting everything but being unable to carry it all.
Helplessly, she quickly selected a few items. Just as she was about to shoulder the backpack, she suddenly stopped, remaining in a squat. She even picked up a stick from the ground and poked away the overgrown grass, revealing the true face of a toppled tombstone nearby.
"Star Calendar Year 3214, Zhang Sheng, thirty-five years old, engineer. Died from dancing in high heels for 48 hours, resulting in excessive blood loss from the legs and feet. Erected by survivor 0."
There was nothing strange about this tombstone. Someone died, so someone had to erect a monument.
Time, name, identity, cause of death, and the identity of the person who erected the stone.
Fu Chuan's gaze swept over to the other tombstones and found that the identities of the erectors were all hidden, represented by letters like O, D, L, or S.
And the causes of death varied.
"Died of asphyxiation from chain bondage."
"Died from being bludgeoned by the Coffin Carrier."
"Died from being sealed by Lord Little Skinner…"
"Died from being beheaded by Lord Little Skinner."
"Died from being torn limb from limb by the Coffin Carrier."
"Died at the hands of a fellow inmate, throat slit and bled out…"
"Died from the Gnome Merchant's BOSS's potion experiments…"
Fu Chuan pondered for a moment, weighing the information.
Her next opponents would likely fall into four categories: the Coffin Carrier (estimated 10 in total, unknown how many would be released after KO'ing the candidates in the prisons), Barbara, Little Skinner (a mysterious figure, still unknown), and the Gnome Merchant's BOSS (likely the leader of these gnome merchants, possibly not as fragile as the previous ones, and might control stronger Coffin Carriers or possess combat abilities himself).
This was an analysis Fu Chuan made out of professional habit.
But besides this information, Fu Chuan also noticed signs that the ground beneath the tombstones had been dug up.
Huh, had someone been digging up graves before?
What for?
Grave robbing, of course.
Fu Chuan thought for a moment, then got up and left.
A short while later, under the watchful eyes of the audience, she found a relatively intact tombstone.
She took out a shovel, rolled up her sleeves, and was just about to start digging when suddenly!
The hair on her head prickled. She had a bad feeling that someone was watching her nearby.
Another player? No, this place wasn't far from the exit, and she had locked all the doors over there. Not to mention that those people couldn't have gotten out so quickly, even if they had, she would have sensed it.
So it was… one of the four types she suspected earlier, Little Skinner or the Gnome Merchant?
But it could also be another type of person—a candidate from another city who, like her, had gotten out of their prison early and reached this burial ground area.
Whatever the case, the other party was clearly observing her, judging her.
In that case… let them make the wrong judgment.
Start digging!
She dug quite fast and soon hit something underneath—a coffin.
Fu Chuan observed the coffin and noticed that its texture and style were quite different from the one on the Coffin Carrier's back.
It was simpler and cheaper.
Fu Chuan pulled the coffin out, slightly on guard, and then opened the lid.
With just one look, many parents covered their children's eyes.
The corpse was rather horrifying, a mangled mess of flesh and blood, barely recognizable as human, with an overpowering stench of blood.
Fu Chuan glanced at it, then at the tombstone.
"The time of death recorded on the tombstone was twenty years ago. This corpse doesn't seem right."
It was too fresh. Could it be that this wasn't the deceased?
Fu Chuan directly lifted the lower half of the severed corpse, revealing the male genitalia and decaying pubic bone.
She made a quick judgment of his age.
It seemed to match, and the size of the coffin fit the corpse's height.
It was most likely him.
A person who had been dead for twenty years, yet their corpse looked as if it had only been dead for a few days…
Fu Chuan suddenly put on a pair of gloves with a snap, then reached out and grasped the deceased's head, prying open the jaw. There was nothing inside.
"How can this be?"
"Was I wrong?"
"If that's the case, then there's a new deceased. Someone is deliberately torturing and killing people and replacing the bodies in these coffins. Could there be a new deranged monster, separate from Little Skinner and the Gnome Merchant's BOSS?"
She analyzed the situation, then quickly reburied the grave, making it look undisturbed.
She thought, if the one spying on her was Little Skinner or one of his ilk, as the perpetrators, they wouldn't allow anything valuable to be left on their victims. They must not know about this. If they did, they would have already dug up the treasure.
Therefore, her actions were to prevent the other party from starting to seize the treasures, to provide false information, and incidentally, to create the idea of a new "monster" to make them feel a sense of crisis. If it could lead to internal conflict, that would be for the best.
As the old saying goes, one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers, especially when they're both psychopaths. She had never seen a gang with two leaders.
They were all bad people, not known for their tolerance.
But what if the spy was a player from another city?
Either they already knew this secret and were afraid she would find out and compete for resources, or they didn't know yet, in which case she had to conceal it even more.
Fu Chuan left, but underground, a projection from the little locust had already shown her a verdant crystal the size of a quail's egg.
She had sent the little locust to enter the coffin and retrieve it before she even started digging.
"There really is something."
"It's a Vitality Element Essence Bead. It can be refined to produce water, wood, light, and earth elements."
Vitality was inherently linked to these four primary elements, making it a composite energy source. Placing it within a flesh-and-blood body could effectively slow down decay and aging.
Because of this function, it was also ground into powder by high nobles to create the most expensive and top-tier cosmetics for beauty preservation.
Of course, for the super-nobles, it was just a beauty product, but for Arcanists at her current level, and even up to the 40th level, it was an incredibly rare and valuable item.
Fu Chuan was also a bit surprised, but she quickly realized that this item was the "key" to overcoming the low elemental concentration set in this dungeon.
She immediately had the little locust continue its work underground, but she deliberately pretended to be persistent, digging up several more graves, each time coming up empty-handed.
So, would the person spying on her get impatient and leave, or would they start to approach her and attempt an assassination?
Fu Chuan remained secretly vigilant… Soon, the feeling of being watched disappeared.
Had they left?
Fu Chuan breathed a sigh of relief. Now was the time to develop cautiously; it was best not to go all out if she could avoid it.
Because she had caught the phrase "depth of strategy" in the dungeon's description, she knew that to get a high score, she had to venture deeper into the burial ground.
So, she continued to move forward.
About twenty minutes later… the scenery of the burial ground along the path changed.
There were no more tombstones or graves. Instead, bones were piled up everywhere, and among them stood numerous scarecrows.
They were stuck in the ground haphazardly, wearing lifelike leather coats.
Lifelike as in… alive?
Fu Chuan only gave it a cursory glance, but then a shiver ran down her spine. Frowning, she cautiously approached for a closer look.
The texture and grain of the skin… it looked real, didn't it? And… it was moving.
Smack!
The scarecrow's hand suddenly shot out, its sharp branch-like claws stabbing swiftly towards her eyes.
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