Re-entering the Corpse King Hall

Exchanging brief greetings with fourth-born and eldest-born—who was still downstairs but active on the Legend communication line—Lin Jia brought a Level 13-and-almost-full Mei Mei straight toward the Zombie Cave. Having accumulated zombie-slaving experience twice before, Lin Jia, notorious for his poor sense of direction, managed to recognize some of the path, navigating along the memory of the route toward the zombie spawning points. The power of four Level 7 tires down here was simply unrivaled!

The upgraded tires had vastly improved in speed, attack power, health, and defense. Even their artificial intelligence seemed to have increased significantly; they were smart enough to scatter and attack any zombies that appeared within their alert radius.

Due to their attack speed, one could often witness a tire pummeling a zombie—a creature otherwise infamous for its sluggishness—to the point of severe twitching, rendering it completely incapable of fighting back. Sometimes, a tire would beat a zombie to death while taking at most a glancing blow or two. Whenever a crowd of zombies spawned, four dark, chubby figures would scurry wildly across the ground, and shortly thereafter, the zombies would toppled over in droves, much like wheat beneath a sickle.

Lin Jia's lightning and fire walls were also remarkably formidable output tools. At times, he would lure a cluster of zombies, drop a few fire walls, fan the flames with burst fire, and let the tires roll around his vicinity, whereupon red experience point prompts would cascade across the chat box like a waterfall. Although Mei Mei could only claim two or thirty-odd experience points per zombie, the sheer speed of the cascading experience text was relentless. Not long after entering the Zombie Cave, Mei Mei advanced to Level 14.

Mei Mei only needed to cower behind Lin Jia, casting her healing spell to restore his health, and happily scoop up equipment from the ground, entirely free from the anxieties of grinding levels. This was vastly faster than hacking away at monsters one by one on her own!

Harvesting zombie experience all the way, Lin Jia slowly led Mei Mei deeper into the Zombie Cave. The sparse zombies on the periphery could no longer satisfy the demands of a high-level Level 26 Mage. Although zombies yielded fewer experience points, he still gained over 100 experience points per kill. Solely in terms of monster-clearing speed, provided the monster density was sufficient, it was no slower than farming in Pig Cave or Centipede Cave.

Along the way, brushing aside countless low-level players clinging to him with cries of "Party! Party! Party!", Lin Jia once again stepped into the Eastern Abandoned Mine, a place he had wandered around several times with eldest-born, fourth-born, and the others. The last time he and eldest-born had specifically searched for the hidden map, the Tomb King Lair, it had yielded nothing, leaving Lin Jia deeply frustrated. Clearly, he had managed to enter it once, yet not only had he gained nothing, but he could never find it again.

Lin Jia first led Mei Mei in a circle around the map, slaughtering any zombies they encountered before heading straight to the spot where the zombie monk had crawled out last time. Along the winding mine tunnels, small clusters of low-tier potions dropped by zombies were sporadically scattered across the ground. Mei Mei ran over happily to collect them all; these were items abandoned by leveling players whose inventories were full, or items dropped by Taoist players' divine beasts that went unnoticed upon the summon's death.

Inheriting the traditional thriftiness of Taoist players, Mei Mei displayed a stinginess that outshined even eldest-born's. She didn't even spare the wooden swords occasionally discarded by players who had swapped them out; she gathered them all to sell back in town. Although a wooden sword only fetched a few dozen gold coins, it took a great deal of persuasion from Lin Jia to make Mei Mei understand that abandoning cheap, junk items to free up inventory slots for more valuable, high-level equipment was the proper scavenger rule. Yet, whenever Lin Jia watched Mei Mei gaze longingly at a small bracelet or a gold necklace on the ground with incomparable regret, he felt like an unpardonable corrupt official—far too extravagant and wasteful!

"Look how thrifty and house-proud Mei Mei is, yet here I am urging her not to pick up those precious resources. A wife like this is truly worth marrying!" Lin Jia thought with deep emotion.

Having run to the spot where the zombie monk had appeared, Lin Jia paced around the coordinates where the zombie monk usually crawled out, but no zombie emerged. It was possible that other players had passed through earlier and slaughtered all the zombies. Lin Jia had no choice but to abandon the idea of searching for the Tomb King Lair in disappointment, intending to take Mei Mei and leave, continuing deeper into the Zombie Cave to hunt more zombies for leveling.

Yet, just as he took two steps, several swaying zombies suddenly spawned in the mine tunnel, rushing toward Lin Jia and Mei Mei with feral roars. Two or three zombies separated Lin Jia and Mei Mei, who were standing one behind the other. A gray-robed zombie mage focused its attention on Mei Mei, who was closest to it, unleashing a dazzling flash of Laser Beam. Mei Mei shrieked, spun around, and fled backward, her health pool already depleted to less than half!

Lin Jia hurriedly cast two Burst Fires, using attack aggro to draw the zombies pursuing Mei Mei toward himself, while his four loyal bodyguards slaughtered the newly spawned zombies around them at maximum speed.

By the time Lin Jia finished off the zombies and ran back along the mine tunnel to find Mei Mei, he discovered that she had vanished without a trace. Puzzled, Lin Jia turned back to look at Mei Mei and asked, "Where did you run off to?"

Mei Mei stared blankly at her own screen, shook her head in a daze, and said, "I have no idea either! When I ran over to dodge those zombies, my screen just flashed once and I wasn't in the original spot anymore!"

"Huh?" Lin Jia was dumbfounded. He leaned over to peer at Mei Mei's screen, only to discover that Mei Mei had abruptly appeared in the Southern Mine. Flabbergasted, Lin Jia looked back and forth between Mei Mei's screen and his own, finally realizing that among the zombies he had just beaten to death, one was a zombie monk. At this moment, its bald head had been batted far away by his own attacks, lying dead and miserably on the ground, while not far away lay a bare pit in the earth—precisely the one left behind when the zombie monk burrowed out of the ground!

The hidden map—the Tomb King Lair entrance?!

Lin Jia couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement. He called out to Mei Mei, "Mei Mei, go ahead and grind in the Southern Mine for a bit; I'll come find you later!" Having equipped the female Flying Feather Light Armor picked up along the way, Level 14 Mei Mei could now barely hold her own against a single zombie. As long as she didn't encounter a gang of more than one zombie attacking simultaneously, she could manage her own healing with minimal danger. Given the current player density in the mines, slowly pulling zombies to kill them one by one remained quite safe.

Although Lin Jia didn't understand why Mei Mei had suddenly appeared in the Southern Mine after stepping inside, there was no doubt that this hole was the entrance to the hidden map, the Tomb King Lair. Having experienced it once before, Lin Jia was utterly certain of this fact.

Drawing on the lesson from his previous instant-death experience upon entry, Lin Jia retrieved five Strong Sun Water potions from his inventory to serve as a safety net, placing them on his quick-slot bar, and then placed a Random Teleport Scroll in the sixth quick-slot for any contingencies. He also mapped his Instant Movement skill to F8. If things still proved too dangerous after using Sun Water and random scrolls upon entry, Lin Jia resolved to flee; even dying while trying to fly away was better than perishing inside the Tomb King Lair!

That ghost of a location wasn't somewhere you could just waltz into whenever you pleased; it seemed to harbor some hidden rule. If by any chance he kicked the bucket in there and had his prized high-end equipment blown off his corpse, the agony would be unbearable—he wouldn't even be able to pick it back up!

Having prepared thoroughly, Lin Jia planted a foot into that earthen pit. Any later, and the pit would likely have been despawned by a system refresh.

With a shift of the visuals, Lin Jia successfully reappeared in the Tomb King Lair he had visited once before. Last time, his fleeting glimpse combined with the dim lighting had prevented him from seeing things clearly while lying dead on the ground; he only knew there were many tomb kings inside. This time, after teleporting in, Lin Jia finally got a clear look at the true appearance of the Tomb King Lair!

It was a square mine chamber with a completely flat earthen floor. The surrounding walls were paneled seamlessly with wooden planks, making it look sturdy and secure. Moreover, it felt as though there were no other entrances. So where had he entered from? Lin Jia was deeply curious. If his guess was correct, it was because that zombie monk had excavated through the floor, and he had tumbled down through that hole! Sweat~

At this moment, the scene inside the Tomb King Lair astonished Lin Jia somewhat, because there was already a player inside—though that player was lying flat on the ground...

The spot where Lin Jia landed upon entering the Tomb King Lair was quite favorable: right at the bottom-left corner of the square chamber, coordinates 6:16. Accompanied by a flash of white light, his four tires also spawned right in front of him, perfectly forming a semi-enclosed corner—a "human wall." Subconsciously, Lin Jia pressed Ctrl+A to hold his summons in place, preventing them from moving. Once safety was secured, he inspected the scene. It must have been a Taoist player. Scattered across the ground were a few protective talismans and two bundles of medium magic potions, surrounded by vast heaps of bone fragments right beneath the feet of numerous tomb kings.

Taking in this spectacle, Lin Jia—who had long cooperated closely with eldest-born—instantly deduced what had just transpired. Presumably, this Taoist player had, like them, inadvertently stepped onto the pit dug by the zombie monk and fallen in. However, he had been exceptionally unlucky, landing right in the dead center of the Tomb King Lair and getting surrounded by roughly thirty tomb kings. The Taoist, equipped with Stealth, had upheld the spirit of never logging off before the very last moment, utilizing Stealth combined with Healing to endure the first wave of attacks, and then summoning his skeleton to attempt a counterattack. Yet a skeleton of merely a few levels—or perhaps even Level 0—couldn't possibly withstand the onslaught of so many tomb kings; instead, it constantly drew surrounding tomb kings closer, thoroughly sealing his doom.

This, in turn, created an advantageous condition for Lin Jia, who arrived later! The corners and edges of the Tomb King Lair were completely free of tomb kings, allowing Lin Jia to hide here in safety!

Trapped and cornered, the Taoist player could neither fight back nor bear to use a Town Portal Scroll, reduced to continually summoning skeleton frames to draw the tomb kings' attention in a desperate bid to preserve his life. Until the very moment before Lin Jia entered—likely due to a mismanaged action where his stealth faded or his summoning talismans ran out—the exposed Taoist had been mercilessly gang-raped by a mob of tomb kings...