Chapter 42 - Underground Buddha City
As the phone screen presented the Skeleton General Companion Egg, Zhou Wen’s Mutated Vigor Ant appeared beside it.
A notification popped up on the screen again: ‘As the Mutated Vigor Ant has already finished incubating, the Skeleton General Companion Egg will be used as supplementary material. Proceed with fusion?’
Zhou Wen chose ‘yes.’ Since he was unable to incubate the Skeleton General Companion Egg and there were chances for him to obtain Mutated Vigor Ants again in the future, there was no harm trying.
With Zhou Wen making the choice, the Skeleton General Companion Egg flew towards the Mutated Vigor Ant. After infusing into the Mutated Vigor Ant, the screen immediately turned into a spiraling chaos.
Ding!
After a while, the game screen finally returned to normal. At the same time, there was a notification sound as the following line appeared: ‘Fusion successful. Mortal Mutated Vigor Ant has evolved into Mortal Mutated Skeleton Ant.’
Zhou Wen was somewhat depressed when he heard that. The outcome was still a Mortal Companion Beast after fusing with a Legendary Skeleton General. It felt like a terrible loss.
When he carefully studied the Skeleton Ant after the successful fusion, he saw that its originally red carapace had turned dark red. Furthermore, the carapace’s texture had changed. It now seemed like bone that had been dyed red. Even its feelers and claws had the same texture.
Furthermore, its claws had turned sharp, covered with razor-like barbed bones. It looked ferocious and terrifying, especially its two front claws. They looked like two strange sickles.
Although it had evolved to something rather strong, it was still at the Mortal stage. No matter how much it evolved, it had no way of competing with a Companion Beast at the Legendary stage.
Tapping on the Mutated Skeleton Ant’s stats to take a look, Zhou Wen was immediately taken aback. Compared to the Mutated Vigor Ant, its stats had changed tremendously.
Mutated Skeleton Ant: Mortal
Strength: 10
Speed: 9
Constitution: 10
Primordial Energy: 9
Talent Skill: Skeleton Pierce (Rank 10)
Companion Form: Bracer
Strength and Companion Beast has increased to 10. Same for the talent skill… Zhou Wen was alarmed. He had never heard of Companion Beasts having Rank 10 talent skills.
In fact, Zhou Wen always believed that Rank 9 was the limit to Primordial Energy Skills. Only when his Ashen Palm reached Rank 10 did he realize that there was such a thing.
Zhou Wen had the urge to summon the Mutated Skeleton Ant to see what it looked like. After all, it was drawn in a cartoon style in-game. There were bound to be differences in real life.
Unfortunately, he was sitting on Li Xuan’s Jade-Eyed White Tiger. This wasn’t the best time to summon it.
Despite his arrogance, Li Xuan put away his Companion Beast at the entrance to Sunset College. He then walked in with Zhou Wen without the pompous attitude.
Sunset College was a new college that was established after the dimensional storms. It was very close to the Dragon Gate Grotto—the biggest dimensional zone in Luoyang to date. To this day, humanity had not finished exploring it in its entirety. It was even said that humans had only managed to explore a very tiny area.
Apart from the Dragon Gate Grotto, there were several dimensional zones found inside Sunset College. It could be said that Sunset College took most of the dimensional zone resources in Luoyang.
Due to it being a partially-restricted school, the students still had to wear uniforms despite being university students. It was a little like military wear.
It was still the holidays, but there were plenty of students on campus. Li Xuan and Zhou Wen were stopped by the guards at the door.
The guards of Sunset College weren’t security guards but real soldiers. In fact, the dimensional zones in Sunset College were guarded by real military troops.
Li Xuan took out two special passes before being permitted to enter.
As Li Xuan led Zhou Wen in, he explained, “Luoyang was home to thirteen Chinese dynasties., Ancient cities had been built on this piece of land for millennia, but for all kinds of reasons, these ancient cities had been destroyed and lost to the rivers of time. It could be said that the ground that Luoyang sits on is piled up from multiple ancient cities. Ever since the dimensional storms, many dimensional zones were formed underground. The deeper one goes, the more terrifying the zone becomes.
“People from Luoyang are accustomed to calling the underground dimensional zones dungeons. At present, the explored dungeon has four levels. There’s definitely more, but no human expert can get any lower. This time, an entrance to a new dungeon was discovered at Ancient Inlet, and new dimensional creatures and organ-type Companion Beasts were found inside…”
Zhou Wen listened attentively to Li Xuan’s explanation. Sunset College was just too huge. After walking for nearly an hour, they finally arrived at Ancient Inlet which Li Xuan had mentioned.
Ancient Inlet was, in fact, a marshland. Rumor was that it was once a river mouth of the ancient Yellow River which once brought disaster to this area by drowning the ancient cities. Later, the Yellow River moved and stopped flowing over this region.
In this former riverbed, a new dimensional zone was discovered. When Zhou Wen looked at a stele inside the marshland, his eyes lit up.
The stele stood in the middle of the marsh at a height of over ten meters tall. There was a sitting Buddha engraved on it with fairies circling him.
Amongst the various engraved symbols, Zhou Wen found a tiny palm symbol. It was rather inconspicuous amongst the fairies and Buddha palm symbols, but to Zhou Wen, it was extremely familiar.
On the city gates of Guide Ancient City, Zhou Wen had seen a similar symbol. Furthermore, he had focused his mysterious phone on it to download the Guide Ancient City game dungeon.
However, this tiny palm symbol was a little different from the one he had seen at Guide Ancient City.
The palm in the Guide Ancient City’s symbol carried something akin to an onion or garlic. But here, engraved in the middle of the tiny palm symbol was a blooming lotus flower.
I’ll try to download this game dungeon now. Zhou Wen took out his phone and turned on the camera before aiming it at the tiny palm symbol.
Beep!
A green box appeared on the screen as it focused on the tiny palm symbol. After the light beep, the familiar ‘Installing’ word appeared.
It really works. Zhou Wen was pleasantly surprised.
Imagining that Zhou Wen was snapping photos, Li Xuan said, “This stele looks to be in the style of the Northern Wei dynasty. Back then, Buddhism thrived…”
Zhou Wen wasn’t listening to what Li Xuan had to say. The phone had finished installing as a lotus icon appeared on his phone’s home screen. Beneath it were three words: ‘Underground Buddha City.’