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Chapter 63: What Is The Corpse’s Surname?
While following the armor clad soldiers, Yue Qiang and Yin discussed their current situation through whisper.
“So you received a new notification about the main quest?”
“Yeah, it notified be that the first stage of ‘Search and Investigate’ is complete. We’ve accumulated enough information and we’ve activated the second stage of the quest.” Yue Qiang said.
“What else did it say?”
“It says that I’ve reconnected with the trader Ai Qian. Er, this Ai Qian is the one I told you before, the one who also has a Memory Unlock Rate.” Yue Qiang answered.
Yin pondered for a moment before asking, “The ‘Request For Help’ quest you completed earlier when you came to School of Mo’s Great Camp was issued by Ai Qian, correct?”
“No, Ai Qian seems incapable of issuing quests. However, it was thanks to him that I managed to escape from Yue Village.”
“Then before you came out, did you know that the School of Mo’s Great Camp is actually a big cave, and that it was abandoned for such a long time that it became a tiger’s den?”
“No.”
Yin pondered for yet another moment before she told him her analysis, “In that case, we probably overlooked something when we’re at School of Mo’s Great Camp. After all, the place was titled a ‘Great Camp’. Even if it had been abandoned, it should not be this small. If I am not mistaken, then the caves and passages we saw might very well just be the outer layer of the School of Mo’s Great Camp.”
“That is only the outer layer?”
Yin said, “I checked when I walked out of the cave. The top of the cave entrance was engraved with the words, ‘School of Mo’s Great Camp’. So here’s a problem: Why would a mere artificially renovated cave with at most a single passage inside be called a ‘Great Camp’ and not a ‘Cave’? The only explanation to this is that the cave is nothing more than the School of Mo’s Great Camp outer fortification.”
Yue Qiang did have such a question in his mind when he first entered the cave. Now that Yin had officially brought it up, her explanation that it was just an outer fortification did make more sense.
“This can also explain why the main quest kept revolving around the School of Mo’s Great Camp. You should know that in the ancient times, the School of Mo is not just a school of learning.”
“Oh?” Yue Qiang was immediately grew somewhat interested in the topic. His understanding of the School of Mo was not deep, and a portion of his limited knowledge came from reading in-game backgrounds. He only knew that the School of Mo was very accomplished in terms of wooden devices and constructions, and not much of anything else.
“To begin with, the School of Mo is not a school, but a very tight organisation.” Yin explained things simply for Yue Qiang, “Other than the six major States and smaller States during the warring period, the School of Mo can also be seen as an independent and very powerful organisation. You can absolutely view them as China’s earliest organised crime syndicate!”
“Organised crime syndicate?” Yue Qiang was now completely surprised by the revelation.
“Unlike other schools, the School of Mo is an organisation with tight management and rules that are criminal in quality. According to historical accounts, the founder of the School of Mo, Mozi is first an extremely powerful martial artist, then a philosopher and scientist. It has clear organisational structure and tight discipline, and each generation’s leader has incredibly high prestige. A School of Mo’s disciple is hardworking, disciplined, unwavering and patient. They are strong, but their core ideologies of ‘impartial care’ and ‘rejecting aggression’ kept them from being an aggressive organization.”
“With the School of Mo’s strength during the Warring States Period, it would not be difficult for them to construct a town-sized fortification inside the mountain. While it is named ‘School of Mo’s Great Camp’, what’s strange is that there are no corresponding structures to be seen in the place. Not only that, there were no tenements, drinkwares or construction works, and most importantly, no one to be seen anywhere at all. This is obviously highly irregular, so the only possibility left is this.” Yin said, “The cave is not a part of the great camp. It is merely an outpost, or a defensive structure. The real School of Mo’s Great Camp should be hidden behind an entrance inside the cave that we had not discovered previously.”
“Furthermore, I’m guessing that this future quest may very well be for us to go back and discover the true School of Mo’s Great Camp.” The duo spoke while walking.
Hearing this, Yue Qiang actually grew interested in the School of Mo’s martial arts. It would be pretty great if he could learn some martial skill for free in the great camp.
They followed the armored soldiers to a luxurious building, and after walking through the door, they unsurprisingly saw Ai Qian.
From the first moment Yue Qiang saw him, he felt that the trader seemed to become more… on edge than before. The expression on his face could be described with the simple word, ‘excited’. Like a pervert who met a beauty, or a miser who robbed a treasure, his entire being was in an incredibly excited state.
Ai Qian carelessly tossed a bag of knife coins on the table beside Yue Qiang. There was also a set of standard issue military equipment on the table.
“This is your reward for killing the tiger.” He rubbed his hands and said excitedly, “Now, are you interested in doing an even bigger venture with me?”
Yue Qiang listened with considerable interest to his words. The fellow himself could not issue a quest, so what Ai Qian was saying right now was probably a quest background of sorts.
“You killed the two evil tigers inside the cave of the School of Mo’s Great Camp and left directly, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“In reality, those tigers are simply guarding the treasures deeper within the great camp.”
Treasures deeper within the great camp? It would seem that Yin’s guess was pretty much spot on. He asked Ai Qian, “How did you know this?”
Ai Qian produced a beast skin secretively and showed it to them. There was an exquisitely drawn drawing on the beast skin, and the drawn drawing was the full body portrait of an incredibly beautiful female corpse. She lay flat inside a coffin with shut eyes, and there were all kinds of treasures that filled her surroundings!
There were gold, silver, ornaments, wine-jars, precious stones and so much more. Every treasure known to man of the most valuable kind were there, laid around her corpse in many circles.
“Do you know what this means?” Ai Qian said a with a tinge of insanity, “This is an entire capital city’s worth of wealth! No, it should be an entire small state’s worth of wealth!”
“I don’t care about anything any longer. I have no intentions of completing the so-called mission or reclaim my lost memories. Everything in the past is too painful, but the present and the future is infinitely beautiful. I only want wealth and women! I want an incalculable wealth that is equivalent to that of an entire country!”
“The woman drawn inside this picture is the School of Mo’s previous generation’s Juzi*. She is now dead, and the great camp she stayed in during her previous life became her final resting place. It is only until recently that I received reliable information that the great camp she died in is exactly the one where you killed the tigers! With her death, this great camp now has turned entirely into a tomb!”
*The position of a Mohist leader
“So what do you think, young sir Yue, tiger hunting brave. Are you interested to take me there and grab all these riches for ourselves?”
The trader Ai Qian spoke loudly to no one in particular, his excitement completely out of control. Yin listened quietly as she stood at the side, but when Ai Qian brought up the terms ‘mission’, ‘memory’ and ‘painful’, she frowned slightly and appeared to be thinking about something.
Meanwhile, Yue Qiang was looking curiously at the drawing drawn on the beast skin. At first, he didn’t really care about the quest too much. After all, no matter how much wealth there was in this world, to him, they were nothing compared to Progress Points. He was simply curious about Ai Qian’s behavior and the origin of the beast skin drawing.
But suddenly, his eyes narrowed.
He began to look closely at the beautiful female corpse of the drawing.
The artist of this drawing was very skillful. The female corpse’s lines were soft, vivid and realistic. Even in the real world, the woman had tall, firm breasts and a slim waist that was a match of the figure of a fitness coach. If she wasn’t sleeping inside a coffin, she could’ve been mistaken as being asleep.
But Yue Qiang’s eyes only narrowed further. He even crept closer to the point where his eyes were about to stick against the monitor, just to get a better look at the female corpse.
Yue Qiang suddenly clicked the backspace button and typed quickly, “I accept this quest.”
“That’s not like you. Why have you accepted the quest so decisively this time?”
Yue Qiang did not answer him immediately.
The reason he accepted the quest was not for the treasures inside the coffin. It wasn’t even for the main quest.
After keeping silent for a moment, he typed out a question, “This previous generation Juzi of the School of Mo… What’s her surname?”
“Who cares about a dead person’s surname? Although, if I remember correctly, her surname is… Luqiu?”
i see…so the leader was dead in the game because she is currently in real life…
thanks for the chapters…
Thanks for the chapter. ^^