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Chapter 65: Where are the Corpses?
There was a lot to exchange from the old watchman.
Take equipment for example. Among them, Yue Qiang saw an extremely famous sword called the ‘Zhanlu Sword’, which was said to be forged by the master artisan Ou Yezi and was of peerless might, capable of piercing all defenses and inflicting wound damage with every hit. The Progress Points needed to exchange it was 500 points.
Although just like before, it did not have any attack power value, the special effect of inflicting wound damage with every hit alone was worth the price.
Since the game had employed a near realism combat system, if an attack by this sword hits a vital spot, then it might well result in an instant kill! An instant kill that ignored HP no less!
Previously, Yue Qiang had used this exact trick to kill a ferocious tiger. If this sword was really as it stated, capable of inflicting wound damage with every strike, then it was definitely more than worth its price.
Other than weapons of extreme power such as this sword, there were also more average weapons such as Bronze Sword and Ring-Sword, and there were all kinds of armors and accessories as well. After viewing for some time, he concluded that his iron rod might be free, ugly, and incomparable to those godlike weapons, but it was still much better than the average ones. One might say that it was extremely cost effective as well.
So he decided not to change his equipment for the moment.
Then he briefly glanced through skills several times. He immediately saw Yue Maiden’s Sword Style at first glance, and the swordplay description was pretty domineering: This swordplay was a war type swordplay which the Yue State’s Yue Maiden had learned while staying together with a white gibbon. It was used to kill generals and pierce horses, and was useful no matter what the circumstances. It would take 300 Progress Points to learn it.
Besides that, there were many more skills that existed only in legends. Most of them were extremely expensive, and they normally cost more than 100 Progress Points. God knows how many months or years would it take if he could only farm those Progress Points required from the Zhao Soldiers.
He even found the choice to level up Heart skills! However, Progress Points were not the only requirement to improve them. He needed the item ‘Inheritance’, and the option would only be available in half a year’s time.
Yue Qiang etched the memory into his heart and continued scrolling downwards.
Suddenly, he discovered a very interesting skill.
Hunyuan Jin LVL 1: A fair and moderate skill. Hunyuan Jin allows the conversion of a particular gauge’s points into another gauge. This includes the ‘Life’ gauge, the ‘Rage’ gauge, the ‘Stamina’ gauge and the ‘???’ gauge. The conversion ratio is dependent on the gauge value and skill level. This skill requires the Wisdom attribute with a value of 12 and above. Total Progress Points required is 50 points.
It could neither increase one’s stats, nor increase a gauge’s max value. At first glance, it was nearly useless, and did not need much Progress Points.
However, Yue Qiang’s eyes had lit up upon seeing it.
This skill fitted the current him just nicely.
To begin with, he now had two gauges, the Stamina and the Rage gauge that enabled him to use skills. However, he did not actually have many skills, and all of them depleted the Stamina gauge only. He did not even have a skill that uses his Rage gauge. So although Rage did enhance the effects of his skills, it was a little wasteful. But if he learned this Hunyuan Jin, then he would be able to fully utilise this Rage gauge.
More importantly, with Hunyuan Jin, he would be able to convert all of this gauges into HP!
This was a Healing skill in disguise!
Although he could guess that the conversion ratio of the other gauges to HP would not be too high, but any skill that could increase one’s HP in the battlefield was an absolutely good skill.
If he acquired Hunyuan Jin, then his basic system of skills would almost be complete.
He would have multiple gauges, skill power buffs, healing, and rapid gauge recovery. It could be called a positive cycle where his combat power became 1+1 resulted in far more than just a value of 2.
Alright, let’s get ‘Hunyuan Jin’ then!
Yue Qiang paid out 50 Progress Points.
There was neither a golden flash over his body, nor any kind of protective halos that surrounded his body. Just like when he learned the skill ‘Cockroach’ from before, there were no special effects whatsoever.
The old watchman left his recliner and walked towards him smilingly. Then, he extended a hand and slapped Yue Qiang’s head once!
A system message quickly followed: You have learned the skill Hunyuan Jin LVL 0.
This way of skill learning was extremely odd. Also, why was it level 0?
Yue Qiang then read the message on the screen once more and opened the character screen. He discovered that the skill’s technique was LVL 0 and not LVL 1. There were also something like a proficiency level behind the skill, stating that he could only level up this skill through repeated practice or combat experience.
He wasn’t too worried about this though. He had accumulated quite a bit of combat experience after the previous few battles. It was just enough to level up Hunyuan Jin to level 1.
As you know, it wasn’t easy to learn a skill in this game. Tan Xiong once said that he must train hard if he wishes to increase his strength, and if he somehow did it without harsh training, then he most likely ran into someone from Green Cow Village.
Wasn’t this old man a watchman from Green Cow Village?
After casually passing down a skill to Yue Qiang, the old man then handed him a rectangular bamboo piece. The bamboo piece was thin, long and as translucent as jade. There were some patterns etched on the bamboo piece that he did not understand.
System Message: You have acquired the rare item ‘Inheritance’.
Inheritance: A bamboo token used to authenticate one’s identity. Using the key item ‘Inheritance’ will grant the player one chance to enter and study in Green Cow Village.
“You’ve returned this stubborn cow’s nose ring, and although it rightfully belonged to me in the first place, I am not without blame for that incident. Now that I’ve given you an ‘Inheritance’ from the village, we no longer owe each other from now on.” the old man said.
Yue Qiang put the bamboo token with great care into his backpack. When he reconvened with Ai Qian and his ten armored soldiers and then departed towards the School of Mo’s Great Camp, he was still thinking about the old man.
The watchman of Green Cow Village Market, he said? He seemed to be nothing more than a trading NPC with an overly comprehensive trading content. But if there was one thing he did not understand, it would be why the system had not provided a more official-looking trading spot. If the NPC’s existence was purely for the sake of providing a trading option to the player, then the developers could have put him at the starting village even if they chose not to omit this function from the system overlay, couldn’t they?
Perhaps this old man wasn’t under the system’s jurisdiction then.
If that really was the case, then the fact that the old man could acquire so many equipment, rare attribute and items on his own meant that his strength must be immeasurable, not to mention that he was nothing more than a watchman. Just how powerful was the village behind him, Green Cow Village?
While pondering these questions, the group of people reentered School of Mo’s Great Camp after a long march.
The second they entered the cave, Yue Qiang, walking at the foremost of the group, immediately paused on his feet.
The cave was different from he last remembered.
The time the duo came back and forth the cave did not exceed a day, and when they left, there were at least twenty or so bloodied Zhao Soldiers and female tiger littered around the area. The scene had been ugly to say the least.
But now, the entire cave appeared incredibly empty.
All of the corpses; both human and tiger were completely gone.
The cave was extremely clean.
Not only did the corpse completely vanish, even the dark red blood that flowed everywhere seemed to have grown a lot fainter. The blood traces on the ground was so faint that it was as if the slaughter had not happened yesterday, but ten years ago.
It was as if the corpses had been… burned by some super high temperature flames and evaporated completely.
And this had all happened in just a day.
That was not all. When he went outside the cave again and checked the surroundings closely, he neither saw any corpses nor any marks that indicated that the corpses were dragged away.
Yue Qiang looked at Yin once, and the latter shook her head at him. The same question flashed across their hearts at the same time.
Where are the corpses?
