Sword Among Us Novel - Chapter 164

Chapter 164: Forbidden Grounds of Luoyang
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

There was a place outside Luoyang City that was known as forbidden grounds in the players’ hearts.
It was a mass grave…
The place was disorderly and humid. It was a grave that was incredibly ghastly, and will-o’-the-wisps could be seen floating in the area around it.
There were zombies wandering about regardless of whether it was night or day. They were dressed in black government official robes and wore a round hat on their heads. Their arms were held straight, and their terrifying faces were savage but dull. They were not agile.
Their knees would bend before they leapt, and they would jump several feet into the distance. When they landed, a small pit would appear. They looked like clumsy but powerful martial artists when they moved.
The headquarters of Corpse Sect, which shared an equal status with Heaven’s Secret Valley, which was the strongest sect among the sects that sided with justice, lay there. Corpse Sect was the strongest evil and deviant sect that practiced puppetry. They relied on capturing the corpses of various powerful martial artists to create zombies that would not lose to the puppets from Heaven’s Secret Valley in terms of battle power.
Their zombies had long since made their names known in the world of martial artists!
Corpse Sect used their secret techniques to maintain them in good condition. All zombies retained their muscles and bones from when they were alive! There were also some fighting instincts left in their bodies. They could use some of the skills they had practiced before.
More terrifying was the fact that there was some brass polish on the skin of the corpses. After they were dipped in it, the sturdiness of their physical bodies could even rival masterpieces, and it was difficult for normal weapons to harm them.
The zombies themselves also had abilities that rivaled the abilities of martial artists in Mystical Realm. As of then, no player or guild would dare to get close to the mass grave. However, that did not mean that there had not been plenty of players who had rashly entered the mass grave since World of Martial Arts had been launched. All of them had been hunted down by the zombies and had their corpses buried in the mass grave.
That was how the mass grave gained its fearsome name.
However, on that day, a person came to visit the mass grave as a guest.
He had dashing eyebrows and fluttering blue robes. With a few agile jumps, he treated all the ghastly tombs that filled his vision as if they were nothing. Not a speck of dust touched his feet when he entered the depths of the mass grave, causing the few people who followed behind him from the distance to look at each other at a loss. They nearly bit through their own tongues because of their shock!
One of them was stunned speechless.
“What should we do?”
“Darn it, he knows that we’re behind him!”
“Cut the bull crap, if he really wanted to shake us off, wouldn’t it be better if he just turned around and killed us? Do you actually think that the zombies in the mass grave are easier to deal with than us?”
The people gathered together and discussed the matter.
“Then what should we do now?”
“There’s nothing we can do. We definitely can’t enter the mass grave. Guard this place. I’ll send a letter and tell the sect master. We’ll let him decide.” One of the people sighed and quickly wrote a letter before he had a messenger pigeon take it away.
The other people looked at the tombs that protruded from the ground and were enveloped in a thick miasma. They could see a few black figures moving about in the fog, and they could not help the crawling sensation on their skin.
Perhaps there was no sane human who would do something as crazy as facing a group of Mystical Realm zombies. After seeing someone actually do it, the pursuers quickly formed a conclusion about the young blue-robed man.
“That guy’s mad.”
In truth, even if they had accepted the task, they did not know about their target’s identity. They only knew that they were to follow him and observe where he went and what he did.
Soon, the messenger pigeon returned.
The person who received the letter turned his head around slowly.
“Boss said that we can leave now.”
“Urk, doesn’t that mean that we just worked for nothing?”
“What else do you want to do?”
Even though the people said that, in truth, they still held a little bit of anticipation in their hearts.
The mass graves was a forbidden ground!
The more dangerous something was, the more attractive it was to a player.
Of course, most rational people would not choose to step into a place which was too dangerous, especially a place like that which had all sorts of bombs buried everywhere.
But what they did not know was that the person who went into the mass grave, which was the headquarters of Corpse Sect, was Happy. He was the person ranked in third place on the Famous People Rank and discussed by countless players fervently!
This was because Happy had performed several major feats continuously. He spilled blood all over the temple in Mount Song, fought against Class One Hall in Punishment Mount, broke through multiple encirclements, gained the title of Killer Star, and even found a way to prevent the diviners from locating him. Many of the players even said that Happy’s name not only surpassed that of the hall master of Class One Hall, but also began to overshadow Quicksword Xiao Shan and North Placating Duke!
However, the Famous People Rank had not changed for a long time, and Happy still remained at third place.
Because of it, arguments arose.
However, Happy knew nothing about this, and he did not really care about it.
He was in a gloomy mood right then. Why did his momentary slip of the tongue bring such a huge problem and responsibility to him?
Even though he tried his best to make things clear and smooth things over, the Three Lonely Wolves still allocated him the task of handing in at least one assignment (high-tier martial art manual) per day. They even made it sound nice by saying that it was to strengthen Beautiful Robes Faction, which could also indirectly boost the fame and influence of South China Martial Arts Ranking Board!
Fortunately, the task was not too hard.
Besides, before the task was even given to him, he had thought to farm high-tier martial art manuals and earn a huge bucket of money while there was still a lack of high-tier martial art manuals in the market. At the very least, he would not have wasted all his time after he returned to the past.
However, while there were plenty of places that dropped high-tier martial arts, he did not know many that dropped high-tier martial arts that could be learned by those in Blessed Realm. He only remembered a few rather popular places.
Happy had actually once come to Luoyang City because he had been attracted by the fame of the mass grave. He had trained there for some time and knew that Thousand Corpse Hands—a poisonous palm technique—which was of pretty good quality, dropped from the zombies. There was also a chance that the corresponding high-tier martial art would drop as well—Ten Thousand Poisonous Palms!
Even though Ten Thousand Poisonous Palms was an unorthodox martial art, the wind stirred up by the palms would cause others to feel nauseous when they were engaged in close-quarters combat. Those without experience would be easily affected, and the damage of Ten Thousand Poisonous Palms was extraordinary. It was considered a rather good high-tier martial art at Blessed Realm.
The zombies were not stronger than the Mystical Realm monks who had broken their Buddhist vows. However, their fearless fighting methods were rather troublesome, and their poison techniques were also difficult to handle.
Happy brought a lot of antidotes with him because of that. He was prepared for them.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
And yet, soon after he entered the depths of the mass grave, two loud booms signalling that something was charging through the air suddenly came from ahead of him. Two zombies dressed in coarse, gray clothes shot out from behind tombs with withered faces and terrifying expressions. They pounced on Happy as quickly as lightning.
Happy said nothing, but he was alarmed!
But he did not panic. He stopped moving forward, and the saber glare of his Hundred-battle Saber increased exponentially! The dark blue saber glare instantly swept past the bodies of the two zombies.
Bang! Bang!
The sounds of something crashing into something else with a solid thump rose. The two zombies clad in gray robes were flung to the side by Happy’s hasty slash.
When he saw that the danger had been resolved, Happy did not become happy, but alarmed! He bent his knees and jumped several feet back. With a solemn look on his face, he swept his gaze around the area with increased wariness!
“Who is it?! Come out!” he growled.
He was quite puzzled by what had just happened.
He remembered that no zombies should be in the area in front of him. Why then did the two zombies suddenly appear, and it looked like they had been lying in ambush for a long time.
Stranger still was that with his tenth realm Flowering Knights’ Song at Blessed Realm, if he truly ran into the zombies in the mass grave, he would at most only be able to send them to the ground. He should not have been able to send them flying several feet away.
It could only mean that they were not zombies at Mystical Realm, but second rate zombies at Blessed Realm!
They were different from the zombies that were born and bred in the mass grave. They were puppet zombies that players controlled and leveled up, weapons that would only move based on their controllers’ will!