Show Me the Money

Fatty set up the ballista, about to let this "Cheng Xiong" have a taste of it when suddenly…

BOOM! The ground violently shook and ruptured. From the rifts, an army of skeletons strode out in groups.

Tens of thousands of Skeletal Soldiers, Skeletal Knights, as well as numerous Skeletal Assassins, emerged. At the very center of the army was a tall and bulky figure riding a mount and wearing a golden mask.

A golden cape fluttered at his back, the Hellfire Stallion under him let out a long whiny. As the figure swept his eyes around, all of the monsters in the vicinity fled in terror. Even the Dark Unicorn pack got on their hooves and left, not wanting to oppose him at all.

"Lei Ting!"

Fatty was dumbstruck as he instantly recognized this figure as none other than the strongest boss he had met, Lei Ting.

"This isn't real anyway." Fatty consoled himself.

Hooo… A black sphere of light appeared around Lei Ting and quickly spread out in all directions.

Shrouded in the expanding sphere, Lei Ting's subordinates stood still in solemn silence, not being affected in any way. However, the monsters that couldn't run in time and got caught by the sphere was plagued with all kinds of consequences.

Some began to stagger in their steps, some quickly aged, some lost their sanity, screaming and wildly attacking the monsters around them.

"Nation of Darkness." Fatty pocketed the ballista and slowly moved back.

This place was boundless without a sky, the earth was all dark brown soil. Chilling winds screamed all over, striking fear into people's hearts.

After musing for what seemed like half a day, Fatty could affirm that this area wasn't a real existence, because all of the monsters he'd come across here so far were all those that he had seen outside.

Moreover, Fatty recalled that he didn't gain any experience from killing the monsters in this place.

"What a fantastic mirror!" Fatty praised.

The monsters weren't real, yet were able to kill the players inside. This ability was much more formidable than the usual Celestial items.

If this wasn't the Celestial item that Sallip mentioned, then Fatty figured he should reassess that Celestial item that hadn't made its appearance.

However, this wasn't time for Fatty to delve into this. His priority was to come up with a plan to get out of here.

Fatty tried logging off and found out that this function wasn't restricted. He informed Liu Lan to not touch the mirror, then logged back on to explore the place.

An hour later, Fatty estimated that he had walked for several hundred kilometers. Yet, he hadn't seen any special objects at all.

The scene stretching out before his eyes were still brown soil and a skyless space, plus monsters that he was familiar with.

BOOM!

Upfront, a towering pillar of fire flared up, and within it was a hazy figure. Fatty's heart jumped as he recognized the figure: Advanced AI boss, West the Flame Ruler.

"Lil' Bro, you're here!" West flew out from the fire pillar with a hearty laugh, his face full of delight.

"Big Bro, you've ranked up?!" Fatty asked.

"Ranked up?" West was very confused.

Fatty instantly understood. When he parted ways with West, the latter still hadn't ranked up. Since Fatty hadn't seen how West looked like after he ranked up, the 'West' that appeared in this place was the pre-ranked-up version.

Of course, there was a possibility that the real West still hadn't ranked up at all.

"What is this place?" Fatty asked.

"What? You already forgot? This is the Fire Valley, your old bro's hometown." 'West' laughed loudly and pointed around. Fatty suddenly fell the temperature spike up as the surroundings transformed into an area in the Fire Valley.

At the center, a familiar lava pool was still bubbling with heat. As the bubbles burst, some kind of red gas drifted up.

Fatty casually asked some more questions and 'West' answered all of them. The two chatted happily.

Fatty started to feel respect for the design staff. Whoever was capable of designing such a game like this was definitely not just your normal genius.

Bidding farewell to 'West', Fatty continued along his path, where he met the Ancient Camphor Tree Spirit, demon general Moretta, and even the God of Misfortune illusion, who chased him up to the sky and down on the ground without a hiding place and nearly killed him.

Whoosh! A white light beamed at Fatty as he ran from the illusion. It was 'Cheng Xiong' again.

"That's not right!" Fatty halted his steps. He suddenly remembered something. Why can I recognize Cheng Xiong, but 'Cheng Xiong' doesn't seem to know me at all?

Losing 'Cheng Xiong' with Earthwalk, Fatty found a safe spot to log off. He then made a call.

"F*ck! I was nearly killed by 'you.'" Cheng Xiong was even more irritated.

"So that's why." Fatty logged into the game again and searched everywhere. Finally, at the center of a monster mob, he found Cheng Xiong in the middle of a haphazard massacre.

"It's not him." Fatty nodded, then took out the Plenilune Ballista.

Zoom! The bolt ripped through the air and nailed 'Cheng Xiong' to the ground.

"AHHHHH!"

'Cheng Xiong' screamed and waved his staff as if his life depended on it. Healing light streamed out from the staff and quickly restored his health to full.

"He didn't die?!" Fatty was appalled. Without hesitation, he fired another bolt.

Puff!

This bolt pierced through the head, dealing multiplied damage of the last hit and insta-killed 'Cheng Xiong.'

Whoosh. A halo rose from the spot where 'Cheng Xiong' died and gradually formed a portal.

Fatty retrieved the two bolts and stepped into the portal. His vision flashed before he found himself in a room. This room also had a mirror and was bare of everything else.

"Where are you guys?" Fatty asked in the party chat.

"You got out?" Liu Lan asked, delighted.

The three were still in the first room waiting. The room Fatty was in was quite far from theirs.

Xiao Jian logged off and told Cheng Xiong how Fatty got out. Cheng Xiong miserably complained at this. Just now when he was hovering in the air, 'Fatty' used the ballista on him. If Cheng Xiong hadn't been quick enough, he would have been shot dead.

"So if two players enter together, they have to kill the duplicate version of the other to exit. What if only one player enters then?" Liu Lan wondered.

No one here knew the answer. Sallip might be the only one who did. With his strength, the NPC definitely had entered this mirror before.

Fatty reluctantly left the room. This mirror was only a special tool in the maze, so he couldn't take it with him.

The Crystal Maze was bewitching and colorful like something out of a fairytale. However, its tunnel system was complex and tangled. It only needed a moment of carelessness for one to be lost in there.

Some tunnels led to a hall with a mountain of monsters inside. Some were infinite loops that would send the players back to the starting point. Very few led to the depths of the maze.

Fatty walked alone in the maze following a rough direction. Soon, he arrived at a monster point.

The monsters here were quite funny. There would be a bunch of them living together with a boss of their kind as the leader.

The leader of this monster lair was a three-eyed toad, a low-rank Yao boss. Fatty only spared it a glance before taking another turn. Of all the things that could stop Sallip, this kind of low-rank Yao was definitely not one, so Fatty didn't want to waste his time with it.

Meanwhile, Cheng Xiong had shed tears and blood before he finally exited the mirror world. He appeared in another room that was extremely far away from the rest.

As Fatty walked deeper in, the tunnel grew broader and the light grew dimmer.

Fatty's face abruptly changed. He forcefully stopped his foot that was about to land and soundlessly retracted it.

After tossing out several Detects, the area in front of him didn't reveal anything out of place.

Fatty sneered and used the last chance of the X-Ray Mirror today at this place.

The black and white eye in the mirror swirled around. Then, the details of the tunnel were projected.

On the wide open path, faint black lines weaved and crossed, cleverly hiding a series of mechanism below. It was impossible to discover anything looking from a higher point.

"Sallip." Fatty nodded as it was within his expectations. Just when he wanted to alert the others, screams rang out from the party chat, followed by Xiao Jian's enraged voice.

"Who is that bastard setting traps on the road?!!! Concatenation of eighteen series! That motherf*cker!"

"He is sooo miserable right now. His equipment is all tattered. He's not looking much better than a beggar," Liu Lan discreetly gossiped with Fatty.

"It's fine as long as he's still alive. It's fair to lose in the hands of rogue mentor Sallip," Fatty consoled.

Fatty pocketed the X-Ray Mirror and started to disarm the mechanisms according to his memory.

He had to respect Sallip for finding so much idle time to set up traps in every inch of this one hundred-meter long tunnel.

Fatty spent over half an hour to advance ten-something meters. He inwardly praised Sallip for his high expertise in Trap, and at the same time grew more and more curious about the Celestial item.

What kind of Celestial item that could make Sallip pour in so much effort to protect after he failed to acquire it?

Unlike Fatty, the others weren't so lucky to have an X-Ray Mirror. Liu Lan and Xiao Jian could rely on Han Shen to crack the traps, but Cheng Xiong was all by himself. The baldy forcefully made way through the mechanism, embracing himself for either a battered death, or a lucky advance in a battered state.

"Baldy, can't you just be a little more patient? If this goes on, you'll die before we can remove the traps," said Fatty.

After a long silence, Cheng Xiong's voice rang out.

"No need, I'm already back in the city."

Back in the city? Fatty checked out the party notification. Indeed, Cheng Xiong had dropped one level to 43.

The rest were speechless.

"You just… go grind. I think the rest of us will return sooner or later," Fatty uttered after a while.

In truth, Sallip's traps weren't that hard to crack. The only difficult thing would be the thing that had stopped Sallip from getting the Celestial item.

Fatty logged off in the afternoon to have dinner, then focused on the mechanisms as soon as he got online. Only very late into the night did he completely remove all of them. As for the other three, they still had over a dozen meters to go as Han Shen's trap cracking speed was a little bit slower than Fatty.

At the end of the tunnel, it was a big hall as expected. The hall was round and expansive, with both diameter and height being roughly one hundred meters.

A fountain stood at the center of the hall. The water shot up over twenty meters before raining down into a water screen. Under the lumination of the colorful crystals, the water looked beautiful like a rainbow.

The floor of the hall wasn't made of usual crystal, but huge cubes of black crystal engraved with magical runes.

The sound of footsteps echoed, and from another tunnel, Liu Lan and the two guys walked out.

"Where's the Celestial item? Where is it?" Han Shen yelled as soon as he appeared, his eyes staring fixedly at the fountain with a burning desire.

"Watch out for the surroundings," Fatty said in a serious tone. He didn't dare to be careless for just a moment.