A tall tree catches the wind — but once a tree has grown thick enough, even a hurricane need not frighten it. The Dugu family’s strength was bound to make Huaxia’s highest authority wary; the threat they posed exceeded even that of the three taboo families. And yet the Zuo family had never had any intention of stamping the Dugu family’s power out, because the moment they moved, a balance would inevitably break…

A balance struck between two underground kings… At one end of it stood the Dugu family, and at the other stood the underground king of the North — the Yun family.

The two of them held the south and the north of Huaxia between them, and had contended openly and covertly for years without either gaining the upper hand, neither able to extend its claws into the other’s territory in any real way. But both shrewd kings understood perfectly well that even if it could be done, it must not be. Because the moment that balance between north and south broke, the Zuo family would move. And that would do them harm and no good at all. They might be the uncrowned kings of north and south, but the true king… was still the Zuo regime that had stood unfallen for centuries, and it could not be shaken.

And so this balance had held for close to three generations, with neither side breaking it, and neither side truly willing to.

With a vast network of power in the real world behind them, putting together an enormous faction alliance in the game world was naturally the simplest thing imaginable. And so two giants had appeared in Huaxia’s virtual gaming world — the Divine Domain Pact and Wings That Shroud the Sky. The masters of these two powers were not the underworld overlords of north and south themselves, but their eldest sons. And plainly, judging by how the Divine Domain Pact and Wings That Shroud the Sky had developed, Yun Bafang, head of the Yun family, and Dugu Xiong, head of the Dugu family, far from opposing the road their heirs had chosen, gave it considerable backing. And in fact, built on the deep foundations of the two houses, the reputations of the Divine Domain Pact and Wings That Shroud the Sky in the virtual gaming world stood at their zenith, and the profits they had brought the two great families over the years were far from small.

This time, the Divine Domain Pact happened to be right here on this quest map, meeting Ye Tianxie face to face. With the leader of the Divine Domain Pact standing in front of him, everyone around was waiting to see how Xietian would react.

When Ye Tianxie had finished speaking, Zangshen clapped again, calling out his approval through the clap, clap of it. “Good! Well said. Brother Xietian is a remarkable man indeed. We may not have managed to seize this chance at the trial today, but I know perfectly well that even if we had gone in, nine times in ten we would have come back badly beaten. Still, having met Xietian, these two hours haven’t been spent waiting for nothing. Once the ‘Bones of the War God’ quest is completed, the guild system will open — and when it does, I hope Brother Xietian will come and sit awhile with us at the Divine Domain Pact. Should you be willing to join my Divine Domain Pact, I, Zangshen, would be endlessly delighted. And if one day Brother Xietian has some matter that is hard to get done, you might do worse than to come to Zangshen. I have no way of knowing what Brother Xietian thinks of it, but I, Zangshen, would very much like to make a friend of you.”

That said, without waiting for Ye Tianxie to answer, he smiled easily and turned. “Let’s go.”

A dozen or so shafts of white light flashed, and Zangshen and the eleven of the Divine Domain Pact all portaled back to the city, cleanly and neatly.

It was not the first time Ye Tianxie had seen Zangshen, but it was the first time he had spoken with him. This man… made him knit his brows very slightly.

Not a simple character after all.

The Divine Domain Pact’s departure left an entirely different impression from Battle Soul Hall’s. Battle Soul Hall had been fear and headlong flight. This was a simple show of goodwill from a man sincerely after friendship, and the magnanimous concession of a great guild. Facing Ye Tianxie, Zangshen had been neither stingy about his admiration nor inclined to hide it, and had shown his intent to draw the man in — while at the same time displaying, in exactly the right measure, a bearing that compelled respect and a touch of pride that no one could find objectionable. Leaving did not lower them in anyone’s eyes; if anything it displayed the style of a great guild in full.

Was the Divine Domain Pact afraid of Xietian? Not one person there would have thought so. What Zangshen had just done was plainly to hand Xietian a very large measure of face.

“In that case, let’s go as well. The Divine Domain Pact isn’t wrong — at the levels we’re at now, we’re in no state to be attempting this quest. Even Wings That Shroud the Sky failed twice. Waiting here any longer is nothing but wasted time.”

The speaker was the leader of the squad nearest Ye Tianxie. He walked over to Ye Tianxie’s side and said, “The opening of the guild system touches a great many interests, ours included. Put more broadly, it touches the honor of our Huaxia. It’s no exaggeration to say we dream of the guild-alliance system opening sooner. But from the look of things now, if it takes a team of level twenty and above at minimum to complete, the guild system’s opening is at least half a month away. If you really can complete this quest in the shortest possible time and open the guild system, we’ll thank you from the heart. And when that day comes, you’re welcome to come and sit awhile at the Under Heaven Pact. Let’s go.”

The man’s name was “Sky-Shaking Blade,” a senior figure in the Under Heaven Pact. He nodded in acknowledgment and left, taking his people with him.

With the Divine Domain Pact leading the way, more and more people began leaving this map saturated with the reek of rotting corpses. Nearly every player here came from a faction alliance of one size or another, and every one of those had someone at its head. Having weighed the situation up, most of them chose to go. The temptation might be enormous, but when even the Divine Domain Pact admitted openly that they had no real hope of completing this System Quest, why force themselves to stay here and face that plague star Xietian? And besides — if Xietian did still have the ability to complete this quest, then wasn’t that exactly what they wanted? Only once the guild system was genuinely open could they build real faction alliances, instead of drifting along loose and unattached as they were now.

Before long, well over half of what had been a crowd of thousands had withdrawn, and those who had not withdrawn had all moved away from the magic seal and stood watching in silence from a distance. That it had gone this way owed a good deal to the Divine Domain Pact’s clean departure.

But if today did not go the way he wanted it to, he would not have minded a great slaughter. Even if it meant offending every player present and every faction they represented, he would not have counted the cost. He pursued only the course and the outcome he wanted for himself; what the consequences were did not matter to him in the least. Seen from another angle, given what he currently possessed and the level on which he now stood, there were genuinely very few people he would look at straight on.

The ground before the magic seal had emptied out. Ye Tianxie walked straight ahead — and as though it had been arranged, just as he reached the seal, that enormous magic seal suddenly flickered, and then dimmed in the flickering… and vanished.

Ye Tianxie’s stride did not falter. He walked in, and in the instant his foot crossed over, the vanished magic barrier formed again behind him in a flash.

The Ten Thousand Bone Ruins. The moment he set foot inside, the stench of rotting corpses, several times more concentrated here, had him close to retching. He set his teeth and managed to hold it down, then walked forward holding his breath, and only after a good long while did he finally adjust.

To enter the Heaven Soul Graveyard, one had to overcome the dark… and what greeted a man first in these Ten Thousand Bone Ruins was a smell fit to break him.

It occurred to Ye Tianxie all at once that he would very much like to know what would happen if Guoguo — who was fanatical about cleanliness and fanatical about sweet things — came out by accident at a moment like this…

And it was exactly then that the voice which should not have appeared sounded in Ye Tianxie’s ear. “Oh la la, that was such a full sleep… mm… aaaaaaah!!“

The languid voice turned into a high-decibel shriek, and the white shape that had been floating in midair went down with a whoosh in the middle of the scream.

Ye Tianxie hurriedly put out a hand and caught her, and said with great sympathy, “Guoguo, you’d better go back.”

“Wuu… wuu wuu…” Guoguo, all but knocked out by the smell driving up at her, was dazed for two seconds, and then burst out crying. “Wuwaaah… you’re bullying me, you’re bullying me… wuu wuu…”

Then she turned into a shaft of white light and melted into the Hour of Fate hanging at Ye Tianxie’s chest.

Ye Tianxie was choked into speechlessness… And how is any of this my fault!!

This was open wilderness, and yet it was strangely gray and dim throughout. Even the sky was a press of dark cloud, shutting out eight or nine parts in ten of the light. At a glance the ground was a dark shade that sat badly with the eye, and the disordered gray-black heaps piled across it made ruins that deserved the name in every particular.

And within the ruins were pale bones of every kind, enough to make the skin crawl.

In the gloom of the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins even the wind carried a cold that cut to the marrow, and within the ruins in his line of sight, bones large and small lay scattered everywhere. There were stark white skeletons still standing, and more that had already broken into loose bone. The place, the smell, everything already lying in it — all of it struck hard at the mind, and tested it hard.

Ye Tianxie went on ahead, kicking a few bones of differing shapes loose at nearly every step. According to the quest description, these bones were all human, belonging to the heroes who had died in that terrible defensive battle eighty years ago, and to the invaders those heroes had killed. Eighty years was not yet time enough for these bones to crumble into gray-white ash.

A grim wind kept sweeping in, carrying dust mixed with that uncanny smell, and the sky seemed to darken further still. In this appalling place Ye Tianxie walked for over half an hour, and the scene before him had not changed at all: still ruins of white bone with no end in sight.

Ye Tianxie stopped, turned, and looked back the way he had come. The low mouth of the gorge he had entered by had already vanished from view. He turned slowly on the spot and found bone ruins in every direction, front, back, left and right, without one distinguishing feature anywhere.

When everything around you looks the same and there is not one thing to take a bearing from, a human being — or any other animal — loses all sense of direction very easily indeed. That one turn of Ye Tianxie’s had left him instantly unable to find the direction he had been going in.

Over half an hour, and he had not met a single monster; not even the scenery ahead of him had varied in any way. Put that together with what had puzzled him earlier — that even ordinary player parties could stay in this place for close to two hours… could this be a search quest of extremely high difficulty?

The War God’s bones had to be hidden somewhere in these boundless bone ruins, but across a range this vast, if there were no hint and nothing to take a bearing from… was he supposed to dig the ruins open inch by inch?

And even if he did dig them open… since they had already become bare bones, who could tell which of them were the War God’s?

The thought made Ye Tianxie’s scalp prickle faintly. He stood where he was and thought it over for a long while, then went carefully through the quest description again and again, and still found no hidden thread anywhere in it. There was nothing for it but to keep walking forward.

(End of Chapter 185)