Ye Tianxie stood where he was and thought in silence for a long time. Every possibility flashed through his mind one after another and was thrown out again at once, and across from him the Undead Guardian God of Archery was just as silent, just as still, as though he could no longer see that Ye Tianxie was there at all.
An undead was, after all, only a dead spirit with no true consciousness of its own. Powerful as the Undead Guardian God of Archery was, he was like a puppet that would react only to a particular stimulus under particular conditions.
Undead…
Darkness…
A flash of inspiration went through Ye Tianxie’s mind, and he lifted his head at once and looked into the utterly lightless space in front of him… He had actually forgotten he had it.
He called up his pack quickly and took out something that shone with white light — and at once the absolute darkness was driven back, a dazzling brightness blazing up in that black space. It was the Lamp of Light, given to him back in Windfall Town by that little girl called Shasha.
Lamp of Light: … As the light element inside it dwindles away of its own accord, it can now give light for a total of 30 seconds more.
When he had used this Lamp of Light in the Skeleton Cavern to destroy the juvenile Undead Sovereign, the lamp still had two minutes of light left in it. The light element leaking away on its own had brought it down, now, to only thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds… Ye Tianxie took one step forward and threw the Lamp of Light as far as he could with all his strength… and it landed perfectly, coming to rest right at the Undead Guardian God of Archery’s feet. Then Ye Tianxie charged straight forward with nothing left to fear.
What the undead feared most was light. In light they lost their sight and their awareness entirely, and lost life on top of it.
Exactly as expected, once that space blazed with light, Ye Tianxie — already well inside the Undead Guardian God of Archery’s attack range — heard no further sound of an arrow being loosed. Looking across, he found the archer with both hands clapped over his eyes, his body twisting in pain, red damage figures rising continuously above his head. Only, he had to stand guard in that one place for all time and had no ability to move; otherwise he would certainly have fled at the first instant.
Very good!
At his fastest speed, Ye Tianxie took only a few seconds to reach that hidden door… The door was a closed stone one, and plainly the kind that had to be hauled open left and right. Ye Tianxie set a hand on each of the two leaves and tried to pull them apart with everything he had…
“Ding… Your Strength attribute is insufficient. You cannot pull this door open.”
“Ding… Your Strength attribute is insufficient. You cannot pull this door open.”
“Ding… Your Strength attribute is insufficient…”
Ye Tianxie put every ounce of strength he had into it, and the stone door did not stir in the slightest, without the smallest sign of coming apart. Five seconds… ten seconds… Ye Tianxie still did not give up, and went on pulling. The Lamp of Light’s brightness could only last thirty seconds, which meant that was all he had — and with the time already spent… what remained to him was the last dozen seconds or so.
“Ding… Your pet ‘Xiaobei’ requests to leave the pet space. Do you permit it?”
“Xiaobei… come out.” Something moved in Ye Tianxie’s face and he permitted it at once. This was the first time Xiaobei had ever asked to leave the pet space on its own. Could it be that…
Xiaobei made a brilliant entrance, its snow-white body lit to a shining glow under the Lamp of Light. Once out, it patted its two cat’s paws together, then strode forward, set a paw on each of the two door leaves… and forced them apart.
Krk-krk-krk-krk-krk-krk…
Under Ye Tianxie’s astonished stare, the door he had not been able to shift for love or money was slowly hauled open by one pull from that small creature Xiaobei, opening onto the blackness beyond. The door was so heavy that the sound of it opening was beyond describing — the sound alone was enough to give a man an idea of what terrible strength it would take to open it.
Xiaobei… this monstrously strong cat, through and through. Its base attack attribute fell only a little short of Ye Tianxie’s as he was now — but well over half of his attack power came from bonuses on his weapon and gear, while Xiaobei’s came entirely from its Strength attribute. Compare them on Strength alone, and the level 20 Ye Tianxie fell short of the level 16 Xiaobei by a very great deal indeed.
The door was open far enough for a man to pass through, and the Lamp of Light was still shining. Back when he had got it from Shasha in that random quest in Windfall Town, the only use he had thought of for it was seeing in the dark. But in the not very long time since, this item he had thought so little of had come into its own twice over. In the Skeleton Cavern it had helped Ye Tianxie destroy the Undead Sovereign, and now it had helped him cross an obstacle that was very nearly impossible to cross.
He did not put the Lamp of Light away, because doing so would bring down a killing attack from a recovered Undead Guardian God of Archery. Ye Tianxie looked back at him, still standing there with his hands over his eyes, and smiled faintly. He thanked that little girl called Shasha silently in his heart, and then ran with Xiaobei into the dark world ahead.
Past the darkness was more darkness. But this time it was not a simple passage.
This was another empty and ancient hall, not especially large. At a glance, apart from a great square block of stone ahead of him, a good two men high, there was nothing else anywhere worth resting the eye on… not so much as a trace of a door.
That enormous stone, three meters and more in height and three meters and more across, stood flush against the wall. So… could the entrance to the next area be hidden behind it?
As things looked, that was the only possibility.
But this stone did seem rather too large… Ye Tianxie walked over and put out a hand to touch it. The face of the great stone was flat and smooth, and unusually cold and hard. Ye Tianxie set himself at one side of it, gathered his strength, frowned hard, and shoved with everything he had…
The great stone did not stir a hair.
“Ding… Your Strength attribute is insufficient. You cannot push this obstacle aside.”
The pitiless System prompt left him with nothing to say all over again. He drew a deep breath and tried several times more, and the great stone still gave no response at all, as though it were fixed dead into the ground… An obstacle on that scale was simply not something a player could push aside, still less a player at Ye Tianxie’s level.
“Meow, meow…”
The next one to take the stage was, once again, Xiaobei.
It patted its own paws together with a pat-pat, took up the position Ye Tianxie had been standing in, let out a call, then set both paws against the great stone and shoved hard.
There was not a sound. Under that shove of Xiaobei’s, the great stone still did not move at all.
Ye Tianxie: “……”
Xiaobei: “……”
“Xiaobei, let’s do it together.” Ye Tianxie took his place beside Xiaobei, drew a heavy breath, set both hands on the great stone, and man and cat put out their strength at the same moment…
……
……
Under their combined effort, a stone several times larger than the two of them put together did not move at all, without the smallest sign of shifting.
Ye Tianxie drew back hands that had begun to ache and go soft, and let out a light breath. “Never mind… a stone this size simply cannot be pushed. Let’s go and see whether there’s another way out.”
“Oh la la… Master, Master, we can’t go away, I felt it, that orange Fate Core is in the place behind this big stone… it’s true, Guoguo isn’t lying to Master. Hurry up and push this big stone open!” Guoguo, who had caught the scent of a Fate Core, popped her head out and said it rather urgently.
Ye Tianxie looked up, glanced at the height of the great stone, and said helplessly, “Guoguo, why don’t you have a go at pushing it?”
Guoguo raised her head, sat blankly for a moment, then shook her head hard and shouted, “No, no! Guoguo is a sweet little loli who hasn’t grown up yet. How can Master make Guoguo do a job for grown-ups… Master, you’re not allowed to bully Guoguo.”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
He could not do it, and Xiaobei could not do it, and the two of them together could not do it… This was an obstacle with no life in it, so getting past it could not be done by any strategy or tactic or clever trick at all. The only method was to push it aside with strength enough for the job. And getting past this obstacle was very much harder than getting past that Undead Guardian God of Archery who could kill him with a single shot.
“Meow… ooo… ooo~~~”
From beside Ye Tianxie’s foot came a sound out of Xiaobei that was nothing like its usual ones, a low sound plainly born of anger. Looking closely, Ye Tianxie saw Xiaobei with its two paws pressed hard together and its pale green eyes fixed straight ahead at the great stone. Then all at once it backed up several paces and put out one cat’s paw to push at Ye Tianxie’s leg, telling him to move aside.
Ye Tianxie moved out of the way and watched Xiaobei with a strange look in his eyes.
“Meow!!!!”
With one meow from Xiaobei, its body sprang high into the air — a full three meters and more of a leap, carrying it from beside Ye Tianxie’s feet to above his head in one movement, so that Ye Tianxie’s gaze went from looking down to looking up. In midair Xiaobei made a swift turn, and one Meow-Meow Kick, carrying a violent shaking force with it, came down hard on the top of the great stone.
BOOM!!!!
An enormous crash, loud enough to leave Ye Tianxie’s ears ringing… and what shook him most was not his ears but his eyes…
In his line of sight, the powerful recoil sent Xiaobei’s body tumbling backward, and that great stone… pivoting on its far edge, tipped slowly and with difficulty over backward…
Ye Tianxie: （⊙o⊙）!!
A strange cat with a dainty little frame, barely half Ye Tianxie’s height, had actually shifted this enormous stone, at least three meters tall and unbelievably heavy!
The sight of it hit the eye far too hard. Ye Tianxie could scarcely believe what he was seeing.
Ten degrees… twenty degrees… thirty degrees… forty degrees…
As the arc of the great stone’s tipping grew wider, the speed of it grew slower and slower, and just as it was straining toward forty-five degrees, the tipping came to a halt. After a brief pause it did not, in the end, go over — it began to fall back toward where it had started.
Ye Tianxie went forward fast and used his own body to hold the great stone back from tipping down again, straining with everything he had. But his strength was plainly not equal to it, and although the stone’s fall grew slower under his effort, it kept coming down slowly all the same, ready at any moment to crush Ye Tianxie’s body beneath it.
(End of Chapter 239)