Chen Xu walked forward while releasing several ghosts to hunt down the Wa family members attempting to flee through the underground tunnels.
These clan members were quite clever. After their front lines were crushed by Bone Guard Two and Bone Guard Three, they gathered the women and children and hid in the secret passages below.
However, none of this could escape the perception of Bone Guard Two. It was simply that the underground tunnels were too narrow for a skeleton hero to fight effectively, making ghosts the most suitable choice for the job.
Entering the largest room in the manor, Chen Xu saw Bone Guard Two holding a spear and stepping on a man with disheveled hair.
Chen Xu glanced at him casually and immediately lost interest. The power level of the people in the South Realm was far too underwhelming.
Liuqing City was considered a major city in the South Realm, and the Wa family was a prominent clan with a significant reputation, yet the family head and his kin only possessed the strength of level twenty or thirty class-users.
Only their methods of using poisons and voodoo insects had some unique characteristics worth noting. With such a low level of power, he truly wondered how the people of the South Realm survived. It was as if the World Will only threw the lowest-level dungeons into this region.
He summoned another ghost and ordered it to possess the Wa family head to read his memories.
The ghost flew out from the Undead Kingdom and went straight for Wa Long's head. As it entered his body, Wa Long's injured frame began to twitch violently.
His eyes rolled back, and foam bubbled at his mouth.
Before long, he stopped breathing.
The ghost flew out of the corpse and let out a satisfied burp.
Then, it spat out a soul fragment roughly the size of an apple, caught it with both hands, and handed it to Chen Xu.
Chen Xu took the fragment and examined it with his mental strength. He found that it contained almost all of the Wa family head's memories. He had no interest in the daily lives of these clans; he only wanted to know the locations of the dungeons and the family's treasures.
He tossed the fragment back to the ghost. "I only want the memories regarding dungeon locations and clan treasures. Clear everything else out, understand? If you stay this lazy and just give me the raw memory block, I will stuff you into the Ghost Factory to work day and night without even giving you oil."
The ghost caught the fragment and shuddered upon hearing Chen Xu's words, nodding repeatedly. It swallowed the fragment again and began filtering out the useless content.
After a while, the ghost spat the soul fragment out once more. This time, it was much smaller, about the size of a grain of rice.
Chen Xu took the fragment and muttered, "So small?"
The ghost immediately shook its head in terror, indicating it had followed his instructions perfectly.
Ignoring the cowardly ghost, Chen Xu wrapped the fragment in mental strength and began browsing the memories.
There were three treasure vaults beneath the manor: one filled with gold, one filled with antiques, and one containing some low-quality dungeon materials.
As for dungeons, there were only seven locations in the family head's memory. Four of them were located in the mountains twenty kilometers west of Liuqing City.
The other three were further south in the middle reaches of the Lei River, near the territory of the Ba family, one of the Eight Great Clans of the South Realm.
"Is that really all?"
Chen Xu was unwilling to give up and checked the memory fragment again, finding that he had missed nothing. Still unsatisfied, he grabbed the ghost and began reading its own internal memories.
After a long moment, Chen Xu finally accepted the truth.
The South Realm was truly a destitute and impoverished land. There were many dungeons, but most were monopolized by the Eight Great Clans of the South Realm.
Other minor clans that followed the lead of the eight great clans were only given some basic, small dungeons for their family members to level up.
This resulted in a severe scarcity of class-users capable of clearing dungeons in the South Realm.
With fewer class-users, the speed of clearing dungeons was slower, and as the clearing progress lagged, the growth of the class-users' strength also slowed down.
The time it took to clear one dungeon in the South Realm was enough for Daxia to complete an entire cycle of dungeon runs.
"My Lord, your instructions have been carried out. There are a total of thirty-two mud statues in Liuqing City, and I have marked them all."
Xuan Chu's message arrived just in time. It was time to end this farce.
Initially, Chen Xu thought this trip to the South Realm would be an epic battle of one man against a nation. But from the Wa family head's memories, he realized that the South Realm's strength was at most equivalent to a single county in Daxia.
The snowballing capability of a transcendent system was even more exaggerated than that of a technological one. Because the South Realm cleared fewer dungeons, their strength simply could not improve.
Going from fighting a nation to fighting a county left Chen Xu greatly disappointed, and he lost the desire to continue playing along.
Coincidentally, the markers were all in place. After reaching the mythic-tier, Chen Xu, the Black Knight, and the skeleton heroes could leave markers in the world outside the Undead Kingdom.
Chen Xu could open the gates of the Undead Kingdom at these markers to directly release his undead army.
It was somewhat similar to the Hellgate of Hell, except Hell was more flamboyant, while the Land of the Undead preferred to secretly build up forces behind everyone's backs.
Before releasing the undead army, he had to make a declaration.
"Ahem." He coughed twice to clear his throat and then infused his voice with mental strength.
"I am the White Bone Buddha of the West. Today, I sense that the monks of the South Realm do not honor the Buddha, do not respect kindness, and have defiled the reputation of my Buddhist path. The clans of the South Realm have harmed my followers and severed the incense of my faith. Therefore, I dispatch the Buddhist soldiers under my command to purge the ranks, execute the clans, and serve as a warning to all!"
His voice rolled like thunder, spreading throughout the entirety of Liuqing City.
As soon as he finished speaking, gates to the Undead Kingdom opened in front of every Doorway Buddha mud statue in the city. Skeleton soldiers marched out one by one, drawing their blades and attacking the nearby temples.
Besides the temples, there were four other minor clans in Liuqing City. Chen Xu ordered Xuan Chu to command a portion of the skeleton soldiers to flatten them.
As for himself, he planned to take Bone Guard Two, Bone Guard Three, and Invincible to see the dungeons west of Liuqing City.
At the same time, he summoned Bone Guard Four, Xuan Shu, Xuan Ji, and Xuan Tian, ordering them to continue south. They were to leave markers on the Doorway Buddha statues in every city they encountered along the way. When the time came, he would wipe them all out in one go.
"Yes, my Lord!"
After Bone Guard Four and the others departed, Chen Xu also mounted Invincible and headed west.
As for the cleanup in Liuqing City, he left it to Xuan Chu. If even the top-ranked Wa family in Liuqing City was this poor, the others would likely be even worse, making it impossible for Chen Xu to find any interest in them.
Invincible's four hooves were wreathed in ghost fire as it galloped through the air, carrying Chen Xu through the sky. Bone Guard Three relied on brute force to charge ahead, smashing rocks and felling trees to forge a path.
Bone Guard Two had it much easier, following behind Bone Guard Three without needing to clear his own way.
Before long, the three of them arrived at the entrance of the first dungeon, which was a snake den. There were many Wa family guards stationed nearby.
Chen Xu only spared them a glance. His soul pressure rolled over them, and the guards collapsed in unison. He then rode Invincible into the dungeon.
Inside the dungeon, there were no members of the Wa family. They had already exited to prepare for tomorrow's banquet with the Ba family and the Voodoo Cult.
Chen Xu scanned the dungeon with his mental strength again. After reaching the mythic-tier, his soul had undergone a qualitative change. He no longer had to worry about being contaminated by strange things and could use his mental strength freely and boldly.
"It is nothing but snakes and centipedes. No wonder it smells so foul in here."
Because the stench was unbearable, Chen Xu casually summoned tens of thousands of skeleton soldiers along with Bone Guard Six. He ordered Bone Guard Six to lead the soldiers in clearing the dungeon before he exited and headed for the next one.
Soon, he arrived at the entrance of the second dungeon, which was a hollow tree.
Since this dungeon was deep in the mountains and the environment was treacherous, the Wa family had not sent any guards to watch it.
Upon entering, Chen Xu found it very similar to the previous one. While the last one was full of snakes and centipedes, this one was filled with various types of venomous bees.
"Wait, this feels like the growth dungeons for special classes mentioned in textbooks. Have the people of the South Realm still not finished clearing these welfare dungeons?"
After summoning another tens of thousands of skeleton soldiers, Chen Xu visited the remaining two dungeons.
Unsurprisingly, the remaining two were also growth dungeons. One was full of scorpions, and the other was full of toads.
So-called growth dungeons for special classes were dungeons where the resources and environment were tailor-made for a specific class.
These dungeons were likely generated by the World Will specifically to help certain classes grow quickly.
However, in Daxia, all growth dungeons had been cleared within the first twenty years of the Dungeon Era. Over two hundred growth dungeons had helped Daxia cultivate tens of thousands of powerful class-users.
As for why there were no new growth dungeons, the academies speculated that the World Will believed Daxia's current strength was sufficient for veterans to lead newcomers, so it no longer spent energy generating new growth dungeons.
And yet, in the South Realm, they had not even finished clearing them. Chen Xu did not know what to say.
As a mythic-tier powerhouse, coming here to bully a nation that had not even cleared its growth dungeons gave him the ridiculous feeling of being a dragon in a nursery.
Rate on N.U.
