Life Game In Other World
Chapter 732: The ’Use’ of the Underground Palace? (Long - for Monthly Votes)

Chapter 732: Chapter 732: The ’Use’ of the Underground Palace? (Long Chapter for Monthly Votes)

"What’s wrong?"

Feiya, who was leading, turned her head to look at He Ao, whose steps had halted.

"It seemed pretty lively here before,"

He Ao’s gaze shifted from the sign on the ground that read "[······Research Institute Commercial District]" as he lifted his eyes to look at the various ’shops’ with their doors wide open.

Most of these shops appeared to have been glass doors, but now all the glass that had formed the main part of the doors was shattered, leaving only some faded frames that spoke of bygone days.

In addition to the broken glass doors, some shops were sealed with thick rolling shutters. These shutters were in better condition than the glass doors, but they too were riddled with large holes and piled with rust at the seams.

Faint lights flickered overhead the street, casting their glow into the deep darkness of the shops.

Then He Ao turned back to look in the direction they had come from.

Hidden there were little doors they had explored earlier, leading to narrow ’rooms’ beyond, which had mostly been occupied by twisted monsters, but you could faintly discern they were places where people had ’lived.’

There were single beds, and bunk beds, and it looked like some kind of ’dormitory.’

"This place seems to be something like a commercial district,"

Leading the way, Kalin stepped over a vine lying on the ground, slowly undulating and contracting like breathing. Glancing at the empty shops around him, he said,

"Some shops look like restaurants, some like bars or such, but what we know the most about is the supermarket nearby. There are still some things left from who knows how many years ago. Most of them have gone bad, but a small portion of compressed food and some specialty material goods are still usable,"

With that, he turned his head back to glance at the vine on the ground, "Right, don’t step on these vines. They’re all over this ’Underground Palace’ and are very aggressive, but as long as you don’t touch them, they won’t attack you."

"Okay."

Feiya nodded lightly, stepping over the vine. She looked down at the vine extending out from inside one of the shops, its roots invisible, and curiously asked, "Where do these vines come from?"

"Don’t know,"

Kalin shook his head, "At any rate, they’re everywhere on the first floor, and there’s a lot on the second floor, too. But in places where these vines are thick, there are fewer strong monsters; it’s relatively safe, so long as you stick to the ’rule’ of not touching the vines."

When Kalin said this last part, his voice noticeably lowered.

Living in this dangerous area, many ’rules of survival’ have been paid for with lives.

"Got it."

Feiya nodded carefully, scrutinizing the shops along the street.

In the profound darkness behind those doors, it was as if pairs of eyes were watching the ’hurried passersby’ on the street.

Kalin and a few survivors armed with Gauss Rifles led the two through the commercial streets, navigating one alley after another.

The journey was quiet and calm, without encountering any dangerous monsters.

"This ’commercial district’ is quite large."

Feiya looked around the streets on all sides.

Now they seemed to have entered a food service area, with restaurants everywhere, complete with tables and chairs.

He Ao’s eyes also swept across the shops around them.

Unlike before, these shops did not have their names marked in five languages. Nearly all the shop signs used the script of the First District, although some also had annotations in other district languages, but the majority of these additional scripts were also essentially unreadable to He Ao, belonging to the other three districts he hadn’t learned about.

Only one shop that served ’fried onion blossoms’ had annotations in the script of the Second District.

The signboards of these shops were mostly decorated quite lavishly. You could see some neon lights that had fallen and decayed; these decorations had similarities with those in the Copy World.

In a trance, He Ao could almost see the splendid glory of this street in its heyday.

The imagined colorful lights of fantasy overlapped with the bleak desolation of reality, accompanied by the lonely footsteps of the group, like a silent dirge.

"We estimated before that this commercial area is at least several thousand square meters,"

Kalin, walking ahead, turned back to pick up on Feiya’s earlier remark, then twisted his head towards the front, "But we should be almost done now. After that intersection ahead, one more short corridor and we should see the elevator."

"Hmm."

Feiya nodded, indicating she had received the message.

At the same time, she glanced around the stores and leaned towards He Ao, asking in a low voice, "Have you discovered anything?"

"This place used to be a residential area."

He Ao withdrew his gaze and said calmly.

"Residential area?" Feiya was momentarily confused as she swept her gaze around the area, "Are you referring to this ’commercial district’?"

"No," He Ao shook his head, "I mean this entire level."

As Feiya looked on somewhat bewildered, he continued, "On our way here, including the ’settlement’ where Kalin and his group were, most of what we’ve seen are empty ’rooms’,

"These rooms contain some daily-use furniture as well as beds, which clearly suggest residential use, like standardized dormitories. Dense dormitory areas combined with dense commercial zones—what does that make you think of?"

"A designated residential area within a university campus, or a planned residential area for large factories?"

Feiya pondered and replied, now somewhat understanding what He Ao meant by ’residential area’.

"What do these two have in common?"

He Ao asked casually.

"They both are enclosed facilities with large populations concentrated within."

Feiya carefully chose her words, lifting her head to look at He Ao’s profile, "Are you suggesting that the ’Underground Palace’ is actually a large-scale, densely-populated underground facility, perhaps for employment or housing large groups of people? And that the first level of the palace is this facility’s ’residential area’? Then what is the purpose of this facility?"

"If we keep going down, we might find out,"

He Ao replied slowly.

"Be careful!"

At that moment, a loud shout suddenly came from the survivors leading the way up front.

"Porcupine! It’s a porcupine!"

Kalin shouted from the forefront, "Fall back, find cover! Don’t get hit by it, watch out for its quills, it can shoot them out!"

At the very front of the group, a black pig standing over a meter tall and three meters long, with a dense thicket of sharp quills on its back, appeared in everyone’s field of vision.

As soon as it appeared, it charged at the crowd with a ground-shaking momentum.

At the same time, the quills on its body began to tremble violently.

Kalin raised the Gauss Rifle in his hand and shot at the pig-shaped monster.

With a booming gunshot, the bullet pierced the dark skin, but it did not affect the beast’s mobility.

It still charged towards the crowd at high speed.

A huge spike on its back shot out, flying past Kalin and instantly piercing through the wall of a nearby shop, leaving a large hole and a loud rumble.

"Watch out for its spikes!"

Kalin yelled, turning to warn He Ao and Feiya, who were behind him.

In that instant, a white light flew past his field of vision.

Boom—

With a massive bang, the charging porcupine was impaled by a tremendous force, flung backward in the direction it had come from, and nailed to the bloodstained wall of a shop by a pristine white bone sword.

The giant mouth of the pig was open, its blood-red eyes round with disbelief, as if it had not yet comprehended what had just happened.

Its body twitched a few times before finally coming to a complete stop, with blood trickling down the crimson wall.

Kalin stopped in his tracks, his expression frozen in the panic of a moment ago, staring dumbfounded at the scene before him.

He felt as if his brain had crashed.

It wasn’t until He Ao walked up from behind with his footsteps chiming softly that he came slightly back to his senses.

He Ao approached the porcupine monster’s corpse, reached out to pull out the bone sword, and with blood splattering, the gigantic porcupine body fell to the ground with a thunderous noise.

He turned around and found the surrounding survivors had stopped in their tracks, staring at him blankly and stupefied.

"This pig wasn’t actually that strong; it just had thick skin and flesh and evolved some special abilities,"

He Ao said offhand, glancing at the body behind him.

In the eyes of Divine Sense, this pig didn’t show much Transcendent power, resembling more a kind of tough-skinned mutated monster with actual combat power not even reaching C-level.

"It’s the overlord of the commercial district nearby."

Kalin slowly recovered from his shock. Although the pig’s strength was far less than the ’Ram Demon’ He Ao had killed before, watching He Ao take action on-site was different from watching the incomplete battle footage of He Ao killing the Ram Demon through a screen.

It was like thunder in a movie versus real thunder falling close by.

Before, he knew He Ao was strong, but he didn’t have a profound concept; now, that concept had been deeply etched into his heart with that stroke of the sword light.

"It doesn’t usually come around here?"

He Ao asked with a slight frown upon hearing this.

Kalin and the others took this route frequently; it was highly unlikely that they would wander around the territory of a dangerous entity often, especially since they had obviously detoured many times to avoid certain areas on their way here.

"Yes,"

Kalin scratched his head in confusion, "The porcupine usually roams in another part of the commercial area. We are close to the edge of the commercial district here, and it hardly ever comes this way."

"And those ’Ram Demons’, they didn’t use to run towards your settlement?"

He Ao suddenly asked.

"Um,"

Kalin nodded, "Before today, the area where our settlement is located was very safe, with almost no monsters coming by, not even vines."

"I see,"

He Ao turned to look at the porcupine on the ground and asked in a low voice, "Can that machine of yours convert the meat of this pig?"

"It should be able to,"

Kalin looked at the pig, "Such strong monsters have outer skin parts that are mildly ’toxic’ and can be converted."

This pig was so large that, even just the outer layer of meat, several hundred pounds could be cut off.

Then He Ao looked up towards the dark entrance without light ahead and continued, "Is the elevator just beyond that corridor?"

"Just straight ahead to the end of it."

Kalin followed He Ao’s gaze and nodded.

"How do we get to the stairs to the third floor once we reach the second layer?"

He Ao asked.

"After exiting the stairwell or elevator door, turn right. There’s a small corridor; go straight, and after passing a half-open gate, you will see the stairs leading to the third layer,"

Kalin answered thoughtfully.

"Thank you,"

He Ao spoke slowly, glancing at the porcupine corpse on the ground, "This meat should be enough for you to eat for a while. Let’s part ways here; we can take it from here on our own."

Kalin opened his mouth as if to say something, but He Ao cut him off, saying, "Some kind of ’change’ is taking place in the ’Underground Palace.’ Those survivors need you more than I do. After you go back, lock the gate, wait quietly, and don’t open the door for anything. If I find a way back, I’ll come looking for you."

In the end, Kalin nodded gently, "Alright. The second and third layers are very dangerous, be careful when you go down."

"We will, and you guys be safe on your way back too,"

He Ao nodded gently.

At this moment, Feiya also walked over and stood beside He Ao.

The two groups parted ways at this point.

He Ao and Feiya walked together toward the deep corridor, while Kalin and the others stayed behind to cut the flesh of the porcupine.

"Sometimes, I doubt whether you are even human,"

Feiya walked beside He Ao, with the sound of her high heels tapping the ground, she remarked softly.

"What do you mean?"

He Ao looked at her with some confusion.

"When you moved just now, I could hardly catch your actions. We are all C-level, but isn’t this gap a bit too wide?"

Feiya sighed slightly.

Laymen watch the excitement, while insiders watch the technique.

Kalin and the others simply thought He Ao was really incredible. They hadn’t gone far in their understanding of the Transcendents, so their reaction stopped at surprise and awe.

But Feiya had already walked a long way on the path of the Transcendents, almost being one among the few who had walked the furthest in the main world’s path of the Transcendents.

That was why she could sense He Ao’s true strength.

The simple action of drawing the sword and throwing it seemed to contain the ultimate principles of this world. Everything was natural, nothing felt abrupt, just as the moon sets and the sun rises, as the stars turn, everything seemed to be as it should be.

The more she understood this power, the more she realized the vast chasm between her C-level and He Ao’s C-level.

"I’m indeed just a little bit stronger than an ordinary C-level, these things aren’t that difficult."

He Ao shrugged.

"In your ’little bit’, there’s an entire universe, right?"

Feiya glanced at him slightly wide-eyed.

At this moment, she saw He Ao turn his head to look back, gazing at the survivors who were quickly stripping flesh under the faint light.

"What’s wrong?"

Feiya asked in a low voice.

"They’re very lucky,"

He Ao remarked softly as he watched those figures.

If those ’remnants’ who had initially stayed in the settlement had not left because of their own reasons, then what ultimately caused their ’disappearance’ or even ’death’?

If something external ultimately caused the settlers to leave, then why hadn’t this external factor affected these survivors?

The settlement’s ’gate’ was very sturdy, but it couldn’t withstand the continuous assault of powerful C-level creatures like Ram Demons, so why hadn’t any strong creatures appeared outside the gate of the settlement during the long year?

Is the first layer of the Underground Palace really the safest?

If one could survive by just finding a settlement, why is it that hardly any Transcendents who had been brought into the Underground Palace by the ruins’ passages survived?

He Ao retracted his gaze and turned toward the depths of the corridor.

He still had many questions in his mind, but for now, staying in the settlement was the best option for these survivors.

The ’external factor’ that had led to the disappearance of the original settlers hadn’t entered the settlement to kill.

And he had a vague feeling that the dangers that had originally lurked on the first layer might no longer be there now.

Feiya, standing behind, took a look at He Ao’s figure gradually disappearing into the darkness, and quickly followed after him.