Chapter 96-2: Space Plaza Serpent Ancestor Trial (2) |
Two days later.
A player made a post that drew quite a bit of attention.
In the post, the player described accidentally discovering an ancient temple while exploring the dense rainforest behind the coast.
Thinking it was an easter-egg scene, the player resolutely went in to explore.
During that time he found mechanisms all over the temple, suspecting there were hidden quests or treasure inside. The poster hoped more players would join the exploration and search for the hidden treasures within the temple.
The post also included many scene screenshots, triggering heated discussion among players.
It also attracted quite a number of interested players to go. They followed the coordinates in the post to enter the temple and attempted to challenge the mechanisms and proceed.
At this stage, the post was not very hot.
Until a player discovered a mural in the temple. After the text on it was analyzed and translated by Guide, this passage was obtained.
In players’ understanding, this translated information represented two meanings.
First, the mechanism trial inside the temple is a hidden easter-egg quest.
Second, players who complete the easter-egg challenge can obtain the wealth bestowed by the Serpent Ancestor, which may be a considerable sacrificial power gain.
When this screenshot was exposed on the forum, it instantly attracted a large number of players to enthusiastically join the challenge.
—
Emperor’s Mound Village.
With revive cooldown over, Ding Yu’s figure appeared in the Revive Plaza.
Imitating the performance in popular videos, he tried to stage the art of assassination within the Swarm, with utterly miserable results.
He tried five times. Each time, at the instant of switching to corporeal form, because he did not precisely control the attack frequency of the Swarm warriors, he was submerged by the onrushing bugs and gnawed apart.
“Eh, this is so hard.”
After the fifth failure, Ding Yu completely gave up on trying again.
He also realized that to achieve the brilliant performance shown in the videos would require long and arduous training, something ordinary players simply cannot casually replicate.
At this moment he stepped toward the Teleportation Plaza in the Eastern District of Emperor’s Mound Village.
During the revive cooldown, he had discovered on the game forum that quite a few players were heading to the Colorful Mist Coast to challenge the temple trial.
After watching several challenge videos, he became deeply interested.
The temple trial felt to him like a stage-clearing mode from an adventure game. The trial process contains a series of challenges such as traps and puzzles. So far no player has successfully passed the trial.
With curiosity in mind, he arrived at the Teleportation Plaza in Emperor’s Mound Village.
The ground here was paved with white jade stone, engraved with complex spirit-pattern tracks.
At the very center towered a teleportation gate, with a rotating, twisted, multicolored vortex at its core.
He could see nearby that players were constantly entering the Teleportation Plaza, wanting to travel to the Colorful Mist Coast through the gate.
Following the flow of people forward, he came before the teleportation gate and walked straight in.
A teleportation option instantly popped up before his eyes.
[Challenger Notification: Entering the spatial teleportation corridor. Please choose a destination]:
Colorful Mist Coast (Cost: 5 points of sacrificial power)
—
Although it was a teleportation option, there was only one selectable destination at the moment.
On the right side of the option was a reduced overhead map of the scene that could be teleported to.
From it one could see the white beach connected to the cerulean sea, and the lush rainforest behind it.
With a tap of his consciousness on the ‘Colorful Mist Coast’ option, a multicolored corridor assembled ahead like stacked building blocks, extending continuously toward the end.
A strong suction followed, yanking him forward rapidly.
When the suction disappeared, he found that he had already appeared at the spatial teleportation node of the Colorful Mist Coast.
The air here carried a faint sweetness. Not far away, a group of players were roasting crab-like creatures over a campfire, chatting and laughing, looking every bit like they were on a relaxing vacation.
Summoning the map function, a bird’s-eye scroll unfurled before his eyes.
In the upper right corner it displayed – Map exploration degree: 1.84%.
A large area was still shrouded in fog, undeveloped by players.
He used his consciousness to zoom in on the map and found the location marked by forum players, with a small temple marker icon above it.
Without hesitation, he turned and headed for the marked location.
Shuttling through the rainforest, there were no man-made roads here. Nearby grew sturdy, towering old trees. Their trunks were covered with layers of moss and vines. The deeper he went, the sunlight could only barely penetrate the dense canopy, casting a mottled crisscross of light and shadow.
The air was filled with a fresh scent mixing soil and vegetation, occasionally laced with a faint fragrance from fruit trees.
He could also hear the alternating chorus of insects and birds, as well as the low roars of beasts sounding from time to time.
Time passed.
Crossing a crystal-clear stream, Ding Yu arrived at his destination.
The main body of the temple was piled from crimson megaliths. The entrance was entwined with vines and ferns, giving it a strong sense of age.
Curious, Ding Yu followed the messy footprints left by players and passed through the temple entrance.
At the end of a straight corridor, the light grew dim. Only a few shafts of light fell through cracks in the ceiling. The interior space opened up, and upon the central stone altar stood a three-meter-tall statue of the Serpent Ancestor, carved from dark stone, shaped as a monster with a human torso and a coiled, rising serpent tail.
Although it had weathered many years, the scales on the human-headed, serpent-bodied monster were still clearly visible, glimmering with a ghostly sheen in the gloom, as if they might writhe at any moment and display the vigor of life.
On the stone slab beneath the statue was imprinted a passage of complex text, many of the characters already blurred.
His gaze focused, and parsed information surfaced in Ding Yu’s mind.
[…Countless times we prayed for salvation to the great divine Emperor who created all things, hoping for the true god’s return, yet what came was the world’s decay and the withering of all… I was wrong… but I refuse to give up… Warriors of my race, I will continue to lead you to wage war against the Black Tide until life is extinguished.]
From this description, Ding Yu thought of the information Guide had provided when analyzing the Shadowed Cavern.
There, too, a powerful warrior who believed in the Emperor had once remained, and in the end perished in the war against the Black Tide, leaving only an unfallen shell behind.
From this it could be seen that in the years of the Emperor’s disappearance, countless warriors still did not give up.
This Serpent Ancestor was clearly one of them.
The words engraved on the stone slab seemed able to tug at one’s emotions, making Ding Yu feel the resentment, anger, unwillingness, and resolve in the Serpent Ancestor’s heart.
Skirting around the Serpent Ancestor statue and the blurred spirit-pattern array beside it, Ding Yu continued deeper into the temple.
Before long, he arrived at the first stage of the trial challenge.
Ahead was a bottomless chasm. Suspended in midair on the route to the platform at the end were countless stones. Players had to advance by stepping on the floating stones, and a single misstep would send them plunging into the endless abyss.
At the starting point, many players were hesitating and pacing.
Some players were attempting to advance by jumping, but the floating stones’ surfaces were very small. While jumping forward, some players lost their balance and fell into the abyss, their exclamations fading as they drew farther away, until their souls returned to Emperor’s Mound Village.
After carefully observing the arrangement of the broken stones, Ding Yu used his line of sight to simulate a viable path.
After repeated observation to confirm feasibility, he chose to launch the challenge directly.
The moment he stepped onto the first suspended stone, he sensed something was off. It was as if an invisible suction rose from the pitch-black abyss.
When he jumped, his body suddenly sank hard, nearly causing him to fall into the chasm.
His gaze swept to the second stone ahead. He leapt again, landing on his toes, pushing off to begin a series of continuous jumps.
Before long, he passed through the suspended stone path and reached the second platform.
Here, too, stood a statue of the Serpent Ancestor, with a line of text carved on the stele below:
‘Only warriors with resolute will can receive the Serpent Ancestor’s bestowed power.’
Looking up ahead, there was a narrow, winding corridor with cold stone walls on both sides, inlaid with energy stones that shed a faint glow.
Observation revealed that as players advanced in their exploration, metal spikes would suddenly shoot from holes in the stone walls, their surfaces stained with dark green venom, or energy lances would suddenly rise from the ground. Any player struck by the spikes would dissolve into black mist.
There was both energy damage and physical damage in the passage.
This stage clearly tested the challenger’s powers of observation and judgment, as well as their reaction when danger struck.
To challenge this stage, one had to guard against dangers that could strike from all four directions while moving forward.
Before beginning, Ding Yu chose to stand aside with other players, watching those already challenging ahead and analyzing how to pass the stage.
During this time, the small regional voice channel was full of lively chatter:
“The next one, hurry up and go. Why are you all dawdling over here?”
“Why don’t you go? Why should I go first?”
“The Serpent Ancestor said only warriors with resolute will can pass the test. He is very displeased with your sneaky observation. He demands you act immediately, or else the statue will revive and whip you with its tail.”
“Hiss, another brother just got a spike straight through the heart. It hurts just to look at it. I don’t dare keep playing.”
“After watching for half an hour, I found there is no pattern at all to the trap trigger timings. It is completely random. This tests reaction way too much. As a mage-type player, what if my brain reacts but my body cannot keep up?”
“What else can you do? Return to Emperor’s Mound Village as a soul and go shut yourself in the little black room for an hour.”
—
Unlike the players currently challenging the stage,
Most of the players standing aside were indecisive, looking afraid of the traps yet unwilling to miss out on the trial rewards.
After a brief observation, Ding Yu shook his head in regret.
Just as the players in the regional voice channel described, this narrow winding corridor’s trap timings could not be calculated at all and were released completely at random.
In that case, further observation was meaningless.
Ding Yu decided to begin the challenge right away.
He came to the starting point. Just as he was about to step into the trap corridor, a Challenger Notification sounded in his mind:
[Challenger Notification (regional): Congratulations to player ‘Iron Forge’ for completing the Serpent Ancestor Trial and receiving the Serpent Ancestor’s boon: 1,400 points of sacrificial power (converted).]
Guide prompt: Remaining number of trial rewards: 5,432.
Guide prompt 2: All players who complete the trial will have their information scanned and recorded by the Serpent Ancestor’s lingering will and cannot repeat the challenge.
—
The sudden messages caused an uproar among the players present.
What they had not expected was that the challenge rewards for the Serpent Ancestor Trial actually had a limit on the number of times, and each player could only claim them once.
At that moment, notifications of completed trials sounded one after another.
The in-game names of members of the veteran squad appeared in succession.
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