The Dahe Settlement, "Filled With Wailing"

Some of the news even struck Lin Ye as a little funny.

That was especially true of some of the unreasonable news reports from the Dahe Settlement.

The first time, when he had deliberately designated members of the Great He Clan to enter the dungeon, he had indeed meant it as a bit of a provocation toward Itō Hidetaka.

But when the dungeon opened for the second time, he had no such intention at all.

He was busy. How could he have the energy to spend all day on this bunch of Shorties?

The Great He Clan had chosen to form a group and raid the dungeon themselves. How could that be called deliberate revenge on his part?

As for the 5,000 points deducted from a single person, that ultimately had to be credited to Itō Hidetaka's wave after wave of aneurysm-inducing moves.

The Firmament actually imposed limits on the points deducted for failing a dungeon mission.

As the Firmament, it absolutely did not want Azure Star's challengers to be easily eliminated, because that would upset the balance of this world.

In the mission setup for Raging Waves, the penalty for ordinary mission failure was not actually severe. It basically followed the rule that the further a challenger progressed, the higher the points deducted.

Even if a challenger made it to the very last stage of Raging Waves, the penalty for mission failure would not exceed 500 points.

Otherwise, the dungeon could never have passed the Firmament's review and received its approval.

It was just that Lin Ye had added a penalty mechanism to the dungeon, using a series of special events to punish challengers who did not act according to the mission prompts.

The increase imposed by this penalty mechanism was particularly large.

Itō Hidetaka's actions had allowed him to experience this entire penalty mechanism to perfection.

He repeatedly disregarded the mission instructions. After entering the dungeon, he ignored Eagle Sauce's threats twice, and he did not even treat the NPCs inside as people.

He was always looking for crooked shortcuts, so naturally his penalty grew heavier.

It was like being in the newbie village, where the mission told you to kill chickens and pigs, only for you to insist on sneaking aboard a boat to the royal capital to challenge the final boss.

Naturally, you would die a miserable death...

To some extent, Lin Ye really ought to thank Itō Hidetaka properly.

If not for his contribution, Lin Ye would have earned a few tens of thousands of points at the absolute most from his last dungeon. He certainly would not have reached Level 3 as quickly as he had now.

He was all over every television program.

With nothing to watch on television, Lin Ye could only lie on the sofa, bored out of his mind, and rest. He prepared to sleep until the dungeon opened the next day.

The Soaring Dragon Settlement was bustling and crowded.

The Dahe Settlement, however, presented an entirely different sight.

After the Raging Waves dungeon ended today, the entire Dahe Settlement had sunk into an exceptionally heavy gloom.

There were few vehicles on the roads. The pedestrians who could be seen were all observing a moment of silence for those who had been eliminated yesterday.

A large proportion of the Great He Clan members eliminated in this round were students from the Dahe Settlement's major universities. Although their levels were not high yet, they had received the best dungeon design education the settlement had to offer. They were the Dahe Settlement's future.

People wore black suits, their expressions bleak. Some were even wailing like ghosts and howling like wolves.

Nearly twenty thousand people had been eliminated outright. For a settlement, for a people, it was an immense disgrace!

Before this, the Dahe Settlement had been one of the most renowned settlements. It had developed rapidly over the years and produced quite a few high-level challengers whose names appeared on the Hero Ranking.

Many people of other races had voluntarily migrated to the Dahe Settlement.

The people here had once believed that the Great He Clan was the noblest race on Azure Star.

But the slaughter in Lin Ye's dungeon had severely damaged the Great He Clan's reputation. No matter what happened in the future, history would remember this day as a stain on the Great He Clan.

The world would see the Great He Clan as having formed a group and gotten in their opponent's face, only to be wiped out. It was pure clown behavior.

The Great He Clan's prestige would also plummet. Unless its own people could conquer Raging Waves, its reputation would be hard to restore in the short term.

From time to time, distraught Dahe people cried out wildly in the streets.

"Damn Lin Ye! Damn the Great Xia people!"

"Amaterasu, protect us! Susanoo, protect us! Yamata no Orochi, protect us! Gods, please help us get rid of Lin Ye."

"Lin Ye! You demon!"

The confidence of these Dahe people had been badly shaken. They no longer believed their race really had any way to conquer the Raging Waves dungeon.

Moreover, the result of nearly ten thousand people being eliminated at once left them with nothing but fear in their hearts, and no will to fight.

All they could place their hopes in were their race's most illusory gods.

Of course, aside from this impotent rage, some members of the Great He Clan also vented their anger on Itō Hidetaka.

After all, he had been the commander-in-chief in the previous dungeon!

Many people knelt at intersections, holding up large signs with red characters on a white background.

They read: "Expel Itō Hidetaka!"

"Itō Hidetaka is not a member of the Great He Clan!"

"Itō Hidetaka is a traitor!!!"

"Firmament, please punish Itō Hidetaka!"

At this moment, no Dahe people would still be proclaiming that Itō Hidetaka was their genius designer.

A piece of trash who had fallen from Level 2 to LV1 was not worthy of being the face of their Great He Clan!

Inside the Emperor's residence, people now filled the room.

Dressed in a yellow robe, the Emperor sat at his desk, his brows tightly furrowed.

His face was grim, veins bulged on his forehead, and he clenched his teeth as though he wanted to grind them to dust.

If not for the Firmament's watch overhead, the Emperor would have wanted to kill someone.

"Emperor, I've captured Itō Hidetaka and brought him to you!"

Just then, Shogun Minamoto no Yorimitsu walked slowly into the residence, dragging a disheveled Itō Hidetaka by the hand.

Minamoto no Yorimitsu gave him a shove, and Itō Hidetaka stumbled and fell to his knees before the Emperor.

It was as though he were dragging a dead dog.

The Emperor stared coldly at Itō Hidetaka and asked in a deep voice:

"Itō, hiding? Did you think you could hide from me?"

Itō Hidetaka trembled all over and kowtowed nonstop, his face already covered in tears.

From the moment he left the dungeon, he had been completely out of his mind, to the point that even the people the Emperor sent to contact him could not reach him.

With no other choice, the Emperor had sent Shogun Minamoto no Yorimitsu to make a special trip and bring him over.

"Emperor, spare my life!"

"I was only acting on your orders, Emperor. There was nothing I could do about those people being eliminated either."

Itō Hidetaka cried out.

The Emperor's expression hardened, and a hint of killing intent entered his gaze as he looked at Itō Hidetaka.

The other Great He Clan dignitaries in the room were also staring fixedly at Itō Hidetaka.

In the Dahe Settlement, the Emperor held the highest position beneath the Firmament.

The Emperor could never be wrong.

Daring to question the Emperor was a grave offense!

"Itō, I never told you to run amok in the dungeon. We saw your conduct perfectly clearly from outside."

"If you don't want to be eliminated, don't say things like that."

Although war and killing people in reality were forbidden on Azure Star,

the Emperor and the other high-level members of the Yamato people could still use dungeons to reduce a person's points to zero.

That would have the same effect as killing them!

The Emperor had done such things many times before.

"It was my incompetence, my incompetence... Please show me mercy, Emperor."

Itō Hidetaka kowtowed with loud thuds, and his forehead instantly turned red and swollen.

"Get up. We don't have time to eliminate you now." The Emperor waved a hand, signaling Minamoto no Yorimitsu to pull Itō Hidetaka to his feet.

"The reason we called you here now is to discuss tomorrow's assault on Raging Waves!"