Statue Special Event

After clearing out the low-level gray domain on Huotan Road, Chu Wei quickly had the driver take them to another gray domain site.

This was an ordinary village outside Dongjiang City. A gray domain had descended in a small grove beside the village a day earlier. Since no one lived at the point of descent, the village chief had not discovered and reported it until an entire day later. By now, it was nearly solidified, so Wang Zhifan and the others had to complete this cleanup mission as soon as possible. Otherwise, the gray domain would likely solidify into the real world.

"Brother Fan, A Liao, this gray domain contains a winding, dark mountain cave nearly a kilometer long. There are quite a few low-level Lizard-type and Bat-type monsters inside. We'd better eliminate them all within half an hour."

Before entering the small grove shrouded in dense gray mist, Chu Wei, who had used her summon to scout the entrance, briefed Wang Zhifan and A Liao on the basics. Compared to the gray domain mission from earlier, this time they were under greater time pressure.

"Alright. I'll take the lead and clear the way."

After hearing that, Wang Zhifan promptly stepped into the gray area before him.

In the blink of an eye, the dim, blurry woodland scene before him transformed into rock walls illuminated by the beam above his head and dark passages to either side. The beam came from the miner's helmet with a lamp on his head, something Chu Wei had specifically dug out of the Bureau of Management's official car trunk earlier. Each of them wore one.

Before he could make out the passages on either side, Wang Zhifan suddenly slashed the Wolf Slayer Blade in his hand toward the upper right. A piercing shriek rang out, followed by the sound of some small object hitting the ground.

"You little bastard, daring to ambush me? Don't think I can't find you just because you're hiding in the dark."

When Wang Zhifan turned and looked down, he saw under the lamp that the small monster he had just killed with a sudden slash resembled a bat. It had fallen to the ground, its corpse split neatly in two.

As for why Wang Zhifan had been able to spot it in the darkness and strike it down in one blow, it was because the heightened perception granted by his above-average Spirit Attribute had allowed him to do so.

Wang Zhifan's Spirit Attribute was currently 16, more than fifty percent higher than the average for a healthy adult man. Normally, such a high Spirit Attribute was not particularly useful to a melee class like him, since all his senses functioned normally and he had no need to rely on perception to judge anything. But darkness was different. Once his vision, which he usually relied on most, became useless, the advantages of his heightened perception became clear. Anything without particularly exceptional stealth that tried to approach him quietly would be immediately detected, and he could even determine its exact location.

"Wow! It's so dark in here! Fighting monsters in a place like this has to be exciting!"

A Liao, the teenage gunner following behind Wang Zhifan, was the second to enter the gray domain cave. To everyone's surprise, he actually praised a place where the limited visibility would restrict his performance.

"Brother Fan, you handle the rear defense. A Liao and I will clear the front."

After entering third, Chu Wei glanced around the cave passage before swiftly laying out their cleanup strategy.

"Alright. Let's get started."

Wang Zhifan had no objection to Chu Wei's plan. He had joined this team as a temporary worker to serve as a bodyguard, so he did not need to worry too much about clearing monsters.

Chu Wei then released her female ghost summon. In this cave-passage environment, it showed off its ability to pass through walls and scout ahead. Along the way, her female ghost summon was responsible for investigating the route and dealing with some troublesome monsters, while A Liao fired his gun at every enemy ahead. Chu Wei's summon was physically immune anyway, so he had no need to worry about friendly fire.

As for Wang Zhifan, he took charge of defending the rear of the team. He had originally thought the task would not be too troublesome, but before long, a constant stream of monsters began attacking him from behind, forcing him to swing his blade and kill monsters almost the entire way. His workload was not much lighter than that of the two in front.

This was likely because the light they brought into the dark environment had attracted monsters from both directions. Fortunately, the relatively narrow passages were well suited to Wang Zhifan's strengths. All he had to do was keep swinging his blade in front of him. Often, a single slash could kill several charging bat or lizard monsters at once.

After fighting continuously for about twenty minutes, the three of them, who had not stopped walking, reached the end of one side of the cave passage. They had cleared one direction to its end and had no choice but to turn back.

"Let's rest here for a minute, everyone. There were more monsters in this gray domain passage than expected, so you must all be tired after fighting our way here."

Chu Wei seemed somewhat worn out after the continuous battle, so she announced that the team would rest where they were.

"I am a little tired, but there shouldn't be as many monsters to clear once we turn back."

Wang Zhifan crouched down and leaned against one of the rock walls.

He really was somewhat tired. The number of monsters he had killed at the rear of the team was not much lower than the number killed by the pair in front. For a melee class like him, who had to keep swinging a blade, continuous combat took an even greater toll on his stamina than it did on Chu Wei and the others.

A Liao, usually the most talkative of the three, was also unusually quiet. Hugging his rifle, he leaned against the rock wall with his eyes half-closed and began to rest. Clearly, clearing two gray domains in one day had challenged the teenager's stamina as well.

But just as the three were about to take a brief rest at the end of the Gray Domain Cave passage, Chu Wei, who had been resting with her eyes closed, suddenly gave a soft cry of surprise, drawing the other two's attention.

"Brother Fan, A Liao, there's something inside that rock wall!"

As she spoke, she rose from her reclining position and walked more than ten meters toward the way they had come. The light from the lamp on her helmet then shone onto an utterly unremarkable rock wall in the passage.

"What is it?"

Wang Zhifan immediately got to his feet in alarm and moved closer to inspect it, but he could not spot anything unusual about the rock wall. It looked like nothing more than an insignificant part of the gray domain cave wall, containing nothing but bare, uneven stone.

"It's a humanoid statue. My summon found a hidden humanoid statue inside there."

Chu Wei then explained to Wang Zhifan. As she spoke, her female ghost summon emerged from the rock wall in front of them. It seemed that it had accidentally discovered the anomaly while passing through the wall earlier.

"A humanoid statue? A Wei, if something like that really appears in a place like this, we should leave immediately."

At Chu Wei's words, the hairs on Wang Zhifan's back nearly stood on end. Just imagine it: finding a humanoid statue inside the rock wall of a monster-infested gray domain cave passage. Could that possibly be a good thing? Yet Chu Wei was not nearly as nervous as Wang Zhifan. She quickly pulled out the special Bureau of Management device she possessed, tapped its screen, and opened a page.

"Based on the image my summon saw, this type of statue seems to have been recorded in the Bureau of Management's gray domain database. We may have encountered a Special Event."

As she spoke, she showed Wang Zhifan the information displayed on the device.