Just as Han Jingjing and the others on the official side had suspected, the Underground Race had indeed arrived nearby long ago. They had simply stayed hidden in the shadows.
It wasn't entirely a matter of the Underground Race keeping them in suspense. They stayed hidden for two reasons: to avoid risk and guard against being ambushed by people from the Surface World. The other reason, naturally, was the Surface World's corrosive force. They couldn't afford to waste energy recklessly.
When they lay low, their blood flow and bodily functions came close to a state of hibernation. Their energy consumption dropped, and the corrosive force of the Surface World affected them less.
When the Underground Race emerged like weeds, Yang Shuangxi's men weren't especially surprised. After all, this wasn't their first time trading with the Underground Race. The previous deals hadn't been on such a large scale, but they were familiar with the Underground Race's usual methods. There were simply several times as many of them this time.
Previously, the adventurer group had numbered no more than twenty or thirty, and the number of people involved in a trade had been around one or two hundred. This time, the scale had expanded five or six times over.
The Underground Race's group looked to number close to a hundred as well.
No wonder the masked man who had negotiated with Yang Shuangxi had seemed so confident. The Underground Race's numbers weren't substantially different from Yang Shuangxi's. They might have had a few dozen fewer people in total.
But the Underground Race's adventurers lived on the edge of a knife almost every day. They had a natural instinct for combat, and at the same level, they would certainly be stronger one-on-one. Yang Shuangxi's group, by contrast, was mostly a rabble. They might