Chapter 240 - 239: Two Days

Chapter 240: Chapter 239: Two Days

For the following two days, Gu Su roamed the nearby wilderness.

The Graveyard Demon moved in fits and starts. Sometimes it would stop beside a manor hiding Deceivers, letting Gu Su take his underlings to trade with them. He would exchange what he could offer for the items he wanted.

After all, not all Deceivers had enough food. The mushrooms Gu Su was struggling to sell became a hot commodity in these trades.

At other times, it would stop in some desolate corner to devour the unpromising, hidden places of the wilderness.

These hidden spots were varied: earthen slopes piled with rubble, stagnant pools reeking of rot, caves with entrances blocked by dense vines and shrubs, and beast lairs filled with piles of stark white bones.

Every place was desolate beyond belief. Weeds grew taller than a man, and tree roots buckled up from the earth, leaving the ground pitted and uneven. There wasn’t even a proper path to be found.

Admittedly, there were no major windfalls during these days.

No new buildings shot up from the ground, no Blue Quality treasures popped out of the earth, and there wasn’t even anything of Green Quality.

But the Graveyard Demon’s footprint was tangibly growing. The walls pushed outward, section by section. The freshly turned earth was dark and loamy, exuding a damp scent and feeling soft underfoot.

The open ground in the Main Tomb Area grew more spacious, too. The gaps between the Gravepiles widened, so it was no longer so cramped that one could barely turn around.

All sorts of odds and ends also made their way into the Graveyard Demon through these repeated trades and consumptions.

The useful items were sorted out, and the useless ones were converted into materials. Nothing was wasted.

During this time, the team led by Jin Chang and Xi Yue had returned twice in a sorry state. Each time they came back, they were covered in wounds, their breathing ragged. They had clearly encountered powerful, strange entities outside and been forced into a desperate situation, fleeing back to the Graveyard Demon for respite.

They never lingered on their return trips. They would just find some food to regain their strength and briefly tend to their wounds. After a short rest, they would hurriedly depart again, continuing their exploration toward the Inverted Tower.

From his limited interactions with them, Gu Su learned of their current situation.

It had been almost three days, yet they still hadn’t managed to fight their way to the entrance of the Inverted Tower. The strange creatures appeared in wave after wave. Even though they knew their weaknesses, they were simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and frequently fell victim to sneak attacks.

Without the protection of a Mobile City, it was clear that survival was incredibly difficult, even for a team of players working together.

Despite their situation, Jin Chang and Xi Yue didn’t seem anxious at all. When talking with Gu Su, they even smiled and said to him, "Brother Gu, there are some things you really don’t need to overthink.

A mission is just a mission. The rewards you can actually get your hands on are what truly belong to you.

When you start a game, focus on improving yourself first. The rest can wait."

Gu Su couldn’t agree more. He hadn’t been running around for nothing these past two days.

If he had rushed to the entrance of the Inverted Tower as the mission required, he never would have made such significant gains.

The Graveyard Demon wouldn’t have grown, and those rewards wouldn’t have just walked into his warehouse. Rather than rushing to complete a mission with no end in sight, it was better to first secure all the benefits right in front of him.

Today was no different. After waking up early, Gu Su first stretched his limbs and then went to check on the Yin Soul Shop.

This was a habit he had developed over the past two days. He discovered that his Undead underlings would always wait for him to pick what he wanted from the Yin Soul Shop before they would make their own purchases.

Whether they were ordinary Undead soldiers, Minions, or Bosses, they all stood guard by the shop, watching eagerly. Until Gu Su finished picking, none of them would move.

So every morning, Gu Su would use the opportunity of his daily stretches to stroll over there. Even if the shop had nothing he wanted that day, he would still take a look to give his underlings a signal.

It let them know they could start buying for the day and didn’t need to wait any longer.

As he did every day, Gu Su began his morning stretches while walking toward the Yin Soul Shop.

He stretched his arms and legs as he went, twisting his neck from side to side until his bones let out a couple of loud CRACKS.

He hadn’t fought any tough battles these last two days, but all the running around had left him with little rest, and his muscles felt somewhat tight.

But after taking only a couple of steps, Gu Su froze.

He noticed that in the Main Tomb Area to the right of the path, a strange ’building’ had appeared.

Calling it a ’building’ wasn’t quite accurate, as it didn’t have a large footprint.

All told, it only occupied a square plot of about four square meters, which was barely a palm-sized patch of land in the vast Main Tomb Area.

But you couldn’t say it wasn’t a building, either. The thing was tall and massive, and Gu Su had spotted it at a glance as he approached.

It stood there like a lanky giant, jutting out abruptly from among the low Gravepiles and tombstones. It was impossible to miss.

In any case, Gu Su couldn’t make sense of this ’building’.

He only knew that the structure before him was a vertical-axis windmill that occupied about four square meters but was roughly ten meters tall.

The windmill’s blades were crafted from translucent bone plates and the sharpened legs of giant crabs. The bone plates were thin enough to let light pass through, with keenly honed edges. The crab legs were bent into a perfect arc and firmly embedded at the base of each plate.

Four blades spread out evenly, each longer than two men are tall. From a distance, they looked like four translucent Big Sabers hanging in mid-air.

The windmill’s axle was a dark, reddish color, its surface pitted and uneven. It looked as if it had been cast from some coarse material, or perhaps stretched from within, leaving it covered in a web of fine cracks.

The omnidirectional design of the blades was obvious; no matter the direction of the wind, they turned steadily. Not too fast, not too slow, they spun round and round with an indescribable, unhurried grace.

Below the windmill was a base piled up from gears, rusty parts, bones, flesh, and various other odds and ends.

The gears varied in size—some as wide as washbasins, others no bigger than a fist. Their teeth were worn to a shine, though some were already chipped. As they interlocked, they emitted a faint clicking sound.

Rusty parts were scattered in the gaps between the gears. Some had rusted completely through, leaving only a hollow metal shell. Others were still solid, coated in a layer of dark red rust dust.

Bone and flesh were mixed in, making it impossible to distinguish the original materials from later growths. Everything was tangled together, tightly bound by mycelium and vines. The base’s overall silhouette was rough and cumbersome, as if someone had haphazardly thrown a pile of scrap together and poured some kind of adhesive over it to hold it in place.

Only faint traces of the [Rusty Mechanical Grinding Disc] were visible on the base.

The original shape of the Grinding Disc was almost unrecognizable. Only a few crooked gear shafts were still exposed, with dried vines wrapped around them and a few dead leaves hanging from the vines.

The rest of it was completely covered by new growths. Bone enshrouded the gears and flesh filled every crevice, binding the entire base into one dense, impenetrable mass.