Villain Cultivator

"We've already given you face, but you chose to cross the line. This is my last warning – Open the path for us to return, or I'll smash your little underground kingdom and bury you in hell as you wished."

Ling Tianlong's pupils narrowed like snake's eyes, and his killing intent soared. He brandished his sword and walked toward the center of the room.

"I'll be counting to three."

The golden words on the wall taunted him.

[Oh, I'm so scared. I'm wondering what a trashy 4th-stage cultivator like you can do against me and my dungeon.]

Ling Cao shook his head and sighed, "Take it easy, Lingtian. We're still underground."

Ling Tianlong smirked, "I know. Well… Three."

The protagonist's broadsword pierced the floor, and he shoved it into the ground.

As soon as the blade sunk into the floor, Ling Tianlong finally revealed one of his powers.

"Awaken, Plum Monarch!"

The sword trembled. Then, the ground shook, generating the force of a Richter 7 earthquake.

BOOM

The sword, which had pierced into the ground, transformed into a plum tree's roots. A large trunk of the tree emerged from the ground and shot through the ceiling, expanding and growing without limits!

The plum tree absorbed Qi and Essence from the dungeon and continued growing larger. At the same time, the roots dug through the underground levels, scanning and searching through the dungeon's lower floors.

This was the effect of Ling Tianlong's immortal-grade sword, the Plum Monarch. It contained the spirit of the ancient world tree, which could transform Ling Tianlong's Wood Element Qi and Life Essence into seeds of Primordial Monarch Plum Trees.

These trees had another nickname in the immortal realms. Many immortals and dao gods called them [The Blood Plums of Calamity], one of the Seven Calamities that all dao gods had worked together to remove from their planes and planets.

Wherever these trees grew, no cultivator could thrive as the trees always monopolized natural Qi and Essence in the air into their leaves. Moreover, the roots, tree branches, and their leaves had sentience as they sought mortal and immortal blood to nourish themselves.

As such, most planets populated by these trees were considered inhabitable, and the trees became taboos in the immortal and god realms.

But now, Ling Tianlong had planted one of the trees here!

After the tree had emerged, the dungeon master didn't reply as usual. However, the dungeon floor rotated, attempting to drain back their lost energy from the tree while the enhanced bricks continued to crush weak roots and tree branches, disabling them from expanding.

The tug-of-war began as two protagonists contested the power of their familiars.

As Ling Tianlong and the dungeon master couldn't pay attention to other things, the north gate revealed the changes in the maze – Instead of having random passages and rooms, it changed into a long white corridor, stretching over several kilometers.

Ling Cao expanded his senses and activated his domain ability, surrounding his disciple and himself with a storm of plum flower petals, using them as shields against the unknown attack.

Nothing happened after the maze had transformed. Aside from the tug-o-war between the dungeon master and Ling Tianlong, the changes stopped.

Curious, Ling Cao slowly approached the long corridor.

But Ling Tianlong yelled in a panic, "MASTER!! DON'T ENTER THAT PASSAGE!! IT'S A TRAP!!"

Ling Cao paused his feet. His right foot was only 10 centimeters away from the entrance.

Receding slowly, Ling Cao walked backward, retreating from the suspicious passageway.

However, it was too late.

TATATATATATATA

Hundreds of bullet heads flew from the other side of the corridor and hit Ling Cao's plum petal shields. The impact and the force of each 150mm shell pushed the 7th-stage cultivator back ten steps before one of the shells punctured through the shield and hit the elder's chest.

BOOM

Ling Cao was sent to the other side of the wall with the large shell. Fortunately, the elder blocked it with his arms, but his bones and ribcages were crushed by the impact.

The elder coughed as he gazed at the bullet head that he had caught. It still emitted the strange metal-like element Qi, but it seemed a lot stronger.

"Metal element stone? Wait… I sense fire element Qi…"

A second later, it turned red and ignited.

"MASTER!! THROW IT AWAY!!"

Hearing Ling Tianlong's warning again, he tossed the shell away. The next second, it exploded and covered everything in the room in flame.

The plum blossom petals were weak against flame. Upon getting touched by the fire element Qi, they were burnt to ash.

Ling Cao and Ling Tianlong braced the flame by covering themselves with their basic pseudo aura barrier. Still, their skins reddened from the burn as common essence barriers couldn't protect themselves against element Qi skills.

The flame didn't last long. After the 10 seconds of scorching explosion, the flame subsided.

RUMBLE

Yet, the master and disciple couldn't afford to relax as they heard footsteps of something large approaching from all sides.

VIIIIIII

Two sections on the walls opened, showing long corridor passages from the west wall and northwest corner. Combining with the north corridor, now, three paths had opened before Ling Tianlong and Ling Cao.

Unfortunately for them, this was their bad news. They saw two giant golems with strange long black metals in their arms, pointing weird barrels at them.

Behind Ling Tianlong, golden words formed on the south wall, mocking the duo again.

"You've picked to the wrong house, fool!"

"!!!"

BANG BANG BANG BANG!

The thunderous sound of gunshots came from the giant metal golems, followed by long pins of light that hit Ling Tianlong's chest, head, and legs.

Like his mentor, the protagonist was sent to the other side of the wall!

However, none of the bullets managed to pierce into his skin… rather… green dragon scales.

Ling Tianlong had decided to reveal his true power by transforming himself into Earth Dragonewt. His snake-like eyes stared at the metal golems with hatred.

"Now, you've pissed me off. I was planning to spare you, but you've chosen death!"

Ling Tianlong tore his uniform while his mentor had been watching his new form in shock. He ignored Ling Cao's reaction as he approached the tree of calamity and touched it.

"Come to me, Plum Monarch!"

SCREECH

The tree suddenly shrunk and entered Ling Tianlong's body through his pores. A second later, a pair of wooden wings spread. A head of a white snake and a head of a black snake also emerged from his back, slithering and wiggling behind the protagonist's head.

"KAHAHAHA!! Tianlong, you've finally called us!"

"I see that the situation is critical, but isn't this a bit hopeless? I can't even sense who you're fighting."

The two snakes started talking, but Ling Tianlong wasn't surprised by their linguistic ability. He got used to their antics.

"Yin Monarch, Yang Monarch, this lowly mortal needs your help. Please provide me aid in this fight."

The black snake scoffed, "Prepare a suitable sacrifice after this!"

The white snake nodded, "Since you've asked, we're obliged to help."

Ling Tianlong strolled toward the northern passage, where he had a hunch that the dungeon master or the golem puppeteer had been hiding. He projected green energy swords from his both hands, preparing for combat.

BANG BANG BANG BANG!

As if Golems from the north corridor had guessed that Ling Tianlong had picked their turf, they sent another barrage of cannons and gunfire.

Ling Tianlong charged head-on. As he focused his Life Essence in his eyes, everything seemed slower, and he could see the trajectories of over a thousand bullets.

"Plum Blossom Sword Style… Death Sword Formation!"

…

Meanwhile, in the vault, Liu Guang and Miaomiao were clueless about the commotion in the dungeon. They stared at the immortal-grade dadao in shock.

Liu Guang was afraid of her new weapon at first. Then, she heard her dadao's cute voices again. She giggled and started talking to herself, ignoring Miaomiao's existence.

Miaomiao had a bitter smile on his face.

'So, I must have acted like Liu Guang in the past. Did Jia Shan and others look at me like how I look at Liu Guang now?'

It felt weird to see one of his wives turning into an existence closer to a major character. After all, weapon transformation perk belonged to main characters, such as antagonists, protagonists, or important side characters, because they looked cooler than normal weapons.

"Guang'er," Miaomiao snapped Liu Guang back to her senses as he needed to send her off this place first before he started cleaning this place.

"Hmm? Oh, err, master. I was talking to these cute puppies. Please don't mind me."

"Puppies?" He raised his eyebrows.

"Yes! The weapon spirits are actually cute puppies! They are pitiful, though, since nobody has taken care of them for centuries. The Liu Clan neglected them because they didn't understand how good they were. Right? Bao Bao, Bao Wow, Bao Woo?"

"…"

Miaomiao wondered if she had named the invisible spirits that he couldn't see, or these were their actual names. But one thing for sure, it sounded too similar to his surname, and he didn't like them.

"Guang'er…"

Miaomiao reached for Liu Guang, about to tell her to leave this place.

As soon as he touched her, the merged dadao, which continued to release aurora light radiation to the air, suddenly smashed his forehead with its blade.

Fortunately, due to the dao oath and the bond between him and Liu Guang, the latter's servant couldn't harm the grandmaster. The aurora-leaking purple dadao could only lightly bonk his head.

"I was about to tell you to leave this place first, but can you stop this stupid butcher knife from bonking my head?"

Miaomiao grabbed the blunt edge of the dadao to stop it, but the blade suddenly transformed into a dog's mouth and gnawed his lizard hand.

NOM-NOM-NOM

"…"

Miaomiao stared at the weird dog-like weapon. The bite didn't hurt, but it started to get annoying.

He yanked the dadao from his hand and passed it back to Liu Guang.

WOOF-WOOF-WOOF-GRRRRRR

Now, the dadao barked like a rabid dog. It tried to bite him again even though Liu Guang had tried her best to tame it.

"Stop! Bad doggies!"

The dadao whimpered and snuggled in Liu Buang's bosom. It looked odd since the blade part was too flexible to be useful.

…

After playing with the dog-like weapon for a few minutes, Liu Guang finally agreed to leave this place first.

Miaomiao had instructed her to return to Siren City without him since he was about to do something drastic. Moreover, it might affect them if they didn't leave the dungeon within an hour.

After Liu Guang had left, Miaomiao started counting the heaven-grade weapons in this place and calculated the points that he could amass.

First of all, Miaomiao needed 5,000 luck points to use the designated teleportation plot armor.

From his point of view, exchanging everything in this place for his 5,000 luck points, which was equal to five pieces of Heavenly Fate Fragments, wasn't worth it. However, the number of sky-grade and earth-grade armors, robes, and accessories in here was enough to gear his army at home.

Had it been Miaomiao in the past, he would have ignored everyone and tried to survive alone. But since several villains wanted him dead, he didn't mind improving his status as a major villain or a protagonist. For the sake of killing Yuan Hua, Kishin Douji, random villains, and annoying protagonists, Miaomiao needed a strong army.

Thus, arming the weakling beastkins, orcs, and the monks weighed over his luck points!

"I have 3500 luck points. Buddha gives me 500. The others gave me 200. I'm still 800 short."

Macho Joshua had offered 50 luck points for every heaven-grade weapon that Miaomiao could tribute. Meanwhile, he lacked 800 points to use his plot armor skill to teleport randomly to Aves Continent.

In short, he needed to sacrifice 16 heaven-grade weapons in this room to the capitalist Jesus to get enough points. But the real question was, would this place had enough weapons to tribute Joshua and fulfill the sidequests of all gods?

Miaomiao began scanning through the vault before he did something irreversible.