Douluo: What the hell is the academic master development system?

Chapter 206 Close Reconnaissance
The fact that they dared to choose a mountain cave as their base means they were confident they could retreat.

If those people in the inner courtyard had known how to put themselves in others' shoes, they wouldn't have rushed in as soon as they saw the entrance.

After circling the entire hill, both Ma Xiaotao and Ling Luochen were surprised.

Just as Chen Ping said, the cave where the entire Death Hand bandit gang was stationed really did have more than one exit.

The exit in front of them was much more concealed than the previous one. It was not only hidden by lush vegetation, but also so narrow that it could only accommodate two people side by side.

If Chen Ping hadn't previously said not to look at people but at traces, allowing Ling Luochen to notice the obviously man-made arrangement of vegetation with even the fallen vegetation pointing in the same direction, this exit would have been really hard to find.

Seeing that there really was a second exit, Ma Xiaotao gave in to Chen Ping's words and volunteered to go in and investigate. However, she came back out after only taking a few steps.

Looking at Ma Xiaotao, who looked completely bewildered and seemed shocked as to whether she was still half asleep, Ling Luochen was also completely baffled.

"Why are you out again?"

Ling Luochen forced a question into a thin line.

Unexpectedly, Ma Xiaotao quickly raised her slender, white index finger, which resembled a scallion, and placed it against her red lips, gesturing for Ling Luochen to go in and take a look.

Ling Luochen was also puzzled. He carefully crawled into the entrance and soon came out looking completely bewildered.

"Am I seeing things? Why are there more than a dozen people standing at the entrance?"

Ling Luochen, who was known as the Snow Princess in her hometown, rarely swore, and her eyes were full of strange expressions.

Chen Ping tilted his head slightly and looked through the gap in the entrance. Dozens of meters behind the entrance, there were twelve figures standing quietly.

The figures had skin of the dead, an iron-gray color, and seemed lifeless. They stood there stiffly like twelve statues, their eyes empty and lifeless, their fingernails unusually long and purplish-black. Their bodies reeked of decay.

"They're corpse slaves created by evil spirit masters, what else could they be?"

Chen Ping offered an explanation, and Ma Xiaotao and Ling Luochen hurriedly recalled the knowledge they had learned about this topic in their textbooks. After a while, they could only pout in grievance.

The school must have taught this part, right?

Yes, it sounds familiar. I think I've studied it before.

Luckily, Wang Yan wasn't there, otherwise he probably would have been yelling at people: "What kind of rubbish did you all learn in school? Go back and retake it!"

Chen Ping casually tossed a piece of raw meat onto the ground, and after waiting for a while, he threw pieces of raw meat at the feet of the twelve corpse slaves.

Only after confirming that the corpse slaves showed no reaction did he gesture for Ma Xiaotao and Ling Luochen to follow, and they walked into the tunnel.

Ma Xiaotao and Ling Luochen were filled with curiosity, completely unable to understand what Chen Ping was doing.

Chen Ping did this to test the state of the corpse slave created by the Grim Reaper.

Aside from the Holy Spirit Cult, Shrek Academy is probably the organization most knowledgeable about the various abilities of evil spirit masters.

If one pays close attention, the abilities possessed by all types of evil spirit masters that Shrek Academy has faced over the past ten thousand years are basically recorded in the academy library. Of course, having records is one thing, but if some fools don't learn from them, or if the school leaders don't value the academic knowledge of the inner academy students, that's another matter entirely.

At this moment, these corpse slaves, or rather corpse puppets, showed no reaction to the chunks of meat thrown at their feet, indicating that the Grim Reaper, in order to conserve energy, no longer needed to feed the corpse slaves meat every day to maintain their operation, and had put these corpse slaves into "standby" mode.

Of course, the so-called standby is just for easy understanding. Simply put, it means that the corpse slave in this state will not react to anything in the outside world, saving its own consumption to the maximum extent. It can usually standby for one or two months.

In addition, corpse slaves also have two states: patrol and sentry.

In the former state, the prey will automatically seek out blood and flesh to devour, while in the latter state, the prey will indiscriminately attack any creature that approaches the warning range.

These three modes are the common states of most corpse puppets, since these things don't have very high intelligence to begin with.

Even if the Grim Reaper is incredibly powerful, he's still just a Soul King, not Ilex. Naturally, he couldn't possibly possess a high-level, self-aware undead guard.

If such corpse puppets truly existed, the Grim Reaper in the original story would never have left them all behind to cover his retreat; that would be far too extravagant.

The three carefully bypassed the corpse puppets and headed deeper into the entrance. With Chen Ping's intentional or unintentional hints, Ma Xiaotao and Ling Luochen also discovered the explosives that the Grim Reaper had hidden in the passage.

This is the Grim Reaper's escape method. Relying on the special nature of his soul skills and the explosives used to blast through the tunnel, the Grim Reaper earned the title of the strongest soul king and thoroughly outmaneuvered the useless Lao Xuan.

The three of them passed through the narrow tunnel and soon arrived at the exit.

Chen Ping took out the Elephant Staff and stood it on the ground. He silently thought, "Grow," and the Elephant Staff began to slowly grow longer.

Soon, the cover above the tunnel was pried open by the elephant stick, reaching a height of about one centimeter.

Chen Ping gripped the rope ladder in the tunnel with both hands, peering out with his eyes, cautiously surveying everything inside the cave.

This location should be the innermost area of ​​the cave. A strong smell of blood is almost overwhelming, mixed with a pungent stench of corpses.

Even Chen Ping looked quite pale when he smelled such a nauseating odor. He barely managed to suppress his physical reaction and didn't vomit. It took him a few seconds to adjust before his complexion returned to normal.

On the walls of the cave, there were more than a dozen human skins hanging on both sides, and even a child's corpse that had been pierced and hung on a stalagmite.

The cave was equipped with chevaux-de-frise, which was the first layer of defense for the cave, probably to block the assault of ordinary soldiers from Xingluo.

In addition, there are various traps that are not very threatening, but most of them are aimed at ordinary people and are not very threatening to Soul Masters. This is why the inner court disciples were able to enter unscathed in the original work.

Chen Ping was currently located on one side of the center of the deepest part of the cave, where a dozen torches were tied together and many bandits were sleeping haphazardly, though they all looked to be small fry.

The higher-ranking Soul Master bandits at least had relatively decent clothes to wear and rested in two-story wooden structures, either sleeping or cultivating.

Controlling the elephant staff to make it grow a little longer, Chen Ping began to observe the structure of the cave ceiling.

The cave ceiling here is only about six or seven meters high, and a large number of soul beast corpses are hanging above it, their fur all stripped off.

This scene matches the previous leather smuggling case provided by the Xingluo military.

(End of this chapter)