Scourge Messenger

Chapter 306 Unprotected Drop Tower
No wonder that apart from accents, the written language used during the Three Kingdoms period in the Central Plains was almost identical. With a cultural anchor like the Secret Realm, which provides stable textual records, any changes in writing can be reversed.

Yan Qing tried out the coffee machine on the counter. It wasn't plugged in, but it worked. Yan Qing made himself a latte. The long-lost bitter coffee aroma made him feel a lot of emotions. Sure enough... Coca-Cola is more suitable for him.

With a few cans of drinks in hand, Yan Qing set off again.

Arriving at a street called 'Winding Road,' Yan Qing discovered that the demons on the street were no longer solitary figures, but rather in small groups of two or three. According to the information provided by Xi Zifeng, the further in one went, the stronger the demons became, and they also appeared in large groups, with up to seven demons forming a team. If one was attacked, the others would unleash a chain reaction of hatred and attack, leaving even a third-tier messenger with no chance of survival under such an onslaught!

Suddenly, Yan Qing's eyes lit up as he spotted a small team consisting of a dragon servant and a bronze dragon in the distance!
He raised his bracelet, activated the [Resurrection] mutation on his dragon servant, and then rushed over and slashed the wild dragon servant with his sword!

The moment the battle began, Yan Qing's dragon servant died instantly, but due to the resurrection property of [Yellow Springs Remnants], a newly resurrected dragon servant was immediately summoned.

At the same time, because [Resurrection] itself summons a puppet that is exactly the same as the original, a dragon servant that can still be resurrected is summoned again.

Because of the two summons, the Dragon Servant's attributes increased by 600/400, and its attack power directly reached 1,000 points!

It sure works!

The resurrection trait, the return from death trait, and the resurrection mutation—these three combined form a combo that can quickly stack up the Dragon Servant's attributes!

The two dragon servants, each with a thousand attack power, were almost on par with third-tier demons, and the battle was won in a single round.

After the battle ended, the wild dragon servant and the wild bronze dragon flew out as two streaks of light and entered Yan Qing's bracelet. Yan Qing looked up and found that the dragon servant's ascension progress had increased by 1.

As expected, collecting identical puppet cards would directly contribute to his ascension progress instead of turning them into cards in his hand, Yan Qing thought. He had anticipated this; if identical puppet cards didn't merge, then he only needed to collect enough dragon servant puppets and continuously replace and summon them, and he could stack the dragon servant attributes to a terrifying level within a day.

Even if Guiding Lands is just a time-limited instance, it's impossible for such an obvious loophole to appear.

To Yan Qing's surprise, he did not receive the Bronze Dragon Puppet Card, but instead obtained a Transformation Card:

"Charge into battle: The puppet gains 300 health and the Taunt trait."

Besides the Puppet Card, is it possible to get a Transformation Card? Yan Qing casually used it on the Dragon Servant, and suddenly the sound of metal armor being assembled came from behind him. Yan Qing turned around and saw that a phantom shield appeared on the original Dragon Servant, indicating that it had become the first target of other demons.

However, Yan Qing noticed that one of the Primal Dragon Servant's skeletal claws had been smashed, a result of the wild bronze dragon's dying counterattack. Even after the battle ended, the puppets wouldn't recover from the damage. If all the puppets perished, Yan Qing would either have to fight the demons himself, replace the fallen puppets with new puppet cards, or wait until the next day to summon new puppets. The Demon Gathering Grounds didn't have restrictions like 'gold coins' or 'fatigue points'. If players were willing and capable, they could easily fight their way from the entrance to the city center, replacing fallen puppets with new ones.

However, due to the level cap, even the most powerful level 39 player is unlikely to solo a group of third-tier demons. Therefore, choosing and nurturing your own puppet is the core gameplay of the Demon Gathering Land dungeon.

Yan Qing decided to focus on the Dragon Servant for the first two days, and then challenge the third-tier or even fourth-tier puppets once the Dragon Servant's attributes had accumulated. Therefore, he couldn't replace the Dragon Servant puppet card. He had to carefully consider his next battle opponent, since the Dragon Servant had limited health and couldn't be fought many times before all of them were defeated.

As Yan Qing walked along, she noticed that there were quite a few shops here: milk tea shops, snack shops, and tobacco and liquor stores—Holy crap, why are the tobacco and liquor stores empty?

Yan Qing recalled that during the six-day journey through the Qi Kingdom, he had seen many officers and generals carrying pipes. He wondered if they had learned to smoke from the secret realm.
As they walked, a towering building appeared by the roadside, piercing the clouds like a stone pillar supporting the heavens and the earth. Its highest point was even level with the dragon in the sky. Yan Qing stood at the bottom and looked up, but he couldn't even see the top of the stone pillar.

"Ascension Pillar," Yan Qing read aloud the description on the plaque next to the pillar: "Trial participants who accept the Ascension Trial will increase the ascension progress of all their puppets. The longer the trial participant rides the pillar, the more ascension progress they will be rewarded with."

Yan Qing looked at the incredibly tall stone pillar, then at the stone chair at its base. He hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the chair. The dragon puppet servants following behind him waited patiently outside the pillar.

Where's the safety bar?

With such obvious features, Yan Qing naturally recognized that the stone pillar was based on a drop tower. He quite enjoyed riding drop towers at Chimelong Paradise, so he was no stranger to it.

There should be safety bars or seat belts on a drop tower, but Yan Qing looked around and found that this stone chair was just too much like a stone chair, and he couldn't find any mechanism at all.

The only two unique features were the two semi-circular protrusions on the stone chair's armrests, perfect for placing one's hands. Yan Qing searched in vain, and as he sat down and instinctively placed his hands on them, the ground suddenly clicked, and the circular floor tiles around the stone pillar began to rotate. When all the tile patterns aligned in a straight line, a huge hole slowly opened in the ground, leading to… a swamp that looked like boiled excrement!
The smell was still quite strong; Yan Qing took a sniff and instantly felt refreshed. Wait, I remember before I transmigrated, there weren't any screens that allowed you to smell things. Why did the developers design this mud pit to be so smelly?
The stone chair rose up with a rumble, and light blue patterns emerged from the stone pillars one by one. Yan Qing watched as the Demon Gathering Land gradually sank to his feet, and the houses became as small as building blocks. He felt as if he had become the emperor here, looking down on the world, and being the only one who was supreme!
That's the allure of the drop tower – reaching the highest peak of the world, you can raise your hand and touch the sky, a sight that blots out the sun!
But damn it, where's my safety bar?

Where is my seatbelt?

Even if you tie me to a stone chair, I'll do it!
At first, Yan Qing wasn't too scared, but as the height gradually increased, her spine tightened, and her calf muscles felt like they were about to cramp. She wished she could shrink into the stone chair. The wind grew stronger, and the stone chair swayed more and more. Yan Qing had to grip the rounded armrests tightly with both hands, otherwise she might be blown away!
A super drop tower with no safety measures? Who came up with such a despicable idea? Aren't they afraid of tearing through the paper every time they try to clean up their mess?!

Yan Qing felt his acrophobia was about to flare up, but the amazing thing about acrophobia is that even though you know you're afraid, you still can't help but glance down, like a moth drawn to a flame. Yan Qing looked down and his legs instantly went weak, yet it was precisely this fear that made him want to look a few more times.

Ok?
Yan Qing squinted at the people on the ground, who looked like trash. They... seemed to be running towards him?
(End of this chapter)