Scourge Messenger

Chapter 385 Foundation Upgrade
With a clench of his right hand, Master Suolong wrapped the chain with the Thunder Cutter knife around the claws of the Chongming Bird. While slowing down the demon king, the chain rotated and slashed, leaving dripping bloodstains with flowing lightning and magnetic energy on the Chongming Bird's claws!
"It's not as amazing as you think."

Master Suolong was well aware of the immense potential for his hidden skill, and while fighting, he explained with ease: "Chain Hands can only control very light weapons, such as daggers and knives. Any heavier weapons will significantly reduce the speed and power of the Chain Hands."

"Moreover, the chained hand can only exert the permanent power of the token, and cannot activate the active power of the token. However, such short-range tokens are rare and generally do not cause much damage. They can only be lethal by relying on active power. Therefore, I have not found a suitable token for many years and would rather hide it than expose it."

"Even if I find a suitable token, I can only control two chained hands at most right now. Any more would distract me too much and affect the accuracy of my restrictions. Ultimately, this is just an additional offensive method of the [Dragon Locking Well]. Restrictions are the foundation of my existence."

Despite this, the talent displayed by Master Suolong still made Yan Qing's scalp tingle.

【Locking Dragon Well】is a special divine power that specializes in restricting, and even Foundation Establishment cultivators would find it difficult to resist. In this respect, it is actually quite similar to Bunny Girl's 【Candle Tears Red】, both being imagery divine powers that sacrifice derivative possibilities to enhance a single effect to the extreme.

As a result, Master Locking Dragon not only researched the [Locked Dragon Well] and discovered its many ingenious uses, such as movement and flight, and interrupting obstacles, but also groundbreakingly created the chain hand technique. Despite Master Locking Dragon's self-proclaimed limitations, these limitations can be overcome as her cultivation and proficiency increase. In fact, given enough Thunder-Cutting Knives, she could now transform into a formidable killing machine!
She deduced a usage of the restrictive imagery of the "Dragon Locking Well" that rivals top-tier offensive imagery!

Without the constraints of a system and with a long period of time dedicated to cultivation, what trump cards are these Foundation Establishment cultivators still holding? Yan Qing initially looked down on these local Foundation Establishment cultivators. Even though he couldn't defeat them yet, it didn't stop him from thinking of them as either 'poor Foundation Establishment cultivators' or 'poor Foundation Establishment cultivators who are very skilled in supernatural abilities'. However, the short time he spent teaming up with Master Suolong to conquer the secret realm completely shattered Yan Qing's arrogance as a player.

The heroes of the world are indeed as numerous as carp crossing a river!

When the Chongming Bird unleashed its deadly Double Pupil Bloodlight attack again, they immediately retreated to a corner of the passage. Once the bloodlight was blocked, Master Suolong threw a pig into the passage, watching as the pig was focused by the bloodlight and then pulled it back. This was repeated several times, until the pig was almost vomiting from the shock, until they finally saw that no more bloodlight was shooting out from the depths of the cave.

Rush!
As expected, the Chongming Bird in the cave was absorbing blood energy from the blood pool to recover from its injuries. However, the advantage of [Candle Tears Red] became apparent at this moment. Even after the bunny girl and the others withdrew, [Candle Tears Red] could still continue for nearly a minute, constantly depleting the Chongming Bird's health. Therefore, its current health was still only 78%!

Without further ado, let’s get started!
A few minutes later, the Chongming Bird launched another deadly attack, and the Bunny Girl and the others dodged again. Time flew by as they focused intently on the chase, and nearly an hour passed in no time—considering that they hadn't even spent half an hour in this secret realm in total, including monster hunting, discussions, and looting!

Master Suolong and Master Yao have been paying close attention to Bunny Girl. After all, Bunny Girl only has one day of unlimited supernatural powers. She was supposed to quickly and repeatedly clear the secret realm, but now she is spending so much time on Chongming Bird, which inevitably makes her anxious.

But the bunny girl's movements remained unchanged, as did Yan Qing's.

Such instances of wasting a lot of time slowly wearing down a boss are commonplace in his gaming career. He still remembers the first time he killed Diablo in Act IV, running back and forth between his corpse dozens of times before finally defeating him. What is this little bit of effort compared to that? The more time he spends, the greater the sense of accomplishment when he finally defeats the boss!

Although there's a saying that sunk costs shouldn't be involved in decision-making, we've already fought this far, so even if it takes another hour, we have to keep fighting!

When its health dropped to 30%, the Chongming Bird suddenly raised its wings and tilted its head back, like a taut bow. At the same time, a fan-shaped beam of blood-red light shot out from its beak, aiming at the Rabbit Girl in the front. The fan-shaped area was so large that it even included Suolong Zhenren and Yaoshi Yuan behind it.

Water waves are punishable by death!

Because of its resemblance to a water wave spray, all such fan-shaped attacks are referred to by players as "water wave executions."

"Pig!" the pharmacist exclaimed immediately.

"Get out!" Master Suolong shouted.

The chains rattled as they dragged a pig from the passage to the front, successfully attracting the attention of the Chongming Bird. The direction of the fan-shaped blood-red light changed with the pig's position, even managing to lure it into a corner to minimize its area of ​​effect. However, the bunny girl and her companions stayed far away, not taking advantage of the situation to continue their attack, preferring to observe the situation first.

Sa!
With a piercing whistle, the Chongming Bird unleashed an invisible gale, leaving the pig stunned and paralyzed on the ground. After a breath, it gradually turned into dust and vanished, leaving not a trace behind!

“Bifeng?” Master Suolong shook his head after saying that: “No, Bifeng is not that weak... but if the defensive barrier can’t stop it, it will directly erode the foundation of your Dao!”

Yan Qing thought this was probably a special attack move against ordinary players, because ordinary players would rather die than manifest their Dao foundation. The Chongming Bird would not kill them but instead damage their Dao foundation, which would probably terrify the players even more.

After killing the pigs, the Chongming Bird calmed down, but when the Rabbit Girl and her companions joined the fray, it quickly launched another fan-shaped blood-red attack. In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Master Suolong had used up all the pigs she had brought in, but the Chongming Bird continued to launch its attacks very frequently, sometimes even emitting two fan-shaped red lights that required two pigs to distract it.

“Its second phase will likely involve frequent water-wave executions,” said Bunny Girl. “We need more pigs.”

Although it was the first time that both Pharmacist Yuan and Lock Dragon Master had heard the terms "second stage" and "water wave execution," they understood Bunny Girl's meaning without any communication costs because they fit the current situation so well.

Master Suolong scurried out of the secret realm like a spider, quickly leading a large herd of pigs and cattle over. "There are more behind," Master Suolong said, "I've ordered them to bring all the livestock in the village in. Let's fight them for now."

The battle that followed was as expected.

The Chongming Bird continued to frequently launch water wave executions, and from the initial single water wave, it eventually launched eight water waves simultaneously, thus upgrading from a water wave execution to an eight-directional water wave execution!
In the game, this is a death penalty mechanism that requires all players to coordinate their positions to deal with. If two players cross paths, they will be hit by two water waves, causing the entire party to be wiped out. It already feels a bit like a challenging dungeon. But in reality, the Dragon Slayer is too lazy to assign positions to his minions. He simply piles them all in a corner of the arena and lets them be instantly evaporated by the eight-sided water wave death penalty.

After dozens of livestock died, the Chongming Bird let out a mournful cry, and its huge body slowly collapsed onto the burning sea of ​​blood candles, its crimson-gold feathers losing their luster like flames.

"Your Dragon Blood Thrush Dao Foundation (Demon Core) has been upgraded to level 41!"

"Your Spiritual Energy Mastery has increased to 1.05!"

"The [Crimson Candle Tears] supernatural power has been upgraded!"

what?
Yan Qing was somewhat surprised. He opened the Bunny Girl's Dao Foundation page and found that her first restriction, [Dragon Reversal], was shining brightly. This meant that the Bunny Girl had just executed this most important restriction, so her Dao Foundation gained a lot of experience and leveled up directly, and her status also recovered from 41% to 45%.

Does this Chongming bird have dragon blood?
Yan Qing suddenly remembered that in the background story of the secret realm, it was mentioned that the Chongming Bird was corrupted by the 'Raging Dragon Poison', which caused it to be severely injured and go berserk.

Does being poisoned by 'Dragon's Venom' mean you have dragon blood?
Thinking about it this way, the Dragon Blood Thrush Dao Foundation might not be so bad after all. As long as Yan Qing finds the production method of 'Raging Dragon Poison', he can inject this mysterious virus into the enemy during battle, turning them into dragon blood creatures that are countered by the Dragon Blood Thrush Dao Foundation.

However, it's still too troublesome; as a build, it can only be considered T3 or T4 level.

Yan Qing looked at the upgrade notification and found that none of the Bunny Girl's three stats had improved, so he wasn't too surprised.

Except for a small number of players with a foundation in Dao, most players will no longer see an increase in their three attributes after level 40 with normal leveling up. They will only experience a quantitative change again at the fifth or sixth reincarnation. Either they will not level up at all, or when they do, it will be a multiplier increase.

This explains why posts by players focused on maximizing their character's strength emphasize the accumulation of points in the first 39 levels of the Mortal stage. The quantitative changes at the fourth, fifth, and sixth job advancements are multiplicative, building upon the base three-dimensional attributes at level 39. Every 10 points of attribute gained in the Mortal stage translates to tens or even hundreds of points of benefit later on. Higher attributes increase the probability of achieving a final, powerful ascension. Therefore, for those focused on maximizing their character's strength, playing the game is truly like raising a child; no stage can be overlooked.

Although the three dimensions were not upgraded, the mastery of spiritual energy and supernatural abilities were improved.

Supernatural powers go without saying, but the reason why Dao Foundation supernatural powers are so important is that they will upgrade along with the Dao Foundation. No matter what level the messenger is, he can trust his own Dao Foundation supernatural powers.

Spiritual Essence Mastery is the multiple between the Divine Soul value and the maximum Spiritual Essence limit. Although the Divine Soul value remains constant, the higher the Dao Foundation level, the more Spiritual Essence one can master per point of Divine Soul.

Yan Qing remembered that the post mentioned that once a player's Spirit Mastery level reaches 2 or higher, and their Divine Soul doubles in the fifth and sixth reincarnations, players will no longer be thinking about how to conserve Spirit, but rather how to unleash all their Spirit in the shortest amount of time to maximize their output! The truly powerful builds are those that maximize the use of Spirit at the sixth reincarnation!

The corpse of the Chongming Bird emitted a lot of glow, but it was obvious at a glance that it did not have orange flames.

Yan Qing was somewhat disappointed and controlled the bunny girl to go and loot.

First, there are 1633 True Spirit Jade, which is not bad;

Keep the materials like 'Double-Eyed Bird Eye', 'Red Gold Feather', and 'Bird Jade' for now;

"Blood of the Auspicious Beast" can be used to restore the durability of all tokens. Yan Qing's eyes lit up. This is a crucial resource, especially in this poor place. Yan Qing was really worried that he would not have the resources to repair the tokens in the future.

Finally, there are two tokens: the "Double Brightness Robe," a rare and precious token of the fourth rank, and the "Heavenly Whip," an ordinary token of the fourth rank.

The Demon King in the fourth-tier difficult dungeon dropped a fourth-tier common item?
As Yan Qing looked at the "Heavenly Return Whip," an idea popped into her mind.

　I watched TI last night, and I felt it was a bit of a pity.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)