This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 146 Shu Li?

Outside the ancient city, across two mountains, a group of people squatted on the edge of a field, looking into the distance in a state of panic.

"Is it still moving?"

"Yes."

"The Dark Zone has also moved?"

"Yes……"

Liang Zhenduan scratched his head. He looked like he wanted to pull out his hair, but he held back.

In the distance, a pitch-black area was moving at a constant speed. It was the dark area of ​​'Shu Li'.

In the darkness, an old farmer in coarse clothes walked slowly across the fields. The setting sun could not reach him, but everyone could see that he was moving towards the old city!
"Go check! There must be something in Gushi that's attracting it!" Liang Zhenduan shouted, "Are all the people here?"

"One third of the 120 people on the list have arrived, and the rest are on their way."

"Where's Nie Weiyang?"

"He hasn't... Oh! He's coming!"

'Om—'

The setting sun dyed the sky and the earth orange and red. The lucky lottery crossed the uncultivated wilderness, jumped onto the ridge of the field, and headed straight here.

Under the light and shadow, the black body of the motorcycle reflects a beautiful blood orange color. The blue crystal shield blade on the edge of the round shield merges with the blue light in front and behind the motorcycle, cutting out a color like the blue sky in the orange-red world.

The knight in black and silver armor was covered in light, his armor gleaming like black iron surrounded by diamonds. He glanced sideways at the setting sun - except for the color, it was exactly the same as the blood moon people remembered.

Nie Weiyang shook his head slightly, stepped on the accelerator to increase the speed, crossed the hill like lightning, pulled up the front of the car and jumped up, landing heavily next to Liang Zhenduan, splashing a cloud of mud, drew an arc, and stopped on a stone platform.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Seeing him coming, Liang Zhenduan's expression relaxed a little and replied, "Shuli is moving towards Gushi. I suspect something in the city is attracting it..."

Nie Weiyang frowned, and countless recent information and intelligence left over from his previous life flashed through his mind, and he quickly put together an answer in his mind.

"The food is still in the city." Nie Weiyang's expression was a bit complicated. "Go to Xinyin District and look for it... No, go and arrest everyone in the cafeteria in Xinyin District and interrogate them. Look for the cellars and underground passages!"

"What?" Liang Zhenduan was stunned for a moment, then his expression turned serious. "We previously speculated that the stolen grain might still be in the city. Do you think so too?"

"It's very likely." Nie Weiyang sighed. "The boss's judgment can be tricked. To trick a boss like Shuli, you need to use good land, good farm tools, or a large amount of food to perform a ritual. The Return Sect is very good at this trick because the Sky Crossing Demons are good at illusions. This is the first trick they learned."

"The description of the hostile target file clearly states that the boss has no thoughts. A cultural boss like this walking in the wild is just an illusion." Liang Zhenduan's face darkened, but it wasn't directed at Nie Weiyang. "Is there anything here we should know?"

Nie Weiyang smiled.

"Yes, it's just an illusion, without even true self-awareness... But have you forgotten?" Nie Weiyang gently pointed out the fact: "The boss has spiritual attributes."

The BOSS has... spiritual attributes!
Liang Zhenduan suddenly felt a chill down his spine.

How could he have ignored this fact before?! Damn! Those bosses, phantoms without self-awareness, where the hell did their spiritual attributes come from?!

Liang Zhenduan was so desperate that he wanted to pull his hair out, but he remained calm and quickly followed Nie Weiyang's train of thought: "What does its spiritual attribute come from? Or rather, where does it come from?"

While asking, he also glanced at the people accompanying him - two melee fighters, one ranged profession who was either a shooter or a spellcaster, and one stealth profession. This was the basic guard configuration for important personnel in Gushi.

There is no defensive profession called T position because there are really not many such people in the world, so naturally most of them are assigned to expedition teams.

Except for the spellcaster, the spiritual attributes of all the accompanying personnel in this team are lower than Liang Zhenduan.

Nie Weiyang would occasionally divulge a few secrets, and Liang Zhenduan had to consider the tolerance of those around him for such information. At this moment, these people warily scanned their surroundings while listening to the two men's conversation, but this time, Nie Weiyang not only refrained from revealing any secrets, but also didn't answer any questions.

He just gave a somewhat melancholy smile and spread out his hands.

Liang Zhenduan knew that this meant he couldn't say it, but he still asked unwillingly, "Can't you hint at it?"

"It's impossible to hint at it." Nie Weiyang said.

This is really impossible to hint at - after all, the "cultural" BOSS, which includes national culture, myths and legends, religious humanities, is too broad in scope and the related information is too heavy.

[Their spiritual attributes come from a larger individual, which is also a collective.]

This sentence would make any player with a mental strength of less than 50 have their brain explode if they understood it.

Moreover, it does nothing to address the crisis at hand.

Nie Weiyang turned his head and looked towards Shuli's dark area.

Around that dark world, nearly a hundred people have gathered to form a team, quickly following the dark area, ready to enter it at any time and start a life-and-death challenge.

Shuli's dark zone covers dozens of acres, and mechanical vehicles are not allowed to enter. The challenge level is as high as level 20, and the recommended number of challengers is more than people.

Nowadays, the average level of players is not even close to 20. As long as it enters the ancient city, it will definitely cause devastating damage.

Nie Weiyang stepped on a stone and stared at the fields in the distance.

He could see that the top combat forces above level 20 in Gushi were continuously coming. Most of them were mid-range long-range professions, followed by long-range professions, and the least were melee professions. Apart from defense and healing, these two were rare.

There are the fewest high-end players in melee professions. This is because melee professions are too close to danger, and sometimes, a distraction may cost them their lives.

"Our career selection recommendations, skill allocation plan planning, optimal development process planning, and specialized combat training for various professions will be released soon. Once the garrison force is established, the career configuration will become more balanced."

Liang Zhenduan stood beside Nie Weiyang and introduced him to the subsequent plans of the ancient city.

Nie Weiyang nodded slightly. Seeing that the people in the distance had not arrived yet, he told Liang Zhenduan about the puppeteer and described the approximate location of the biological research institute.

"The normal strength of the Lost Soul Puppet Master is not that high. Under the current circumstances, he is considered capable if he can control a hundred humanoid puppets. But the number of puppets he controls is actually far more than a hundred. This is very strange, just like the fact that he turned into a dog." Nie Weiyang said softly.

Unlike the 'establishment of spiritual connection' of summoner-type professions, the control of puppeteer-type professions tends to 'directly manipulate the spiritual carrier'.

This is what it means to "manipulate a puppet" - this kind of manipulation is relatively more difficult to change the will of the puppet itself.

As a hidden profession, the Soul-Lost Puppet Master is one of the best. The control of this profession requires the puppeteer himself to have a sufficient understanding of the life form and changes of the controlled person.

The puppets of the Soul-Losing Puppet Master are corpses, precisely because the ultimate change of life is death.

Death is a necessary part of the natural cycle of nurturing new life.

Of course, there's more than one Lost Soul Puppet Master in this world. The one in Gushi isn't even the strongest. The strongest one is next door, having gradually snowballed from the great plague during the rainy season...

But even that soul-destroying puppeteer couldn't directly control thousands of puppets right now.

Turning into a dog sounds abstract, but in Nie Weiyang's opinion, it may be a manifestation of the bloodline being extremely purified in a short period of time, so that the life form is changed.

So, does the increase in the number of manipulated targets have anything to do with changing life forms?
—Yes, brother, yes.

According to Nie Weiyang's knowledge, something must have happened here. Adding to this the events unfolding before him, he could only think of one thing. Its keywords were 'life', 'diet', 'reproduction', 'alienation', 'death', and 'cycle'. Each time it appeared, there was a different precursor, and its name was -

[World BOSS: The Cycle of Life and Death]!
(End of this chapter)