The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

It fell out when the last body fell, landing on the sand, its surface covered with a faint sheen.

Su Mu walked up and picked it up, holding it in his hand before he could see its full appearance.

It was black with gold lettering, the back of which was engraved with the word "cable," while the front featured a symbol he had never seen before.

[Cable Assistance Order]

[Type: Special Consumable]

[Use this item to obtain an A-level cable quest. Quest completion reward: Platinum Chest.]

Platinum Chest.

Su Mu's breath hitched slightly.

The treasure chest levels he currently knows, from lowest to highest, are gray, bronze, silver, and gold.

The platinum chest was clearly above the gold one. This was the first time he had ever seen anything related to the platinum chest.

He used it without any hesitation.

The token shattered into specks of light in his hand, followed by a system announcement that echoed throughout the entire 886 cable:

[886 Cable Announcement: Survivor Su Mu has received the first Cable Mission Order, officially activating the Cable Mission module for this cable.]

[Personal Announcement: Due to your significant contribution to unlocking the Cable quest module, you have received a permanent buff... Cable quest rewards have been increased by an additional 10%.]

Su Mu had a slight smile on his face.

"There are additional benefits."

Before the announcement was even finished, several follow-up notifications popped up:

[You have received the public quest: Find the Ancient City of Loulan]

[You have obtained the personal quest: The Scepter of the Queen of Loulan]

He opened the panel, and the extra module was below the previous guild tasks.

First, let's look at the common tasks.

Mission Name: Searching for the Ancient City of Loulan

Task type: Cable common task (shared across cables)

Mission Description: The lost ancient city of Loulan lies buried beneath the yellow sands. Find and unlock the ancient city of Loulan (this is a multi-tether mission; other tethers will be unlocked after three days or when a survivor of one of the tethers receives a mission token).

Mission Phase: Phase One... Locating the Ancient City of Loulan. Details of the unlocked mission will be available after the ancient city is discovered.

Task Rewards: Calculated based on contribution. Finding the cable to the ancient city of Loulan first will grant a 5% bonus to the total reward.

Phase Two: Unsealing Loulan, finding the Unsealing Stone, and completing the unsealing process. Details of this phase require visiting the ancient city of Loulan.

Mission Reward: Bonus calculated based on the percentage of Unsealed Stones collected along the cable. Total reward is 95%.

Su Mu then opened the personal tasks.

Quest Name: The Scepter of the Queen of Loulan

Task Type: Individual Task (Level A)

Mission Description: After the ancient city of Loulan is unsealed, venture deep into its heart to obtain the Scepter of the Clown Queen of Loulan.

Mission Reward: Platinum Chest x1.

Note: This quest requires the Loulan Ancient City to be unsealed before further details can be triggered. Personal quest rewards are increased by 10%.

Su Mu read it twice, and his brows slowly furrowed.

"This task...can't be done in a short time," he said in a low voice.

Searching for the ancient city of Loulan is a massive undertaking that requires a huge amount of manpower and resources, as you can tell from the name alone.

The desert is so vast, who knows where the ancient city is buried? And it needs to be unsealed before the scepter can be retrieved.

He sighed.

"After all that effort, all I got was a mission token, which I can't complete in a short time. It's really pathetic."

Su Mu put away the panel, glanced at the corpses scattered on the ground, and then looked at the almost vanished entrance to the secret realm.

He was about to leave when he suddenly felt something was wrong.

The entrance had been swept away by the aftershocks of the massive attack and was almost invisible, but it had not completely disappeared.

And those corpses... were not absorbed by the sand as before.

"Before, after I killed them, they would slowly sink into the sand. This time, they didn't."

Su Mu stopped, thought for a moment, walked to a corpse, and kicked it with his toe.

Very real.

The corpses that were there before would soon turn into a puddle of soft sand, or simply scatter into sand.

But now, instead of turning into sand, the corpse still has a stiff, realistic feel to it.

Su Mu recalled that he had tried to finish off the body before, but at that time the corpse was already in a semi-dissipated state, and the spear tip piercing in was no different from piercing the sand.

It is different now.

He noticed something was wrong the moment the tip of the gun touched the surface of the thing.

There is resistance.

Real resistance can only be provided by muscles and bones.

The tip of the gun pierced through, and you could even feel some warm, elastic tissue being torn apart.

"Is he really dead this time?" he whispered.

Before he could finish speaking, a system notification popped up.

[Defeat the Abyss Gatekeeper (Lv15, White) to gain +10 experience points.]

Su Mu was taken aback.

White level 15?

Before he could think it through, the five corpses that had been lying haphazardly on the ground suddenly sprang up at the same time.

They didn't die at all.

The five monsters, as if their bones had been removed, tumbled up from the sand and charged madly toward the entrance to the secret realm.

Su Mu immediately realized what was happening.

"Stop pretending to be dead!"

These guys didn't regain their original strength at all after being resurrected.

They disguised themselves as corpses and returned the items, their purpose being to lull Su Mu into a false sense of security so they could leave.

As soon as Su Mu leaves, they can take the opportunity to escape back to the secret realm.

Su Mu was so angry he laughed.

"They're playing dirty tricks, and they're doing it so convincingly."

But he made preparations in advance.

He had already moved those corpses to a location thirty or forty meters away from the entrance.

Even if these guys sprint at full speed now, with their white level 15 status, they won't be able to escape under his nose.

Su Mu summoned his shadow clones, while he himself charged forward first.

These monsters are indeed much weaker than before.

They are currently only at level 15 (white rank), with pitifully low combat power on their stats, several times weaker than when they first appeared.

Su Mu didn't even activate the Ancient King's Bloodline; he caught up with the enemy solely based on his base attributes and spear.

The first one was shot through the back of the heart and fell into the sand, never to rise again.

The second one was still more than ten meters from the entrance when it was intercepted from the side by a shadow clone, whose gun barrel swept across and broke its leg.

The third, the fourth, the fifth, they fell one after another.

Su Mu did not stop after he finished hitting the target.

He carried a long spear and stabbed the corpses one by one.

[Defeat the Abyss Gatekeeper (Lv15, White) to gain +10 experience points.]

One shot, two shots, three shots.

Each time the spear pierced the solid, the tip emerged covered in dark blood—a clear indication of this.

And after these monsters die.

Su Mu pierced through again with his spear.

However, this time there were no prompts at all.

He was still uneasy, so he simply stood there, staring at the corpses.

The wind blew from afar, carrying sand that rustled against the corpses.

Ten minutes later, the entrance to the secret realm finally began to disappear.

Starting from the bottom, it's like a sand painting blown away by the wind, peeling away little by little from the ground upwards.

Finally, the entire door transformed into countless tiny specks of light, disappearing into the afterglow of the setting sun, which had completely sunk below the horizon.

The moment the entrance completely disappeared, the corpse on the ground changed.

As if their last bit of support had been drained, they began to crack from the surface, peeling off piece by piece, and then turning into sand and dust, merging into this desert.

After the sandstorm cleared, two more things appeared where the corpses had been lying.