Chapter 246: Eliminating the Enemy and Seeking Treasure (Please Subscribe)

After the shock, Commandant Zhen also quickly realized and understood that Du En, who had previously run off to investigate the corpses, had only arrived at this moment, and that Cui Wei had been silent until now; thus, it was highly probable that he had already engaged in a fierce battle with Cui Wei.

That traitorous villain must have had his schemes ruined and met his end!

Therefore, only then did Commandant Zhen truly heave a long sigh of relief, hurriedly circulating his Qi to regulate his condition, so as to be prepared for any contingencies.

At the same time, he could not help but secretly consider himself lucky.

"It is fortunate that I did not rashly fall out and clash with this person earlier; otherwise, this whole affair would truly have been beyond saving, and even sacrificing my life in the line of duty would have been a futile gesture!"

While he was secretly rejoicing on this side, the other side was already terrified out of its wits!

"You, you—what exactly is going on with you? This is impossible, something is not right..."

Liu Hong trembled with fear, his copper-armored zombie flesh-shell already half-shattered by that translucent, gradient-colored fist; looking at Du En, whose Spirit of Firmness had finally manifested and whose divine might was even greater, he felt it was beyond belief.

"What, what exactly were our plans... what were we doing?"

A moment later, Zang Ba lamented with a miserable sigh, and with a look of bewilderment, he flew backward, crashing into the ground with a foot still following him, heavy as a collapsing mountain, causing the corpse at the point of impact to burst open as if a flower had bloomed.

In the blink of an eye, he was on the verge of death, in a state of dying.

However, his desire for survival erupting, Zang Ba still wanted to take the opportunity to feign weakness and attempt to ambush Du En while he turned to fiercely attack Liu Hong again, but he was instead relentlessly pursued by him, directly struck by a fist from a distance, the fist force and magic power erupting to blow the guy's head apart.

The gaze locked onto Liu Hong once again.

Now it is your turn.

He said this silently.

"You, don't come over here!"

Liu Hong, who had originally been suppressing his fear and attempting to close in to support Zang Ba, now roared in impotent rage and retreated with small, quick steps, but he could not stop Du En from charging over, forcing him to the front, and directly clapping his hands together in a great strike.

Slap!

Like swatting a fly, he directly crushed the head of this copper-armored corpse, a sight that made even Commandant Zhen, who was still embedded in the shallow decorative surface of the city wall, twitch his stern face uncontrollably.

He felt a bit of tooth-aching chill.

Since the main enemies had been dealt with, Du En concealed his Spirit of Firmness, turned to start finishing off the other trash zombies, and then began to clean up the scene, pretending to burn those unusable zombie-half-corpses.

At the same time, he spoke naturally to Commandant Zhen, who had already pried himself out: "Although the three main evils have been removed this time, I am, after all, only a traveling practitioner without any actual authority; I must trouble the Commandant to reorganize and restart the inner and outer city defenses, and seal the City Lord's Mansion, lest the thieves have any remaining tricks up their sleeves."

"That is exactly what should be done."

Commandant Zhen did not doubt or linger, flying at top speed into the Inner City Affairs Office, breaking the various traps Zang Ba had left behind, taking over the city defenses with his authority as an Inspecting Commandant, and beginning to cast spells to restart the vast majority of functions that had originally been stagnant and paralyzed.

Du En, meanwhile, under the cover of golden flames, quickly and neatly dug pits to bury the corpses.

Although he arrived quite late and only fifty-eight were left usable, it could still be considered not bad.

"Now I am still short two hundred and thirty-six; hmm, quite fast, I estimate I will soon be able to achieve a small success in the divine ability."

After burying the corpses, he also took the opportunity to loot the personal belongings of the two stewards, but because they were all packed in storage bags, forced dismantling and looting resulted in a discount, and he could only obtain about twenty to thirty percent of the items.

There were no finished magical artifacts or talismans; perhaps they were used up while besieging Commandant Zhen, or perhaps there were remnants, but his luck was bad, so he didn't manage to grab them.

As for the rest, there were a total of six hundred and thirty-three high-grade spirit stones, several dozen third-grade high-grade spiritual objects, and large and small bottles of medicinal pills; these were quite numerous, with twenty-two bottles for cultivation, all of which were third-grade high-grade, and thirty bottles for recovery, also third-grade high-grade, enough for two months of his accelerated spell grinding.

"It still seems too little, especially the severe shortage of spiritual objects that can serve as main ingredients for culinary cooking; and in this city, looking at this miserable state, even if there are any third-grade spirit beasts still alive, there will be no surplus to sell to me in the future."

Du En thought as he looked around.

At this moment, the flames were gradually extinguishing, and thick black ash was scattered everywhere.

All left behind by the half-zombies or zombies he had just incinerated.

Among them, the remains of those spirit beasts that had undergone partial corpse transformation were the most numerous; earlier, corpse parts were scattered everywhere, so dense it was hard to count how many Commandant Zhen had killed.

Adding those that could not turn into third-grade zombies and were thus eaten by the demonic array as high-grade fuel, it could be said that the spirit beast farming in the inner city must have suffered a devastating blow, or even total annihilation, and it would be impossible to squeeze out any surplus for him in the future.

Therefore, for the main ingredients for culinary cooking, he would have to find a way from other aspects.

"Using the method learned from Meng Changqing in the Southern Azure ruins, I could use the main trunk wood of the Red Leaf Firmiana as a main ingredient, but of the thousand trees on me, I need to return eighty percent to the treasury, so now I can only..."

Du En pondered, casting his gaze into the city.

Cui Wei had been secretly plotting beforehand; there should be several secret treasuries storing spiritual objects like the Red Leaf Firmiana, used to quietly raise the people of this city, to serve as blood-food in the past, and to be used for blood sacrifice tonight.

"The reason third-grade high-grade Red Leaf Firmiana seems abundant in the mountains is likely because only medium and low-grade ones were used to fulfill quotas in previous years, and the reason this was possible is that, in reality, they had already begun to consciously reduce production and lower quality a long time ago..."

Under such operations, a portion of the surplus was left in the wild—that is, the ones Du En had previously appraised—which could be used to deal with investigations from above; even if the situation of just getting by was discovered, the crime would not actually be too great.

As long as the conspiracy could be covered up, it meant there was definitely another portion that Cui Wei had secretly hidden away, which had likely not been used up yet.

And the reason Du En thought they were in a secret treasury rather than in a storage bag was that storage bags were a type of strictly controlled magical artifact; first and second-grade ones were fine, but for those above the third grade, the refining and flow of every single one were registered.

It can only be said that although this type of magical artifact always makes one feel very helpless and regretful when forced to dismantle them, in a situation like this, it can also bring unexpected gains.

Du En disappeared from where he stood and began to take action.

The Red Firmiana City was gradually quieting down; he wandered through the inner and outer cities, taking the opportunity to gather the surviving cultivators in the city, allowing the wounded to receive timely treatment, and ensuring that those who could still be saved from half-corpse transformation would not be mistakenly killed by their colleagues who were blinded by bloodlust, which would have caused unnecessary tragedies.

And when Commandant Zhen successfully took over and restarted the city defenses and began to seal the City Lord's Mansion, Du En finally found a secret treasury left behind by Cui Wei amidst the ruins.

It was located in an inconspicuous place in the outer city, and only when the city defenses in this area were restarted did it reveal a clue.

(End of chapter)