Chapter Ninety-Seven: Details

Xu Ying’s stomp made the phantoms above the Rebirth Grass vanish in an instant. Countless roots shot up from beneath the ground, winding toward him.

But Xu Ying was faster still. With only a shift of his body, he retreated to the spot where he had first stood. At the same time, the strange weapon in his hands, made of white bone, transformed into a heavy hammer and crashed straight down at the earth.

The blow shook the ground all at once, and countless bones were jolted up from below.

Then the heavy hammer in Xu Ying’s hands flickered again, becoming a thick iron staff. He kept striking those bones, sending them flying behind him.

With nearly every piece of bone he knocked loose, a root was driven back underground. In no time at all, heaps of white bone had appeared on the surface, while not a single root could be seen anywhere.

After finishing that step, Xu Ying took one more stride forward, into the Rebirth Grass’s attack range. This time no roots sprang out to attack him; only the flower heads, shaped like open hands, kept clawing at his feet.

But what use was that? Xu Ying did not care in the slightest. The thick iron staff in his hands changed again, becoming a pointed long staff that he tapped against the ground with every step.

With each tap, Liu Zong could clearly see that much of the yin energy in the Rebirth Flowers was being drained away. These Rebirth Grass plants had lost most of their lethality.

Then Xu Ying flipped his wrist and gave the long staff a lift. A whole Rebirth Grass plant fell neatly to the ground, intact from root to flower, without the slightest damage.

The sight left Liu Zong and the others astonished and admiring. Even Reina felt that, even after reaching Level 1, she would still never be able to handle such a herb to this extent.

As for Yuan Ying, her gaze was fixed even more on the jewels, as though she were considering whether she might take a few for herself afterward.

Liu Zong, standing at the very back, was not looking at those things at all. His attention was entirely on the white bones that had appeared nearby. He had not forgotten the purpose of this trip, and before long he found something unusual.

Most of the bones were humanoid, about the size of an ordinary person, though their heads were mostly shaped like locusts.

Only a few of the bones were different. They were very small humanoid skeletons, and overall they were still fairly intact. When Liu Zong picked them up for a closer look, he found that even these differed from one another: some had already lost their legs, while others had already lost their hands.

These bones were clearly the skeletons of Kurast dwarves, and from how clean the bones were, it could be seen that they had been dead for about a year.

Liu Zong glanced at Xu Ying, who was still dealing with the Rebirth Grass, then took out the map and began marking it. In the end, he said with some helplessness, “The general situation is clear now. What I still do not understand is whether they carried things from their dwellings to the cemetery, or from the cemetery back to their dwellings.”

Liu Zong’s muttering was heard by Reina beside him. She lifted her chin proudly. “What, your knowledge has run out? Want to hear my opinion?”

Liu Zong gave her a look and found that something about her was off again.

When it came to Reina, Liu Zong was rather speechless. She was clearly very clever, well read, and not someone with low emotional intelligence, yet she always failed to distinguish between reality and the things in books. Whenever she encountered a problem, she would first try to force everything into the mold of a book before doing anything else.

Because of that, she sometimes made choices so exasperating that people had no words for them.

And over this period of time, he had already become used to her habits. Usually, when she spoke in a very soft voice, that was when she was relatively normal. What she said then was all material that had been verified in books, and was quite reliable.

When she became proud or coy, however, that usually meant she had dragged some plot from a romance novel into real life. At such times, it was best to pretend he had not heard a thing.

But Reina did not notice that there was anything wrong with herself. Seeing that Liu Zong did not answer, she actually strode over to him, lifted a leg in front of his face, and made an utterly exasperating gesture.

“You refuse to look at me. Are you thinking about my thighs?”

Liu Zong’s face twitched violently, and even Xu Ying, who was busy ahead of them, slowed his movements.

Yuan Ying, who knew Reina’s personality, stood to the side with a hand over her mouth, laughing without end.

“If you have any ideas, just say them directly. If you can convince me, I’ll take off my stockings and give them to you.”

Liu Zong was so angry at these words that he nearly exploded. He shouted, “Stop reading those strange books all the time! What kind of way is that to talk? Since when did I ever want your stockings?”

When Reina heard him raise his voice, she raised hers as well. “Then what do you want? Let me tell you, I’m an upright person. I won’t give you my underwear or anything like that.”

“Please stop reading those books like The Proud Young Lady and Her Submissive Husband, all right? At the very least, stop reading them while we’re on the move.” Liu Zong was nearly at his limit.

“That won’t do. I have to read at least one chapter every day before I can sleep. If I don’t sleep well, I get angry very easily the next day.” Reina answered without even thinking, chin still lifted high.

At this point, Liu Zong had nothing more to say. He shook his head and said, “Fine, then tell me what ideas you have. Give me the important part.”

“All right.” Reina put on a look that seemed to say he was hopelessly boring. “We’ve already found the bodies of the Kurast dwarves, so we can almost be certain where the amber in your hands came from.

“What you’re wondering about is how the Kurast dwarves retreated back then, isn’t it?”

On matters within her field, Reina was still fairly reliable. After hearing her, Liu Zong nodded in confirmation.

“Then let’s make an assumption. If they were walking from the cemetery toward their dwellings, what would they have carried besides amber?” As she spoke, Reina flipped through the book in her hand. “According to the burial customs of the Kurast dwarves, their tombs contain their own weapons, servants, and equipment.”

“If we can find those things here, then by examining them, we can determine whether they went from the cemetery to the dwellings, or from the dwellings to the cemetery.”

After hearing that, Liu Zong thought about it very carefully, and only then nodded. “Then have you found anything?”

“This spear.” Reina picked up a spear as thin as a wooden needle from the ground. “This is a weapon of the Kurast dwarves. It’s made of wood and has no attributes; it’s a standard ritual implement.

“Judging by how badly it has decayed, this spear has been buried underground for more than a hundred years.”