Chapter 128: Immortal Bone Space
From the inside, the walls looked identical to the coffin’s exterior—four towering boundaries carved from solid blood jade.
The jade itself was crystal clear and a deep, pure crimson, completely free of impurities. Yet at this moment, a brilliant golden radiance seemed to pulse from deep within the stone, swirling softly through the fresh blood-red glow. It was likely a lingering reaction from that golden immortal bone.
In her past life, Chen Feng had used an uncorrupted bone to upgrade his coffin, whereas Lin Huai had used a true immortal bone this time around.
The required material had changed at Level 6. Watching those gentle ribbons of golden light, Lin Huai couldn’t shake the feeling that this coffin was already walking a completely different path from the Corpse-Refining Coffin of her previous life.
Unfortunately, Chen Feng was long dead, and Lin Huai had never seen what his coffin looked like after reaching Level 6. She had no way of knowing what new changes were taking place.
Following Dong Xiaobao forward, they soon arrived before one of the tall blood-jade walls.
As the two approached the crimson surface, a heavy golden gate slowly materialized out of the stone.
Lin Huai reached out and pushed the doors open, stepping across the threshold. Dong Xiaobao tried to drift in right behind her, but an invisible barrier stopped the little spirit cold.
“Xiaobao, wait for me outside.”
Seeing that the baby couldn’t enter, Lin Huai had no choice but to leave her behind. After all, nothing could be safer than the interior of the coffin.
Once Dong Xiaobao obediently drifted away to play, Lin Huai turned her attention to the mysterious realm beyond the doorway.
Behind the golden gate stretched an entirely different world. It didn’t feel like the interior of a coffin at all, and Lin Huai had no clue where she actually was. Everything ahead was swallowed by pitch-black darkness, save for a single square meter of floor illuminated beneath her feet.
Reasoning that this space had formed inside her own coffin and remained connected to it, she figured it shouldn’t hold fatal traps. Summoning her courage, Lin Huai took a few cautious steps forward.
To her surprise, wherever her boots landed, the darkness peeled away, lighting up the area around her.
Watching the clearings flare to life along her path, Lin Huai couldn’t help but feel as if she were playing a life-sized game of Minesweeper.
The ground was paved with neat blue bricks, leading her to guess that she was walking through the interior of some ancient, underground structure.
Seeing an uneven, zigzagging line of light form behind her, Lin Huai’s tidy habits kicked in. She turned back and began pacing methodically in straight rows, determined to uncover a neat, orderly square.
Right as she took her one-hundredth step, her right boot dipped into the dark. The blue stone beneath her sole tilted downward with a dull click. Although she froze immediately, the trap had already been sprung.
A volley of iron arrows whistled out from an unseen corner in the dark. Hearing the sharp gusts tearing through the air, Lin Huai dropped into an instinctive roll.
Swoosh—!
The arrows grazed her loose strands of hair, flying out from the shadows only to vanish back into the darkness on the other side.
Glancing at the sunken brick beneath her boots, Lin Huai let out a long, careful breath. “It really is Minesweeper.”
From that point on, Lin Huai weighed every single step with extreme caution. Over a long stretch of time, she disarmed several pressure plates, sliced through a handful of ambushing imps, and mapped out over five hundred paces—lighting up roughly four hundred square meters of floor space.
A quick glance at her system clock showed that it was already approaching 10:00 PM. She couldn’t spend all night wandering a maze inside her own coffin, so she decided to call it for the day and stepped back out through the golden doors.
The moment she crossed the threshold, a golden progress bar lit up over the gate’s frame: [Exploration Progress: 0.01%].
Spotting Lin Huai, Dong Xiaobao floated over eagerly, her large, round eyes blinking with affectionate joy.
Lin Huai frowned at the measly 0.01%, letting out a quiet sigh. She patted the baby’s chubby cheek. “I’m heading back down to the hearse. If you like it in here, feel free to stay. The spiritual aura can purify your soul and help you grow faster.”
Dong Xiaobao nodded happily, floating in mid-air as she watched Lin Huai vanish, teleporting back to the vehicle cabin.
Once inside the hearse, Lin Huai habitually pulled up the district chat to see what people were talking about, only to face an empty feed. Then she remembered—she had placed the entire zone on mute.
However, the Elite Guild and her core squad channels were still fully active, buzzing with excitement over her Level 6 milestone.
[Little Grass Doesn’t Float]: I’m still stuck on Level 3… Crying a river over here!
[Honey Blood Ice Orange]: I finally hit Level 5! Just waiting for an opening to join the Boss’s core raid team!
[Chaikofu Driver]: How did you push to Level 5 so fast? I’m barely scraping through Level 4!
[Information Office Director]: Our Big Shot Bone Ash triggered another server-wide announcement! Absolutely legendary. The rank ones in the other districts must be fuming right now, hahaha.
Reading through the chatter, an idea sparked in Lin Huai’s mind.
Ever since their profitable run into Zone 275 with the Young Miss and Brother He Ping, she had been turning over the concept of running regular inter-district trade operations.
She just hadn’t found a quiet moment to coordinate the details. Now that the idea was fresh again, she opened the squad chat without delay.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: @Jiangzhehu Inheritor, have you thought any more about reselling regional supplies across other zones?
[Jiangzhehu Inheritor]: Boss, great minds think alike! I’ve been putting together a preliminary proposal over the past few days. How about I stop by your car tomorrow so we can go through it?
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: [Thumbs Up.jpg] Truly worthy of our Young Miss—your business instincts are razor-sharp! I’ll wait for your presentation tomorrow.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: @Peace and Violence, Brother He Ping, do you have any technical insights on running cross-district logistics?
[Peace and Violence]: I have a few frameworks in mind, but they aren’t fully fleshed out yet. The technical hardware constraints are the main bottleneck right now.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Why don’t you join us tomorrow as well? We can put our heads together, identify the technical gaps, and I’ll find a way to source the gear!
[Peace and Violence]: Sounds like a plan. The Boss is reliable as always!
As the conversation wrapped up, another long-standing matter crossed Lin Huai’s mind. It had been sitting on the back burner because she previously lacked enough Zone Transfer Cards and didn’t have enough trustworthy people to pull it off.
Now, after several dungeon runs and district mergers, the number of dependable players in the Elite Guild had steadily grown.
Still, she usually let the larger guild manage itself, so the job of screening personnel had to go to Dragon Emerging from the Sea.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: @Dragon Emerging from the Sea, Brother Long, I need your help picking out a few specific operatives. They must be sharp, discreet, and drive low-profile, lower-level vehicles. Above all, their loyalty to Zone 444 and to me must be absolute.
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: ? What’s the mission?
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: To plant undercover scouts near Master Cloud Cliff and Old Mo of Western Hunan. If we have enough candidates, I’d like to slip an operative into the home territories of each of the top ten leaderboard elites.
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: Understood, Boss. Leave it to me. If I can’t find ready-made scouts, I’ll train a batch from scratch!
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Perfect. Let’s aim to finalize the shortlist before this month’s official rankings drop!
