Chapter 88: Rewards
Hungry Spirit Blue Knight nodded vigorously. “Hey, speak of the devil! The burial shrouds sold at the town funeral parlor are truly something else. I’ve been eyeing a set for myself too.”
Beneath everyone’s boots, the pale teleportation rings for exiting the trial flared to life. Smiling through the swirling particles of light, Lin Huai gave an approving nod. “Go ahead and buy them. They come with a handy temporary disguise buff.”
Jiangzhehu Inheritor waved a hand generously. “That settles it! To celebrate our squad’s victory today, I’m buying every single member of the Elite Squad a full set of burial shrouds!”
Before her voice had fully faded, the light flashed, and Lin Huai found herself back on the long, asphalt highway.
Her armored hearse and the green jade coffin materialized right beside her. Looking up at the stone casket, her heart ached; the smooth, polished surface was webbed with deep fractures and chipped corners from smashing through Master Cloud Cliff’s barrier. Without a moment’s delay, she pulled out a high-grade repair card and summoned an underworld mechanic to restore it.
While waiting for the repairman to arrive, the system began tallying and distributing the trial rewards.
Lin Huai tapped open her interface. As the official clearance zone of the joint instance, every single driver from Zone 444 who had entered the trial received a baseline completion bundle: fifty Yin energy crystals, fifty Yang energy crystals, and one Green Ghost Box each.
Next came the rewards calculated from individual monster kills. Because putting down the Ghost Mother was treated by the system as wiping out the entire spawned horde at once, Lin Huai’s personal kill count skyrocketed to a staggering 18,296. That massive number translated into an enormous mountain of basic building materials and energy stones.
The rest of the zone benefited in the same way. Every participant from Zone 444 had an inflated kill tally that easily dwarfed the scores of other districts, resulting in a rich harvest for all.
Once the baseline rewards finished processing, the screen chimed again with a fresh series of notifications.
Her core squad had earned the First Kill award for the Birth Ghost. Each member of the six-person team received three Green Ghost Boxes, one Bone-Crushing Box, and an additional fifty crystals of each type.
Lin Huai herself, having resolved the Birth Ghost’s lingering obsession through peaceful salvation rather than destruction, received a unique personal drop: the Birth Ghost’s Cloth Bag.
Looking at the dripping red burlap pouch that appeared in her hands, Lin Huai blinked in surprise and ran a quick scan.
[The Birth Ghost’s Cloth Bag: An artifact born from the Birth Ghost’s dying obsession. The pouch can expand or shrink at will. Any player or monster shoved inside is subjected to a womb-like state, submerged in cursed blood until they suffocate. Monsters trapped inside are gradually dissolved into raw essence by the fluid. Maximum capacity: 9 targets simultaneously.]
Reading through the attributes, Lin Huai let out a quiet chuckle. “Now this is an interesting little toy.”
She slipped the red pouch safely into her backpack and returned to her screen, where more loot was still waiting to be claimed.
Her team had also claimed the First Kill for the Ghost Mother herself. Although the boss had fallen under a collective assault by the drivers of Zone 444, the game logic awarded the official First Kill title to the specific squad that landed the killing blow.
As the true dungeon boss, the Ghost Mother’s bounty was far richer than the Birth Ghost’s:
Each of the six squad members received five Green Ghost Boxes, two Bone-Crushing Boxes, and a generous grant of one hundred Yin crystals and one hundred Yang crystals.
Taking in the sheer volume of resources in her storage and the tall stack of supply chests sitting on the pavement, Lin Huai raised an eyebrow in genuine satisfaction. This joint instance had turned out to be an incredible windfall!
The sound of heavy wings beating against the air broke through her thoughts as a Nine-Headed Bird repair vehicle touched down on the road. Because Lin Huai had spent a high-grade repair card, the mechanic—a Nine-Headed Bird spirit dressed neatly in an apron—bowed low to her the second its talons touched the tarmac.
“Greetings, distinguished guest. I am Xixi, your assigned technician for this service. Your vehicle and artifact overhaul will take approximately ten minutes. Please make yourself comfortable.”
A high-grade card truly made a difference; it even came with polite customer service.
Lin Huai nodded and stepped aside, letting Xixi get to work while she turned her attention to the supply chests at her feet.
In total, she had nine Green Ghost Boxes and three Bone-Crushing Boxes. Working quickly, she popped the latches and sorted through the loot. She carefully separated the drops from five of the Green Ghost Boxes and two of the Bone-Crushing Boxes, storing those specific items into the Space Jade Bangle.
The First Kill on the Ghost Mother belonged to the shared effort of every driver in Zone 444 who had held the line. She had no intention of hoarding it all for herself; she would distribute those supplies to the participants once they reached safety.
Just as she was pondering the upcoming visit to the hub town, Old Hei’s grating voice blasted through the district channel.
[Well, look at that! There are actually still over four thousand of you breathing!]
[What are you standing around for, you slackers? Hit the gas! Have you finished your daily mileage quotas yet?]
[I’m giving you exactly two hours to clock your distance. Once the two hours are up, everyone merges straight into the regional hub town for the district integration trial. Any useless slug who can’t clear two hundred kilometers in two hours can just lie down and wait for the reaper!]
Remembering the sharp, soul-shaking shout of “Idiot!” that had snapped her out of Su Wan’s charm spell during the ambush, Lin Huai suddenly found Old Hei’s rude ranting oddly reassuring and familiar.
By now, both her armored hearse and the emerald coffin were fully restored. The high-grade repair card included a complimentary coat of polish; not only were the dents and shattered jade repaired, but the exterior paint—dull from weeks of acid rain—now gleamed with a deep, vibrant shine.
Once Xixi packed up and took flight, Lin Huai climbed aboard the hearse. She walked straight up to the glass observation lounge on the second floor, settling onto the comfortable sofa to enjoy a hot meal while the automated navigation system covered her required mileage.
Opening her special inventory tab, she began searching for something valuable she could give Milk Tea to repay the debt of that Nine Revolutions Soul Returning Pill:
[Special Items: Intermediate Crafting Bench x1, Low-grade Talisman Blueprint x10, Low-grade Artifact Blueprint x8, Intermediate Talisman Blueprint x10, Intermediate Artifact Blueprint x6, High-grade Talisman Blueprint x3, Undertaker Work Permit x1, Altar Token x2, Blueprint Duplicator x1, Earth God Temple Route Guide x1, Nine-Headed Bird Golden Feather x3, Underworld Pawnshop Token x1, Instance Shard x2, Outpost Token x1, Immortal Bone x1, Birth Ghost’s Cloth Bag x1, Century-Old Peach Wood Core x2, Ghost Mother Core x1, Molten Refined Gold x3, Decayed Dragon Scale x1, Lightning-Struck Wood x6, Petals of the Netherworld Spider Lily x9, High-grade Recipe Fragment (Nine Revolutions Soul Returning Pill) x1, Ghost Market Invitation x1, Zone Transfer Card x2, Substitute Puppet (Single-Use) x3, Tai Chi Bagua Mirror x1, Ever-Burning Lantern x1, Memory Crystal Orb x1, Voodoo Doll x1, Little Ghost Incubator x1]
Lin Huai tapped each item to inspect its details. The Century-Old Peach Wood Cores, Ghost Mother Core, Molten Refined Gold, Decayed Dragon Scale, Lightning-Struck Wood, and Spider Lily Petals were all rare materials used for crafting and enhancing high-grade magical artifacts. While she had no immediate use for some of them, she locked them safely away for future upgrades.
Then her eyes caught the recipe scrap: High-grade Recipe Fragment (Nine Revolutions Soul Returning Pill).
Lin Huai raised an eyebrow. An actual pill recipe?
Medical concoctions of this tier couldn’t be mass-produced on a regular crafting table; brewing them required a specialized alchemy furnace.
More importantly, it was the exact recipe for the miracle pill that had saved her life. Unfortunately, being only a single torn fragment, it was unusable in its current state.
After a moment of thought, Lin Huai pulled up the Elite Squad chat to ask if anyone else had found matching fragments during the raid so they could piece the full recipe together.
