Chapter 372: Chapter 315: Happy Times Are Coming
Sensing the danger receding, Kuro finally relaxed, and the overheated components gradually cooled down.
Until both wandering monsters had completely left, neither Kuro nor Yisi made a single sound, fearing they might attract attention.
After feeling completely safe, Kuro suddenly became curious about the maze Li Zheng had thrown out.
Why did he clearly see two wandering monsters pass by the entrance, but it was as if they didn’t see them at all and just walked right past?
With this in mind, he walked alone to the entrance to take a look and discovered that what he had seen as an unobstructed passage from the inside appeared to be a wall from the outside!
One of the rules of a True Maze: the maze can have an inner and outer layer, but they must be connected.
Li Zheng had spent some time figuring out this simplified version of a double-layer maze.
The outer layer was just a half-circle; entering from point A and following the edge, one would inevitably exit from point B.
However, in reality, the maze also had an optically hidden point C, located in the middle segment between A and B.
Point C allowed entry into the inner maze, where Li Zheng had placed the capsule residence.
This area was incomplete, with only an entrance but no exit, so by maze rules, this could be considered a "dead end."
If a powerful enemy broke through point C, Li Zheng could only face them head-on.
If he couldn’t win, he could escape quickly with the capsule by leaping over the maze.
However, if it came to fleeing, the True Maze wouldn’t be salvageable.
Because there was an adversary target within.
Kuro passed through point C and returned to his original position.
He hadn’t expected that such a simple maze setup could deceive two terrifying high-tier creatures.
Could this be the legendary "return to simplicity"?
Truly terrifying...
Yisi looked at him with a strange electronic eye, lacking further emotional feedback, still trapped in the earlier fear, unable to extricate himself.
At one moment, when he saw those two creatures at the entrance, he almost triggered the plasma cannon on his back.
Fortunately, the extreme fear caused a delay in the signal transmission, preventing an attack.
Otherwise, they would have been finished.
In terms of mindset, Yisi was not as composed as Kuro. After all, before consciousness conversion, he was still an underage Cron female.
Whereas Kuro, by Earth’s age standards, could be considered Yisi’s "grandfather" generation and was quite familiar with Yisi’s ancestors.
After surviving their first external crisis without danger, Yisi gained a rough understanding of the outer world he had always longed for.
Not much safer than that place, yet mysteriously reassuring.
The two robots from the Bloody Battlefield stood guard through the entire night.
When Li Zheng woke up in the morning, he rubbed his slightly sore nose bridge, wondering, "I didn’t sleep face down, so why’s my nose numb?"
"Awuu awuu!" Xiaoying hopped at the bedside, urging Li Zheng to get up quickly.
After eight hours of rest and rejuvenation, the little guy was full of energy, as if it had endless strength.
Loud with its noises, Li Zheng had no choice but to get up quickly and start his busy day.
He set up breakfast, adjusted the portions, and then left it to the stove for automatic production.
During this time, Li Zheng completed washing and hygiene tasks with Xiaoying.
Before breakfast was ready, Xiaoying opened the door and flew out with Pink Poli for "morning exercise."
Meanwhile, Li Zheng checked what all the Intelligent Humanoids had accomplished overnight.
Besides a large amount of Black Iron and Bronze Level potions, there were also considerable quantities of various cultivated products.
Chou Nong, being the professional he was, had given Li Zheng some pleasant surprises again.
Under his careful care, the "Honey Fruit" and "Luoshen Flower" had each mutated, yielding two football-sized "Golden Honey Fruits" and five "Frost White Ginseng Flowers."
Among them, the "Frost White Ginseng Flower" not only increased in Tier by one level but even gained slight medicinal value beyond its food-grade status.
When crushed and applied to wounds, it could extract toxins below Bronze Level.
For Li Zheng, this effect was almost negligible.
However, it demonstrated the remarkable value of the agricultural humanoids, greater than he expected!
Non-Face had now completely turned into a tool, with its database connected and shared by Chou Nong. It was sent to run errands for any tasks Chou Nong couldn’t handle.
Li Zheng stroked his chin as he surveyed the site, plucking the Arctic Cattail Fruit picked by Chou Nong overnight. He then withdrew two sets of clothes from the trading hall and placed them before the resting (self-recharging) Chou Nong.
He knew Chou Nong had some simple thinking and professional knowledge for tending crops, but he wasn’t sure if Chou Nong understood the concept of "modesty covering," planning to check after it "woke up."
By then, the stove had already completed breakfast, and Li Zheng went over to retrieve all the dishes, issuing specific trades for those he had promised to others.
Recalling Xiaoying, he finished breakfast, ending one of the few leisurely moments of the day.
Biting into an Arctic Cattail Fruit, Li Zheng gathered the capsule residence and reverted the True Maze back to its original form.
Casually checking it, he noticed the maze he drew today was slightly different from yesterday.
Upon enlarging the image for a closer look, he found a section of the wall appeared to have been scored by something sharp, leaving deep grooves.
"Left overnight?" he estimated after some gesturing, suspecting it was done by some kind of spiky tool.
Li Zheng glanced at the energy-deficient, automatically hibernating Kuro and Yisi, noting neither seemed to possess such items, so it wasn’t them.
"Could it have been wandering monsters at night?"
A thought crossed his mind, and he turned towards the direction of several metal doors, spotting two doors with red lights lit outside.
One of these doors had large muddy footprints, each about the size of a washbasin.
[Guess what happened after you fell asleep last night?
Two hugely surprising creatures!
And can you guess how surprising?
Startling even for a Diamond Level!]
Old Pu provided relatively vague detection results, allowing Li Zheng to deduce what had happened.
Two wandering monsters had come in the night; the footprints indicated their size was certainly not small, hence the score marks left on the maze walls.
Moreover, most creatures that are active at night typically have enhanced capabilities, significantly surpassing others of the same level.
"If their base level was Diamond then, after enhancement, they should be close to the Extraordinary level, right?" Li Zheng thought with slightly somber eyes, surprisingly glancing at the robots.
These two must have witnessed everything last night and yet did not wake him?
Were they mere bystanders?
Or...?
Li Zheng checked the robots’ attributes but found no signs of damage.
Instead, Kuro’s loyalty had increased again, reaching 85, surpassing Yisi by two points.
"Strange."
Could being a bystander increase loyalty?
Li Zheng rubbed his chin, unable to understand the reason.
If he couldn’t figure it out, he decided not to dwell on it.
Anyway, the wandering monsters hadn’t affected him this time, nor had there been any loss, so there was no need to overthink it.
At least he could confirm that, for some High Tier monsters, the True Maze had an effect.
"In the future, I’ll deploy the maze during nightly rests, and also complete the inner maze quickly to enhance its effectiveness." He tossed the True Maze into the capsule and attempted to store the resting bleed-stained robots as well.
Watching Kuro and Yisi vanish from sight indicated that although classified as pets, they didn’t belong to the living type.
Going light, Li Zheng, accompanied by Xiaoying, embarked on today’s exploration journey.
...
"Nothing happening over at the Mechanic’s side?" Qian Buguo asked the morning after another team member, and received a usual answer.
"The lantern isn’t with Li Zheng?"
"Or has he guessed our objective?"
Qian Buguo was perplexed.
...
In Channel 67, a room previously explored by players suddenly had a bald strong man covered in concentrated Blood Qi walk out.