Chapter 97 The royal banquet was excellent; he was the one who led the way.
A declining royal city?
The mission name tells us that the current timeline is in the future.
Unlike the previous side quests, which were detailed down to the word count of conversations, the two new side quests only mention exploring the fallen capital without specifying the extent of the exploration. In contrast, "leaving the fallen capital" is a separate quest.
Generally speaking, the more detailed the task description, the easier it is to complete; if it is too general, players will need to figure it out on their own.
The deadline for completing the task is before dawn. Based on the time when the banquet ended, it is now around midnight, and dawn will break around 6 a.m., so he only has less than six hours.
Time is of the essence, and although there are some things I don't understand, I can only explore and think as I go.
Shi Yu started searching the banquet hall in front of her. The entire banquet hall was smashed to pieces. Small valuable items were taken away, while larger items that couldn't be taken were smashed. She didn't find any useful clues.
Although the palace had changed, the map remained the same. In the past few days, Shi Yu had become familiar with the palace's routes, and after leaving the banquet hall, he explored the other palaces with ease.
The capital had been massacred; not only the banquet hall, but all the palaces were severely damaged, with broken furniture and debris everywhere, dark red dried bloodstains on the walls and floors, and in some places, traces of heavy objects being dragged could still be seen.
Shi Yu searched several important palaces, including the emperor's bedroom, study, meeting place, and secret chamber, but found no useful clues.
Under the moonlight, Shi Yu noticed some messy new footprints on the dusty ground, which looked like some people had come to search after the massacre. If so, then any clues that had been exposed would have been taken away or destroyed long ago.
Explore the [declining royal city]?
Shi Yu reviewed the question again.
It's not the palace but the royal city, so could the area to be explored be more than just the palace?
Shi Yu stood on the highest pavilion of the palace and looked into the distance. All he could see was an inky blackness. The sky was black, and the low houses in the distance were also black. The place where the sky met the earth was an endless expanse of darkness. There was not a single person or a single light.
A crescent moon hung overhead, its clear, cold light illuminating a dead city.
Those dark, unlit places seemed to harbor some potential danger, making people afraid to approach, or perhaps... drawing people in.
Shi Yu descended from the pavilion, left the palace, and headed towards the place where the night was darkest.
.
When Mo Rugui opened his eyes, he found himself in an unfamiliar palace. Before him was a pale golden gauze curtain. He hid behind the curtain, and through the semi-transparent curtain, he could vaguely see two swaying figures in the candlelight.
They seem to be arguing about something.
A voice rang out excitedly: "Traitor! I'm going to expose him!"
"Stop!" another voice stopped him. "You exposed him, and then what? He'll be arrested and executed, and we'll all be implicated. On the bright side, the king might spare us, but he'll never reuse us. On the other hand, the king is suspicious and will eliminate us completely. Not only you and I, but our wives and children will also be affected. What's the point? What are you after?"
The voice continued, "The Ska Dynasty of today is not the Ska Dynasty of the past, and His Majesty the King of today is not the King of the past. The Ska Dynasty has long since declined; if it is not him, it will be someone else..."
A gust of wind blew by, and the gauze curtains fluttered where Mo Rugui was.
"who?!"
With the sound of a knife being drawn, the two men looked over warily.
.
Qin Ke found him kneeling in the middle of a room.
There were two other people in the room. The woman sitting down was dressed in plain clothes. She glanced at him, then lowered her head and covered her face, weeping. The man standing had his back to him. His broad back and body were somewhat stiff. He didn't speak for a long time.
"Have you made up your mind?"
These two must be Ron's parents.
Qin Ke thought.
"Yes, the prosperity of the nation is the responsibility of every citizen!"
Qin Ke: "?"
Before Qin Ke could react to what he had decided, his body seemed to be controlled, opening its mouth to speak. Qin Ke listened stiffly as it continued to speak, its voice unusually firm.
"Besides, the God of War saved my life, I must go!"
Qin Ke: "..."
Good heavens, so it turns out they're sending him to the battlefield.
The woman cried even harder, and then the man held her in his arms to comfort her. The two turned around, and the man waved to her, his wrinkled hand trembling slightly.
"You... should go..."
Qin Ke then turned and left.
As he stepped out of the house, a soldier sneaked up to him and said, "Deputy General Luo, the carriage is ready. Tell the master and madam to hurry!"
Qin Ke: "What's so fast?"
The soldier whispered urgently, "The enemy army is already pressing in! If we don't run now, it will be too late!"
Qin Ke: "???"
One second he was portrayed as someone who would dedicate himself to the cause until his dying breath.
How could you turn into a deserter the very next second?
Qin Ke didn't understand.
He doesn't understand at all!
.
During my student days, I enjoyed watching war movies, especially those depicting massive armies pressing in on the border. Sometimes I would get so engrossed in them that I would even dream about them.
At this moment, Shen Su especially wished he were dreaming.
However, the facts told him otherwise.
Soaring flames, billowing smoke, the sounds of swords clashing, horses' hooves thundering, horns blaring, siege chariots roaring, cannons firing...
"Brothers, charge!"
The soldiers behind him were shouting slogans loudly, but they hadn't even started charging yet.
The city gate has been breached.
The enemy troops surged in like a dark cloud.
Chen Su looked at his position.
Shen Su: "..."
Very good, he's leading the charge.
He truly deserves the title of God of War!
.
"Squeak, squeak..."
A dark shadow darted out from under Shi Yu's feet. Shi Yu was so startled that he took two steps back. By the moonlight, he could see that it was a rat.
He hadn’t seen a single living creature on his way out of the palace, but here a rat appeared.
Shi Yu walked thoughtfully toward the rat, squatted down to examine it closely. It was a gray-black rat, no different from an ordinary rat, except that this rat was rather plump, with its belly bulging from eating.
He searched several houses outside the palace, only to find them ransacked and looted, with nothing left, especially no food. But this rat was so fat, which meant there was food there, and quite a lot of it, probably hidden well and not found.
Shi Yu followed the rat into a small room. After circling around, the rat crawled into the crack between the wall and the floor. Shi Yu found a rusty axe and smashed open the hole.
really.
A staircase is visible underneath.
Shi Yu lit a candle and went down the stairs by its light. At the bottom was a cellar, which contained not only grain but also several jars of wine. The grain bags had been poked through by rats, and the grain had spilled out. The rat that had just come in went to a corner to eat.
When Shi Yu turned around, she saw a skeleton leaning against the wall.
This wasn't the first time he'd seen skeletons. He and Shen Su had even dug them up during the Xincheng Hospital instance, so Shi Yu wasn't frightened. He carried the candle over to take a look.
The skeleton was dressed in ordinary people's clothes; the person had been dead for a long time.
There's still so much food left, and a few jars of wine. The person shouldn't starve. There are no signs of a struggle, and no marks of sharp weapons on the bones. So... this person could only have committed suicide.
Who is he?
Why commit suicide?
The entire city was completely empty; there were no living people, no corpses. This was the only skeleton in the city, and this cellar was probably the only place in the royal city that had not been destroyed.
Shi Yu searched the man's pockets and found a piece of parchment with several large characters written on it in blood:
—Suye! Traitor!
Shi Yuxin was suddenly startled.
.
Mo Rugui stood motionless behind the gauze curtain, holding her breath.
However, the gauze curtain was semi-transparent, and the people outside still managed to spot him.
In the nick of time, Mo Rugui noticed that he was wearing a maid's clothes. He had a flash of inspiration, grabbed a cloth from the table, knelt down, and began to wipe the floor.
A chill ran down my neck.
A sharp blade was already pressed against his neck.
However, the knife left the next second, and its owner said, "Get out, there's no need to clean this place."
Mo Rugui then slipped away.
.
After a moment of stunned silence, Qin Ke came to his senses and began to probe for information.
Fortunately, the soldier was oblivious and quickly got the information out of him.
Qin Ke got the information he wanted to know.
I was stunned again.
Qin Ke: "..."
Damn, there's so much information, I can't process it all at once.
.
The moment the enemy troops poured in, Shen Su's mind went blank for a moment.
But he quickly calmed down, his mind racing.
He triggered a hidden side quest.
This is a copy within a copy.
There are two side quests that need to be completed before dawn: one is to explore the [Fallen Royal City], and the other is to leave the [Fallen Royal City]. However, it doesn't specify how much of the Royal City needs to be explored. The Royal City is so large that it's impossible to search it all in one night. The quest description is also quite general, indicating a high degree of flexibility. So, does exploring only one percent count as exploration?
If that's the case, then he only needs to complete the second side quest, "Leaving [the Declining Royal City]," before dawn.
[The Fallen Kingdom] is a dungeon within a dungeon, and what he needs to do now is find a way to leave this dungeon.
Based on my experience leaving the corridor last time, this way of leaving will most likely also be through a door.
He lost consciousness in the banquet hall, which means the exit was most likely there. There's a distance from there to the banquet hall, and his journey there can be seen as "exploration." So, all we need to do is find that door...
Shen Su sat on his horse, one hand gripping the reins and the other the whip, ready to ride off.
A dense mass of soldiers knelt before him.
A unified and resounding voice shouted under the night sky—
"We swear to follow Prince Suye to the death!"
"We swear to follow Prince Suye to the death!"
"We swear to follow Prince Suye to the death!"
Chen Su: "?"
Shen Su: "???"
What the heck?
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