Chapter 174: Dealing with the Pollution in the Underworld - All Door Keys Collected...
After the apartment was switched to nighttime mode, the collapsed area in the upper-floor corridor reappeared.
Zhou Fangdong looked at the misaligned, collapsed spaces in the seventh-floor corridor and prepared to start making repair workers.
This time, he not only has to repair the seventh floor, but also all the other floors.
In fact, he could have created multiple repair workers and placed them on different floors to work together.
The reason he didn't do that was because one of the raw materials for creating workers was his nightmare clone.
When cleaning up the pollution in Evil Dog Village, Zhou Fangdong tried to create a maximum of a dozen Nightmare clones; any more and his mental energy would drop drastically.
Previously, he needed to keep his Nightmare clones to clean up the pollution in the underworld, and he couldn't leave all the clone slots on repairing the collapsed areas.
However, after his body repair progress reached 99%, his skill effects also improved significantly. Zhou Fangdong decided to test the current limits of his clone.
Now, only nine floors of the collapsed area need to be repaired.
Although the 16th floor is where the most alien projections and mad ghosts are located, there are no collapsed areas on this floor.
Zhou Fangdong suspected that the extraterrestrial projections wandering on the 16th, 17th, and 18th floors were likely brought down from the cracks in the top floor of the apartment building, so these three floors were not included in the scope of the repair work on the collapsed area.
If he were to repair nine floors at the same time, he would need to create at least eighteen Nightmare clones.
Zhou Fangdong prepared himself, keeping an eye on his mental state while trying to create a Nightmare clone.
...It was surprisingly easy; my mental state didn't seem to be declining at all.
Since that's the case, there's nothing to fear. We can just repair all the floors together.
Zhou Fangdong created eighteen workers in one go.
Thinking that it was nighttime and the Key Ghost must have appeared, Zhou Fangdong went around the purification devices on each floor and picked up a bunch of clue notes.
There are now renovation installations on floors two through six. Zhou Fangdong has collected a total of five small notes with clues about the key ghost.
He glanced at the small notes, then at the sandalwood memorial tablet in his hand, and Zhou Fangdong suddenly remembered something.
It is known that the purification device drops small notes at dusk when day and night switch, and he can now use the ancestral tablet to freely switch the day and night state in the apartment—does this mean that he can switch between day and night continuously and shake out all the clues of the key ghost in one go?
After trying to switch to x again and confirming that new notes would drop, Zhou Fangdong switched more than ten times in a row, collecting more than sixty clues related to the key ghost.
Many of these notes contained the same content.
It was only then that Zhou Fangdong realized that the small notes with repeated floor clues could be combined. Putting three duplicates together would upgrade the note, and the upgraded note would reveal the specific location of the ghost.
For example, the note in his hand originally just had "7th floor" written crookedly. After he combined three small notes with "7th floor" on them, more text appeared on the note—"[Next to the entrance door of apartment 703, 7th floor]".
Such precise location really saved him a lot of time, as he no longer had to investigate each ghost one by one.
It's noon outside, and Zhou Fangdong feels that at this rate, he can find all the key ghosts today.
Zhou Fangdong returned to the 7th floor and, after confirming that the repair workers were working diligently, went to the door of room 703.
This key ghost is a ghost messenger, dressed in a black suit and overalls, with a collapsed crack behind him.
Because he could return to the apartment using the [White Paper Lantern], Zhou Fangdong didn't even use his Nightmare clone this time, and went straight into the collapsed crack with his main body.
It was that familiar feeling of penetrating through the plastic film again, and the scene before my eyes quickly changed.
What appeared before Zhou Fangdong was a majestic mountain, with a cave at its foot and a memorial archway in front of it.
Unlike the massive archway with four pillars and three gates at the Gates of Hell, this cave entrance archway has only two pillars and one gate, making it look rather small. The plaque above it bears the three large characters "Gongyang Pavilion".
Zhou Fangdong did not enter the Offering Pavilion immediately because he was shocked to find that the map of the underworld had appeared in his mind.
The floor plan of the underworld is also pixelated, just like the floor plan of an apartment building he usually looks at.
He examined it carefully.
The overall shape of the map of the underworld resembles the Chinese character "中" (zhong).
The uppermost edge is the Road to the Underworld. After walking a certain distance, you will reach the Gate of Hell, followed by the Terrace of Longing for Home, the Village of Evil Dogs, the Golden Rooster Ridge, and the Hall of Bewilderment.
In these areas, both Wangxiangtai and Mihundian are in a state of contamination.
The largest area in the middle is Fengdu City, where the Ten Kings of Hell reside. The remaining ghost messengers should also be located within the city.
The core area of the underworld, Fengdu City, is fine; the pollution is concentrated in the facilities surrounding the underworld, and this pollution is a projection of external gods.
The current state of the underworld is such that as long as it receives the souls of the dead, those souls are likely to be torn apart by the projections of those outer gods. Not only will their souls be scattered, but they will also become nourishment for those projections of outer gods... The City of the Wrongfully Dead is the best example.
Meanwhile, the cracks in the top floor of the apartment building constantly attract ghosts from hell, causing those vengeful spirits to climb into the mortal realm. Therefore, the gates of the underworld are closed, directly severing the passage to the outside world.
Zhou Fangdong is currently in the Offering Pavilion, which is located below Fengdu City. Further down from the Offering Pavilion, there is a fork in the road. The left path leads to the City of the Wrongfully Dead, while the right path leads to the Bridge of Helplessness and the Well of Reincarnation.
All the deceased souls have an account in the Offering Pavilion to receive offerings burned in the mortal world. Souls who need to serve their sentences, or who died violently, can go to the Offering Pavilion to receive offerings burned by their relatives before entering Hell or the City of the Wrongfully Dead, which can improve their imprisonment conditions to some extent.
Before heading to the Bridge of Helplessness, the departed souls can also receive offerings from their relatives and be reincarnated with their "travel expenses".
Besides the obvious pollution of the Offering Pavilion, the Looking-Home Terrace, and the Bewitching Hall on the map, Zhou Fangdong also noticed that the situation of the Naihe Bridge was also very strange.
Even in pixelated form, the anomaly is immediately apparent – the Bridge of Helplessness is now just a bare, empty structure.
There must be a river below for a bridge above, but now the bridge is still there, but the river is gone.
...Could it be that it was drunk up by some projection of an outer god?
Damn those extraterrestrial projections! They're like locusts, devouring and taking everything in their path. If these things were to actually enter the core area of the underworld, the entire underworld would be completely wiped out.
It's fortunate that the underworld closed in advance, otherwise the situation might have been even worse.
The Bridge of Helplessness is malfunctioning, so the Reincarnation Well behind it probably won't be usable either.
It's reasonable to suspect that reincarnation is now manually controlled by the Ten Kings of Hell using a roulette wheel... That must be incredibly arduous.
Zhou Fangdong sighed and prepared to enter the Offering Pavilion to clean up the pollution.
Once the pollution here is cleaned up, the abandoned elementary school's canteen and convenience store can operate normally, and those kids will have snacks to eat.
As Zhou Fangdong entered the Offering Pavilion from the entrance, he discovered that half of the mountain's interior had been hollowed out.
The Offering Pavilion is not a single building, but rather a collection of countless smaller pavilions stacked one on top of another, built against the mountain and continuously built upwards until reaching the summit.
The complex is predominantly dark blue-green, constructed from a type of dark blue-green wood. Each floor features deep, outward-sloping eaves beneath which are windows but no doors. The window frames are cast in bronze, covered with demonic chains and obscure runes.
...Well, to put it simply, this Gongyang Pavilion complex is like an ancient-style version of a courier locker or a QR code-based food delivery locker.
The greenish-blue will-o'-the-wisps flickered on the windowsills and eaves, and the runes on many of the attic windows occasionally flashed with a golden light—clearly, the Offering Pavilion was still in operation.
But before the offerings could take shape, a black tentacle seized the points of light and forcibly removed them from the window opening.
Following the direction the tentacles were moving, Zhou Fangdong shifted his gaze to the right.
The other half of the offering pavilion was occupied by a mountain of flesh, a huge black lump of flesh almost as tall as a mountain. It had no facial features, only a crack at the top, like a mouth.
Countless black tentacles spread out from its body, reaching into the window openings and engulfing the nascent golden specks of light within the attic windows.
As the tentacles transported light, the points of light converged into thin streams, silently flowing into the crack. With each round of absorption, its pitch-black form swelled, like a slowly expanding black balloon.
Looking at the fat, dark-skinned man, Zhou Fangdong was furious.
—Damn delivery thief!
He's already inside, and this guy still dares to blatantly steal food right in front of him.
What's wrong with these extraterrestrial projections? First, an evil god stole food from the ghosts in his apartment corridor; then a placenta pulverized all the souls of the dead in the entire City of the Wrongfully Dead into nutrients, which were then absorbed through the umbilical cord; then some unknown extraterrestrial projection drank the River of Three Crossings dry; and now this big, fat, black guy is stealing offerings from the Offering Pavilion right in front of him—
These alien projections are so rude!
Zhou Fangdong directly used the [Judgment·Decision] devouring ability on the food delivery thief.
With such a large size, it should be able to make a huge profit from the ghost coins.
Zhou Fangdong had thought that this enormous projection of the outer god would have to be devoured several times, but he didn't expect it to succeed on the first try.
His physique looks very imposing, but it turns out he's all bark and no bite... Those alien projections in the 16th-floor corridor even attack him on their own, so why doesn't this guy put up any resistance?
And for such a huge body, they only gave 30,000 ghost coins. How poor!
After the projection of the outer god disappeared, the passage connecting the Offering Pavilion to the apartment began to collapse, and Zhou Fangdong took out the [White Paper Lantern] and returned to the apartment.
The next step is to locate the collapsed cracks connecting to Wangxiangtai.
Following the clues on the note, Zhou Fangdong collected all the keys to the doors on the 16th floor and then found a ghost messenger.
The giant jellyfish-shaped projection of the outer god that occupied the Wangxiangtai Terrace didn't resist at all, and it burst like a balloon with a single poke.
The projection of the Outer God in the Bewitching Palace was also weak; it did not resist and chose to die peacefully.
The fact that he had effortlessly eliminated the pollution in the underworld three times in a row gave Zhou Fangdong the feeling of a max-level expert accidentally entering a newbie village and slicing through melons and vegetables.
After using up all the clues and slips of paper, Zhou Fangdong switched the apartment's state several times and finally succeeded in gathering all the clues for the key ghost, collecting all the apartment door keys.
[The landlord's key has been replenished, and the passage to the rooftop of the apartment building is now open.]
[The Landlord's Key has been completed. Ghost Market and Underworld teleportation points have been added. Use the [Return] skill to teleport to either Ghost Market or Underworld at any time.]
Zhou Fangdong was stunned for a moment, thinking he had misheard: "Teleported to the underworld? Isn't the underworld still under lockdown?"
Yes, it's still under lockdown, but the host can come and go as they please.
The host can also open the gates to the underworld at any time, unseal the underworld, and restore the underworld's reincarnation mechanism to normal.
Is the "Landlord's Key" item really that powerful? Once you collect them all, you can freely enter and exit the underworld and even unseal it. This ability is a bit overpowered, like cheating.
Well, being a minor tyrant isn't really an advantage; being able to teleport to the underworld at any time is very convenient for him. Zhou Fangdong was somewhat concerned about the dried-up Sanzu River. Although the underworld map showed that it wasn't polluted, he still wanted to go and see for himself.
But before that, he needed to check the time... He had been busy for most of the day, running back and forth between different floors looking for the key ghost. It should be evening outside, right?
Just as Zhou Fangdong thought of this, the familiar mission notification sound told him the current time:
[Dynamic Event: Night Attack by a Hundred Demons (Countdown: 1 day)]
Time flies. The ghost actually wasted a whole day looking for the key... He started looking at it at noon, and the whole afternoon and evening were gone.
I feel inexplicably anxious.
Looking at the countdown timer for the mission, Zhou Fangdong asked, "System, what does this one-day countdown mean...?"
Seemingly guessing what X wanted to ask, the system directly said:
[After midnight, the Night Attack by a Hundred Demons officially begins]
In other words, he only had one day left.
Time is a bit tight; he still has a lot of things to do. He also wanted to test the effects of the [lamp oil hand cream] today, but he doesn't know if he'll have enough time.
Since that's the case, let's skip the Bridge of Helplessness in the underworld for now. There's no pollution there, so it's not something we need to deal with right now.
The main quest description for Quest 7 is to collect all the apartment door keys, clean up the pollution in the underworld facilities, repair the underworld, reopen the gates of the underworld, and restore the cycle of reincarnation in this world to normal.
Now that the keys have been collected and the pollution of the underworld has been cleaned up, it will take time to reopen the gates of the underworld.
The collapsed areas in the apartment and the cracks on the roof have not been repaired. If it is opened now, those extraterrestrial projections will definitely try to invade the underworld again.
Let's wait until all the issues with the apartment are resolved before considering unsealing the underworld.
Zhou Fangdong checked the progress of the workers repairing the collapsed areas on each floor.
The lower floors are almost fully repaired, while the floors above the tenth floor will be repaired more slowly, but they should be completed by this morning.
Main quest 6 involves repairing all collapsed areas of the Liwan Apartments, clearing away the external god projections that entered the apartments from the collapsed areas, expelling the main god, and preventing the infinite dungeon from descending.
Of all the collapsed areas in the apartment building, the most difficult to deal with was probably the crack on the top floor.
This gap is the source of the paranormal outbreaks. As long as the gap exists, mad ghosts and projections of other gods will continue to appear from the 16th floor and above.
The door to the rooftop is now open, and he can go to the top floor of the apartment building at any time.
But thinking about the inexplicable panic and headache he experienced on the top floor, Zhou Fangdong felt that now was not the time to go to the top floor.
Let's deal with the renovation and safety issues on the other floors first.
Having just completed a trip to the underworld, Zhou Fangdong now has a balance of 360,000 ghost coins.
The building under renovation has nine floors in total. If all nine floors are renovated using the most basic white-walled renovation package, it will cost a total of 320,000 ghost coins.
I can only say I'm glad I didn't get carried away yesterday and didn't insist on doing renovations on the first floor.
Zhou Fangdong teleported to a hidden room on the second floor, where he slaughtered nine mature baby slimes and obtained nine evil god cores.
"System, keep these cores. Once the collapsed area upstairs is repaired, use these cores to install protective devices immediately."
Thinking that he might not be able to find the time later, Zhou Fangdong continued, "Let's also deduct the 320,000 ghost coins. Once the renovation and protective equipment are installed, we'll renovate all nine floors using the most basic renovation."
Efficiency is the priority now, and to prevent the mastermind from stealing from the house, Zhou Fangdong can only temporarily give up showcasing his artistic talents.
Anyway, the apartment is in his hands, so there's plenty of time to decorate it nicely later.
[Okay, 320,000 Ghost Coins have been deducted, and the decoration preset has been successfully completed.]
With the renovations complete, the next concern is the safety of the tenants during the night of the demons' attack.
To establish an absolutely safe zone within the apartment that is unaffected by the Night of the Hundred Demons, you need 300 reputation points.
Currently, only the first floor is an absolutely safe zone. To make the remaining three floors, which are rented out, also an absolutely safe zone, you would need 900 reputation points.
It's too expensive; I'm a little reluctant to spend the money.
Zhou Fangdong pondered for a moment and asked, "System, during the night of the hundred ghosts' attack, is it possible to have the tenants leave the apartment and move out?"
[During the night of demon attacks, the outside of the apartment is more dangerous for tenants than the inside.]
[If a tenant dies during the Night of a Hundred Demons, the ghost in that tenant's room may go berserk and join the attack. Please proceed with caution.]
"Is it possible for the tenant to stay in another tenant's room?"
The first floor is now an absolutely safe area. If tenants from other floors are moved to the first floor, they should also be safe.
No, during the night of the demons' attack, tenants must remain in their own rooms within the apartment building.
Okay, it seems we can't find a loophole. To ensure the tenants are completely unaffected, we have to pay 900 reputation points.
The patients at Liwan Hospital haven't been discharged yet, and the reputation settlement will have to wait a while.
Seeing this, Zhou Fangdong teleported directly to the basement to check the manufacturing progress of the [lamp oil hand cream].
The Supreme God has been hiding and refusing to show himself; it's time to invade the Supreme God's space and take the initiative.
No matter how many main god dungeons it invades or how many players it kills, it's all insignificant to it. Only when this cowardly thing is severely punished and subdued will it truly give up.
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