Main Text, Chapter Forty-One: Jade Snow

"Phew—I'm exhausted!" Yang Qi collapsed onto the ground and said. It wasn't physical fatigue, but mental exhaustion. If they couldn't wipe out all the rotting corpses before the ghostly buffs faded, it would spell disaster. Both she and Lin Zheng had fought like madmen, staking their lives on every strike. As a result, though the corpses were eradicated, their minds were drained to the limit! Yet, when she glanced at Lin Zheng, she couldn't help rolling her eyes. Was this guy a monster? He was still this energetic!

After resting for a while, Lin Zheng looked over the group and shook his head, saying, "No good, we can't go on with this quest!"

"Yeah!" Yang Qi nodded in agreement. "If they were just normal monsters, we'd still stand a chance, but I never expected the ones here to be elites! Their attack power is too high, and we simply can't withstand their skill damage! This is only the first type of monster, and it's already forced us to pull out all our ultimate moves. There's even less hope for what comes next!"

"Well, then, that settles it. Let's head back!" Lin Zheng said with a trace of helplessness. They had set off to tackle the quest full of spirit and ambition, only to be forced to retreat in tail-between-the-legs defeat now—it was truly frustrating! The group tidied up the battlefield, picking up everything they could salvage, and prepared to return to the city to grind levels obediently. Unexpectedly, in the blink of an eye, Yueshi's right hand erupted with a dazzling blue light. Under their astonished gazes, the blue light transformed into the spirited female swordsman they had seen earlier. The moment she appeared, she spoke with intense emotion, "I can sense it. Longling is just ahead. She's still waiting for me at home, that fool!"

"We can't get past," Yueshi said coldly to the female swordsman. "The monsters blocking the way are too powerful!"

"It's those damned things again!" The female swordsman glanced at the rotting corpses on the ground, a blaze of vengeful fury erupting in her eyes. "Back then, it was you damned creatures that tore Longling and me apart. Now that you're dead, you still want to stop me from seeing her?!" With that, she looked back toward the depths of the valley, her fiery gaze melting into a deep, lingering tenderness. "Longling, you silly girl, Big Sister is back! Big Sister is coming to see you right now!" Turning her head back, she looked at the group with earnest sincerity and pleaded, "I need your help. Will you please help me?"

"We'd love to help you, but the suppression these monsters exert on us is simply too severe!" Lin Zheng said, shaking his head.

"That won't be a problem!" the female swordsman hurriedly replied. "My power can protect you from the suppression for a short time!" With these words, she drew her sword and slashed through the air, scattering a wave of blue light over the group. Instantly, a system prompt chimed in their ears:

"You have received Longxue's Blessing. You will be immune to the effects of monster tier suppression for the next 60 minutes!"

Upon hearing the prompt, the eyes of the group instantly lit up! What was the greatest danger when facing second-advancement monsters? Attack power? Skills? None of those—it was the lethal tier suppression! Double the damage—no one could endure that! Now that the tier suppression had been temporarily lifted, what else did they have to fear?!

"Is it possible now?" Longxue asked nervously, looking at Lin Zheng and the others. Lin Zheng smiled faintly and nodded with absolute firmness. Seeing this, Longxue smiled, instantly overcome with emotion.

With Longxue's blessing, the plan to head home naturally fell through. After a brief rest, the group resumed their advance deep into the canyon. Passing a bend, they entered a slightly flatter, wider valley, but the monsters that greeted their eyes caused their pupils to contract! Cavalry! Stretching out before them was a vast expanse of cavalry!

Lin Zheng checked the stats of these cavalry units:

Cursed Knight: Level 54 (Elite), Physical Attack 1650-2150, Physical Defense 950, Magical Defense 600, HP 35000, Skill—Thunder Strike LV1. Noble knights from a millennium ago, the immense resentment of their cursed deaths transformed them into immortal undead knights. Unlike ordinary undead knights, they possess powerful cursed energy, granting them higher resistance to magic and making them immune to extra magical damage.

Their attack power was lower than the rotting corpses, but their defense and HP had been significantly boosted. Although their magical defense was slightly lower, there was no extra damage multiplier, making these knights look formidable from every angle! If Lin Zheng and the others had to fight them alone—especially while their major skills were still on cooldown—it would probably take over an hour just to clear out these blocking knights. Fortunately, this time, they had the soul of the powerful swordsman Longxue fighting alongside them! Since Longxue was an NPC, her damage against the Cursed Knights was terrifying. Whenever her spirit-form sword cleaved into a Cursed Knight, it resulted in an instant kill!

Lin Zheng finally understood that this quest, "A Millennium's Tenderness," required Longxue's assistance to carve a path to the bottom of the valley. Otherwise, players alone could never complete the quest under the heavy burden of tier suppression. If it truly relied solely on players, the quest's difficulty would undoubtedly surpass Epic grade, which was clearly impossible! The game did not allow uncompletable quests to exist, which was why Longxue appeared during the quest progression. The prerequisite for all this was presumably the elimination of the first wave of incoming Blaze Rotting Corpses—serving as a way to ramp up the quest's difficulty a little.

Longxue was now the primary damage dealer, while Lin Zheng and his companions acted as her bodyguards. After all, though Longxue slaughtered monsters fiercely, getting hacked by them would still spell doom for her. If Longxue died, the quest would undoubtedly fail! Therefore, Lin Zheng's mission was to protect Longxue from being attacked. To be honest, this job was far from easy. Longxue charged relentlessly into massive packs of monsters, dragging Lin Zheng and the others along with her as they desperately intercepted blow after blow. This situation was far more exhausting than fighting on their own, leaving Yang Qi so exasperated that she glared fiercely, itching to rush up and curse Longxue out, and demand, "Damn it, do you even know how to pull mobs?!"

The reality was that this girl actually *did* run up and ask. In response, Longxue looked completely bewildered, turned her back, and continued plowing into the mob of monsters, leaving Yang Qi speechless as she had no choice but to follow and slash along with her!

With Longxue—an NPC capable of one-hit kills—leading the charge, the massive horde of Cursed Knights was wiped out in less than ten minutes. The price for this, however, was that Lin Zheng's group had chugged tons of expensive recovery items yet gained zero experience points. Aside from the corpses of the Cursed Knights, the ground didn't drop a single copper coin. If it weren't for the sake of the quest, or the worry that they might not survive otherwise, Yang Qi would have seriously considered going up to fight Longxue to the death!

Lin Zheng, on the other hand, saw through the whole thing quite clearly. This quest reeked of absurdity from the start—a quest accepted around level 30 required entering a second-advancement elite monster map to complete it, which was simply unbelievable! Therefore, the current state of affairs actually felt rational. Lin Zheng even suspected that even if they hadn't helped, Longxue wouldn't have died; their true task was probably just to tag along and take a stroll through the entire Blood-stained Valley with her. However, a guess was just a guess, and Lin Zheng didn't dare to let things take their course—if Longxue somehow got hacked to death, things would blow up into a massive disaster!