Chapter 282 Eternal Life Palace

In front, Ling Mo and Murong Yue had finished exchanging information.

Overall, there wasn’t much worth noting as clues; the location sealing the Five Elements array might be useful information, but they hadn’t even seen the props used for the sealing. This thing definitely required a system to guide them in obtaining it.

It’s worth mentioning that while chatting with Murong Yue, Ling Mo kept a part of his attention on Xia Xinyan.

He also noticed the changes in Xia Xinyan’s expression.

She was probably discussing something with Monica that shouldn’t be heard by outsiders, and Ling Mo didn’t eavesdrop; he always believed that if Xinyan wanted to tell him something, she would do so naturally. There was no need for him to go out of his way to find out, as that would only annoy her.

He understood the concept of personal space quite well; even two people deeply in love couldn’t always be in each other’s faces, right?

However, in the last glance Xia Xinyan sent his way, he saw a dazzling light in her eyes for the first time.

It was like a new belief was rising in her heart, carrying endless warmth.

Could it be because of him?

Ling Mo couldn’t help but feel a bit curious.

But he had no chance to ask Xia Xinyan and Monica now—

Because they encountered other people.

Not the fat guy and his crew, but another group.

This group consisted of four men, all dressed quite fashionably. They looked to be about in their twenties, but the invisible aura they exuded made Ling Mo uncomfortable—it felt like these guys were looking down on them from a higher position, a disdain that even had no intention of hiding.

Still, Ling Mo maintained a friendly demeanor and greeted them, “Hello, gentlemen, want to chat?”

Given that they still weren’t clear on the specifics of this dungeon, their primary task was to gather information, and exchanging information with other teams was one of the simplest ways to do that. After all, there’s strength in numbers—provided those teams held no malice toward them.

However, those four seemed to be an exception.

They scrutinized Ling Mo and his companions for a while, then all their gazes settled on Ling Mo. A tall, thin man at the front suddenly spoke, “You are Ling Mo?”

“You know me?” Ling Mo was slightly taken aback.

Was he this famous already?

…Well, maybe the online soft rice man reputation was very convincing.

“Of course we know you.” The man snorted coldly. “I didn’t expect you to last this long; you have some skill.”

Ling Mo: “?”

But before he could say anything, a familiar teasing voice from the fat guy interrupted, “Oh! Isn’t this the legendary Yan Qiu? Fancy meeting you here! What a coincidence!”

Turning around, he saw the fat guy and Bai Yu walking out of a narrow alley, glancing around at Ling Mo and his crew, before drifting back to their own team. “This place is quite lively. Hey… I wonder if Yan Qiu is considering teaming up with us? We now have three squads allied together; if you guys join too, that’s four teams! Any bizarre monsters that come our way won’t scare us at all.”

“No interest,” unfortunately, the man named Yan Qiu flatly rejected them. “You guys should just pray to last a little longer.”

With that, he took his three teammates and left, disappearing into a narrow alley.

The fat guy stared at their figures for a while until they vanished from sight, then chuckled softly, “What a show of importance.”

“Do you know them?” Ling Mo turned to the fat guy.

The fat guy nodded, “Of course, Yan Qiu. He’s quite famous—he rose to fame around the same time I did with my videos, but his popularity is way higher than mine… We had a bit of a run-in back then.”

After pausing, he added, “But I suggest you don’t poke at them; they have the Eternal Life Palace backing them. Big players.”

“What’s the Eternal Life Palace?” An Xiao instinctively asked.

“You can think of it as a guild in the game, but more accurately, it’s a force like our Chicks organization—though the Eternal Life Palace is much larger than us,” the fat guy explained.

As the world transitions into a new era, countless forces, large and small, have emerged. There are small organizations in reality like the Chicks, small guilds in games, and large organizations that deal in both realms.

Now that peace and order haven’t been shattered, even if they wanted to recruit personnel in real life, they couldn’t take any substantial action. So many relatively large factions turned their focus to games. Although there’s no independent guild or team system in this game, one can custom build one using the friend system. With a little effort, they could create something fairly decent.

By now, there are quite a few well-known guilds in the game; the Eternal Life Palace is one of them—one of the earliest established major guilds.

The Summer Family also functions similarly; they have now integrated resources from both reality and the game and established a guild force led by the Summer Family called “New Dawn.”

In simple terms, it’s just a legal façade for an illegal organization, and the so-called guild is just a cover everyone is well aware of. Nobody dares to expose it—because even the state knows that once that thin layer of peace is shattered, the law won’t hold those big forces back. By then, that guild façade won’t be needed at all.

Thus, the state has personally set up investigation bureaus.

Xia Xinyan remembered that the family backing the Eternal Life Palace is the Yan Family—after all, the Yi from the Witch’s Castle dungeon was the heir of the Yan Family.

As she recalled this, something seemed to flash in her mind.

But that thought was too swift; she couldn’t catch it in time.

It made her frown slightly.

At this moment, Ling Mo had already turned the topic to the fat guy and his crew: “What happened after we split from you? What about Tiger Ba Tian and the others?”

“Not sure,” the fat guy shrugged. “We were walking when suddenly we noticed you guys were missing and got startled. Just as we were about to head back to find you, we were ambushed by vengeful spirits. That thing seemed to have a ghost realm, making us run into a ghost wall. Bai Yu and I almost didn’t make it out.”

An Xiao immediately looked at Bai Yu, “You’re not hurt, right?”

“Nope,” Bai Yu smiled, “The Great Sun was pretty impressive; he broke the ghost realm and brought us out.”

“How did you break the ghost realm?” Ling Mo curiously asked.

Hearing this, the fat guy patted his shoulder, “Old Ling, I have to say, there are some things worth learning from you. Sometimes acting like a crazy person can really solve a lot of trouble.”

When surrounded by vengeful spirits in a ghost wall and feeling near hopeless, he pulled out two chainsaws.