webnovelfull Chapter 296 Are you trying to make me a sucker again?
Chapter 296 Are you trying to make me a sucker again?
Chen You stared at the words "Qianguang City Meng Clan Ancestral Construction Team" on the iron ring for a full half minute.
A cold wind howled.
He felt that the freezing wind of minus seventy degrees Celsius was not as destructive as these words.
In his memory, the Meng family ancestor was a ruthless person who would stop at nothing to become stronger, even making a pact with a demon.
Behind the scenes, this ruthless man turned out to be a contractor who handled all the high-altitude work?
Chen You rubbed his cheeks, which were stiff from the cold.
"The game's planners must have something wrong with their heads," he offered a fair assessment.
Despite the complaints, we still have to keep going.
Chen You used his legs to propel himself upwards, his entire body resembling a nimble ape, rapidly ascending between the massive chains.
The wind howled like a knife across his cheeks, but with spiritual energy protecting him, the physical cold couldn't penetrate his defenses at all.
One hundred meters.
500 meters.
One kilometer.
The higher you climb, the more enormous the dark blue city hanging upside down in the sky appears.
When Chen You climbed to the middle of the chain, the surrounding wind and snow suddenly stopped.
Without warning, a strange pulling force came from above.
Chen You felt a churning in his stomach. The downward gravity vanished instantly, replaced by a strong suction from above.
At this moment, gravity completely reverses!
He released his hands and let his body fall upwards.
In mid-air, Chen You forcibly twisted his waist to adjust his posture.
The upside-down city in sight rapidly magnified, and the original ceiling transformed into a solid ground.
"Bang!"
Chen You's feet landed firmly on the dark blue stone slab, his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact.
[At this point, I hope readers will remember our domain name: 202ᴋᴋs.ᴄᴏᴍ]
The moment he landed, a circle of deep blue ripples spread outwards from him.
Where the ripples swept across, the once lifeless city seemed to be powered on, with blinding yellow searchlights lighting up one after another.
[System notification: You have discovered the hidden mythical area—the Hidden Star Mine.]
Chen You was stunned.
A mining area? Isn't that the site of the old Zangxing City?
Or was the old Zangxing City a mine?
He looked up and glanced around.
Previously, when looking up from the bottom of the abyss, I only felt that the place was magnificent in architecture and dazzling in starlight, full of the epic feeling of the mythical era.
But now that I'm actually there, all that pretense and filter has been completely shattered.
This doesn't even qualify as a city; it's an outrageously large open-pit mine!
The entire mountainside was covered with scaffolding constructed from the bones of unknown giant beasts and black iron.
On the flat ground not far away, several extremely wild-looking machines were parked—
With tracks bigger than a house and drill bits at the front that shimmer with runic light, it was clearly some kind of modified psionic excavator.
Directly in front of him, the enormous chain connecting to the abyss was firmly anchored to a bronze base the size of a football field.
There are no sacred halls, no ancient traditions, only a strange flavor of industrial waste and civil engineering mixed together.
"Shh...click..."
A series of light footsteps came from behind a pile of abandoned minecarts on the left.
Chen You immediately became alert, his right hand clenching as if to draw the Jade Emperor sword at any moment.
"Hey! You newbie! I'm talking to you!"
A sharp, rough voice, filled with deep weariness, rang out.
Chen You turned his head to look.
A humanoid creature, less than a meter tall with a bluish-green complexion, was peeking out from behind the minecart.
This thing had a big head and a thick neck, its whole body was wrapped in dirty gray bandages, and it was dragging a pickaxe that was taller than itself.
He looked just like a Smurf with bandages wrapped around his neck.
The Smurf laborer strode forward with an arrogant air, tapped the ground with his pickaxe, and pointed at Chen You's head while cursing loudly.
"Which work team is this? Daring to come to the construction site without a safety helmet? Fifty copper coins deducted! Go, go, go to the warehouse and get a helmet before you get back to work!"
Chen You fell silent.
He was a dignified cultivator, possessing celestial-level cultivation techniques and wielding innate spiritual treasures, a man being groomed by the nation as a strategic nuclear weapon.
In a mythical ruin, I was actually fined by an NPC for not wearing a helmet?
"I'm not here to work," Chen You said calmly, trying to reason with them.
"Not here to work?" The Smurf laborer widened his pupil-less white eyes, looked Chen You up and down, and his gaze suddenly fixed on Chen You's waist.
There was a token hanging there.
The "Deputy City Lord's Order of Qianguang City" appeared on Chen You's waist at some point.
The token is engraved with a bold and elegant "Meng" character.
The Smurf laborer gasped, his wrinkled blue face instantly contorted with disbelief.
It threw down the pickaxe, covered its head with its hands, and let out a piercing scream: "Boss Meng! It's Boss Meng's badge!"
That shout was even louder than an air raid siren.
Countless identical laborers instantly emerged from the abandoned scaffolding, mine shafts, and even under the tracks of excavators.
Armed with wrenches, hammers, and even broken steel bars, they surged forward like a tide, surrounding Chen You.
"Have people from the Meng family arrived?"
"Finally, someone's here!"
"Thank God!"
The Smurfs were furious, their eyes gleaming with a bright green light.
The laborer who was first pushed to the front, grabbed Chen You's leg, and cried his eyes out.
"Boss Meng promised to pay wages after this astral vein was finished, but he ran away!"
"They've left us working-class folks in this godforsaken no-fly zone, trapped here for three thousand years!"
Another Smurf, holding a wrench, chimed in with teary eyes.
"Three thousand years! Do you know how we've lived for these three thousand years?"
"There's no basic salary, no social insurance or housing fund, and we haven't even received rice, flour, or cooking oil for holidays!"
"Give me back my hard-earned money!"
"Severely punish the unscrupulous contractor!"
Chen You felt a chill run down his spine.
He finally understood why this place was called the Hidden Star Mine, and why there was such an outrageous disclaimer at the entrance.
The ancestors of the Meng family in Qianguang City must have lured these natives here to use as cheap labor, and then absconded with the money!
Now, with the Meng family's deputy city lord's token hanging on his waist, in the eyes of these laborers who have been owed wages for three thousand years, he is the financial director sent by the Meng family to settle accounts!
"Calm down." Chen You tried to pull his leg away, but the Smurf held on tightly. "I'm not from the Meng family, I'm just passing through."
"Bullshit!" roared the laborer clinging to his leg. "You're wearing a Meng family badge around your waist, and you still say you're not a member of the Meng family? Brothers, he's trying to renege on his debt!"
"Grab your weapons! Nobody's leaving until we get our wages!"
Hundreds of Smurf laborers raised their tools, looking as if they were about to smash Chen You into mincemeat on the spot.
Chen You took a deep breath, feeling that this plot was absolutely outrageous!
It seems there are only two options at the moment:
First: Give them gold coins to pay the wages on behalf of the Meng family.
Second: They won't pay them, and they'll just kill all these laborers.
Chen You thought quickly and tentatively asked, "How much wages does the Meng family owe you?"
The lead laborer held up his only three fingers.
"Not much, thirty million gold coins."