Nine Hundred and Sixtieth IX Three Fierce Places

The empire has a vast territory and many dangerous places. But among them, there are three murderers, and they can be divided into north, south and south according to the region. The southern border occupies two fierce places, one is the blood king's cemetery in the valley of the dead behind the trading capital of Sardinia, and the other is the dark place in the northeast of the Iron Spear Territory. The ominous environment in the North is the basin known as the Devil's Throat.

The names of the three fierce places are widely spread in the empire, but the dangers of the three fierce places are different.

The Cemetery of the Blood King, located in the Valley of the Dead, is known as the most ominous place. Although it is not the oldest, although this fierce land can be traced back at least two hundred years ago, the Cemetery of the Blood King is definitely the most dangerous. It is precisely because of the existence of this fierce land that the empire established a so-called ancient investigation committee, because this fierce land is actually a relic of heaven and man.

It was a well-known team of adventurers who discovered this ruin back then, but in the end only one person in that team escaped from the Valley of the Dead. The news of the blood king's cemetery came from the survivors. In the next seven or eight years, teams of adventurers continued to enter the deep valley, but only one out of ten survived. Over the past ten years, more than a hundred adventure teams have been buried in that valley forever, and there are eight hundred adventurers who have become the fertilizer of that valley, so that originally unknown valley has been crowned with the name of the dead. say.

Afterwards, the empire finally paid attention to the existence of this ferocious land, and when it learned that it might be the remains of heaven and man, the empire set up an investigation team, which was the predecessor of the ancient investigation committee. In the next ten years, the emperor's team entered the valley of the dead, and it seemed that this valley and the blood king's cemetery were designated as forbidden areas. In the subsequent research and investigation, surprising news continued to come out.

The investigation found that the blood king's cemetery is a labyrinth building with a pyramid structure. The deeper it goes underground, the wider the area of ​​the labyrinth. Moreover, there are terrifying and tyrannical relic creatures in the maze on each floor. The adventurers who were buried in the blood king's cemetery before only went deep into the fourth floor of the underground maze. After the empire put in the army, the number of layers of the maze to be cracked increased by leaps and bounds.

In just three years, the imperial team advanced to the tenth floor of the Blood King's Cemetery. However, behind this rapid advancement, it is at the cost of countless bones. Immediately afterwards, due to the massive invasion of the Shadow Principality, the empire could no longer continue to invest its troops in the bottomless pit of the Blood King Cemetery, so it had to seal it off. And it never restarted after that.

Over the next hundred years, the empire's research on the blood king's cemetery was also intermittent. Until this generation of Emperor Tanglio, after listening to the advice of the former Prime Minister, he simply released the ban on the Blood King's Cemetery and opened it to all adventurers. And the empire has provided corresponding supply points in the first ten floors of the maze that have been opened in the cemetery, so that adventurers can rest when exploring the maze. The empire not only opened the cemetery to adventurers to explore, but also did not prohibit adventurers from taking the things found in the ruins out of the cemetery. But if the adventurer is willing to hand it over to the empire, he can get the corresponding reward from the empire.

For this reason, the investigation committee members also set up a special identification team to identify the value of the relics and antiquities for adventurers in exchange for corresponding rewards.

In this way, the empire does not need to invest too many troops in the blood king's cemetery, but also can continuously recover relics and ancient relics. As for the adventurers, if

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page) Discoveries in the Blood King's Cemetery are often rewarded with both fame and fortune. There are also many adventurer teams who have just debuted, using the blood king's cemetery as a springboard for their lives. After gaining fame in the cemetery, they immediately transformed into a mercenary group. There are countless such examples.

Of course, since the Blood King's Cemetery is ranked as the most dangerous place, it is not in vain. The death rate in this underground labyrinth has always been high, but there are still a large number of adventurers who can't resist the temptation of becoming famous overnight, and rush forward to drill into the blood king's cemetery.

If the danger of the blood king cemetery lies in the tyrannical and terrifying relic creatures, then the evil of the devil's throat lies in the terrain environment.

It's cold in the north.

When you cross the Oserina River, you will find a significant difference in temperature between the north and the south. People who have lived in the North for a long time know that in the four seasons of the year, autumn and winter are particularly long, while spring and summer are very short. In the north, especially in the area close to the imperial capital Olisgar, glaciers that are hard to melt for thousands of years can be seen everywhere. Especially the Ice Star Port, which is close to the imperial capital, that port city was built on a ten thousand year old ice layer.

Across the Oserina River, there is a city that is almost well-known to business travelers, and that is Frostwind City. Frostwind City is located near the Cold Ridge Valley. After the ice and snow in the north melt, due to the effect of air currents, the cold current will continue to move southward. When passing through the Cold Ridge Valley, due to the special landform of the valley, a cold wind will blow continuously, hence the name Frostwind City.

Even Frostwind City, which is closest to the Oserina River, is like this, and the coldness in the northern region is not hard to imagine.

But in such a place, there is such a special landform as the Devil's Throat.

Devil's Throat is a basin, but the gap between this basin and the plain is astonishingly large. Moreover, the center of the basin is a magma zone, and the high temperature persists all year round due to geothermal heat, so the devil's throat is filled with white smoke all year round, which is the result of the encounter between the heat flow of the basin and the cold air of the plain. In the basin, there is only a ray of natural danger to cross.

In the last dark land, there are as many bandits as a cow's hair among the poor mountains and rivers. The forces inside are divided and intertwined, and the situation is complicated.

The Balegon Empire has a very loose management of all parts of the country, otherwise it would not allow the lords of various places to fight for power. In wars between lords, only the lords will always suffer. In the beginning, the Dark Land was just a sinister forest and a place where fierce beasts haunted. But with the passage of time, gradually displaced citizens due to the war hid in the dark land, and the number of bandits began to increase.

So far, in this lawless and dark place, there are at least a hundred bandit groups, large and small. The "Fire King" who was besieged by Huo Yi back then came from the land of darkness. Normally speaking, let alone the empire, the lords of several territories adjacent to the Dark Land would definitely not be able to tolerate such a den of thieves at their doorstep. But after so many years in the dark place, no one has seen it cleaned up by anyone. Instead, several large bandit groups inside have been operating with great vigor.

Therefore, if it is said that there is no interest transfer relationship with the lords and nobles in the Dark Land, I am afraid that no one will believe it.

Generally speaking, business travelers would rather take a longer detour than pass through the dark place. However, some hunting groups or short-distance caravans will choose to enter the Dark Land. Of course, they all need to report to one or more pirates when they pass.

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page) Bandits pay poll tax, which has become an unwritten rule in the Dark Land.

Over time, some people who couldn't survive in the territory and didn't dare to really do the hard work would gather at the edge of the Dark Land, blackmailing business travelers under the banner of a certain bandit group. However, these guys didn't dare to kill anyone, and most of the time they started by staring at small caravans. Sometimes even when encountering caravans with strong guards, they have to be silent as turtles, not daring to jump out to intercept them.

For these guys, those influential figures in the Dark Land usually turn a blind eye. But if those guys step over the boundary, they will suffer disaster. So for guys who do this for a living, a pair of sharp eyes is very important. These eyes not only need to distinguish which caravans can eat, but also need to know where the invisible boundaries in the dark land are. Only in this way can he keep his job and not be suppressed by those real villains.

Abel had such eyes.

Abel is only fourteen years old this year, but he has been a spy for the bandit group "Dark Lance" for four or five years. The bandit group's name sounded majestic, but the dark spears were simply rough wooden spears made of sharpened local black wood. Using this kind of black wooden spear as a weapon can also scare people. When Abel was ten years old, the territorial war broke out, and his father took him to flee to the dark land, and later died of illness. Abel also became an orphan. Fortunately, the leader of the thieves group, Bi Rick, took him in. That scary-looking old man who was actually a timid old man always said to Abel: "I can't raise you for nothing, so everyone will have opinions, so you have to work too, kid."

So the boy who was only ten years old had to play various roles on the edge of the dark land. Like a lost boy, a wandering orphan, etc., to win the sympathy of the caravans. After mixing into the caravan, he is responsible for observing the size and number of people in the caravan, so that the old man Birik can refer to and decide whether to blackmail.

This work is four years.

Now Abel, who has grown into a tall and thin boy, no longer needs to win sympathy to obtain information on the caravan. Now he relies more on his own eyes. As if he could be called an experienced boy, he could roughly estimate the number of people in the caravan just by looking at the size of the caravan, and he could tell the weight of the goods from the marks left by the wheels, and so on. It can be said that the bandit group of Dark Lance has been able to take root here in the Dark Land for four years, and most of the credit is earned by Abel.

The number of times the boy saw the wrong person in the past four years can only be counted on his fingers. As for the invisible boundaries that change from time to time in the dark land, they cannot escape his eyes.

At this moment, Abel was hiding in the canopy of a blackwood tree, biting a green grass core that had just grown, counting the copper coins he had saved with his fingers. When the war broke out that year, the army of the hostile lord rushed into their small village on the border. The war came so suddenly that Abel's family was torn apart. He still remembers the expression of panic and fear on his younger sister Mena when she was separated by the crowd.

Every time Abel thought of that little face that was flushed by the flames of war, he couldn't help but clenched his fists.

He believes that Mena is still alive, and as long as he saves enough money for the road, the boy will leave the dark place.

At this time, he heard the sound of horseshoes, Abel's eyes lit up, and business came again!

(end of this chapter)

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