The Level 15 dungeon 【Nest of the Clearsand General】 was not something Zhou Yuan could clear as he was now.
But to him this dungeon was still full of value.
He swung the hatchet, crudely smashed apart a great many pearls, tossed his head-cloth onto the ground, and turned back into the dungeon portal.
When he left the cold and returned once more to the Clearsand River, the icy water felt as soothing as a gentle hot spring.
He dressed, went home, and fetched a large lidded clay pot and a set of thick clothes.
Zhao Dahuang wasn't back yet, and the two village men slept soundly, none of them aware of Zhou Yuan's movements.
Returning again to the stone arch bridge, he stuffed both sets of clothes into the clay pot, clamped the hatchet in his mouth, and re-entered the dungeon.
The instant he entered, he opened the clay pot, put on both sets of clothes, and only then observed the changes in the dungeon's environment.
The intact coral ground, the unbroken pearls, the vanished head-cloth — all proved this dungeon possessed the power to refresh.
And this refreshing power didn't only renew the things inside the dungeon; objects left behind from outside were refreshed all the same.
"It doesn't refresh while a person's present; it refreshes automatically once a person leaves.
If someone stayed stationed in the dungeon long term, could the dungeon become a secret base for stockpiling supplies?"
"Far from the normal world, set in an unknown space, its interior a world unto itself — doesn't it rather resemble the fabled grotto-heavens and blessed lands?
Looked at another way, if I were a native-born son of this world, I'd absolutely treat a mystic space like this as a blessed secret realm between Heaven and Earth."
"No wonder Ergou's family calls it a Dragon Palace — hidden beneath the river, guarded by shrimp soldiers, a space all its own; isn't that exactly the legendary Dragon Palace?"
Zhou Yuan stroked the coral ground, its texture incredibly real, and thought of an old essay he'd studied as a child — the "Record of the Peach Blossom Spring."
Set aside the dangerous monsters within, and the dungeon truly deserved to be called a common man's Peach Blossom Spring, a seeker's grotto-heaven and blessed land.
"The Clearsand River is just one of the Qu River's many tributaries, and an obscure little branch at that.
If even a place like this holds a dungeon, the number of dungeons in this world surely isn't small."
Back on Blue Star, Zhou Yuan had played no small number of video games.
He knew a thing like a dungeon, stripped of all its prompts and dropped into a vast game world, would be very hard to unearth.
But once the numbers grew large enough, someone would always stumble on one by chance.
Just like now — Cuiniang's late husband discovered 【Nest of the Clearsand General】, told Cuiniang, and Cuiniang told Ergou's family.
This meant there were people, or powers, who might pass a dungeon's secret down generation by generation, treating it as their own family's blessed realm.
"The nation of Great Wei; families that inherit dungeons; the deathless, undying demons the village elder said never leave their territory.
This setup rather resembles a normal human society blended into a game world."
Zhou Yuan shook his head and flung off the narrow guess; he understood far too little of this world.
Analyzing the state of a whole society from a single dungeon was neither reasonable nor reliable.
Still, a half-formed guess wasn't useless; at the least Zhou Yuan could lean on his guesses to extend a certain understanding of his surroundings.
"By normal game logic, the AI logic of wild monsters and dungeon monsters should be about the same.
These six Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers really do behave like game monsters with an aggro range.
So if I don't enter their attack range and only taunt them with sound, will it trigger their attack judgment?"
With his back to the portal, Zhou Yuan knocked at the coral ground with the hatchet while calling out loudly.
"Hey, over here, over here..."
The six Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers didn't spare him a glance, like six lifelike statues.
This was deeply deceptive; a local could easily let down their guard and, on entering attack range, get a fork through them from a Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldier.
Facing the rigid, wooden shrimp soldiers, Zhou Yuan at once thought of pit-digging, fire, poison, and the like.
But the coral ground was uncommonly hard, and fire and poison would also need to verify the shrimp soldiers' judgment logic and defensive strength.
That is: Zhou Yuan would light a fire and use smoke to work on the Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers, to see whether they'd attack the fire source and the one who set it, and whether flame could lower their health bars.
【Nest of the Clearsand General】 was an excellent testing ground; Zhou Yuan wouldn't leave without gaining some intelligence.
So he first went back to the riverbank, filled the large clay pot with twigs and leaves, and returned to the dungeon.
Advancing twenty steps, he pulled out a flint, lit some grass tinder, and got a fire going; when the flames were vigorous, he tossed in several damp, thick branches.
Gripping the front of his clothes with both hands, he fanned hard, trying to drift the smoke toward the Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers.
The moment the smoke drifted toward one of them, Zhou Yuan immediately retreated near the portal.
Before long, a Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldier caught the smell of smoke, judged itself attacked, dropped its standby state outright, and strode for the fire, scattering it with one jab of its fork.
It trod over the burning branches and kept walking toward Zhou Yuan, the branches crushed to bits underfoot, and the other five Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers entered an attack state too.
Zhou Yuan stepped back, touched the portal, and left the dungeon.
Back on the bank again, he had to admit the Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers weren't truly rigid and wooden — they were competent killing machines.
So long as they judged themselves attacked — even by an attack so feeble it could do them no harm at all — they'd shift into offense.
"Poison plus fire is relatively workable, provided someone holds off the Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers' attacks while the fire and poison gradually take effect.
A living person can block the dungeon's refresh — can a living animal?"
Zhou Yuan slipped into the water and before long fished out a palm-sized freshwater turtle, then tied its shell with grass rope so its limbs couldn't extend.
Carrying the turtle, he entered the dungeon again; sure enough, the burning branches had been refreshed.
The spotless coral ground and the motionless Cold-Tide Shrimp Soldiers made the place look unusually tidy.
"Turtle, this is a great experiment. I will remember you."
After setting the turtle on the ground, Zhou Yuan practiced his exit, then re-entered.
Then the wondrous thing happened: the turtle was gone, as if the dungeon didn't recognize the turtle as a player-like creature and had simply refreshed it away.
"A turtle can't block the dungeon refresh, so chickens, ducks, fish, and dogs most likely can't either; insects need not even be mentioned.
Looks like my cockroach-poison method won't work."
His game-ified sight, plus the dungeon prompts, had put Zhou Yuan into a state of clearing a dungeon far above his level.
But the facts proved that a purely opportunistic approach couldn't threaten the dungeon's monsters — the native people of this world would likewise find it very hard to solve powerful dungeon monsters through cunning alone.
"A Level 15 dungeon is too much for me as I am now. I need a low-level dungeon, or low-level wild monsters.
But the lower the dungeon's level, the easier it is to clear, and the more valuable it is to the locals.
Trying to ask after or seek out a low-level dungeon like that will likely be very hard."
"Turbid river water, jade-green algae — that alone could screen my sight, keeping me from spotting the Clearsand River's anomaly at once, let alone all manner of mountain forests and buildings."
"No — buildings. Unreasonable buildings.
A manor in the mountains, a stockade on the water, even temples and Daoist abbeys, or a fort that passes over the advantageous terrain......
Any unreasonable building could well have been raised to hide a dungeon."
TL Notes:
TL Note: Peach Blossom Spring — a classical Chinese tale of a hidden, idyllic refuge sealed off from the outside world; shorthand for an unreachable utopia.