The Dungeon Conquerors: Journey to the Peak

Chapter 172: Ch 172: Smell of Conspiracy

The battle in the fortress lasted for about an hour. This was actually more time than Rein had expected and the reason for that was the unexpected strength of the evil cultivators. Other than one heavenly platform realm that was mentioned in the mission report, there were actually 7 heavenly platform realm powerhouses. That was very unexpected.

That was the reason why the battle became a bit risky. But as Rein and Colinde both were exceptionally stronger than what their rank suggested, they were able to still deal with the situation. After killing all the evil cultivators, Rein started to search the whole fortress to find the reason why so many heavenly platform realm people were gathering here. This was definitely not a common occurrence.

Soon he was able to find the reason from notes left behind by those now deceased cultivators. It turned out that those people who were killed were not loose evil cultivators but belonged to sects. Among the seven three were from an evil sect called Nether Fall Palace and four others were from the Demonic Serenity sect.

Both of those sects were powerful evil sects with high grade pattern condensation realm powerhouses guarding it.

As for the reason why this many people were gathering here was because in a ruin two of the disciples had managed to find a treasure map which indicated that a great treasure was located in this area. But the area shown on the map was below the current Flowing Stream City.

They tried to sneak into the city to open the door to the ruin with a key that was alongside the treasure map but the natural Cultivators of the City were able to find them almost immediately and that was when the Divine Scale Pavillion was notified about their existence.

After failing to open the secret realm, those two disciples decided to call for a few good friends in order to help them to destroy the city as that would be the best choice for them. That was reson why so many heavenly platform realm cultivators were gathered in this place. They wanted to do a sudden attack on the city to destroy it.

Now that Rein had killed all of them, he took the treasure map and the key to open the secret realm. This whole matter looked a little bit suspicious so he was planning to investigate it. There was a rumours of a valuable item appearing in this city and now there was a treasure hidden in it. All these things were extremely suspicious.

But Rein would worry about it later. For the time being he went and congratulated both Colinde and Lan for their first successful mission. Colinde had single-handedly defeated three Heavenly Platform realm cultivators and Lan had also managed to kill several more evil people after having her first experience in killing just a few moments ago.

So both of their performances on the mission were praiseworthy.

...

Rein, Lan and Colinde met back with Himiko and Mei after that. Both of the protectors were quite worried when they first saw the high number of heavenly platform realm powerhouses and immediately tried to intervene in the mission. But then they saw that their target of protection was still doing fine and even had the upper hand in the fight. Only then they were able to relax a little bit.

But the fighting prowess that Rein and Colinde demonstrated was abnormal. It was certain that this was not their first life and death battle and it even looked like these two young people had a lot of experience in this kind of fight. Mei and Himiko were really having a hard time thinking of a reason why children like them needed to have this kind of experience.

They obviously praised Rein and asked him if he was able to find the reason why so many powerful people were present there. Rein told them about the treasure map and the key as this was not something Rein needed to hide and it would be better if he could get their help in investigating this matter.

Hearing Rein's explanation both of them also found it to be very suspicious. They had taken many missions so they had a lot of experience in the real world. So listening to Rein, they immediately felt that something suspicious was happening in this city.

After thinking about it for some time, they also came to the same conclusion as Rein, someone was trying to borrow power from others to harm this city.

First there was a rumour of a powerful item suddenly appearing here which was very unlikely. And the rumours also spread at a surprising speed which was also unnatural. Normally in a situation like this, various cultivators would start to fight each other without worrying about the well being of the city and in that case the city would be destroyed.

This was a very good plan but it failed when a powerhouse from the Divine Scale Pavillion intervened in the matter. He was travelling nearby and came to the city after hearing the rumours. As he was at the high grade divine palace realm, no one dared to stop him. But when even he was unable to find the treasure, the rumours died down.

Still he told the sect about it and the mission hall decided to put a small mission for their low ranking disciples to experience. This was how Rein found this mission. No one had actually expected any valuable treasure to be here and it was only there to provide the disciples with some experience.

So the culprits behind all this hatched a second plan. He targeted a group of evil cultivators and wanted to lure them to the city with the bait of a secret realm. There was almost zero possibility of a secret realm to be here as it was something that a Divine Castle realm powerhouse would not overlook.

But Evil Cultivators were known to be lawless so there was a very high chance that they might destroy the city in anger after finding nothing or even before entering the city. This was again a very well thought out and well prepared plan but Rein messed it up with his intervention.

Now Rein wanted to see if the map and the key could help him in locating this culprit. The chances of that happening were very low but he still wanted to try. And in that process he wanted help from Mei and Himiko. Colinde was not suited for this kind of work and Lan was still very young. So currently only Himiko and Mei were able to help him in this regard.

So after telling Mei and Himiko what they needed to do, Rein started planning how they should confront the great beast the next day. He was worried that the great beast was also related to this mess. So he wanted to have a safe plan to tackle all these troubles.

That was how Rein got ready for the second mission.