Chapter Fifteen: Escaping Danger Successfully

"Yali, you go ahead first. I’ll stay behind to… I have something to take care of."

Pulling Yali into a small grove outside the valley, Mo Fangyuan handed her the map.

"After you leave, don’t stop for anything. Just follow the route I marked on the map. Head back to the Kingdom of Blocks—I’ll be there a little later."

"But you—"

"It’s fine. I’m the king, after all. The monsters didn’t get me last night, and they won’t today either!"

In the end, Mo Fangyuan persuaded Yali to go, using the villagers' safety as his argument.

Standing at the top of the valley, watching the others’ figures disappear, Mo Fangyuan finished the roasted potato in his hand and began to act.

He knew he couldn’t possibly eliminate all these monsters; that simply wasn’t realistic. He wasn’t some protagonist blessed by invincibility, able to defeat monsters far above his level or intimidate them into submission with sheer dominance.

But trapping them was entirely possible.

After all, these creatures were brainless—Mo Fangyuan was not.

There was only one exit. As long as he lured all of them into the valley and then blasted the exit, they’d be trapped inside. Add some other obstacles to make it even harder and more time-consuming for them to break out, and he could buy time for the immigrants.

But all this required bait. Mo Fangyuan didn’t trust anyone else to play that role—he had to do it himself.

He buried TNT at the exit and connected it with a stone button. All other paths leading from the valley to the top were sealed off with stone. In areas where spiders could climb walls, he built overhanging ledges of raw stone to prevent them from climbing out and chasing the others.

He toiled away, and just before sunset, Mo Fangyuan finished setting up the defenses.

Night fell. Mo Fangyuan lit all the remaining torches in the valley, creating the illusion that many people were still inside.

The long night stretched on, solitude his only companion.

As he waited, Mo Fangyuan’s thoughts wandered. He thought of his family, of games, of architecture, and finally, of what it meant to be a king.

A bitter laugh escaped his lips.

In his past life, Mo Fangyuan had read plenty of novels, watched films and series about kings. To him, a king was supposed to command from the rear, devising strategies that would win wars from afar. At best, he was a wise ruler, beloved by his subjects, building a prosperous nation with the help of loyal ministers. Or perhaps he was a king who enjoyed all the world’s treasures, living in luxury. If nothing else, he’d be lost in a harem of beauties, so enchanted he’d neglect his duties entirely.

But for Mo Fangyuan, things couldn’t be more different. Not only did he have to live cautiously, avoiding even the slightest waste, but in war he had to take up an axe and fight on the front lines himself.

This was not the life a king was meant to lead!

“I must be the unluckiest king ever,” Mo Fangyuan thought, gazing at the scene, a sudden wave of sorrow washing over him.

“What has this world come to?”

A chill ran through him—

Crack!

At that moment, the egg Mo Fangyuan had left as an alarm at the breach shattered.

“Someone’s here… No! They’re here!” Mo Fangyuan was irritated—the atmosphere he’d worked so hard to build was ruined. Without it, how was he supposed to win his readers’ sympathy and coax more recommendations?

He didn’t hide. Instead, he ran to the exit. He had to give the skeletons a whiff of human presence to provoke them into attacking.

Sure enough, as he neared the makeshift exit, the quiet was shattered. The sound of spiders screeching, bones clattering—monsters were pouring in.

Even though he’d widened the breach with an iron pickaxe, the monsters were slow to enter the valley.

Thinking quickly, Mo Fangyuan drew his axe and sliced a shallow wound in his arm. Bright red blood dripped onto the stone ground.

In this world, perhaps this blood was the only thing not made of blocks.

Smelling blood, the monsters went mad, charging into the valley as if they’d been dosed with stimulants. Anyone watching might think some nameless old god had favored them.

Occasionally, Mo Fangyuan would kill a skeleton to further enrage the horde, employing hit-and-run tactics with his fishing rod to drag out the fight and lure more monsters inside.

“Come on, come and catch me! If you catch me, I’ll take your name as my own!”

He knew the skeletons had no intelligence and couldn’t understand him, but that didn’t stop him from taunting them.

Using his fishing rod, Mo Fangyuan kept changing positions, evading arrows, his mind rapidly tallying the number of skeletons.

There must have been about a hundred; there were probably more still outside the valley.

It was odd—the skeletons were usually skilled with ranged attacks, most of them spawning with bows and arrows. But this group had abandoned their strengths to fight hand-to-hand, their brittle bones clashing against their enemies.

All he could say was that their Skeleton King was quite a character—or rather, quite a monster.

But it worked in Mo Fangyuan’s favor. With no ranged threats, he could “float” above the fight with little risk.

“Just a bit longer,” he muttered.

Initially, Mo Fangyuan estimated he could barely hold off half the skeletons, but with no ranged attacks, he felt he could stretch his endurance further.

Earlier that day, he’d purposefully built a series of platforms on the cliffs within the valley. Now, these platforms were invaluable.

Using the fishing rod, he’d pull himself onto a platform, then leap from one to another, resting when the monsters lagged behind.

With one swing, he knocked a climbing skeleton’s head clean off. The skull tumbled down and, by chance, struck another skeleton climbing below, knocking it off and causing a chain reaction that sent several tumbling.

“Whew! There are more and more of these things!” Mo Fangyuan took a deep breath.

The valley floor was crowded with skeleton heads, writhing like a sea of white liquid or some unspeakable horror, enough to make anyone’s skin crawl and mind reel.

“That’s enough.”

Casting a glance at the horde below, Mo Fangyuan realized if he pressed his luck any further, he’d be the one done in.

“To have trapped this many monsters already exceeds all my expectations.”

He drew his bow and took aim at the stone button below.

Thunk!

The arrow shot out at eighty meters per second, a white flash in the night, striking above the button instead of dead center.

“…Er…”

“No matter, I’ll try again!”

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk…

He fired over a dozen arrows, but not a single one hit the button. The ground around it was bristling with arrows, but the button itself was untouched.

Mo Fangyuan lost patience. He took out his last TNT, activated it, and threw it toward the exit.

“I should have used a different trigger instead of the button!”

Boom!

The TNT exploded, the blast wave detonating the four other charges buried beneath.

Boom!

A tremendous roar shook the breach, followed by violent tremors. The exit was sealed—the task was done.

“A final gift for you all. Hope you enjoy it.”

Mo Fangyuan had no intention of staying in that cursed place another second.

He tossed down a torch.

Earlier, he’d scattered cloth and wood throughout the valley, making sure the immigrants didn’t take any with them. It was obvious what he intended—to set a massive fire and finish the mission once and for all.

The flames might not kill many skeletons, but they’d certainly slow the horde’s pursuit, buying precious time for the immigrants.

By the time the monsters regrouped, the immigrants would be long gone from the Skeleton Kingdom’s reach.

“Fishing rods are truly marvelous things!” The more Mo Fangyuan used it, the more he appreciated its importance.

With a strong pull, he swung himself to the top of the valley.

Below, the valley was ablaze, bright as day, the chaos no longer his concern.

Diving into the water pool he’d prepared, Mo Fangyuan dispatched a freshly spawned zombie with a casual swing of his axe, then set off west along the immigrants’ escape route.

He knew they were safe now.