Demon King: Hero, don’t run away!

After ending the conversation with the [Red Blood Rose], Yang Yu and his team continued their journey to the [Hall of History], riding on the Lotcar.

On the way, Yang Yu inquired about a village that was destroyed by a fire decades ago and took a slight detour to take a look.

That village had long turned into ruins, with new vegetation growing from the scorched earth, covering up the tragedy that had befallen the village.

The fire from decades ago directly led the [Chaste Jasmine] to join the Curse Sect, and caused the [Taunt] skill to disappear without a trace.

The reason Yang Yu came here was partly to see if there were any survivors visiting for mourning. Seeing them might allow him to learn the long-coveted [Taunt]; and partly, Yang Yu tried to investigate to see if he could activate any tasks utilizing the ruins.

[Taunt] was only passed down in this secluded village, and the skill scrolls they produced were basically consumed internally.

However, occasionally some skills would circulate from that village to the market.

For instance, the [Heroic Leap] that Yang Yu currently possessed might have originated from this village.

Stepping into the ruins, Yang Yu and his team found some melted, rusted iron pieces and saw some patches of grass and obviously disturbed soil.

While inquiring about this village, Yang Yu had heard this piece of information:

”In the deep mountains, there used to be a village unseen by anyone.

One day, suddenly a flame shot straight to the sky.

Someone feared the fire would spread down the mountain and decided to go check it out.

But before he could reach the mountain, the fire had already been extinguished, and the matter was shelved.

Many years later, this person suddenly remembered the matter, led a group of adventurers up the mountain, and brought back a large pile of melted gold and silver.

He and that group of adventurers became rich overnight.

Afterwards, others have gone up the mountain too, but generally found nothing.

It seems all valuable items were taken by the first batch of adventurers.

After that, no one went up the mountain again.

Who would have the leisure to run to such a desolate, extremely dangerous deep mountain?”

Yang Yu agreed wholeheartedly with the last statement.

When coming here, not only would you travel a quite difficult path, but you’d also have to deal with some extremely violent magic beasts.

The rewards and risks truly weren’t proportional.

Based on current information, this village seemed to have been constantly protected by a barrier, and the villagers probably had the habit of going out to sell specialties and purchase necessities.

It’s hard to imagine such an isolated village from the world would suffer a catastrophe like this.

Were they guarding something that got them targeted?

Or perhaps, there were other reasons...

Lotcar relied on its keen sense of smell to search left and right, but couldn’t detect the slightest scent of bones in the scorched earth. It seemed all life, along with the bones, had melted completely into that great fire.

It didn’t appear to be for treasure looting; rather, it seemed like a complete eradication to silence them, even their ashes were scattered.

Yang Yu sensed there must be an earth-shattering secret involved, but now there was too much missing information, so much that Yang Yu couldn’t even begin to guess...

After searching left and right, Yang Yu and his team still found nothing.

Conducting a thorough search would be extremely time-consuming.

Was there a quicker way to find clues without spending too much time?

Of course there is!

Yang Yu tossed a shovel to Iyas,

”Iyas, try digging at random.”

Iyas gave Yang Yu a sidelong glance, knowing this would be the result.

With no other choice, Iyas picked up the shovel and dug randomly.

After digging several holes, Iyas found nothing.

On the tenth hole, Iyas hit a black stone.

The stone was very hard, and Iyas couldn’t move it. Digging it out was time-consuming and labor-intensive, so Iyas decided to dig elsewhere.

At that moment, Lotcar came to the edge of the pit and sniffed intently at the stone Iyas had hit,

”Yang Yu, there’s a discovery! Although it looks like a stone, it smells nothing like one. It’s an artificial object.”

Yang Yu brought Bai Jin and the others closer to the pit Iyas dug, and Bai Jin carefully explored the stone’s interior with magic power,

”Nothing special, feels like an extremely ordinary stone...”

Lotcar suggested, ”With our current strength, cutting open the stone is not a problem. Whether it’s a wrong judgment or not, we can see what’s inside.”

Yang Yu agreed with Lotcar. What if that stone contained a skill scroll for [Taunt]?

Putting on the [Reverse Wheel], Yang Yu smashed the stone in one go.

Disappointingly, it didn’t contain a skill scroll for [Taunt], nor any equipment or tools, but merely lay a very ordinary notebook.

The notebook even had a lock on it.

A diary, perhaps?

Who in their right mind writes a diary!

There weren’t any key-looking objects around the rubble, and when Yang Yu tried to cut the lock open with a small knife, he found the lock extraordinarily sturdy, and the cover extremely resilient.

With no other option, Yang Yu inserted the knife between the pages and cut from the notebook’s binding, slicing through with a snip-snap, leaving him with everything but the cover and lock.

As soon as he opened the diary, Yang Yu’s eyes widened. The diary wasn’t written in this world’s language but in the language of Yang Yu’s original world.

The diary owner’s identity was self-explanatory.

The diary was filled with text, with no illustrations, densely written, with at least fifteen hundred words on a page.

Reading it all the way through would take quite some time, let alone trying to focus on such densely packed words resembling ants.

After searching around randomly for a while and confirming there were no other items, Yang Yu decided to continue riding Lotcar towards the [Hall of History] and read the diary along the way.

In the next few days, whenever he had time, Yang Yu held the diary, staring at each word to avoid missing any details.

As Yang Yu expected, the diary came from a previous ”player,” and one who was a ”civilian” player just like him.

Initially, that civilian player was bursting with confidence about the task of strategizing against the Demon King.

Later, the civilian player encountered setbacks one after another including ”finding it exceedingly hard to improve civilian attributes, slowly becoming just a locksmith,” ”being well-prepared yet being kicked to the ground several times,” and ”diminished potion effects due to overuse,” eventually choosing to slack off.

The civilian player also tried to make a comeback, reigniting his enthusiasm for confronting the Demon King.

After the demon king’s invasion, magic power in this world began to increase dramatically, with many others gaining significant boosts apart from him.

So he thought, could he defeat the demon king not through his own strength but purely with strategy and tactics?

The player took action, leveraging the reputation he had built over the years, gathered a suicide squad, and devised ways to send them into the demon world to cause disturbance behind enemy lines, essentially playing out a scene where they disrupted the Demon Clan’s logistics from the rear.