Chapter 346: Chapter 345 Task One Completed!

“Let’s start by fighting a big demon to see how powerful we are…”

Du Gang laughed and said, “Perfect, there are eight big demons left, we can eliminate them one by one. This will complete nine missions, and for the last one, we can choose a demon king…”

“Alright!”

After the four of them reached an agreement, they started to eliminate the big demons as Du Gang suggested.

At first, they were somewhat cautious, bringing along guides and all. But when they discovered that the big demons were only equivalent to God Spirit Level, they threw their reservations out the window.

In a short span of two days, the four of them split up and eliminated all eight big demons.

This brought the progress of their team’s first mission to (9/10). As long as they complete one more bounty mission, they would have fully completed the first mission.

One day, Du Gang and his team gathered to take on the mission of hunting the Demon King.

“Brother Du, isn’t this too rash?!”

Zhuang Nai’s face was somewhat troubled. If these true disciples who were high in spirits were to die there, he would not be able to escape blame.

Du Gang chuckled, “Don’t worry about that. You’ve seen our strength. In fact, we did not even use half of our strength when facing those demons!”

“Moreover, the four of us have a formation that we can execute together when we cultivate, which often allows us to fight against opponents of higher ranks…”

Seeing Zhuang Nai still anxious, Du Gang continued, “Moreover, we carry numerous life-saving artifacts passed down by the sect. Even if we cannot defeat the Demon King, escaping won’t be a problem!”

After several rounds of persuasion, Zhuang Nai finally agreed and let Du Gang and his team take up the mission.

“Brother Du, if you find that you can’t win, make sure to run. If there’s life, there’s hope…”

Du Gang laughed and said, “Don’t worry, we understand. We don’t need you to see us off!”

After accepting the mission, the four quickly left Misty Mountain City.

However, after they left Misty Mountain City, Du Gang halted, “To the east…”

The other three did not ask any questions and quickly followed. They traversed mountains and valleys and found themselves on an unfamiliar path.

Du Gang stopped and smiled, “I observed carefully for two days. They send carrier pigeons to various cities every day to communicate information, but in this direction, there’s only one each day…”

“According to the map, there’s no city in this direction, only the Five Elements Sect. So, they must routinely send information about Misty Mountain City to the Five Elements Sect every day!”

“Today, there’s a high chance that Zhuang Nai will tell the Five Elements Sect that we’re preparing to hunt the Demon King…”

“Once this happens, there will be three possibilities. First, they will summon us back. Second, they will send sect experts to follow us secretly. Third, they will ignore the situation.”

“Besides the third possibility, the others are not advantageous for us to maintain our undercover identities!”

Tao Xuanzhu’s eyes lit up, “You mean, we intercept the pigeon here and prevent the message from being passed on?”

“No!”

Du Gang laughed, “In the past two days, I intercepted two pigeons bound for the Five Elements Sect and roughly looked through the contents and the handwriting…”

“Once a pigeon arrives, I will intercept it and replace the contents of the letter!”

Upon hearing this, the three others couldn’t help but praise him.

Typical of Du Gang. He was low-key and yet had already done so many things, and they only found out about them now.

“Now, let’s spread out and sweep the road. There’s only one batch of pigeons bound for the Five Elements Sect each day, but there are five pigeons in each batch. We have to ensure that we intercept all five pigeons!”

“Five?” Kou Yingwu was taken aback. “Why so many?”

Du Gang laughed, “This is because the journey is long, and if they encounter powerful birds like eagles along the way, some of these pigeons may be lost. Therefore, each batch usually has five pigeons going out at the same time…”

“Understood!”

The others once again felt admiration. Du Gang was so cautious; he had even taken care of such small details.

The four spread out and used their Divine Thought to scan the area. In just a short while, they had captured all five pigeons.

Kou Yingwu, who was some distance away, shouted out.

“Du Gang, something’s not quite right. This paper seems to be special…”

Hearing this, Tao Xuanzhu and Zhang Xinyi, who had not yet opened their letters, changed their expressions and quickly opened their letters to take a look.

Sure enough, their hearts sank. The paper was indeed of special quality, possessing a certain unique cinnabar red color.

“Hehe!”

Du Gang smiled nonchalantly and with a flick of his left hand, a piece of identical paper appeared.

“I’ve been observing quietly. Every day, Zhuang Nai is responsible for sending information to the Five Elements Sect. He has a stack of unique paper in his study, used only for transmitting information to the Five Elements Sect. I secretly took some…”

Upon hearing this, the other three looked at Du Gang, dumbfounded.

Kou Yingwu’s face was filled with admiration. “I give up!”

“You’re my brother. I didn’t expect you to have thought of even this!”

Du Gang chuckled lightly, “If I can’t even think of this, how can I be the team leader?”

“Actually, all of this is a line of thought. Since I was worried about them transmitting information, naturally, I had to think of measures and prepare in advance…”

“So, these are just normal operations!”

Tao Xuanzhu sighed, “Ever since I met you, I’ve always wanted to mimic your way of thinking and emulate your behavior. Unfortunately, I’ve not even managed to learn one-tenth from you!”

“Compared to you, I still have a long way to go!”

Du Gang chuckled, “You’re already doing well. At least you’re much better than these two who don’t think at all!”

Upon hearing this, Kou Yingwu immediately broke into a silly smile, “With you as our leader, what do we have to think about?”

Zhang Xinyi mockingly said, “Yeah, with my husband around, what do I need to think about…”

Du Gang was immediately at a loss for words.

Tao Xuanzhu and Kou Yingwu had generally understood from their days together that Du Gang and Zhang Xinyi were not really husband and wife. Therefore, they had chosen to ignore their situation entirely.

“Ahem! Ahem!”

“Stop the idle chatter. Let’s focus on our task!”

Du Gang quickly took out his writing tools, spread out the paper on the table, and began to copy the contents of yesterday’s letter to write today’s letter.

After copying five copies, he stopped and instructed the others to put them back on the pigeons’ legs. After that, they released the five pigeons.

“Alright, now we can confidently go and trouble that Demon King. After we complete this mission, we can leave the range of Misty Mountain City and think of ways to do the first and third tasks!”

Hearing him say this, Tao Xuanzhu raised her eyebrow, “Du Gang, are you sure we don’t need to use this Demon King to complete the mission?”

Du Gang shook his head, “The third mission is to kill three demons. The reward is calculated based on the strength of the slain demons, their fame, and their relationship with the protagonist.”

“This means that the more famous and powerful the Demon King, the greater the reward!”

“The Demon King of our Misty Mountain City is clearly just an average guy. Using him to complete the mission is too rash!”

In fact, after knowing that this world is the Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, he roughly understood the ultimate form of the third mission.

The ultimate form must be to turn in Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing as the killed demons to complete the mission. This way, the reward given will be maximized.

The problem is still the same as before. Most of the others, or almost all of them, do not know about this world, only he does.

This suggested that among the four of them, there was someone that the Heavenly Court wanted to cultivate rapidly. This person was either him or Zhang Xinyi.

After all, among the four, only the two of them were unique.

He didn’t see the necessity in finding out who was special, but once he understood that the Heavenly Court favored them, he naturally aimed for maximum benefit.

Moreover, the Heavenly Court had changed the settings of Tathagata and the heavenly palace in order to put his worries to rest.

According to what Zhuang Nai had said earlier, Sun Wukong had wreaked havoc in the heavenly palace which was the strongest cultivator organization on earth five hundred years ago.

The sealing of Sun Wukong was also completed by the Great Power of the Buddhists sacrificing themselves.

So he had no worries. He didn’t need to worry about whether these three demons were people facing tribulation.

Additionally, the second task required them to kill four reincarnators. They had been searching for them within Misty Mountain City over the past two days and hadn’t seen any reincarnators.

This suggested that the area where reincarnators could appear was large. In Du Gang’s speculation, a city might only have one team of reincarnators.

Tasks one and three were easy to complete, just having to kill demons. But the second task was forcing them to actively seek out their targets.

How to search?

Du Gang believed that all reincarnators had a goal, which was a famous Demon King, or the strongest Demon King.

As long as their target was that, they would eventually run into it if they went in that direction.

“Let’s go, back to Misty Mountain City!”

Du Gang was walking when he suddenly stopped and turned around.

“What’s wrong?”

The others asked curiously.

Du Gang smiled and said: “I assume you would not want to return here to hand in tasks?”

“Bring someone with us, have them return with the accomplished task!”

The choice had already been made, and it was Zhuang Zihan whom they had previously encountered!

Returning to Misty Mountain City, although Zhuang Nai was somewhat reluctant to let her nephew go, she had no choice. The four true disciples wanted Zhuang Zihan by name, so she reluctantly agreed.

Before departure, Zhuang Zihan tearfully bid farewell to his wives, appearing as if he was parting from life and death.

In the end, Du Gang and the others grew impatient from waiting so long and he finally left the embrace of his family.

“It’s not like you’re not coming back, why are you acting like this?!”

Du Gang rolled his eyes, “Junior brother, don’t worry. The four of us are confident of killing the Demon King. We’re bringing you along merely to have you turn in our task when we’re done…”

“I understand, senior brother!”

While Zhuang Zihan said this, his face still wore a look of ready-to-die gallantry that clearly showed his disbelief in them.

After all, on one side there’s the ability to slay big demons, and on the other, there’s the infamous Demon King.

Of course, the Demon King they were going to kill was not worth mentioning compared to the other Demon Kings of this world. But within this radius of a thousand miles, this Dog Head Demon King was incomparably powerful!

The Dog Head Demon King, who had been cultivating for a thousand years, was the target of Du Gang and the others.

To be a Demon King, one had to cultivate for over a thousand years.

This Dog Head Demon King, according to the legends, was an ordinary black dog a thousand years ago. Born in times of chaos, it ate many human corpses, which gradually awakened its intelligence. It understood cultivation and eventually reached this stage.

But for Du Gang and the others, this information didn’t matter.

According to their calculations, the Demon King level of this world was equivalent to their True God level.

If the four of them, as True Gods, could not defeat a newly elevated Demon King, they wouldn’t need to consider Sun Wukong. They should directly find a place to scam their way back to the Reincarnation Space.

All five of them were cultivators, with even the weakest, Zhuang Zihan, on par with minor demons. Thus, they could travel up to eight hundred kilometers in a day.

The next day, Du Gang and the others arrived at the lair of the Dog Head Demon King without any trouble.

After confirming their location, Du Gang did not make things difficult for Zhuang Zihan and instructed him to wait outside while the four of them went in alone.

“You wait here. We’ll be back at most in two hours!”

Soon, the four of them entered the lair of the Demon King.

Instantly, everything before their eyes turned pitch black.

Not only that, the entire lair was filled with a repugnant stench. Apart from the smell of blood, Du Gang even detected a hint of feces.

“This damn dog, crapping all over its own lair. It’s so annoying!”

The group had no choice but to hold their breath and move forward.

Thankfully, while the lair was pitch black, each person’s strength was not weak. With night vision capabilities and divine thought to navigate, they soon located the Dog Head Demon King.

“Woof!”

A stern bark echoed across ten miles. The Dog Head Demon King, fueled by rage, charged toward Du Gang and the others.

From his perspective, Du Gang and his party were invaders to his territory.

Outside, hearing the roar, Zhuang Zihan was so scared that he fell onto the ground, his legs given way.

His power was too weak, only equivalent to a minor demon. The gap between him and the Demon King was massive. If not for his trust in the Five Elements Sect, he would have run away by now.

Even so, he still retreated some distance and hid behind a tree, anxiously sitting down to await the judgment of life and death.

In the lair, the Dog Head Demon King was initially burning with rage. But when it finally confronted Du Gang and the others, it froze.

In front of it were four humans radiating the same level of power as it did.

It fell silent, then suddenly spoke human language: “Could you let me leave? I swear I’ll never come back here again …”

Du Gang and the others looked at each other and smiled, shaking their heads. “You are our task!”

Most importantly, he wanted to see the true strength of the Demon King.

The Dog Head Demon King knew its end was near, no longer begging for mercy and instead prepared for a fight.

“When the Dog King is enraged, corpses float for miles. Today, I will spill your blood in five steps. It’s a fight to the death between us!”

The four of them were speechless. This Dog Head was quite cultured, having somehow learnt that sentence.

“Woof, roar!”

After a strange roar, the Dog Head Demon King lunged towards Du Gang. It understood, to capture the thieves, first capture the king.

“You guys hold back, I’ll test the waters with him!”

Du Gang quickly met the charge.

After fighting for dozens of rounds, he felt a bit disappointed. “This Dog Head Demon King, while he seems to be on par with a True God, his strength is inferior. It’s more like he’s patched together to this level. He has only the physical strength but lacks the diversity of divine abilities…”

Upon saying this, he found no reason to bait the king further, he simply struck and killed the Demon King.