Chapter 29: Black-haired gopher~

Tang Mo placed the pink altar on the table, looking in through the opening with the intention of seeing what was inside.

"Bang..."

A loud door opening came from behind her and Tang Mo's hand was the first to press on the matchstrike, turning to look back.

Granny Wolf, dressed in a little dress, walks in the door and takes the pink bag from the sofa. Noticing Tang Mo looking at her, she gave her a vicious glare and said, "Remember the time. If I don't see the golden gopher when I come back in seven days, you're my dinner!"

There was another rumbling of the door slamming, as if it were an earthquake, and the whole house shook with it.

Tang Mo's body shook twice in response and he walked over to the window. Seeing the wolf's grandmother slowly disappear down the path, he narrows his eyes and turns his head to look at the altar again.

Tang Mo looks up at the little pink alarm clock next to the sofa.

"It's day one, 12.30pm." The main quest of this tower attack game gives Tang Mo seven days of quest time, and the time of Monster Valley is calculated in the same way as on Earth, "so I entered the game after 5pm on the 30th of November, and by that time it would be the 1st of December ...... "

Tang Mo carefully went through the rules of the game that The black tower had just issued in his head.

He has seven days to catch a golden gopher, and the only way to attract one is to leave food in the hole at 6pm each day, or the food will not work if you miss it, so you have seven chances in total.

The probability of a golden gopher appearing on the first day is 40%, doubling to 80% for the rest of the day.

If he follows the correct rules of the game for each of the seven days, placing food at the entrance of a hole at six o'clock sharp and then standing in the hole without breaking the rules, the probability of the golden gopher not appearing for seven days is 0.000192. Conversely, the probability of catching the golden gopher within seven days is 0.999808.

The odds of this are frighteningly high.

Tang Mo doesn't think he's too lucky, but it's not like he can't catch a gopher with those odds.

Unless there is something wrong with this game itself.

Tang Mo pondered for a long time without coming up with an answer, and finally decided to look at the props he now owned first. In the absence of Granny Wolf, he walked over to the sofa and sat down, placing the altar on the coffee table.

"Anything that belongs to the Kingdom of the Underlanders can be turned into a groundhog. Anything at all ......"

Tang Mo's gaze shifted to the mass of earthling hair in the crevice of the sofa.

With a tear, Tang Mo yanked the slimy mass of hair out of the crevice. With a petty tug he took a strand of hair and placed it in the altar. After a few moments, the altar did not budge.

Tang Mo looked down along the mouth of the altar. The hair was still lying at the bottom of the altar and had not turned into any groundnut.

"Is that not enough?"

Tang Mo frowns and puts a big handful of hair straight in.

After waiting for about a minute, the altar suddenly vibrated violently. The pink altar shimmered with a colourful glow, like the multicoloured neon lights of an old-fashioned karaoke in the last century, the lights shining in all directions, illuminating every corner of the house with blindingly complex patches of coloured light.

Tang Mo stared unblinkingly at the altar for three minutes before its flickering lights finally went out, followed by a loud rumbling sound and then an overwhelming stench.

Even Tang Mo, who was trained in Mario's hats, almost fainted when he first smelt it.

He held back the stench and looked at the altar. Only to see an invisible line tracing silently downwards from the mouth of the altar. Where the straight line passed, the pink colour of the altar turned into a thick black. When the line reached the bottom of the altar, the whole pink altar all turned black.

Tang Mo was shocked and said, "Is that what makes this task so difficult? Is it hard to get food?"

Without giving Tang Mo a chance to think, a black object suddenly popped out of the altar and hit Tang Mo's leg. The black exterior of the altar slowly dissipated and turned pink again.

Tang Mo, aghast, picks up the unidentified black object, which appears to be charred, and looks at the altar on the coffee table.

A small line of writing slowly emerges on the altar -

[A pile of long-rotted underground man's hair, ah shucks!]

Tang Mo: "......"

What Tang Mo threw into the altar was hair and what was spat out was a charred, black, unidentified pile that reeked horribly. Tang Mo examined this object with his nose pinched as he used a knife to cut the shit-like object open. When the black shit was cut open, Tang Mo lowered his head and observed it for a long time before finally concluding with a grimace: "...... burnt shit like groundnuts?"

As if in response to his words, the pink altar glowed again.

Even without putting it in the hole for experimentation, Tang Mo could have guessed that there was no way that such a thing would attract a golden gopher.

Tang Mo picks up the altar and strokes the small inscriptions on it.

"Decaying Underlander hair ...... means that those hairs have been left too long to be considered part of the Underlander kingdom and can't be converted into food?"

If this is the case, then the task does seem slightly more difficult.

Tang Mo walks over to the fireplace and looks up at the head of the underground man hanging on the wall. He looks at it for a moment, then finally takes out his knife and, grasping the Underground Man's hair with one hand, uses the knife to carefully cut it off with the other. Having done this, he returned to the couch and placed these hairs in the altar.

Five minutes later -

[A pile of decomposing underground man's hair, ah bah bah bah bah!]

Tang Mo: "......"

Not even that?

Tang Mo did not bother trying to cut off the other organs of the Underlander's head and put them back into the altar. This altar seems to be very demanding of the items being put in it, and if Tang Mo is really Little Red Riding Hood, then he is himself the Underlander, and he only needs to put what he has with him into the altar to get food.

But he is not Little Red Riding Hood.

"Mario's hat would be considered something from the kingdom of the Underlanders. The turkey egg is from the great mole, and the earthworm's tears are from the earthworm, and they all belong to the monster."

These three items are Tang Mo's prizes from The black tower game, of which the only one that comes in handy is Mario's hat. But there's no way Tang Mo would put a fine quality prop into an altar like this in exchange for a groundnut.

He had thought of a way to do it.

Tang Mo took the ruby out of his pocket and raised it straight to his head and put it on Mario's hat.

Tang Mo immediately held his breath as the stench of black shit groundnut hit him. His gaze was fixed on the fireplace in Granny Wolf's house, and after three seconds he let out a loud cry and suddenly slammed his head into the fireplace wall.

"Dang!"

"Thud--"

The first was a rattling sound from a head hitting the wall and the second was the sound of a denture falling to the floor.

"This wall is too hard!" Tang Mo rubbed his head and took Mario's hat off.

He leaned down to pick up the dentures from the floor.

It's a yellow, old denture with a little bit of uncleaned chocolate stuck in between its teeth. Tang Mo has even touched a shitty groundnut, how can he be afraid of this? He picks up the braces without changing his face and throws them into the pink jar.

A minute later, the pink altar once again radiates a colourful light. The coloured light dissipates and an invisible line appears from the mouth of the altar. Where the straight line crossed, the altar turned a pale yellow. This difference made Tang Mo's heart flutter, and when the whole altar had turned yellow, a yellowish object leapt out of the altar and popped into Tang Mo's lap.

[An old shoemaker's dirty braces used for 70 years]

A line like this appears on the altar, and soon the yellow fades and the altar turns back to pink.

The groundnut that hit Tang Mo's leg was the size of an adult's arm and was a thick, long piece. The groundnuts look no different from those on Earth, except that they are a little less flavourful. Tang Mo had not eaten for a day, but he had no appetite for this groundnut.

He took the groundnuts and walked to the kitchen to find a plate to put them on.

After all this, it was only three o'clock in the afternoon. Tang Mo thinks for a moment, puts on Mario's hat again and thumps it against the wall twice. The first time a small broken mirror fell out and the second time a half-eaten chicken leg fell out.

Mario's Hat, fine quality, wear the hat and hit your head against a hard object for a chance of getting a magical treasure, with a maximum 10% chance of dropping it.

Tang Mo experimented with this prop as soon as he got it.

When wearing Mario's hat, you must hit a hard object (such as a wall) with maximum force in order to drop the object, and there is never a definite number of things that will fall out.

After being informed by The black tower that he was going to take part in the tower attack game, Tang Mo didn't waste a single day, putting on his hat and banging his head against the wall every night to see if the so-called treasure would fall out.

The hat's restrictions don't say how many times a day it can be hit, but Tang Mo's own experiments have shown that the hat only drops items safely three times a day. The first three full impacts already made Tang Mo dizzy and uncomfortable. If he hit it a fourth time, he could be sure that the hat would have a negative impact on his body. The more times he hit it, the greater the impact.

So this hat can only be used almost three times a day, and the drop rate is sensational.

Since getting the hat, Tang Mo has hit the wall 34 times and not once has anything useful fallen out.

Sometimes it was a dirty rag, sometimes it was a small, inconspicuous stone. The only time it fell was when a small, delicate knife with seven-coloured stones fell out, and Tang Mo was so surprised that he rushed to pick it up. Before he could try it out, the words appeared on the handle of the knife -

[Props: Snow White apple peeler]

[Owned by: Tang Mo].

[Quality: Rubbish]

[Level: None]

[Attack Power: Poor]

[Features: quite beautiful]

[Restriction: No restriction required].

[Note: Snow White: "Do you peel your apples?"]

Tang Mo: "......" My family really peels the apples!

Originally, Tang Mo was not yet dead.

It was a Snow White knife, if not for peeling apples, then perhaps for something else, not crap quality. Tang Mo was shocked when his fingers accidentally touched the blade, and before his brain could react to the pain of the cut on his hand, his vision saw the knife suddenly break in half and fall to the ground with a snap.

...... This knife can't even match the hardness of a finger!

One can only imagine how pitiful Mario's hats really are.

With a gourd in hand, Tang Mo walks towards the nine gopher holes.

The valley of the monsters is silent. Granny Wolf lives on the side of a large mountain in the deepest part of the valley, and all those other gorilla and monkey monsters live in a basin in the middle of the valley, so far away from Granny Wolf's house that there is almost no communication.

Tang Mo has a vague feeling that Granny Wolf seems to be in a somewhat unusual position in the Valley of Monsters.

Granny Wolf's vegetable garden is so much bigger than all the other monsters'.

When Tang Mo first entered the valley, she saw that every family had a vegetable patch in front of their house, all of them were very ordinary small vegetable patches, similar to the kind that people in the countryside grow casually in front of their homes to fill their stomachs. Only Granny Wolf's vegetable patch took up the whole back of the hill.

This hill is home to only one monster, Granny Wolf, so all the land on the back hill has been cleared by her for vegetable plots.

After walking down the trail for about ten minutes, Tang Mo left the vegetable field and walked to the nine caves.

Looking down from the hut on the mountain, these nine large black holes jut out of the smooth mountain wall, out of place in the whole monster valley setting. Now at the bottom of the hill, Tang Mo stands between the large holes and the vegetable patch, with the mountain where Granny Wolf lives behind her and nine large gopher holes of unknown depth in front of her.

Nine large circular caves, three metres in diameter, are lined up horizontally in a straight line, embedded in the mountain wall, from left to right. From the mouth of the cave you can only see a metre or two deep inwards, further inwards they are shrouded in the dim light of the cave and cannot be seen.

Rule 8 of the game: Before sowing, the gopher will only move around inside the burrow.

The seeding will only take place when Granny Wolf returns home, so it is unlikely that these gophers will leave their burrows now. Tang Mo carefully approached these gopher holes, he placed the gophers outside the holes and walked himself from the first to the ninth hole to observe these gopher burrows.

The floor of each cave has some traces of claws digging into the ground, four claws, five nails, each about five centimetres wide. A deep gouge mark appears on the ground that has been ploughed by the claws, the deepest mark being half a metre deep.

"The monster gopher is at least two metres in size and has very strong claws." Looking at the marks, Tang Mo thought to himself, "Are these marks caused by a black-furred gopher or a golden-furred gopher?"

There are a few golden and black hairs near each hole, a little more black, but it is impossible to identify exactly who caused those marks.

"The hairs are the same length and shape, and if so, the golden and black-haired gophers are probably the same size." Without entering the cave, Tang Mo stood as close to the cave as he could to observe what was inside, "Assuming that both the golden and black-haired gophers can cause such marks, they may be no less aggressive than the two monkey monsters, perhaps even more so."

Tang Mo ponders for a moment, walks to the spot and picks up the plate of groundnuts and walks towards the nine large gopher holes.

The probability of a golden gopher appearing on the first day is 40% and a black gopher is 60%.

Tang Mo does not intend to take any chances.

He didn't know exactly what these two types of gopher looked like and how strong their attacks were. He had seven days to catch the golden gopher, and there was no need to rush into the mission on the first day, just to be on the safe side. If a black-haired gopher was attracted, Tang Mo would be trapped.

Knowing one's enemy is the only way to win a hundred battles. The information he knows now is still too little.

Tang Mo found a random hole, the fifth one he had chosen. He stood by the hole, lifted his wrist and looked at the time on his watch.

The second hand ticked across the dial.

Three minutes later, when the minute hand was pointing straight up at 12, Tang Mo quickly put the gourd into the hole and ran away. He ran as fast as he could behind a boulder ten metres away, then looked up and stared at the fifth hole.

As soon as six o'clock arrived, the monster valley was sunny one minute and suddenly dark the next.

There is no sun in Monster Valley, and Tang Mo has been here all day without finding a source of light, but there is sunshine in Monster Valley. The sun comes on at six in the morning and disappears at six in the afternoon.

It is now six o'clock and darkness has fallen, a pitch-black night enveloping the silent valley. The moonlight is dim and the breeze blows without a sound of movement.

Tang Mo's eyes were fixed on the large groundnut, his body tense as he waited for the creature to appear.

Game rule 7: The probability of a golden gopher appearing is 0 if the player and the food are not standing in the same hole.

So, will it be black-haired gophers that appear, or nothing at all?

Three seconds later a thumping sound came from the depths of the fifth hole. Tang Mo's eyes widened as he straightened his upper body and stared into the cave entrance. The next moment, deep in the dark cavern, a large, dark figure shifted gently through the cavern. Suddenly, a pitch-black paw slapped down on the golden groundhog.

The black monster's claws strangled the groundnut, its nails sliding over the plate, which immediately shattered into powder. It held the groundnut and gobbled it up.

In the quiet of the night, the cackling of the groundnuts was ear-splitting. Tang Mo holds his breath and watches intently as the unknown thing eats the groundnuts bit by bit. When it has finished eating it, it suddenly looks up at Tang Mo, who is hiding behind a large rock.

Tang Mo's heart gave a pounding, and instead of running away, he watched from a distance of ten metres from this thing.

The black-furred gopher stands in its burrow, its body one with the night. A pair of tiny green eyes stare straight through the night at Tang Mo with cold eyes and a taste of blood hidden in their dark green colour.

A man and a mouse look at each other across the hole and five seconds later, the black-furred gopher stomps on the ground and turns to run into the hole. It ran as fast as it could and the heavy thumping sound became softer and softer and finally disappeared.

Still standing behind the boulder, Tang Mo waited for five minutes to make sure the black-furred gopher would not return before he cautiously walked to the fifth hole.

The groundnuts were eaten clean, leaving no residue behind.

The plate was smashed by the black-haired gopher with a slap, leaving only a little white powder behind. The powder was mixed with the dirt and could not be seen at all without looking closely.

The probability of a golden-haired gopher appearing is 0, meaning that it must be a black-haired gopher that appears. The black-haired gopher is stronger than the two monkey monsters, and probably even stronger than the big earthworm in "Kill Bill".

Tang Mo comes to this conclusion with a calm expression and turns to walk back to Granny Wolf's hut.

The next day at noon, Tang Mo put on Mario's hat again and started banging on the wall. Again, there were three pieces of rubbish that didn't even look like they were doing anything, so Tang Mo threw one into the pink altar and got a large groundnut.

At 5pm he ate a biscuit to replenish his strength and then, gnome in hand, headed for the nine big gopher holes.

The big dark gopher hole was so deep that Tang Mo hid behind a large rock. He took out a large match, sharpened the blades of two small knives and tied them to his thighs. By 5.59pm Tang Mo was walking towards the fifth hole with a plate in his hand.

All nine holes have the same probability of gophers appearing, and it doesn't matter which one you choose.

At six o'clock Tang Mo bent over and placed the groundnut on the edge of the hole, into which he lifted his feet and stepped. His hands are thrust into his pockets, seemingly casually, while he has a firm grip on two small darts in each hand. He stared unblinkingly into the depths of the hole, shrouded in darkness, his left foot turned in the direction of the cave beyond, ready to escape.

A few dozen seconds later, Tang Mo heard a familiar smashing sound. It was as if a huge animal had come running from far away, and the sound of its limbs hitting the ground reverberated through the narrow cavern, shaking the walls with it.

Tang Mo stood up straight and saw a blackened object appear twenty metres away.

Small, dark green eyes and a huge, terrifying body. The light is still too dim to see whether it is black or gold.

When it reached five metres from the cave entrance, the moonlight finally caught its fur and the rich black colour pierced Tang Mo's eyes. Tang Mo's eyes fluttered and he turned and ran without hesitation, but a sharp whistle sounded behind him.

The black-furred gopher doesn't even look at the ground, his eyes glowing with excitement as he slaps a paw at Tang Mo.

The black-haired gopher was so quick, so much quicker than Tang Mo, that Tang Mo's paws blocked his way before he could get one foot out of the hole. Tang Mo didn't hesitate, he stomped his foot into the paw and took his hands out of his pocket and shot four small darts at the big gopher's eyes.

Tang Mo hadn't practiced shooting darts specifically before, he had a few days of practice after getting the little darts, but in the heat of the moment he shot all three darts and missed, only one flew into the big gopher's right eye.

The gopher rushes out of the way, giving Tang Mo a chance to catch his breath. Tang Mo took out his giant match and met the black-haired gopher with a big, fat paw.

Tang Mo's mouth was shaken and tingled as the huge paw hit the match. The black-furred gopher seemed not to have expected such a powerful object from Tang Mo and was caught off guard as it took a step backwards, breaking a nail on its paw with the large match.

Bright red blood dripped from the broken nail.

The black-furred gopher let out an angry roar and roared at Tang Mo.

Tang Mo immediately swung a large match to meet the attack, while constantly dodging.

The big gopher was so clever that he used his huge body to block Tang Mo's way out of the hole. The tunnel was dimly lit and Tang Mo was forced further and further in by it. If he continued like this, he would get further and further away from the entrance and would be less likely to get out.

Tang Mo gritted his teeth and didn't dodge again when the big gopher swung another paw at him.

The gopher's claws broke into the wind and Tang Mo faced the gopher directly, holding the match tightly in both hands. As the gopher's claws fell, he saw his chance and struck a match between the tiny gaps in the claws and hit the gopher's nails.

The gopher let out a shrill whine of angry pain.

Instead of simply breaking his nails, Tang Mo used the match's reverse force to leap over the gopher's body with his feet on the ground, flipping behind him. Ignoring the pain of his nails, the gopher turned around to grab Tang Mo.

Tang Mo ran for the hole as fast as he could in his life, and the big gopher reached out his paws in annoyance.

"Rip-ra-"

The sharp claws cut through Tang Mo's clothing and made a shallow bloody mark on his back.

Tang Mo had already leapt out of the cave and dropped his whole body to the ground outside the cave.

Inside the gopher's cave, the black-furred gopher growled in annoyance and refused to leave, standing at the entrance and watching Tang Mo. Tang Mo sat on the ground panting heavily as he checked his back, it was not a serious injury, just a little cut. But his clothes had been completely cut open from top to bottom, leaving his back completely exposed to the air.

After resting for a while, Tang Mo used a large match as a walking stick and prepared to return to the hut.

He didn't expect his luck to be so bad. With a 20% chance, only one in five, he actually didn't encounter a golden-haired gopher and encountered a black-haired gopher.

This black-haired gopher is indeed extremely strong, its defence is not as strong as that of the big earthworm, but its attacking power is far superior to that of the big earthworm, and its intelligence and attacking methods are also much better than those of the big earthworm.

Behind him, the black-haired gopher was still snarling at the mouth of the fifth cave. Tang Mo gasped and pondered as he walked: "One in five chance, The black tower doesn't lie, is it really just my bad luck today ......" as he walked past the fourth hole. "The odds of running into a black-haired gopher two days in a row is one in twenty-five, so my luck shouldn't be so bad tomorrow."

Tang Mo walks through the third hole and continues on to the next one.

Suddenly, his steps stopped and his whole body turned rigidly to look at the third hole behind him.

Tang Mo stared dead at the floor of the third hole for a full minute. After a minute, he put away the big match, took a step forward to the third hole and bent down.

In the silence of the dark valley, the night was deep and the angry roar of the black-furred gopher was long and unrelenting.

On the floor of the third cave, a tiny bit of white powder is mixed in with the earth. The moonlight shines on it, reflecting the smooth hue that belongs to a ceramic plate.

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The author has something to say.

Mr. Tangtang: The black tower, I'm bleeped!!!

Mr. Fu School: # Last time my daughter-in-law took off her clothes, this time my daughter-in-law's back is showing, but I can't see a thing and I have to keep smiling