946 Volcanic Cavern - Part 3

"We have exciting news, everyone! The first group has made it all the way through the Volcanic Caverns. Everyone should remember the group of seniors who smashed their boat into Nian earlier! They have just begun their fight against the Final Boss Nian and accompanying them is none other than our very own Pandawan Bu Dong!!!" Bear Cub One exclaimed.

After the introduction of Super NPC Captain Hei, nothing too interesting had happened in the Cinema Hall. Some of the featured live streams used creative, out of the box tricks, but it was nothing exciting enough to get the blood of the spectators boiling. Just as many in the group of spectators were about to leave, the in house announcers pulled their attention back and played the highlights of Bu Dong and the Elder Pandarens fight against the Nian Horde.

The System even used the chance to advertise the fight by putting it onto the front page of Pandaflix. Any Pandarens who used the app or clicked on the promotional link on the forum was able to watch everything in real-time. It was the System's way to somewhat fix the 'problem' with their current streaming service. 

The customers had put in complaints about Pandaflix being too cluttered due to an abundance of streams without any easy options to sort it by their own preferences. In fact, Jin had some ideas how to improve on it, like creating a section for award-winning streams of the Pandarens or Pandawans that cleared the dungeons with style or perhaps people that gave simple walkthrough guides on how to clear it.

But for now, everyone was more interested to see if Bu Dong would be able to pull the first dungeon clear with his new team composition. Jin's new improved system of clearing dungeons gave people an additional opportunity to earn a place in the Hall of Fame. (Which was now an official shophouse near the top of the mountains in the Panda Street Instance.) People could make it either by clearing it in one shot or by clearing it with multiple attempts like Bu Dong was doing right now.

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"Holy shit!? He brought a gatling gun into the battle?!" A middle-aged Pandaren who was walking around in Panda Street Instance cried out in amazement. He could hardly believe that something like that was so easily available for purchase.

"Don't get too overly excited. I just checked and while that gatling gun was on sale, don't forget that such a weapon eats through ammo! Not to mention even on sale it's freaking expensive, and such a weapon is difficult to set up in the middle of the battle. Unless one is very skilled in setting it up, it should be impossible for those Nian monster to not notice it." Another middle-aged Pandaren, who was also watching it on his phone, gave his opinion.

"Holy Mother of- How is this not cheating?!" The middle-aged Pandaren asked as he shook his head in disbelief.

"Hahahah! I guess this is what you would call 'the power of medals'. If you use that new market to change your money to medals, you can gain enough spending power to even buy a gatling gun!" The first Pandaren theorised.

"I'm certain that he saved enough medals to buy that gun. No matter how you see it, this is the first time he is splurging this much!" The young Pandaren was obviously a fan of Bu Dong. He was quite apparently proud to be one of the few to know such details of the Pandwan from all the streams he had watched about the Angry Ape cultivator.

"Ah, sorry! Is my boy being erm…too enthusiastic?" The young Pandaren's father came to stop him from flaunting, but the middle-aged Pandarens were both shaking their heads.

"It's nice seeing someone this young be so interested in cultivation and dungeon instances. Before coming to this shop, I thought the old ways of dungeoneering were dead. Thanks to Boss Jin, I see it being revived and all I can say is this is indeed one of the better dungeon supplier shops out in Shenzhen at least." The middle-aged man smiled at the young boy.

"But you see those firecrackers on the wagon, he is basically courting death -oh my God! That Nian was vicious!" The father wanted to give his opinion of the highlight when they all watched the boss flip the wagon around. 

Both middle-aged Pandarens smirked after discovering where the boy got his energy and enthusiasm from. Meanwhile, the teenager could only giggle and being giddy on Bu Dong's usage of the gatling gun. He even told them tidbits how the Angry Ape Pandawan had used them in the previous dungeon events too, and the boasting subsequently spurred the spectators to watch the current stream together despite them being total strangers.

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"You are not going anywhere you beast!" Zi Dan shouted as he took out his chain ball mace. He used his chi to extend the chains by executing the intermediate technique, Ball Chain Prison. The Bullet Cheetah Cultivator threw the mace over the Nian's legs trying to immobilise the beast. Once he managed to hook it, Zi Dan began sliding and circling around Nian's torso.

Nian realised what he was doing and tried to get out, but Xia Mao was holding it in place. He slashed his dragon-slaying scimitar right into the open wound that Bu Dong's rain of bullets had caused. Nian, in turn, yelled out in pain. 

But it did not end there. 

Jing Yu sent her blades to further aggravate the wound. This series of quick attacks gave Zi Dan sufficient time to bind its legs and forced Nian to drop on the ground. At the same time, she activated the firecracker halberd, and with each slash, the spear blade would explode upon contact.

However, the attacks might have been effective if it was at the start of their battle. Now, Nian had turned into an angry state from losing 50% of her hit points and had entered the second phase of the fight. Soon after Zi Dan had completed his chain binding technique, she roared out anger, causing molten lava to harden and become part of its defences. The firecracker halberd Jing Yu used was the only thing that was able to destroy those hardened floating lava shields. 

But Nian was not completely happy that she was binded by Zi Dan, but she had not given up attacking them. Those Molten Lava Shields which had been broken down from the firecracker spear's explosion had a secondary effect, causing them to explode towards their enemies upon destruction, counteracting against Jing Yu's offensive streak. And that caused the hardened lava turned into projectiles, piercing straight to the Elder Pandarens.

If not for their fire resistance charms and cosmetically inscribed fire resistance armour, they might have been burned and suffered even more damage. Yet, Zi Dan finally thought that was his turn to shine by spreading his chi into the atmosphere and started to heal the party members. They were surprised how fast and wide the healing chi could be distributed since most healing chi required closer contact, and they assumed it was partially due to his cultivation.

And only those with astute observation among the audience noticed that Nian, in turn, had also used the lava to heal herself. However, she used that opportunity to throw in another roar, and the Elder Pandarens expected another attack pattern to soon emerge.

The roar itself was not frightening, but the magically imbued Nian used it to further control the lava that surrounded them without the Elder Pandarens knowledge. 

Only Heala had noticed that the temperature of the dungeon was rapidly rising and the lava was starting to churn like sea waves about to hit the harbour. She initially wanted to heal the rest, but with Zi Dan's emergency healing in play, her programming was able to allow her to be more aware of the surroundings. Thus, aiding her to sense the incoming danger to the entire party. She then quickly raised her staff and started to cast a spell to save her companions.

"Advanced Healing Arts! Wide Panda Barriers!" Heala exclaimed as she released magic into her staff. A horde of Panda silhouettes appeared and flew to the edge of the stone circle they were currently entrapped in. As the magical Lava Waves tried to come ashore, the Panda Silhouettes immediately form a barrier stopping it in its tracks. 

There the Panda silhouettes began to slurp the lava as if they were drinking from a lake until the lava waves subsided. Upon fulfilling their command, the Elder Pandarens realised how devastating the lava overflow would have been if not for Heala. All of them were suddenly very happy about choosing her instead of Tanke. (Or perhaps, Tanke had a different way of saving them?)