[V6C43 – Sorrow of a Silent Parting]
Several grey dogs rushed over, but Qianye didn’t take this level of attack seriously at all. A swing of his East Peak was all it took to send them cras.h.i.+ng into the cave wall. The entire tunnel shook slightly as the ashen canines fell down one by one, never to rise again.
Qianye frowned briefly. The sword strike just now had been controlled with extreme precision—he had intended to incapacitate the entire pack with one move, but he hadn’t expected that nearly half of the origin power on his blade would be absorbed by the dogs’ ugly, wrinkly skin. This weakened the force of his attack by a fair bit, and he only managed to kill a single grey dog, while the others were only injured.
Qianye switched to a different method. He launched a series of stabs, and this time, he retained the origin power within the blade to boost its sharpness. The attack this time was indeed more effective. The dogs fell one after the other, but a small amount of origin power was still absorbed.
Qianye checked the corpses briefly and confirmed that their weird, wrinkly grey skin possessed the ability to absorb origin power. This was detrimental to those experts who habitually utilized origin power to strengthen their attacks.
No wonder William had transformed into his combat form while dealing with those midgets. He was using his sharp claws and pure speed to kill those aboriginals because attacks and weapons that relied on origin power weren’t very effective.
A group of midgets charged out as Qianye pa.s.sed a segment of the cave. He quickly drew the b.l.o.o.d.y Datura and fired immediately.
Qianye had used a shrapnel round for this shot because there was simply no room for evasion in this narrow tunnel. Most of the midgets fell within the blast radius, but the shot only managed to kill two of them. The rest struggled for a moment before clambering up one after another.
Qianye quietly switched to the Mystic Spider Lily and fired once again. This time, the shot was supplemented by an illusory effect of the greatest magnitude. The effects seemed better this time around as several midgets fell into confusion, pain, or madness. However, they recovered soon afterward.
It would seem that the effect of origin guns was fairly limited against these aboriginals. The main issue was that a fair portion of the explosive force had been absorbed by their odd skin. The best way to deal with them was to use sharp or piercing melee weapons that were not too reliant on origin power.
Qianye drew out his East Peak, and then swung it once more while circulating his oceanic force. The effects of this strike were both good and bad—the midgets were highly resistant to the oceanic power, but were helpless against East Peak’s weight and sharpness. Qianye was able to swat several of them to death with its weight alone.
A group made up of a dozen or so midgets was swatted to death in three strikes, thus gaining him an effective countermeasure.
He went deeper in and arrived at a naturally formed hall after a thousand or so meters.
This cave, a hundred meters in radius and several meters in height, was quite grand with its hanging stalact.i.tes. Water from an unknown source flowed down along its length and pattered down to the floor. There were numerous stalagmites extending upward from the ground with little ponds of all sizes between them. There was a dark underground stream emerging from the center of the cave and winding toward the other end.
This place was simply a natural habitat for those aboriginals. The moment Qianye stepped into the hall, he noticed at least a dozen figures flit past to hide in the various corners and shadows. They weren’t afraid at all and were only waiting for the correct opportunity to attack. Qianye hadn’t seen a single docile creature since his arrival in this strange world—even the herbivorous blade-horned horses were extremely ferocious.
Qianye activated his Bloodline Concealment, retracted his aura, and advanced with the aid of the shadows.
Qianye had already discovered during the past encounters that most of the aboriginals here relied on their perception of origin power in order to sense their surroundings. Hence, the creatures lost their target once Qianye activated his Bloodline Concealment. They were stunned for a moment before some of them soon walked out and began searching for traces of the invader.
But these predators soon turned into prey as a ma.s.sive crocodile-like creature rushed out from one of the holes in the ground. It bit one of the aboriginal creatures into two, then proceeded to gobble it up.
The cave-hall was thrown into disarray at the crocodile’s appearance, and the aboriginal creatures started fleeing in all directions. Qianye was moved after seeing this rank-twelve wild beast and almost couldn’t resist taking action.
These native creatures possessed exceptionally dense essence blood. This big fellow was likely comparable to three or four third-rank counts, an amount sufficient to upgrade Qianye’s blood core. He might even become a second-rank viscount after killing this beast!
But Qianye still held back because the beasts in this accursed world were clearly stronger than experts from outside. Moreover, Qianye couldn’t concentrate on fighting this underground crocodile with so many Evernight experts around.
The crocodile devoured several other creatures at lightning speed before crawling back into its burrow, apparently satisfied. Qianye couldn’t help but feel a chill as he glanced at the bottomless hole. More importantly, there was more than just one such hole in this hall.
Qianye circled around the holes with great caution, doing his best to prevent the other wild beasts from discovering him as he made his way to the other side of the hall.
He discovered a powerful origin power fluctuation in front of him at this moment, whereupon he halted his steps and hid inside a rocky crevice. Most wild beasts in this world sought their prey by identifying origin power. Now that this newcomer was utilizing a substantial amount of origin power in combat, he would soon be attacked on all sides.
One part of the cave wall was blasted open with a loud boom as two dark race viscounts rushed into the hall. Both the werewolf and arachne were in their combat forms and seemed to be in a fairly miserable situation. They had probably blasted the wall open with an origin grenade because the arachne’s large body was badly suited for movement through narrow tunnels.
Now, however, these two viscounts were like the sun amidst the darkness. Their incomparably dazzling presence quickly attracted the attention of all the fierce beasts in the hall. After stabilizing their footing, the duo suddenly realized that before them was a dense horde of various creatures. There were at least a dozen species in this thousand-strong beast horde.
After realizing their situation, even the ferocious werewolf couldn’t help but edge back with a terrified expression. Soon afterward, their pursuers arrived through the tunnel behind them. Hundreds of grey-skinned midgets poured into the hall like water from an opened sluice. They charged at the werewolf and arachne, letting out sharp, chaotic cries and waving the primitive yet lethal weapons in their hands.
It would seem that the two had run out of luck. Certain death awaited them, and Qianye had no intention of sharing their burden. As such, he retracted his aura and slowly made his way out from his hiding place. He moved slowly along the outer rim in an attempt to circle around toward the other end of the hall and push further in.
The deadlock lasted less than a minute before a fierce battle broke out. As expected of Evernight elites, the arachne and werewolf possessed great fighting power. They erupted with their full power in the desperate situation, bringing out the full extent of their bloodline talents. Swathes of beasts and grey men fell under their blade.
However, there were simply too many beasts of all shapes and sizes. Moreover, the grey-skinned midgets kept swarming in through the broken wall regardless of how many were killed. Arachne and werewolf would surely come to exhaustion at one point no matter how fierce they were. At that time, they would be torn to shreds.
The great hall fell into chaos amidst the screams of the midgets, the howls of the wild beasts, and the war cries of the arachne and werewolf. There were also mournful wails and miserable screams mixed in from time to time. It was utterly clamorous. This was rather advantageous for Qianye who was looking to extricate himself from this mess. He hastened his steps as he moved along the cave wall.
As he advanced, Qianye suddenly caught an origin power fluctuation behind an ordinary looking wall!
This fluctuation was extremely weak, and he might not have caught it if he hadn’t been maintaining his True Sight. Moreover, at less than two meters from him, the fluctuation was simply too close!
Without a second thought, Qianye brought East Peak up with both hands and thrust toward the source of the fluctuation.
The strike was performed in a hurry, but Qianye’s attainments with the basic sword techniques had almost reached perfection. As he a.s.sumed a stance akin to wind and thunder, all the silver patterns lit up upon the blade and several illusory golden lines erupted with a faint glow.
The cave wall was like tofu against East Peak which pierced through it in one strike. Qianye felt that he had stabbed something, but the gus.h.i.+ng origin power suddenly vanished like a stone falling into the ocean. Soon afterward, he heard a soft gasp of astonishment.
The cave wall shattered under the raging origin power and crumbled into countless stony fragments, revealing the path behind it. A blue-robed Li Kuanglan stood there holding the tip of East Peak with one hand while gazing at Qianye in astonishment.
“Oh c.r.a.p, I’ve accidentally stabbed a human.” Qianye’s eyes were wide as he, too, stood in a daze.
The other party’s origin power was incomparably cryptic even under True Sight, and Qianye had failed to identify it in his rush just now. He was now able to see clearly that it belonged to daybreak which meant that the blue-robed young man was likely an expert from the empire’s side.
Being able to catch East Peak in one hand proved that he wasn’t a mediocre person at all. There was a thin layer of frost on his hand which isolated it from the blade’s edge, but the small trick aside, there was no doubt that he was extremely powerful.
The atmosphere was fairly subtle as the two locked eyes for a split second. Just as Li Kuanglan was about to raise his aura, Qianye drew East Peak from Li Kuanglan’s grasp with a flick of his hand.
The timing of this retraction was extremely clever, and just as Li Kuanglan was starting to increase his power, the blade broke away from his grasp in one movement.
“My apologies, it was unintentional.” Qianye offered a brief apology, tossed a bottle of medicine to the man, and left in due haste.
In such a chaotic situation, the threat posed by humans was no less than that of the dark races. Qianye understood this very well after experiencing the b.l.o.o.d.y battle under the Iron Curtain. Qianye had no wish to seek the company of an unidentified powerful expert like Li Kuanglan.
Li Kuanglan caught the medicine reflexively and only looked down at his hand after Qianye had left. A faint red line had appeared on his white, jade-like hand. That strike from East Peak had managed to injure his hand after all.
“A Zhao clan member? Interesting!” Li Kuanglan glanced at the champion-grade recovery medicine and chuckled.