Chapter 374: Night
There was nothing to the southwest.
The four of them walked for half a day, crushing countless white bones underfoot, but the scenery before them remained unchanged.
Yuan Chu and Gong Gui both looked at Xiong Xin, their faces full of doubt.
They didn’t dare say anything disrespectful about the Dharma Protector, but their expressions made their thoughts clear to Xiong Xin.
"Sigh... Let’s go."
Xiong Xin still believed in his Dharma Protector. After all, besides himself, only four others on the entire Divine Dao Mountain worshiped it.
Reason and sentiment dictated that for the sake of that small bit of incense, the Dharma Protector couldn’t just watch him die.
After another long while, the four of them finally saw something different in the distance.
"Look, what is that?"
Yuan Chu pointed. Amidst the vast sea of white bones, a spot of bright yellow light shone faintly, not particularly conspicuous.
As they got closer, they saw it was a fire, burning slowly with white bones as its kindling.
Occasionally, the faint sound of bones crackling could be heard.
Bai Mo, who practiced Alchemy year-round and was used to dealing with fire, was more sensitive to it.
"This fire seems a bit different."
With that, he placed his hand above it. The flames licked at his skin, but he was completely unharmed.
The waist-high ball of fire, aside from being unable to burn people, seemed to have no other unusual properties.
So, everyone turned their eyes to Xiong Xin.
The latter cocked his ear again, listening to the words from the void.
"The Dharma Protector has spoken. It told me not to go any further."
The group immediately understood.
"Shall we look around then?"
Leaving Xiong Xin to slump down by the fire, the other three began to search the area.
The sky and the ground were clear to see, leaving only the earth beneath them to investigate.
Bai Mo turned over the white bones, trying to identify their origins as he did.
There were bones from both humans and beasts. He could roughly guess which types of Demon Beasts the beast bones belonged to; many were as thick as a human’s.
What was surprising was that the human bones were exceptionally thick, as if most had practiced some form of Body Refinement.
CRACK!
He knocked two thigh bones together in his hands, and both bones immediately snapped and shattered.
’The essence within has completely dissipated...’
Suddenly, Bai Mo’s gaze froze. He picked up a hip bone the size of a human head.
There was a finger-sized hole in it. He lightly traced it with his finger and found the surface of the hole was extremely smooth, which sparked a bit of doubt in his heart.
His strange expression naturally drew the attention of Yuan Chu and Gong Gui.
The two of them had been digging a pit. Relying on their powerful physiques, they had already dug more than ten feet deep. They were just taking a breather when they noticed Bai Mo’s reaction.
"What is it?"
Bai Mo held up the Demon Beast hip bone for the two to see.
"This hole is smooth. If it were old, it should have weathered over time like the rest of the bone and become rough to the touch."
"In other words, this hole was formed recently."
Yuan Chu reacted at once.
"Besides us, is something else active in this place?"
After all, in such a massive Secret Realm, it wasn’t surprising for other things to exist. The group wasn’t particularly shocked.
But this other party seemed to be living in secret, which was enough to put them on guard.
TAP! TAP!
Gong Gui took out two bone fragments and knocked them together, producing a crisp sound.
"These two bone fragments haven’t completely decayed."
"With the essence inside, they could indeed sustain a living creature."
Before they knew it, the sky had darkened. The moonlight seemed to be separated from them by an infinite distance, making it very dim.
The waist-high ball of fire became more prominent, giving people a strange sense of security in the dark night.
Gong Gui tossed out several tortoise shells, which landed around them and formed an Array.
In the deep, dark night, a blue flame emerged in the distance, appearing from thin air and floating in the sky.
One... two...
Dense clusters of will-o’-the-wisps emerged.
Given that the ground was covered in white bones, this wasn’t strange.
Xiong Xin frowned, staring out in confusion at a blurry object.
When he could see it clearly, his pupils suddenly contracted and his body stiffened.
"There’s something out there! Don’t you go out!"
Knowing that his life was short and he could see things they couldn’t, Bai Mo and the other two quickly retreated a few steps.
"What is it?"
Xiong Xin’s face was grim as he gritted his teeth. "I don’t know. They’re floating up from the ground, all grayish."
He instinctively felt that they were no good.
"But those things are avoiding the light of our fire..."
Outside, the eerie blue will-o’-the-wisps were as dense as stars.
Hearing him say this, the other three felt as if they could truly feel a pressure closing in on them.
RUSTLE! RUSTLE!
A strange noise reached their ears, startling the group. When they looked again, they saw a leech-like creature suddenly burst out from the ground in the distance.
The thing moved rapidly, hopping and jumping, but it suddenly froze in mid-air, then curled up and fell to the ground, completely still.
Yuan Chu had sharp eyes and spotted a round hole where the leech had jumped out.
"This is the thing that’s been burrowing through the bones!"
The rustling sound in their ears had not stopped.
Countless leeches swarmed out from underground, surging toward the ball of fire like a tide, only to die for no reason.
In Xiong Xin’s eyes, they were being pounced on by those gray shadows, which was what made them suddenly stop moving.
The finger-sized leeches formed a carpet-like layer of corpses on the ground.
It didn’t matter if they tried to repel them or not. The tortoise shells Gong Gui had thrown out were instantly riddled with holes, and the Array had no effect whatsoever.
Leeches even burst out from the ground at their feet, too fast to be stopped.
Cold sweat broke out on the foreheads of the four, then stopped.
Those leeches that made it into the area illuminated by the fire seemed to have escaped with their lives; their movements slowed, and they burrowed into the white bones under the ground.
But Bai Mo knew they hadn’t left.
The shallow layer of white bones under their feet was faintly undulating; it was the leeches, burrowing in swarms.
Around them, a tide of leeches continued to be forced out from underground, heading for the light of the fire.
The four of them stood rigid for an hour before the commotion finally ended.
The leeches outside that hadn’t made it in time all died on the ground.
"I wonder how the others are doing?"
Gong Gui was the first to speak.
Yuan Chu answered him.
"Among the people from the sect, we are the weakest. If anyone should be worried, it’s them worrying about us..."
After those few words, silence fell over the group again.
Beneath their feet was a surging torrent of leeches. Though they called them leeches, when they’d gotten a closer look, the group had seen that the creatures were as black as ink.
No one could say for sure what they really were.
Plus, the sight of them instantly destroying Gong Gui’s Array was still unnerving, so for the moment, no one dared to act rashly.
Bai Mo took out three grayish Pills and handed them to the other three.
"If something happens, take this Pill and find the Sect Elders. It might be your only chance of survival."
The three readily accepted, clutching the Pills in their hands.
Xiong Xin was especially anxious. He was stout and strong; if the things below were to attack, he would likely be their first target.
"Junior Brother, what is this Pill? I have a way to pinpoint Junior Martial Uncle Shang’s location. If you’re confident..."
Yuan Chu’s face was grim.
Bai Mo shook his head.
"No. Taking the Pill is a last resort."
"This is a Poison Pill. In exchange for necrosis of the physical body, it grants the user the ability to ignore injuries and tap into their latent potential."
"With the potency of a Tier Three Pill, by the time we find Junior Martial Uncle Shang, we probably won’t even have half a life left..."
Yuan Chu and the other two were shocked and immediately abandoned their earlier idea.
"Still, it’s a chance. If the situation turns bad, we’ll do it then."
"Exactly!"
As they said this, they were secretly amazed.
’Alchemy Cultivators really are different. Even the Pills he carries around are Tier Three.’
’And judging by how he casually handed out three, it seems Junior Brother Bai has quite a few of these Pills on him, doesn’t it?’
As the group was talking, a pitch-black leech drilled out of a hole next to the ball of fire.
It arched its body slightly and hesitated for a moment. Seeing a companion emerge next to it, it hurriedly leaped toward Xiong Xin.