Chapter 26 Ominous Mystery
Yet, in those 2 seconds, Zhao Lingfeng did not shut his eyes like before.
His mind went into overdrive, finding a way out of the fate of inevitable death.
The bear's desperate roar, the crackle of lightning, even Zhao Lingfeng's own heartbeat. All of it faded into a strange, crystalline silence as his arm shot out. His fingers closed around the yellow object he'd glimpsed earlier. The surface was unexpectedly warm beneath his touch, with a subtle pulse that felt almost alive.
An egg.
The Twin-Horned Yellow Beetle's egg.
His mind barely had time to process this revelation, where his body acted before his mind, before reality crashed back in with devastating force. In his eyes, the beetle did not stop its charge. With the speed of the beetle, the bear was unable to even react in time despite being long-prepared to intercept the blow.
BOOM!!!
The impact shook the entire chamber with a great rumble. The ancient walls groaned under the stress before collapsing. Massive chunks of stone broke free from above, crashing down in a deadly rain that forced the watching cultivators to scatter for cover.
Through the storm of falling debris and thick clouds of stone dust, occasional flashes of electrical discharge lit up the chaos like silent thunder. The very foundations of the chamber seemed to tremble, as if the beetle's charge had awakened something that had slumbered within these walls for countless years…
As the dust began to settle, the devastation slowly revealed itself.
A scene of broken stone and crackling energy where the watching cultivators could barely make out a figure, half-collapsed but somehow still alive, one hand gripping a sword planted in the ground for support, the other still outstretched, clutching what appeared to be an egg. On the side near him, was a collapsed massive figure.
Zhao Lingfeng breathing heavily, felt the world spinning around him.
"I-I'm Alive…?"
His head was bobbing up and down taking deep breaths, his eyes drifted towards his neck.
The amulet was still intact. There was some damage, but not so much that one would see it break any time soon.
He looked at his HP bar and saw that his health was in the red. But it was not at the infamous 1 HP. When he looked back on what happened, he remembered that although he was hit by the beetle, he did not exactly take the full-on killing blow.
Instead, what happened was he had been struck by the spiritual force of the attack instead. The beetle didn't actually hit him with its electric horns or any body part for that matter. He was essentially hit by the lingering Qi energy and was sent flying.
"I was lucky… but I won the roll." Zhao Lingfeng smiled.
It was because he had held out the egg, the beetle had shifted its posture during those last two seconds which ended up saving his life. Though, since he had the amulet, he probably would have survived.
But the amulet didn't guarantee life after surviving the blow.
For example, what if there was lingering electricity that zapped him after the blow? The damage over time (DoT), would kill him instead! The System's description of the amulet did not fully specify such things and it was not something he would dare test.
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
Then came the scream.
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
No.
Screams.
Multiple voices layered together in a horrifying chorus that made Zhao Lingfeng's pumping blood run deeply cold.
The sound was wrong…
It sounded so wrong…
When he tilted his head up, he saw the cultivators all deadly silent. Every single one of them was struck still in fear. Complete… utter horror painted on their faces.
Fighting against the pain that wracked his body, Zhao Lingfeng slowly turned.
The sight stole his breath away.
The chamber wall had partially collapsed where the beetle had struck, revealing what lay beneath the weathered stone. Glowing ancient patterns and shapes covered every exposed surface, intricate designs that hurt his eyes to look at directly.
These weren't the simple symbols or calligraphy that he had seen in his sect.
These belonged to a category far beyond.
And they were waking up.
The symbols began to move, peeling away from the stone like liquid gold. They didn't flow so much as uncoil, each character burning with an inner light that spoke of judgment and authority. The air itself seemed to grow heavy with a mighty presence.
"Impossible," someone whispered from behind him. "Such power..."
The rest of the words were lost as the symbols surged forward. Some transforming from mere writing into chains of pure light, while the rest hovered in the air like a magic circle. They wrapped around the beetle's thrashing form, each point of contact blazing like a small sun. The beast's struggles grew more frantic, its lingering lightning techniques dispersing uselessly against this higher power.
Then came the separation.
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
SSSHHHRRRRKKK!!!
Black mist began to tear away from the beetle's body like strips of rotting silk, each fragment writhing with malevolent energy. The beetle's screams reached new heights of agony as this corruption was forcibly extracted from its essence.
"What... what is this?" Qin Yi's voice shook, all traces of his military bearing forgotten in the face of such overwhelming might. "This power..."
Zhao Lingfeng couldn't respond.
His eyes were fixed on the unfolding scene, watching as the extracted corruption tried to flee… The darkness writhed like living smoke, attempting to escape through any crack or crevice. But the burning symbols pursued relentlessly, their golden light cutting through the shadows like blades of pure righteousness. Each fragment of corruption they caught dissolved into nothingness, burned away by power.
But the symbols weren't finished.
Having purged the corruption, their attention turned to the beetle itself. Its carapace, already cracked from previous battles, began to splinter further as golden light seeped through every crevice. There was no blood, no violence… only the unstoppable process of a weak creature succumbing to a power akin to the Heavens.
The cultivators watched in stunned silence as lightning coursed over the beetle's form one final time, not as an attack but as the final spark before death. Its essence, freed from corruption but unable to withstand such overwhelming suppression, began to disperse like morning mist before the sun.
The beetle had crumbled away into crystalline dust. Not even electrical energy was left behind…
The chamber remained deathly quiet in the aftermath of that overwhelming display of power. Scattered debris and crystalline dust that had once been a mighty spirit beast were the only evidence of what had transpired. The ancient patterns on the broken wall no longer glowed.
They would never wake again.
Several system notifications flickered in Zhao Lingfeng's peripheral vision, but he ignored them. His mind was racing, piecing together fragments of observations that had seemed disconnected until now.
The wall's collapse had revealed those intricate patterns and shapes.
"These symbols..." Zhao Lingfeng muttered, his eyes tracing the complex designs. Of course, he had no idea what they signified but…
The System's quest echoed in his thoughts: The secret realm is a trap. An ancient evil spirit plans to consume cultivators for its return.
"Fellow Daoist?" Qin Yi's voice carried a careful mix of authority and caution as he approached. His earlier commanding presence had been tempered by what they'd witnessed. "Do you know what's goin-"
Zhao Lingfeng held up his hand holding the egg, not even looking at the young commander.
"Wait."
The pieces were falling into place, and he couldn't afford to lose this train of thought.
Without cultivators, the spirit can't return, he reasoned. Which in reverse means that the evil spirit is also trapped here without us... Then could it be that those patterns and shapes were some kind of powerful seal? The beetle's charged attack had caused destruction to the seal, causing it to activate and end up dead. Looking at the rubble now… it doesn't look like the seal is intact anymore. But there must be multiple seals…
His mind flashed back to the earlier collapse that had separated him from Lin Tian. He hadn't seen any glowing patterns then, though in the chaos he couldn't be certain what had caused that section to fall.
He returned to his attention to the beetle's strange behavior that he was sure off now. Throughout the battle, its actions had seemed paradoxical. It was fiercely defensive of its nest, yet occasionally leaving openings that almost invited attack. Such tactical complexity went against everything known about these naturally timid creatures.
Maybe it was actually cunning under the surface, but Zhao Lingfeng wouldn't buy it with all the oddness piling over.
That black mist... Zhao Lingfeng's eyes narrowed.
In his previous life, corrupting forces in games had often manifested as dark fog or mist. The parallel was almost too obvious. He had heard from his lectures back at the sect that those who had fallen to the evil path also may show such signs.
It explains the unnatural aggression we've seen in the beasts here. Did the evil spirit influence make it so that beasts like this beetle were compelled to help destroy the seals even against their will? But then what about the beasts I had befriended…?
"Senior Brother Tan Rei!" Zhao Lingfeng called out suddenly, making several cultivators jump. "That Brother Wu who had suffered under the strange beasts… where is he?"
Tan Rei, who had come by Zhao Lingfeng's side unknowingly, gestured. Eventually from the back, a haggard-looking young man stepped forward. His complexion was still pale, his movements carrying a lingering weakness that spoke of more than simple physical exhaustion.
"Brother Wu." Zhao Lingfeng turned to face him fully. "The beasts that attacked you guys. Did you notice anything like that black mist we just saw?"
Wu's brow furrowed in concentration. "I... I'm not certain. There was something off about them, an ominous feeling. But they didn't openly display such corruption. We simply thought them strange variants, perhaps unique to this realm."
Tan Rei and Qin Yi both nodded.
"I heard that they were collecting other beasts?" Zhao Lingfeng pressed. "Taking them to areas with concentrated spiritual energy?"
"Yes." Wu nodded slowly. "They seemed to target specific creatures, especially those that showed signs of strength. They'd weaken them, then drag them away and place them at certain places. These places had pockets of space absolutely saturated with spiritual energy."
"I see…And after your encounter, your cultivation was drained, correct?"
The young cultivator nodded miserably. "From the seventh level of Qi Refining to barely maintaining the second. It felt like like something was… feeding on my energy."
The pieces clicked together in Zhao Lingfeng's mind. The corrupted beasts were were gathering spiritual energy, either by draining it directly or by forcing their victims into those saturated spaces to perhaps bloat them for a better drainage.
But why?
What purpose?