Hiding

Ye Jingyun sighed.

Then she propped herself up, drew her flying sword, and hacked at Yu Yuehai's corpse, only stopping after she had cut it into countless pieces.

She walked closer, lifted his storage bag with her flying sword and put it away, then burned the dismembered corpse to ashes with a Fireball Spell.

Only then did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

After dealing with Yu Yuehai, she went to where the five patriarchs had been. She took out a disc-shaped magical tool and searched for a while, then began digging with her flying sword. Before long, she unearthed an intact body.

He was in a miserable state as well, his entire body a bloody mess. Only after examining him carefully did she recognize Han Yuhe, the head of the Han Family.

She probed him with her spiritual sense and discovered that he was actually still alive. He probably also had some defensive treasure that activated automatically.

But if she did not treat him soon, he would probably breathe his last at any moment.

Looking at the storage bag at Han Yuhe's waist, Ye Jingyun's gaze flickered. In the end, however, she chose not to kill him for his treasures and instead took out a pill and fed it to him.

During her years in Kaiyuan City, the Han Family had looked after her quite a bit. Saving his life would repay that kindness.

Next, she repeated the process, using the disc-shaped magical tool to find the remaining patriarchs of the Five Major Families.

None of them had been at the center of the explosion, and they were not buried too deeply.

After examining them, however, she found that they were all dead. Their deaths had been horrific, their bodies too gruesome to look at.

Ye Jingyun took their storage bags without hesitation, then walked over to check on the Xia Sisters.

These two women had only been at the Qi Refining Stage and had no defensive magical tools. They had already been blasted into scraps of flesh.

She sighed and shook her head. They were dead now; no matter how deep the hatred, death wiped the slate clean.

Feeling that some of her mana had recovered, Ye Jingyun dared not linger. Whatever had caused that explosion had been immensely powerful and could easily attract monster beasts. In her current state, she might not be able to fight them.

After hastily burying the dead, she grabbed Han Yuhe and rode her flying magical tool away in a streak of Escapist Light.

Silence returned to the area.

A long time passed.

Another person crawled out of the earth beside the enormous crater.

It was Zhao Zhengyuan!

He was in an even worse state. After emerging and looking around, he scrambled away, stumbling and crawling.

This time, the area finally fell completely silent.

Chen Lin ran wildly the whole way, with no idea how long he had been running. Only when he could run no farther did he find a secluded spot and hide.

He stayed hidden for three days and three nights.

During that time, he did not move at all, not even to relieve himself.

Fortunately, he had been eating spirit rice all along and had little waste to expel. A cultivator's constitution also differed from an ordinary person's, so he was not about to die of hunger or thirst.

Over those three days, several groups of cultivators appeared in the sky, and a few monster beasts passed in the distance, but none discovered him.

As time passed, the cultivators disappeared from sight, though monster beasts still appeared occasionally.

At this moment, one monster beast had set its sights on him.

It was an enormous tiger with patches of black spots across its body.

This creature was a black-spotted tiger. He had once eaten the meat of this very kind of monster beast with Zhao Zhengyuan.

Thinking of Zhao Zhengyuan, Chen Lin felt a little wistful. He wondered whether the man had survived the explosion. Zhao Zhengyuan had been fairly far from where he threw Thunderbolt No. 4. If he had possessed a defensive magical tool or talisman, perhaps he could have escaped with his life.

There were also the patriarchs of the Five Major Families and Ye Jingyun. He had no idea whether they were alive or dead.

But he had had no choice at the time. He could not let his only chance to strike slip away. Besides, even if he had not acted, those people would certainly have died at Yu Yuehai's hands and been refined into pills. Being blown to death was better than that.

Thinking this way made him feel a little better.

As for the Xia Sisters, he did not care. If they were dead, they had gotten what they deserved.

What concerned him most was actually whether Yu Yuehai was alive or dead, but his guess was that the man was most likely dead.

Not long after he hid, he had felt a change in the Melanin Insect inside his body. Not only could he clearly sense its presence, but it also seemed much weaker.

The Melanin Insect was linked to that fiend by blood. Such a change probably meant that, even if the man was not dead, he was seriously injured.

As these thoughts passed through Chen Lin's mind, he kept his eyes on the black-spotted tiger nearby.

If it did not attack him, he would continue hiding for a while. The longer he hid, the safer he would be.

But things did not go as he wished.

"Roar!"

The black-spotted tiger must have been starving for a long time. Having finally encountered prey, how could it give up? With a roar, it lunged at him.

Chen Lin immediately cast Vajra Cover on himself, then rose into the air with the Wind-Walking Art.

Although the black-spotted tiger looked large, it was only a low-tier monster beast. A cultivator in the early Qi Refinement Realm might face mortal danger against it, but he was in the mid Qi Refinement Realm and had nothing to fear.

It could neither fly nor attack at range. Floating in the air, he stood firmly in an unbeatable position.

This was just as well. Lacking combat experience, he could use it to practice.

Chen Lin controlled his flying sword and attacked the black-spotted tiger in all sorts of ways, repeatedly hacking, slashing, sweeping upward, and thrusting.

The black-spotted tiger had strong defenses, with thick hide and tough flesh. It roared incessantly under his attacks but suffered little damage.

Chen Lin followed up with the Fireball Spell and Awe Spell, but neither did much damage.

This immediately made him realize how inadequate his arsenal was.

If even a low-tier black-spotted tiger was this difficult to deal with, he would probably have to flee with his tail between his legs if he encountered other monster beasts.

Of course, if he used a Thunderbolt Bead, he could certainly kill it instantly.

But Thunderbolt Beads were only effective against low-tier monster beasts. Against higher-tier monster beasts or cultivators capable of using defensive spells, their effects would not be nearly as strong.

Especially against ghostly creatures, demonic beasts, and the like that existed in unusual forms, there was no telling whether they would work at all.

He silently resolved that, once he reached a place inhabited by cultivators, his first priority would be to buy some higher-level spells to learn.

Although his attacks were weak, steady grinding wore down even stone. In the end, the black-spotted tiger was slain on the spot.

Chen Lin was exhausted and drenched in sweat. Only after taking a Qi Replenishing Pill did he recover.

The most valuable part of a black-spotted tiger was its hide, but his flying sword had hacked it beyond recognition, leaving it worthless.

In the end, Chen Lin only cut off one tiger leg and put it into his storage bag. He dug a pit to bury the rest, then quickly left.

He traveled in fits and starts, hiding along the way.

Several more days passed.

Chen Lin had come to look like a wild man, though his mental state was still fairly good.

Over the past few days, no monster beasts had attacked him, and he had no shortage of food or water. He had even dug up two medicinal herbs, one of which was a main ingredient for refining Chuyuan Pills, much to his delight.

He already had nine sets of ingredients on hand. With this herb, he only needed to find two more supplementary herbs before he could fire up his furnace and refine pills!

With pills, he could cultivate anywhere, so there would be no need to rush to leave.

More importantly, after wandering through the Barrens for so many days, he had become completely lost. He did not even know where he was, and he probably would not find a way out anytime soon.

Fortunately, the spiritual qi was thin in this direction, so high-tier monster beasts rarely appeared. It was not particularly dangerous.

After that, he settled into a life of searching for a way out while looking for spiritual herbs.