Chen Beixun hovered in the air, his gaze sweeping over the area before he chose to land in the world below. The three guards followed close behind.
Thump!
The ground was instantly smashed into four huge craters, sending dark purple dust flying.
Chen Beixun bent down, scooped up a handful of gravel, and said in confusion, "Last time I came here, the gravel was black."
"Where are we now?" Chen Beixun frowned, then looked around. At his command, the Demon Island Vine emerged from the World Ring. It now resembled a lump of crimson flesh. The "lump" writhed across Chen Beixun's arm, then sank into his alloy armor, forming a layer of protective armor beneath it.
Ding—
Chen Beixun brought up the map projection, only to find that this area wasn't on the map at all.
The World Lord World created by a World Lord was vast beyond measure. It was perfectly normal not to find their location right away; after all, it had been less than thirty years since this World Lord World was discovered.
"This is a bit of a problem." Chen Beixun closed the map. With a thought, the Gold Cloud Shuttle appeared in front of him. He stepped aboard, and it transformed into a streak of Flowing Light, carrying him away. The three guards followed close behind.
"Last time I came, I was teleported directly to a spot not far from the World Castle," Chen Beixun recalled.
The World Lord World's gravity and the resistance of the air greatly reduced Chen Beixun's telekinetic detection range.
"When I was Star Level, the gravity here limited my telekinetic detection range to just 200 meters. Now it's probably around fifty thousand meters." Chen Beixun compared the two.
The gap between Star Level and Universe Level was quite significant.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Screech!
Four streaks of golden light shot over the sand dunes.
"Damn it." Chen Beixun frowned and thought, Why am I getting slower the farther I fly?
A sense of pressure suddenly came over him.
"Something's wrong!" Chen Beixun ordered. "Everyone, stop!"
All four figures came to a halt as if someone had pressed a pause button.
"Your Highness, what are your orders?" one of the tall guards asked.
"Go back the way we came. Something's wrong," Chen Beixun said.
The four figures burst into motion, flying off at high speed and leaving afterimages in their wake!
"Impressive," Qishan said, sounding a little surprised. "I was just about to tell you to stop. You beat me to it."
Chen Beixun had sensed something was wrong as soon as he felt his speed slow, but this was something that could happen under perfectly ordinary circumstances.
"Strange. Could there be a gravitational field ahead?"
"Going by how it feels, if there really is one, it should be to the left of where we were."
"It must have appeared suddenly. Otherwise, how could Qishan have failed to detect it?"
Chen Beixun was puzzled.
A gravitational field was a spatial depression produced by matter in space, capable of attracting other matter. Simply put, imagine placing a huge iron ball on a flat surface—its weight would cause the surface to sag, and anything passing by would slide into the depression.
"What the hell is it?" Chen Beixun couldn't help wondering. Then he asked, "Qishan, have you found the source?"
Qishan replied, "Yes. It's a black sphere twenty meters in diameter. Its gravity is strong enough to tear apart a Universe Level 9 warrior!"
"Based on the size of these dunes, there are probably several million more beneath us."
"Most of them are wrapped in golden cubes. Only a very few are exposed, as if the golden cubes around them have been damaged."
Chen Beixun's face went white as he heard this. "Several million?"
The biggest problem now was figuring out how to cross this dark purple dune field.
What about using a spaceship? The predators here were generally small and lived in groups. The biggest were only three meters long, but they couldn't be underestimated: every one of them was Universe Level, and sometimes even a Domain Lord would appear.
Their prey, on the other hand, were much larger, reaching up to five hundred meters in length.
The creatures here weren't very intelligent. Predators could easily mistake a spaceship for prey, so using one would be tantamount to suicide. Of course, advanced spaceships were another matter.
Chen Beixun couldn't help feeling sorry for the Universe Level loners. They had no idea what they were up against.
"Fly up to the boundary," Qishan suggested.
Chen Beixun nodded. "Everyone, head straight up."
The four figures shot vertically into the sky.
The World Lord World was rife with danger, and countless adventurers had already perished there.
The World Lord World was divided into three major regions: Purple Gold Horn, Brown Earth, and Cape Desert. The upper and lower worlds were identical.
Chen Beixun was in Purple Gold Horn, not far from Brown Earth.
Brown Earth was a vast, desolate stretch of black-brown badlands. Looking up, one could see layers of strange, pitch-black stones arranged in orderly rows in the low sky. They looked like stone tablets or tombstones, square on all sides and barely ten meters above the ground.
At times, a winding, elongated mound would suddenly bulge out of the black-brown earth, as if some snake-like creature were wriggling beneath the surface.
Tap—tap—
A figure approached slowly from afar, looking so strange it seemed to be constantly drawn closer.
Before long, the figure collapsed to the ground. A pool of foul-smelling liquid flowed from beneath him, looking like digestive fluid injected by a spider and turned into liquid.
Thump!
A strange creature with eight legs, two meters tall, and a body as white as jade landed silently behind him. Its mouthparts opened sideways, and a long, thin tube extended from them and plunged straight into his back.
Sizzle.
The five vertical eyes on the creature's face were half-closed, as if it were enjoying itself.
These creatures were manageable when they hunted alone, but they usually hunted in organized groups.
That was the real headache.
The first to die in the World Lord World were those without any organization. They were utterly helpless against the terrifying creatures there.
With a wet rasp, the strange creature withdrew its tube and straightened up, swaying its head contentedly before extending two pairs of wing membranes.
Boom!
The wings looked as if they would tear with a single poke, yet the wind they sent rushing in all directions was fierce and powerful.
This strange creature was called the Long-Leaf Bat. It was vicious and fiercely territorial, usually hunting in groups, though it occasionally went out alone.
The unlucky fellow had probably wandered into the Long-Leaf Bat's territory and been injected with its corrosive venom. Once injected, death was all but certain.
Time passed... Chen Beixun reached the boundary between the purple dunes and the black-brown badlands.
"Bones?" Chen Beixun's gaze sharpened as his mind raced.
"The bones have been eaten away until they look like a honeycomb."
"It looks like the Long-Leaf Bat did this."
The thought of the Long-Leaf Bat made Chen Beixun uneasy.
"That thing's territory should be ahead." He swallowed and sent a voice transmission. "Everyone, be careful. If you encounter any strange creatures, don't provoke them!"
"Yes!" the three guards replied in unison.
"They're guards personally chosen by an Immortal. There's no way they'd make such a rookie mistake!"
I'm worrying too much, Chen Beixun thought.
"We're here." Chen Beixun's nerves tightened like a drawn bowstring, and his eyes were bloodshot.
At the end of the dark purple dunes lay a desolate stretch of ruined black-brown badlands, with strange stones floating in the low sky.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
A gigantic white worm burrowed out of the black-brown earth. Compared to it, Chen Beixun was like a mayfly before a towering tree.
Chen Beixun's mouth turned down. Every muscle in his body tensed like a bowstring as he spat out a few words. "Wengjamo Worm?!"
"No. It's a close relative, a Stelamo Worm." Qishan appeared out of thin air in front of him, standing with his back to Chen Beixun and his hands behind him. His robes fluttered in the wind and sand.
The Stelamo Worm noticed them and stood still, sensing its surroundings as it made a strange "bong-dong" sound.
Sizzle.
A small slit opened in the Stelamo Worm's head, like a flower bud about to bloom. It pointed toward Chen Beixun and the others, then slowly drew closer.
Chen Beixun stared at its abyssal maw. Inside, fine teeth like barbs were arranged in spiraling rows, one ring after another.
"Don't move," Qishan warned. "Stelamo Worms are docile and won't attack unless provoked. Don't startle it!"
The guards couldn't see or hear Qishan, so Chen Beixun had to relay his message.
"This is a Domain Lord-level creature!"
As long as it showed any intent to attack, Chen Beixun's Demon Island Vine wouldn't be defenseless, either!