Great Harvest

After the sandstorm subsided, the terrain within several hundred meters had been completely transformed.

The once-hard Blackstone Mountain hills had been razed flat, their rubble ground into dust and mixed with the yellow sands blanketing the sky, forming a level stretch of sand.

The entire battlefield was shrouded in pale golden motes of light, the remaining Mythic Factors slowly drifting through the air.

Suddenly, mounds rose from the flat sand, and two groups of figures emerged one after another from the dust.

The protective suits of the three Mythic Walkers were almost completely shredded, exposing bodies covered in wounds beneath them.

Low-grade Rune Equipment simply could not withstand the savage wind and sand. They had long been covered in vicious cracks, and the flickering rune light had dimmed.

Though the captain's rune shield had barely blocked the fiercest impact, it too had shattered early on, its outline utterly vanishing amid the wind and sand.

If the captain had not used his Mythic Trait, Earth Escape, at the final moment to send the three of them underground, they would likely have been buried beneath the overwhelming storm and vanished forever into this desolate realm.

The captain knelt on one knee, cold sweat seeping from his forehead.

His gaze swept over the two team members beside him, and only after confirming their condition did he secretly breathe a sigh of relief.

But his expression immediately darkened again. As a veteran explorer of the Yin Mountain Realm, he knew perfectly well that such a terrifying sandstorm could not possibly have been an ordinary natural phenomenon.

The Yaksha Demon was not doing much better. Though it had been prepared and hid behind a raised, wind-sheltering boulder the instant the sandstorm struck, it had still suffered minor injuries.

But the ordinary Yin Ghosts following it were not so fortunate. Of the dozen or so Yin Ghosts, at least half had been torn to pieces in that horrifying storm, their soul bodies scattering and fading between heaven and earth. The few that survived were also covered in wounds, their soul bodies seeming ready to shatter at any moment.

Just then, the young man in the Mythic Walker team suddenly let out a piercing scream.

He frantically fumbled over his body, his eyes sweeping from left to right before finally landing on his empty waist.

"My gun! Where's my rune rifle?"

The other Mythic Walker beside him seemed to wake from a dream and hurriedly looked himself over as well. The Rune Firearm he had kept close to his body had long since vanished without a trace.

One had to know that low-tier Scavengers could wield very few Mythic Traits. When exploring the Celestial Circuit Realm, they relied on low-cost Rune Equipment in the vast majority of cases.

Their armor was shattered, and their guns were gone. To any Mythic Walker, this was a devastating blow.

Only the enormous Gatling Gun in the captain's hands had escaped disaster. He held it tightly in his arms, the rune radiance on its body still flickering. Though dimmer than before, it had not completely gone out.

Seeing this, the Yaksha Demon, which had already lost more than half its underlings, burst into loud laughter. Its hoarse laugh echoed through the empty realm.

"Hahaha! Humans, this is the price of opposing me! You can't even keep hold of your worthless scraps of metal!" Its tone was thick with sarcasm and mockery, as though it were celebrating its own victory.

But the Mythic Walker captain shot it a cold glance and said in an icy, mocking tone, "Couldn't keep them? Don't tell me you lost your weapon the same way?"

Those words instantly froze the Yaksha Demon's smug expression. It turned and looked toward the crack in the ground where it had buried the Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident. The place was empty. The Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident, along with that mysterious rat thief, had disappeared again.

The Yaksha Demon's face abruptly twisted into a vicious grimace. It let out a furious roar and slammed its fist into the sand dune beside it. The huge dune exploded at once, sand spraying in every direction.

"That damned rat thief! It actually dared to come back!"

The atmosphere became tense once more, like drawn bows with arrows nocked. The Yaksha Demon turned to face the Mythic Walker team, while the wounded Yin Ghosts behind it began to stir restlessly.

The captain slowly raised the Gatling Gun in his hands. Rune light flowed across it as it gathered power, and the two team members also nervously assumed fighting stances.

Though they had lost their most commonly used Rune Firearms, they still had other means. They had not completely lost their ability to fight.

The two sides remained locked in a standoff, a clash liable to erupt again at any moment.

At that hair-trigger moment, the captain was the one who suddenly spoke. His steady, solemn voice broke the dead silence.

"What if that thief comes again?"

Those words were like a basin of cold water, dousing the Yaksha Demon's reason awake.

The Yaksha Demon's fist slowly loosened. Seeing this, the Mythic Walker team also lowered their fighting stances, and the atmosphere across the battlefield instantly shifted from imminent conflict to mutual vigilance.

Both sides began warily surveying their surroundings, afraid that the terrifying wind and sand would rise again.

After a brief, silent confrontation, the two sides exchanged meaningful looks.

Before they had determined the identity and intentions of that mysterious thief, continuing to fight was clearly the most foolish choice. The Yaksha Demon therefore turned away first, driving the remaining Yin Ghosts into retreat in the distance.

The Mythic Walker team also put away their weapons. The captain helped up his two bedraggled subordinates and calmly straightened his tattered protective suit.

"Such a powerful individual has appeared on the outskirts of the Yin Mountain Realm. Even the Yaksha Demon fears it. Reporting this information may earn us an intelligence fee."

"Also, remember to clear the battlefield. Bring back the damaged protective suits too. We can at least make up some of the losses."

Meanwhile, in a cave more than twenty kilometers from the battlefield.

Yellow Wind Little Sage dispelled the wind magic swirling around him, and the objects floating around him immediately crashed to the ground.

"Bang! Thud! Boom!"

Rune Firearms, the Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident, Soul Shard Fragments, the rags from the Yaksha Demon's body, communications devices that had become scrap metal... a vast amount of stuff rained down onto the ground.

Yellow Wind Little Sage had hidden in a corner beforehand to avoid being struck. After a while, he looked at the junk scattered all over the ground and revealed a satisfied smile.

"What a harvest!"

Yellow Wind Little Sage had not expected that the Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident he had hidden in the crack would be discovered by both groups at once. Presumably, both sides possessed some special method for finding Mythic Materials.

To keep the things he had buried from being taken away, Yellow Wind Little Sage had, in his urgency, directly used Inner Threefold Samadhi to whip up flying sand and rolling stones, intending to snatch back the Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident amid the chaos.

Who would have thought that both sides were simply too weak? On one side was a weaponless Yaksha Demon and a group of Yin Ghosts; on the other, merely a three-man Mythic Walker team relying on Rune Equipment. Neither had any means to contend with flying sand and rolling stones.

Yellow Wind Little Sage simply took the chance to retrieve the Ghost Soldier's Steel Trident and made a quick haul while he was at it.

After taking stock, setting aside the useless junk, this single haul alone had yielded five full Soul Shards and two Rune Firearms.

There was no need to mention the value of the Soul Shards. Yellow Wind Little Sage's attention was focused entirely on the two Rune Firearms.