Ninety Thousand Li

Lin Shan pried open the round mouth on the Fallen's head and pulled out the eyeball inside. With a ripping sound, the blood vessels attached to it came out as well.

The eyeball was covered in densely packed gray-white flesh, layered over it like spiderwebs.

Lin Shan peeled away the flesh with his hands, revealing an irregular gray stone.

The stone was only the size of a fist, with an uneven surface and a considerable amount of spirituality entwined around it.

Lin Shan first hefted the stone in his hand, then rubbed it against the ground to scrape off the blood before finally stuffing it into his backpack.

With that, he had collected a third of the materials for the Blood Wing potion.

The second material was mercury grass. Its route was not in a straight line with Sikatini's, but nearly parallel to it. The marked distance was 231 kilometers.

He should be able to cover that distance in three days. With sword flight factored in, he might get there even faster.

After hastily making do with some dry rations, Lin Shan continued toward the marked location of the mercury grass.

All along the way, bizarre Fallen gathered in groups. Small groups numbered only a few, while large ones formed dense masses stretching farther than the eye could see. He even saw over a dozen Sikatini walking through the woods. To his surprise, they were grazing on grass.

It seemed the Parchment marked the locations where materials were easiest to obtain. If it had marked this group of Sikatini, getting the material would have been far more difficult.

Fortunately, this seemed to be Fallen territory. He had encountered no anomalies.

For the rest of the day, Lin Shan flew on his sword whenever he encountered Fallen on the ground and walked whenever he encountered flying ones. Alternating between flying and walking, he had covered nearly fifty kilometers by evening.

That was almost twice his previous speed. Gaining the ability to fly had also greatly improved his ability to evade danger.

Good things came in pairs. During this time, the Red Lantern had recovered as well. It might not have recovered completely, since it could only provide a hundred meters of visibility, but that was already enough to avoid the vast majority of Fallen.

With the trees providing cover, he could approach within twenty meters of a Fallen without being detected, so long as he made no sound.

Of course, Fallen with special abilities were exceptions, such as the cobra lying cut in two at his feet.

The snake seemed to possess some sort of perception ability. The moment Lin Shan came within twenty meters, it had watched him without revealing itself. Once he entered its attack range, it lunged at him like an arrow released from a taut bowstring.

Fortunately, Lin Shan kept his Heart Light protecting his body at all times. It knocked the snake away, and he then cut it in two with a single stroke.

Looking at the snake on the ground, Lin Shan had an idea. After days of eating those rock-hard gray buns, his mouth was so starved of flavor that a bird could hatch in it. Perhaps it was time for something extra.

That evening, he feasted on snake meat. After eating it, Lin Shan's eyes lit up.

He discovered that his maximum spirituality had increased slightly. Moreover, as he digested the snake meat, his spirituality recovered faster as well. This was merely a first-stage Sequence 9 transcendent beast, yet its effects were practically those of a miraculous elixir.

The gallbladder, which should have been the most valuable part, proved disappointing. It contained no spirituality at all; all the spirituality was in the snake's flesh and blood. Lin Shan could not figure out why.

He roasted all the remaining snake meat into jerky and packed it in his bag. With this meat to replenish him, he would be able to spend far longer flying on his sword.

Two days later, dozens of meters above the ground, the ash fog streamed swiftly past his sides.

With the snake meat replenishing him, he had spent most of the past two days flying. His destination lay ten kilometers ahead.

He had narrowly escaped more than ten Fallen attacks along the way. The most dangerous had come from a grotesque bird far stronger than him. Only by using the Red Lantern to buy time and fleeing into the woods below had he escaped. Even so, its sharp beak had punched several holes in his body.

He had encountered no anomalies anywhere in this region, only groups of Fallen. Some were strong and others weak, and their shapes were bizarre beyond counting.

Lin Shan also discovered that Fallen rarely slaughtered one another without reason, nor did they have a fixed food chain. Anything weaker than themselves was food. The rule of "big fish eat little fish, and little fish eat shrimp" was displayed here in all its ruthless fullness.

Flying naturally allowed him to avoid most Fallen. Among those capable of flight, the powerful ones flew very high. At his altitude, they were generally only at the first or second stage of Sequence 9.

Thirty meters was the safest altitude-a figure he had paid for with more than ten attacks.

Half an hour later, Lin Shan arrived at the foot of a mountain.

The terrain began to change here. The forest spanning hundreds of kilometers gave way to an unbroken mountain range. The peaks pierced the clouds, wreathed in ash fog, stretching beyond sight like pillars holding up the heavens. The higher the ash fog rose, the thinner it became, allowing him to make out the mountains' hazy silhouettes.

The goal of Lin Shan's journey-mercury grass-was just ahead. The Parchment's distance display had become three-dimensional, with an added elevation reading marked at 9,408 meters.

Another hundred meters ahead stood a sheer cliff, its upper reaches obscured by ash fog.

Lin Shan remembered that Mount Everest on Earth stood 8,848 meters above sea level. A random mountain here already exceeded that height...

He began flying straight up on his sword, ascending slowly. The higher he went, the more he felt an inexplicable pressure, and the more spirituality he consumed.

The eight-thousand-meter ascent took a full two hours of flying, not counting rest stops. By now, Lin Shan was struggling to breathe. This was definitely not altitude sickness, but the result of some invisible pressure bearing down on him. The source of that pressure was the ash fog itself!

Only after reaching this altitude did Lin Shan realize that what he had seen from below was an illusion. The ash fog up here had not grown thinner at all; it had become even denser. Yet for some unknown reason, he could see mountains at immense distances.

In the distance, there were mountains and more mountains. The endless range stretched for who knew how many li.

Suddenly, he spotted a pillar-shaped peak extremely far away. It was a remarkably regular cylinder, utterly out of place among the other mountains.

In an instant, Lin Shan felt his vision draw closer. An unknown force was pulling him along. At that moment, it was as though he had gained a god's-eye view, circling above the cylindrical peak and taking everything in.

Lin Shan could clearly see three enormous characters carved into the cylindrical peak. He did not recognize the script, but just like the Sequence Stele, it conveyed the meaning of the writing directly into his mind.

A moment later, his consciousness traveled back from afar, gradually returning.

"Ninety Thousand Li!"

Lin Shan murmured, shock showing on his face.

That mountain was named Ninety Thousand Li!

What did that mean? Could that mountain be ninety thousand li tall?

But Lin Shan felt it probably meant more than just its height. An immensely powerful supernatural presence surrounded that peak.

What this meant could not have been clearer. The entire cylindrical mountain was an anomaly!

As his view drew closer again, he saw that his current elevation was not the summit of the mountain before him. He was probably only halfway up its slope.

The mountain was so enormous that there was a hollow halfway up its side. On the scale of the mountain valley, it might have been only a small depression, but to Lin Shan, it was a valley stretching for untold li.

It seemed the mercury grass should be somewhere in this valley.