Chapter 386: 100-Meter Stone Stele, Actually a Warning Sign?

These two were veterans, through and through. Even facing a Seventh-Grade junior, they attacked simultaneously with their full power.

Even a King Realm expert of the same rank would meet a bitter end against such a coordinated assault.

But Gu Yuexi remained motionless.

It wasn’t until the very instant the fist and sword were about to strike...

A flicker of disdain crossed her eyes.

HUM.

Space trembled faintly.

There was no earth-shattering collision, no spray of blood.

Giant Rock’s terrifying fist passed straight through Gu Yuexi’s body, striking nothing but air.

’An afterimage?’

A moment later, Gu Yuexi’s figure solidified more than ten meters away.

She watched the two of them awkwardly retracting their attacks and shook her head lightly.

’Fighting here is utterly foolish.’

’Under 200,000 times gravity, every strenuous movement is a waste of Qi Blood and Mental Power.’

She couldn’t be bothered to waste time on these two fools who were destined to die here.

With a flicker of her form, she seemed to merge into the surrounding gravitational field, transforming into a streak of light that vanished instantly into the fog ahead.

"Go any further, and you die."

Her voice lingered in the air—Gu Yuexi’s final warning.

But Giant Rock and Poison Snake clearly didn’t get the message.

"Damn it! Don’t think you can escape!"

"After her!"

Heedless of the drain on their Qi Blood, the two of them also sped up and charged forward.

...

「At the same time.」

Celestial Trace Abyss, approximately 100,000 meters deep.

The red-haired woman codenamed "Firebird" was rapidly retreating.

As the gravity lessened, the strain on her face visibly eased.

In truth, she didn’t want to leave at all. ’Why should I be the one to go back and report? "Report back"... what a load of crap. It’s obvious they just think I’m a burden and don’t want to share the loot.’

But she had no choice.

As the one with the lowest cultivation, only at the Peak of Ninth-Grade, she was already at her limit.

’Even if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to fight them for any lucky finds!’

’Just wait until I report this to the director. You’ll get what’s coming to you!’

Firebird gritted her teeth, about to force herself to speed up.

Just then.

BUZZ—

An extremely faint buzzing sound suddenly reached her ears.

In this deathly silent place, where there was nothing but the sound of footsteps and breathing, the noise was jarringly out of place.

"What was that?"

Firebird raised her head warily, a scorching fireball instantly materializing in her hand.

However, before she could get a clear look...

A tiny black dot in her field of vision was rapidly growing larger.

The black dot was moving so fast that it completely ignored the surrounding one-hundred-thousand-plus-times gravity!

THUD!

The black dot, like an armor-piercing round fresh from the barrel, struck her with pinpoint accuracy right between the eyebrows.

The immense force of the impact instantly shut down Firebird’s brain.

Her eyes rolled back into her head, and without so much as a whimper, her body went stiff and toppled backward. She was out cold.

THUMP.

Dust flew.

Passing out in a place like this was extremely dangerous. Without Qi Blood Power to protect her, her physical body alone couldn’t possibly withstand the terrifying pressure of tens of thousands of times gravity.

Fortunately, the woman was at the Peak of Ninth-Grade. Even unconscious, her Qi Blood continued to circulate on its own.

The black dot, of course, was Chu Sheng, who had flown all this way.

Chu Sheng circled her once before landing on Firebird’s... ample bosom. Ahem. It was mainly because the Battle Armor was flatter there, making for a good landing spot.

He glanced at the unconscious red-haired woman.

’Looks like it’s pretty lively up ahead.’

Chu Sheng rubbed his forelegs together.

’Well, since we’ve met, it’d be rude not to help myself.’

Next, Chu Sheng began his practiced "looting" routine.

He used his claws to violently pry open a hidden clasp on Firebird’s specialized Battle Armor... and then froze.

’Wait, why is it so... bare under here... Women from the White Eagle Country really are something else...’

Soon enough, Chu Sheng had found a pile of items on the woman: an identity tag, a Storage Ring, an Ability Detector... He stashed them all in his Lifebound Space.

Having done all this, Chu Sheng couldn’t be bothered with whether she lived or died.

His gaze shifted to the distance.

To avoid missing Gu Yuexi, he had flown the entire way. But even after flying for over a hundred thousand meters, there was still no end to the canyon in sight.

’Just how long is this damn place?’

Chu Sheng was getting annoyed.

He’d been flying for so long it felt like he was running in place. The scenery was monotonous; apart from the ever-increasing gravity, nothing changed.

’Forget it, I’m done flying.’

’I’ll just use Instant Teleportation to get to the end! If I miss her, so be it. I’ll just wait for her there.’

At this thought, Chu Sheng closed his eyes.

Under the influence of the Law of Gravity, the range of his [Nether Vision] had been compressed considerably. Even the maximum distance of his Instant Teleportation had been shortened.

However, his current maximum Instant Teleportation distance was a full ten million meters.

Even compressed to a tenth of that, it would still be one million meters.

’This canyon can’t possibly be a million meters long, can it??’

’Buzz buzz... Let’s start with... two hundred thousand meters, just to test the waters!’

Chu Sheng had arrogantly set himself a "small" goal.

’Although an Instant Teleportation beyond the range of my Nether Vision can’t be precise, this canyon is a straight path. I’ll just teleport in the general direction of a spatial node!’

’Here goes!’

VWOOM—!!!

Space distorted violently.

Chu Sheng’s figure vanished on the spot.

...

「The next instant.」

SPLAT!

A crisp, loud impact echoed from a point deep within the canyon.

Chu Sheng’s vision blurred, and his entire mosquito body felt like a wad of mud being splattered against a wall. He was stuck fast to a cold, hard object.

’Did I already reach the end? Is the path blocked?’

Dazed and confused, Chu Sheng slid down from the object.

He shook his head, struggling to focus his eyes.

He soon realized he hadn’t hit the end of the path. Instead, at the exact spatial node he had teleported to, there was... a massive black stone stele!

’Are you fucking kidding me?’

’What kind of asshole builds a wall in the middle of the road?’

’And with my rotten luck, of course I’d run right into it!’

Speechless, Chu Sheng flapped his wings and flew back some distance, finally able to take in the entire massive stele.

It stood nearly a hundred meters tall, as majestic as a mountain, blocking the very center of the canyon.

The stele’s surface was pitted and scarred by the erosion of ages, exuding an air of desolate antiquity.

Carved on the face of the stele were several columns of large characters.

The calligraphy seemed to cut deep into the stone, carrying a piercing killing intent that, even after countless ages, made one’s eyes sting at a single glance.

’These characters... I don’t recognize them.’

It wasn’t the modern common tongue, nor was it the language of the White Eagle Country.

There were four columns of text on the stele, each in a different script.

One looked like tadpole script, another like cuneiform, and yet another resembled a form of wild cursive.

It seemed to be the same sentence, recorded in the scripts of different civilizations.

Chu Sheng examined them column by column, and in the third column, he finally found a script that resembled the ancient pictographs of Great Xia.

Although it was somewhat obscure, he was able to roughly decipher its meaning through a combination of recognition and guesswork.

Chu Sheng silently recited the words in his mind:

’Forbidden land ahead. Beware! Beware! Beware!’