Nine Star Hegemon Body Art (WN)
chapter-1853

“What is this?”

Long Chen looked at the object blankly. It was a small bone with many lines carved into it. The bone was slightly translucent and emitted odd fluctuations.

“It’s a strange thing we obtained from one of the Xuan Beasts we cut down. Through a soulsearch, we learned it’s a secret communication tool of the Xuan Beasts. If this bone is activated, it can search the surroundings to see if there are any Xuan Beasts nearby. Senior apprentice-brother Long Chen, if you take it, you’ll be able to gain some information. When many Xuan Beasts gather in one place, there’s a higher chance of there being treasures. You can activate this bone with Spiritual Strength to search for the nearby Xuan Beasts, however, it requires a special technique to use it to communicate with them, and that technique was guarded by spiritual restrictions, so we couldn’t learn it. We were planning on throwing away this bone because we didn’t want the Xuan Beasts to attack us, but I feel like someone like you doesn’t fear that,” said Wang Mao.

Long Chen naturally wouldn’t fear it. He didn’t even know how many Xuan Beasts he had slain, so he had no misgivings.

He directly accepted the bone. Telling them to be safe, he set off in the direction they had pointed out.

The Yin Yang World was huge, unimaginably huge. However, leaving was not difficult.

When the second group of experts had entered, they had come in through several large gates. Several channels had appeared between the Yin Yang World and the Martial Heaven Continent, and it was possible to come and go through those gates. Anyone in the Soul Transformation realm could go through them as they pleased.

However, that was only the case while the Yang side of the Yin Yang World was facing the Martial Heaven Continent. When the Yin side started turning over, they had to immediately leave, or they would never be able to leave again.

Long Chen saw a few experts carefully searching the land as he rushed over. He ignored them, going straight to his target.

The high mountains gradually became plains. Short trees appeared, as well as mist ahead. Long Chen’s lips curled up slightly.

He seemed to have come to a realization. The Yin Yang World’s treasures were all protected by formations to block others from gathering them.

The Blue Eye Peac.o.c.k’s nest had been like that, and the mysterious egg’s location had also been like that. This place was the same. There had to be many restrictions inside.

As expected, once he got closer, the mist blocked his divine sense. He didn’t dare to continue flying. He landed, walking steadily on the ground.

Just as he approached the mist, he saw a corpse ahead. It was a mangled mess as if it had been cut by a thousand blades. It was beyond recognition.

“Not even his Yuan Spirit could escape.” Long Chen saw a ball of black qi on this person’s forehead. His Yuan Spirit had been destroyed within his mind-sea.

This person was a rank seven Celestial. Long Chen couldn’t help sighing. In the dangerous Yin Yang World, even Empyreans had no guarantee of safety. Rank nine Celestials were dancing on the tip of a blade. They could lose their lives at any moment.

For a rank seven Celestial to also come here, their chances of surviving were miniscule.

However, Long Chen had no intention of laughing at this person. He just felt a bit bad inside. This world was just so cruel.

Without resources, without a powerful background, the only thing you could do was risk your life. There truly were existences that could soar from nothing, but the odds were constantly against them. Risking their lives to create miracles, the person who succeeded would have their name shake the world, but the millions of others who did the same but failed would not be remembered.

No one wanted to throw their life away, but sometimes there was nothing that could be done. Everyone wanted to live with dignity, everyone had dreams, and everyone had things that they wanted to protect. There was no high or low when it came to lives, noble or lowly. It could only be said that the cultivation world was just this cruel.

Long Chen tore apart the ground, burying this person. Folklore said that people needed the earth to be at peace, and only then could they enter reincarnation. Those whose corpses were left in the wild would become lonely ghosts forced into a miserable existence.

Long Chen had never believed in that kind of supernatural thing, but he did believe in dust to dust, earth to earth. People ate the earth’s seed and would return to the earth when things were over. It could also be considered a kind of reincarnation, another kind of continuance to life.

Long Chen had just taken a few steps past the corpse when a tender vine lying amongst the grass suddenly sn.a.k.e.d around Long Chen’s leg.

Thorns on the vine stabbed into his leg like a viper injecting its poison. At the same time, countless vines shot out at him from the surroundings.

Long Chen coldly stared at the vine twisting around his leg. Those thorns were stabbing into him as hard as they could, but they couldn’t injure him.

His leg was covered in green dragon scales. The thorns couldn’t break his defense.

Long Chen’s arm shook ever so slightly, and a burst of power erupted, blowing away all the vines twining around him.

“Get out here!”

Long Chen stamped on the ground, causing the earth to crumble. A large figure appeared, looking like a giant ginseng. Around it were tree demons with countless roots attacking Long Chen.

With a single pointing of his finger, a lightning sword pierced its body. That pile of tree demons instantly withered.

Continuing onward, he saw another corpse in less than a mile. However, he didn’t bother with this one as it belonged to the Corrupt path.

As he continued forward, the ground continued to split open. Tree demons came out and attacked him, but his footsteps didn’t pause. His lightning blade slashed repeatedly, destroying the tree demons.

After the tree demons were slain, they all quickly withered away, transforming into nothingness in just a few breaths.

More and more tree demons appeared as he went deeper. They weren’t particularly strong, most being around the level of tenth rank Magical Beasts. However, there were many of them, and they attempted to stab him with their toxic thorns. They could have a fatal danger to ordinary Celestials, but they were nothing to Long Chen.

He couldn’t even count how many of the tree demons he killed. In any case, after two hours, the tree demons were still continuing to wildly assault him as if they didn’t have brains of their own and didn’t know fear.

Slashing his saber once more, he cleaned up the tree demons ahead of him and saw light. The endless tree demons stopped. Instead, he saw a world of birdsong and flowers ahead. The air was filled with a fresh and clean flavor, invigorating him. It was like he had just had a good sleep.

However, that was just on the surface. Right in front of him was a corpse. It was a red-robed man from the Corrupt path. He was peacefully lying there as if he was asleep.

He still had a satisfied and intoxicated smile. But he would never wake from this sleep.

“Break!”

Long Chen suddenly shouted. The beautiful world around him suddenly changed as his Spiritual Strength erupted. A large and imposing mountain range appeared.

These mountains each had a large tree on top of them. They were like beautiful pavilions. Each one of their leaves emitted a dream-like haze.

“The traps really come one by one.”

Long Chen shook his head. That disciple had charged his way through the battles with the tree demons to see a beautiful world. As soon as he relaxed, his mind was invaded by the illusions, and he died without even realizing it.

Those leaves on the trees had a strange rune on them that emitted the dream-like haze. As soon as you looked at them, you would feel sleepy.

Even having unleashed his powerful Spiritual Strength and breaking the illusion, Long Chen didn’t dare to be careless. Those ancient trees gave him a sense of immense danger.

He slowly advanced. Passing mountain after mountain, he chose a random path that winded around them. Only midway through did he realize that these mountains had a formation protecting them.

Each mountain had a formation covering it, and the core of the formation was the tree at the top.

A translucent barrier could be seen covering each of the mountains, and starlight sparkled on top of the barriers. Each sparkle was a formation rune, which was actually the exact same as the runes on the leaves.

“It couldn't be that all the formations are linked, right?” Seeing the unending mountains with a tree on top of each, Long Chen couldn’t help gasping.

He felt like his guess was correct. These strange runes and the formations had made this world sink into a special rhythm. It was like the tide, pushing and pulling. There was definitely a connection between them all.

He carefully advanced. After passing by a few more mountains, he suddenly noticed a strange flower growing on top of one of the mountains.

That flower was very strange. It had seven leaves that looked very similar to dandelion leaves. The six petals were in three groups of two, each pair looking like butterfly wings fluttering. Bursts of fragrance came from it.

“It’s the Butterfly Wing Dragon Bone Mandara!”

Long Chen let out a startled cry spontaneously. After shouting it, he actually came to a blank pause.

“I recognize this flower and know it’s a treasure, but I don’t know its use. What does that mean?”

His intuition was telling him that the Butterfly Wing Dragon Bone Mandara should be used for refining pills, but he didn’t know what pill. Were his Pill Sovereign memories incomplete?

Well, there was nothing he could do about that, and he had no time. He would first get the flower before anything else, but how was he supposed to get it? With the formation protecting it, he couldn’t directly pluck it.

He then roamed around the mountains before his eyes suddenly lit up. His luck had finally taken a turn for the better.

He found that there was another Butterfly Wing Dragon Bone Mandara that was growing outside the formation. It wasn’t behind the barrier.

It was on the very edge. Long Chen carefully crept over. Taking out a jade shovel, he lightly scooped it out of the ground along with its roots. Delighted, he was about to put it away when a sharp ray of Sword Qi slashed toward the back of his head.