Chapter 2391: Grand Conspiracy
Chapter 2391: Grand Conspiracy
The three cultivators surrounding the young man immediately reacted. Without further thought, they activated their movement techniques and fled with all their might.
The young man came back to his senses and said, "Thank you for saving my life, Senior. My name is Sun He, and this is my first time here."
Yun Lintian nodded gently and said, "It was just a coincidence."
He turned to leave.
"Hold on, Senior!" Sun He said hurriedly. "I don't know if we will meet again. This is what I found here and the reason they wanted to kill me. Please take it."
In his hand was a human-head-sized Spirit Bead, emitting strong energy.
Yun Lintian was slightly surprised. Spirit Beads certainly came in different shapes and sizes, but this was the first time he had seen one so large.
He waved his hand and pulled it over. "I will take it then... But where did you find it?"
Sun He was relieved and answered truthfully. "When I entered, I was teleported to a location near the Central Region. This Spirit Bead flew out of the sandstorm surrounding it. I've been escaping these people all the way here."
"Oh?" Yun Lintian nodded slowly. He planned to visit the Central Region once he found Nantian Fengyu and Linlin.
Sun He hesitated briefly and said, "Please be careful, Senior. The sandstorm there is not something anyone can deal with. I heard that even a True God couldn't handle it. Everyone has to wait for the right time."
"Thanks for the information," Yun Lintian said, tossing a few small Spirit Beads toward Sun He. "Use these to replenish your energy."
Sun He wasn't polite and began absorbing them immediately.
As Yun Lintian watched, he suddenly noticed that Sun He couldn't absorb the energy from the Spirit Beads efficiently. A large portion was wasted. It seemed that here, strength affected the absorption process.
After recovering some of his energy, Sun He cupped his fists and said, "Thank you, Senior. I wish you a safe journey."
He turned and left.
Yun Lintian watched Sun He disappear from sight with a thoughtful expression.
"What's wrong, Big Brother Yun?" Qingqing asked curiously.
"Nothing. I'm thinking about the origin of this battlefield. The energy here clearly doesn't resemble anything we've encountered before. It's a mixture of various types of energy," Yun Lintian said.
When Sun He absorbed the energy from the Spirit Bead earlier, Yun Lintian had activated the Eyes of Heaven and seen the leaking energy blend seamlessly with the chaotic energy in the air.
Logically, to crystallize and become solid, energy must go through a refinement process to remove impurities. However, the Spirit Bead clearly wasn't purer than the surrounding chaotic energy. How did it become solid?
Yun Lintian thought for a moment and raised his hand to gather the surrounding energy, trying to compress it into a solid object like the Spirit Bead. However, he couldn't do it.
"Spirit Beads can be found inside the decayed beasts..." Yun Lintian's expression abruptly changed as he said this. He seemed to have figured something out.
"No way..." Yun Lintian furrowed his brow. If his guess was true, everyone here was walking into a trap.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
"Big Brother Yun?" Qingqing tilted her head cutely.
Yun Lintian picked her up from his shoulder and used the Eyes of Heaven to scan her body. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found nothing strange.
"I'll explain later. We need to confirm it first," Yun Lintian said and flew south.
Yun Lintian traversed the desolate battlefield, his heart heavy with a growing sense of dread. The chaotic energy here whipped and swirled, a maelstrom of conflicting forces that seemed to gnaw at his very essence. He pushed aside the discomfort, his focus fixed on the grim task ahead.
He had to confirm his suspicions.
The Eyes of Heaven, his innate ability, pierced through the swirling chaos, revealing the hidden truth of this forsaken place. Everywhere he looked, he found the same disturbing pattern.
Decayed beasts, their once mighty forms reduced to crumbling husks, and the skeletal remains of cultivators, their bones bleached white by the relentless passage of time.
And within each of these remains, nestled amongst the decay, were tiny, nascent Spirit Beads. His conjecture was proving true. This battlefield, this place of seemingly boundless energy, was a trap, a cruel mockery of cultivation. The energy here, so readily absorbed, was not a boon, but a slow-acting poison. It infiltrated the body, subtly altering its very structure, crystallizing it, turning flesh and bone into... Spirit Beads.
Yun Lintian's heart clenched at the thought. Every cultivator who came here, lured by the promise of abundant energy, was unknowingly walking towards their own demise. They were being farmed, their very beings transformed into these concentrated sources of power. But who? Who was behind this horrifying scheme? And for what purpose?
Yun Lintian unknowingly reached the Southern Region. Along the way, he met various cultivators, and most of them possessed a small portion of Spirit Bead energy within their bodies. Those who were stronger could resist and slow down the crystallization process, but the weaker ones would eventually transform into Spirit Beads.
Yun Lintian solemnly regarded the enormous Spirit Bead he had just received from Sun He, now stored within his interspatial ring. Without a doubt, the owner of this Spirit Bead must have been at least a High God, or even stronger.
"Central Region... What's hiding in there?" he muttered to himself.
Yun Lintian, no longer caring about anything, sped up his search for Nantian Fengyu and Linlin.
Several thousand kilometers away from Yun Lintian's position, Linlin, in her human form, was surrounded by ten God Ascension Realm cultivators. These people had been chasing her relentlessly since she arrived.
Unlike Yun Lintian and Nantian Fengyu, Linlin had been teleported directly into the South Region Army's camp. Her arrival was like sending a lamb into a lion's den. A divine beast, the legendary White Tiger God, had unexpectedly appeared there.
Linlin's appearance was somewhat disheveled. She hadn't had time to recover, constantly escaping her pursuers since breaking out of the camp. Her current situation was far from
optimistic.
"Little girl, you better surrender to us," a white-haired old man said calmly. His entire body exuded a strong stench of blood. "We promise that we won't harm you. All you need to do is feed us your blood every week."
Linlin snarled at the encircling cultivators. Her eyes blazed with the cold fury of a cornered
tiger.
"Over my dead body," she spat, her voice crackling with the power of the Law of Lightning.