Stranger Danger

Ye Qing forced down his fear and steeled his heart. Then, he continued to press forward.

Some time later, Ye Qing suddenly caught what looked like an outline of something at the distance. A humanoid silhouette to be exact.

Ye Qing perked up. He hadn’t seen a goddamn thing since he entered the Death Sea until now, so this was a fantastic sign. This meant that he was close to something—most likely the way out.

Even if that wasn’t the case—even if the silhouette turned out to be one of the warriors who entered the Death Sea—it was fine either. At this point, he would take something rather than nothing at all.

Ye Qing realized that the silhouette wasn’t a human when he got close to it though. It was a stone sculpture.

Whoever carved the stone sculpture must be incredibly skilled as it looked identical to a human in every way. The only difference was that it was made of stone, and it was sky blue color and gleaming like a piece of jade probably because of the Death Sea.

Strangely, the stone sculpture wasn’t sinking upward. Instead, it was floating toward a certain direction.

The Death Sea’s water had next to no buoyancy, and this sculpture looked pretty heavy. It should’ve sunk to the “bottom” per se. Instead, it was floating sideways toward somewhere.

A moment of hesitation later, Ye Qing decided to follow the stone sculpture.

The stone sculpture floated surprisingly quickly. A while later, Ye Qing saw more stone sculptures in the distance. The further he traveled, the greater their numbers became.

At first, there were only three. Then, their numbers grew to five, ten, a hundred, a thousand. It wasn’t long before his entire field of vision was filled with the stone sculptures.

Not all of the stone sculptures were intact. Some were missing an arm, some were missing a head, and some were missing an entire half of their body.

Even stranger was the fact that all of the stone sculptures were floating in the same direction.

As the only human being of the group, Ye Qing could not help but feel a little chill down his spine.

He continued to swim in the direction the stone sculptures were floating for about a teatime or so. At this point, his chest was hurting so bad it felt like it might rip itself apart, his head was pounding like someone was hitting it with a jackhammer, and even his consciousness was growing blurrier and blurrier.

He was starting to suspect that he might have made the wrong choice to follow the stone sculptures.

He did not regret making that decision though. It was literally the only viable option at the time.

The only thing he could do now was to stick with his decision until the end.

Ye Qing massaged his forehead not just to keep himself awake, but also spread his demonic thought in waves. His eyes weren’t a reliable sensory organ when all he could see was stone sculptures.

“Huh?”

He was just about to fall into despair when suddenly, his demonic thought picked up something gigantic.

It felt like a mountain. A humongous mountain.

Perking up, Ye Qing did not hesitate to swim toward the mountain at full speed.

It was a long and painful process, but eventually, the mountain came into view.

From a distance, the mountain looked just like any other mountain. But the closer he got, the more he realized just how insanely huge it was.

The mountain was floating inside the Death Sea, but for some reason, it also felt like it was existing in a different space. He also couldn’t catch a full view of the mountain because it was shrouded by clouds.

What stole Ye Qing’s breath away wasn’t the mountain, however. It was the giant tortoise crouching underneath the mountain.

No, that wasn’t quite right. The giant tortoise was the one carrying the mountain.

The mountain was massive, but compared to the tortoise? It was almost puny.

The giant tortoise had limbs that looked like the pillars that held up the sky, a shell that looked like a continent in its own right, a head like a mountain that pierced the heavens, and a body that stretched from end to end. Hells, it felt like the Death Sea was barely big enough to accommodate it!

“Is that… an Oathbearer?!”

Besides its unbelievable size, one of the reasons Ye Qing was so shocked was because it looked very similar to the Oathbearer in that they were both ludicrously massive and boundless. The difference was that the Oathbearer he knew carried countless steles on its back, whereas this one was carrying a mountain.

He could almost imagine this tortoise roaming the universe with the mountain on its back.

Unfortunately, the giant tortoise was long dead. He knew this because it was leaking an unimaginable amount of death qi into the surroundings. In fact, the dead Oathbearer might very well be the source of the death qi of the Death Sea.

That wasn’t all. He could also sense a deep sorrow from it. It was impossible to say if it was sorrow toward its own death, mourning toward the deceased, yearning for the infinite universe and its myriad beings, or all of the above.

Its lingering frustration and sorrow were such that tears were leaking out of Ye Qing’s eyes before he knew it.

Besides the mountain and the tortoise, there was one more thing that caught his attention: the stone sculptures.

The stone sculptures were all floating horizontally with their heads pointed toward the tortoise and the mountain. It felt like they were devote worshipers prostrating themselves before their god.

Could this mountain be the place where the Dark Overlord’s inheritance resides?

Ye Qing quickly made the connection. A few seconds of thinking later, he swam resolutely toward the mountain.

He did not have a choice. He was moments away from running out of breath now. Even if the mountain had nothing to do with the Dark Overlord’s inheritance, even if it turned out to be one giant death trap, he had to get there no matter what.

It was do or die.

Unfortunately, he quickly realized that entering the mountain wasn’t as simple as he thought.

For one, the giant tortoise was leaking an insane amount of death qi. It was easily a hundred times thicker than the death qi he felt when he initially entered the Death Sea. A single speck of it was enough to kill an ordinary person upon contact.

That wasn’t the problem though. The death qi was bad, but it was still within his limits of endurance. The real problem was that, at some point, he was unable to get closer to the mountain no matter what. It was as if there was an invisible boundary separating him and the mountain, or some sort of magic that increased the distance between him and the mountain from one to infinity.

What should I do?

If I don’t enter the mountain soon, I’m going to run out of breath and die here!

Despite the fatal crisis he was in, Ye Qing remained as calm and collected as a machine. He did not allow his panic or his physical pain to affect his thoughts.

Wait. The Dark Overlord Token!

It was at this moment Ye Qing recalled the Dark Overlord Token. Without hesitation, he immediately pulled it out of his Nature’s Shell.

As soon as the Dark Overlord Token entered his palm, the blurry, almost illusory mountain abruptly became as clear as crystal. Suddenly, he knew that with absolute certainty that it was no longer out of his reach.

It was a feeling that couldn’t be described with words. All he knew was that he was no longer impeded when the Dark Overlord Token was in his hands. It wasn’t long before he reached the mountain, took one step forward and—

His vision turned white, and he felt the world turning upside down. For a moment, he completely lost his grip on his surroundings. It felt as if he was entering a different spacetime.

Thankfully, the vertigo only lasted for an instant. When his vision returned to normal, Ye Qing realized that he was no longer swimming inside the Death Sea. Instead, he was standing in the middle of a paddy field.

“I got in?”

Ye Qing scanned his surroundings for a moment. The sky was perfectly blue and clear like a mirror, the air was clean and refreshing, and the paddy field he was standing at stretched as far as the eyes could see.

Every single wheat in the paddy field was golden yellow in color. The ear of the wheat was round, wholesome, and overflowing with spiritual qi. When a cool breeze swept through the paddy field, a refreshing scent filled his nostrils, and the paddy field rippled like a golden sea.

Ye Qing could tell at first glance that the wheat growing in this paddy field was extraordinary. Every single wheat was equal to a hundred year spirit herb in the outside world, and this paddy field was so big that he literally couldn’t see the end of it.

If he had to estimate its value, he would say that it was worth one or two cities at least. Maybe more.

What really surprised Ye Qing wasn’t the wheats though, extraordinary as they were. It was the fact that the paddy field was perfectly square and tidy, which was nothing like what a natural paddy field would look like. No, this paddy field looked like it was managed by someone, which meant that there might be living people in the area.

When the thought occurred to him, Ye Qing narrowed his eyes and spread his demonic thought far and wide.

Of course, he wasn’t able to find anyone.

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