Chapter 1091 – The Enemy Raid in the Storm
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In the purple mountain pit tunnels, Lin Ming casually struck the faint purple walls. With the faint rustling of powder stone falling down, a tiny black fragment dislodged and fell down.
Lin Ming reached out and grabbed this black fragment. Although the fragment appeared simple, when he sent his senses through it he could feel a strange chill around it.
“What is this?” Lin Ming wondered. He felt that this was a tiny fragment from some weapon. But it was hard to imagine that a weapon fragment would still have a tiny fluctuation of energy after all this time.
“It’s a fragment of an extreme quality spirit artifact.” Mo Eversnow’s voice suddenly echoed out in Lin Ming’s mind.
There was a space barrier that separated a divergent mystic realm and the Divine Realm, and the stronger one was, the more difficult it was to pierce through this veil. Even battle puppets and incarnations were no exception. However, the Magic Cube and the space within the Magic Cube were not subject to this restriction.
When Lin Ming first entered the God Beast Mystic Realm, the Magic Cube had entered unhindered too. Moreover, at the Sky Spill Continent, Empyrean Primordius had sealed away the entire planet of the Sky Spill Continent with his incredible supernatural powers. Besides native martial artists, any martial artist from the Divine Realm that surpassed the Divine Sea realm was unable to enter. This was one of the protections Empyrean Primordius had left behind to guard his inheritance.
But the Magic Cube had still managed to pass through this barrier with Mo Eversnow’s soul inside, where it was obtained by Lin Ming.
To this point, Lin Ming could only assume that the Magic Cube was not bound by the Laws of these divergent mystic realms.
Mo Eversnow investigated the fragment with her senses and said, “This fragment already exists for countless hundreds of millions of years. The only reason it was able to maintain its existence for so long is because of the violet sun stone mine here. The thick heaven and earth origin energy nourished it all this time, if not, it probably would have turned to dust by now.”
“Extreme rank spirit artifact fragment. I wonder what sort of strength was needed to destroy it. Just what sort of events happened in this divergent mystic realm?”
“I have no idea what secrets divergent mystic realms hold. Perhaps they are worlds left behind by universes that were destroyed.”
The existence of divergent mystic realms were an enigma to the martial artists of the Divine Realm. Even someone on the level of Mo Eversnow didn’t know the truth behind them.
“What sort of use would this kind of fragment have?” Lin Ming asked.
“It’s not too useful. If there was a top refining grandmaster, he would be able to make a top grade saint artifact, or perhaps an offensive talisman of some sort. For instance, that protective charm you took from Saint Artifact Pavilion in the past was a fragment of an ancient extreme rank spirit artifact. However, because it contained its master’s source bloodline, I absorbed it.”
As Mo Eversnow said this, Lin Ming recalled that when he first came to the Divine Realm, he had indeed taken two top grade saint artifacts from Phoenix Cry Palace’s Saint Artifact Pavilion. One was the Phoenix Blood Spear, and the other was a talisman called Saint’s Will. However, that talisman was later absorbed by the Magic Cube.
Now that he thought about it, that talisman should have served as some sort of support for Mo Eversnow’s awakening. Otherwise, Mo Eversnow might not have had enough strength to pull out the dragon marrow essence from within the dragon bone.
Lin Ming tossed this extreme rank spirit artifact fragment to a Revolving Core disciple. Since Mo Eversnow had already thoroughly appraised it for him, he didn’t care for it too much. After all, it wasn’t like a refining grandmaster was easy to find.
To Lin Ming, there was nothing in these pit tunnels that were able to tempt him. In terms of violet sun stones, something had to be worth several hundred million or even billions of them to be useful.
Like this, 200-300 Revolving Core disciples continued mining in the tunnels non-stop. They dug out massive hunks of violet sun stones, which they stored into their spatial rings.
A martial artist wouldn’t be tired if they didn’t sleep for ten days and ten nights. However, gathering violet sun stones was still an energy consuming task. This was because the rock here was simply too hard. These Revolving Core disciples quickly used up their true essence reserves and would have no choice but to stop for a moment and take some pills.
As for the direct disciples, they didn’t do any work at all. They saved up their strength, waiting for a battle that could erupt at any moment.
However, these pit tunnels were indeed very well hidden. These people worked on for days without being disturbed. Let alone an assault from Splintersoul Mountain or the Occult Bone Clan, there hadn’t even been any red desolate ogres that appeared. Moreover, the red sand storms that constantly stirred up outside had no effect at all on the martial artists mining in the tunnels.
“Haha, I thought that we had too few people, so we would die if there were any dangers. But it seems as if our gains are immense We’ve been able to mine for nearly three full days without pause, and my spatial ring is already half full. Not only do I have violet sun stones but I even have the more valuable violet sun crystals. Although I’m more tired than a dog, I get excited thinking about the portion I’ll receive in return when we leave.”
In the pit tunnels, the Revolving Core disciples were all tired and soaked in their own sweat, but they were actually all in high spirits. When they listened to Ye Rosewater saying the sect would return 2-3% of the net harvests to them, they hadn’t realized what sort of concept that was. But now, as they looked at the immense amount of violet sun stones in their spatial rings, they began to realize that this was a truly huge amount of wealth.
Everyone was able to gather around 60-70 million violet sun stones each so far. When they returned, they would be able to keep over a million violet sun stones. To a small family, this was a mind boggling amount of wealth.
“If everyone gathered 60-70 million violet sun stones, with several thousand disciples together, we’ll have over 100 billion violet sun stones in total. Carefree Island only used 20 billion violent sun stones to send us here. That is a profit of 5-6 times what they paid! But there is also the hidden cost that will be the lives of the sect’s direct disciples. That will come from the all-out war that’s going to happen at the end of this.”
As Lin Ming was thinking, his eyes suddenly flashed with a cold light. He turned his head to look outside the mining pit. There was a terrifying red sand storm that was blowing around, so it was impossible for ordinary martial artists to cast their divine senses out too far. This was because the Red Desolate Mystic Realm’s blood sand was able to block senses. When this blood sand blew everywhere through the air, it limited the senses of an ordinary martial artist to a mere few miles.
Was this an enemy raid?
Lin Ming stood up. If there was an ambush in such bad weather, not even gods or ghosts would be aware of it. No one would be able to detect it. This was just like two armies in the mortal world trying to battle on a day when a thick fog made it so one couldn’t even see their hands.
However, the crux of the issue was that in this sand storm, if they weren’t able to discover the enemy, the enemy shouldn’t be able to discover them either. How could the enemy possibly follow their trail here? Not just that, but they were even hidden in this giant pit that isolated senses!
“Was there a traitor!?” As Lin Ming thought of this, a grim expression crossed his face. He stood up, flew over to Ye Rosewater, and whispered a few words. He didn’t use a true essence sound transmission. Martial artists had very sharp hearing to begin with; they were able to clearly hear all clanking sounds from the mining occurring around them.
Ye Rosewater and the several direct disciples near here were stunned for a moment.
“Junior-apprentice Brother Lin, what did you say? The enemy is about to ambush us? Are you sure?” Ye Rosewater looked at Lin Ming with utter incredulity. She cast her own divine sense out of the pit but was only able to reach out for a few miles before being completely shut down by the massive amount of blood sand. In that blood sand she could only see endless red; there was nothing she could investigate!
“This…”
Ye Rosewater found this a bit hard to believe. She had a late Divine Sea cultivation and Lin Ming was only at the eighth stage of Life Destruction. How far a cultivator could sense completely depended on their soul force. Even though Lin Ming was an unprecedented genius, could his soul force still be stronger than her own?
Although Lin Ming had restrained his own soul force, Ye Rosewater could still vaguely feel it. When she looked at Li Ming, she could make out a sharpness in his eyes, like a bolt of lightning was dancing within them. However, this was a manifestation of Lin Ming’s will and battle spirit, and a cultivator’s senses had nothing to do with their battle spirit.
Taking 10,000 steps back and thinking about it, even if Lin Ming’s soul force was stronger than hers, it was still useless. In order to discover an enemy raid in such horrible weather, his soul force would have to be 10 times, 20 times, or even many times more stronger than her own!
Ye Rosewater wasn’t the only one with such doubts. The other direct disciples were also suspiciously looking at Lin Ming.
Lin Ming faintly frowned. If he were them, even he would find his own words hard to believe. But there was no way he could explain his reasoning. His soul force was indeed not any stronger than Ye Rosewater’s, and he couldn’t tell them that there was a strange hidden space within him with the soul of a half-step World King powerhouse living there. With Mo Eversnow’s titanic soul force, she could even easily discover the enemy if they were hundreds of miles away in this red sand storm.
“Junior-apprentice Brother Lin, how did you discover the enemy? You can’t make a joke like this. If there is a mistake and our group goes out to hide, our position might be exposed even if there aren’t any enemies outside. That will make things very troublesome.” Behind Ye Rosewater, the Junior-apprentice Brother Song from before piped up.
“That’s right. Junior-apprentice Brother Lin, you should at least give us a reasoning for your thoughts. You can’t say that you depended on just your own divine sense to discover the enemy,” a female disciple echoed.
“I’ve already reminded you all. As for how I know, I’m sorry, but I cannot explain it to you. Don’t forget that I am not a disciple of Carefree Island. I’ve done everything that I could already. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing else I can do to convince you. I’ll be on my way first. If we stay here in these pit tunnels, we’ll be caged in by the enemy and completely annihilated.” Lin Ming said, turning around to leave.
This incomparably hard mining pit was a potential death trap. If the enemy launched an assault here, the power of these attacks would multiply in this sealed environment. Once that happened, his fate could be imagined!
“Wait, wait! Junior-apprentice Brother Lin, I believe you!” Ye Rosewater suddenly called out. A genius like Lin Ming had far too many lucky chances. She could believe he had some special method that she couldn’t understand. The other disciples hesitated but didn’t object.
A disciple said, “Since Senior-apprentice Sister Ye agrees, we’ll join you. We should hurry and retreat from here. We can communicate with Senior-apprentice Brother White using the Carefree Command and ask him to hurry here to support us. Hopefully, he won’t laugh at us.”
As the disciple spoke, he looked a bit ill as though he were imagining the scene of this humiliation. In his opinion, this was something that had a pretty high chance of happening.
Lin Ming sneered, “Support?”
The disciple wasn’t too comfortable seeing Lin Ming’s derisive sneer. He said, “You! What’s so funny? Do you think we shouldn’t do this? If the enemy dares to travel over such a long distance to attack us, their strength is surely much greater than ours. How can we fight them without support?”