"Run!"
He Ying's expression changed, and with a wave of his long sleeves, he was enveloped in a large patch of gray light, swirling with streams of air, and flew rapidly toward Boiling Spring Valley.
Seeing this, Zhao Sheng transformed into a sword rainbow and followed closely behind. Bao Yu'er, stepping on a pink handkerchief, also rose from the ground and caught up in the air.
Thirty miles passed in a flash.
Just as the three were about to reach the edge of Boiling Spring Valley, He Ying's shrill roar suddenly rang out: "Get out of the way!"
Get out of the way! Get out of the way!
In an instant, Zhao Sheng felt a chill on his head, a chill that went straight to his bones and made his scalp tingle.
Danger! Utter danger!
Zhao Sheng suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood essence, which instantly turned into a cloud of blood mist that enveloped him.
The next instant, he suddenly transformed into a streak of blood-red light, fleeing towards the horizon at an incredible speed.
In the blink of an eye, he had escaped ten miles away.
As the bloodstains dissipated, Zhao Sheng staggered a step before regaining his footing. Then, his face pale, he looked towards Boiling Spring Valley.
As far as the eye could see, the Boiling Spring Valley, ten miles away, was now a vast expanse of white. The original scene of rising clouds and mist had been completely swept away, and all the water vapor and mist had condensed into ice shards. The boiling springs in the valley had also been frozen, becoming ice bubbles and ice ponds of various shapes.
The valley was filled with icicles and cones of varying thicknesses, standing densely like an ice crystal forest.
This astonishing sight made Zhao Sheng hold his breath, his lips going dry.
"Buzz!"
Just then, a tangible ripple of divine thought descended from the sky and swept across the surroundings.
The air instantly seemed to have been washed clean, without a trace of smoke or dust. All the tiny floating particles were suppressed by the ethereal yet dense mental force.
Zhao Sheng was shocked. He had never seen such a powerful divine sense before. Only a powerful cultivator at the Golden Core stage or above could possess it.
In just a few breaths, a figure appeared out of thin air, bringing with it a bone-chilling cold. The surrounding temperature dropped rapidly, and the already dim environment became even darker. Countless ice particles fell from the air, and an extremely cold aura permeated the surroundings, making one feel as if they had fallen into a ghostly prison.
The cold sweat that had just appeared on Zhao Sheng's forehead was instantly frozen into thin ice.
He slightly raised his head and saw that the newcomer was dressed in a five-clawed black dragon robe and wore a five-colored crown. The twelve tassels of the crown all emitted a faint divine light, and each of the tassels contained a powerful divine technique.
Zhao Sheng was shocked and immediately realized that he had seen something he shouldn't have, so he immediately lowered his head.
Mo Wendao didn't even notice the ants under his feet.
He looked around at the world, and the cold light in his pupils flowed slowly in his eyes like a surging iceberg.
As his thoughts turned, the surface of the soil beneath his feet cracked like a spider web, and icicles grew out of the cracks. Large patches of silvery-white frost rapidly spread in all directions, covering the original landscape with a thick layer of frost. The few plants that had managed to grow there were frozen into ice sculptures.
"Hmph, you can't escape!"
After whispering something, Mo Wendao's figure suddenly vanished from the spot.
Zhao Sheng felt relieved and hurriedly fled the place.
Later, Zhao Sheng returned to Boiling Spring Valley and saw Old Man He emerging from underground.
At this moment, he was covered in frost and shivering from the cold.
Zhao Sheng was eager to know who was behind this "grand gesture" and why an "emperor" would be here.
Of course, he wouldn't ask too directly.
They merely asked, indirectly, which bigwig had orchestrated this grand gesture.
He Ying shook his head hesitantly, "I don't know either! But such a big commotion can only be accomplished by a powerful treasure or a Nascent Soul cultivator."
Zhao Sheng's heart skipped a beat. "The Mo Clan only has one Nascent Soul Ancestor. Could it be that the Ancestor made a move?"
That's giving the Zhou family way too much credit!
The two waited for a while but Bao Yuer did not appear. He Ying's expression turned somewhat unpleasant.
Zhao Sheng tentatively suggested, "Perhaps we should wait a little longer."
He Ying waved his hand and decisively said, "No need, the mission is more important! Let's go and meet up with Monk Wuxiang first. Baoyu won't die so easily; something must have delayed him."
As he spoke, He Ying took the lead and rushed into Boiling Spring Valley, heading towards the cave located in the southwest of the valley. Zhao Sheng shook his head and followed.
Boiling Spring Valley has been managed by the Zhou family for a thousand years. Countless tunnels have been dug into the ground, connecting layer upon layer of underground buildings, including stone chambers, palaces, warehouses, storage sheds and so on, resembling a huge underground city.
However, the city was extremely deserted. Zhao Sheng and He Ying searched three floors in a row and were surprised to find that all the buildings were empty, without a single person in sight.
It was as if the Zhou family had been prepared all along.
As Zhao Sheng went deeper underground, he noticed that the temperature was rising and a faint smell of sulfur was beginning to appear in the air.
After a while, the two had gone down nearly a hundred feet underground. The man-made buildings around them gradually became scarce, and the rough soil and rocks around them became more abundant.
Walking through a newly opened passage, Zhao Sheng suddenly heard a faint scream.
ah!
Upon hearing the scream, He Ying's expression changed instantly.
The screams just now were very familiar; they came from the Water Element Monk Wuxiang. The voices were so sharp and shrill that even through the thick layer of earth and rocks, they could not be completely concealed.
"not good!"
Before they could finish speaking, a violent tremor suddenly struck beneath their feet. Countless cracks appeared in the surrounding stone walls.
Then came a deep, thunderous roar that swept past their feet, like a surging river flowing by.
The temperature is rising rapidly!
Zhao Sheng frowned and listened intently. He discovered that the sounds beneath his feet were actually a series of explosions strung together with almost no interval, transforming into a series of booming sounds like waves surging in a great river.
Upon closer inspection, the shockwaves pushing back and forth were even stronger, causing great damage to the underground passages. Within two or three breaths, Zhao Sheng felt the ground beneath his feet softening and crumbling, covered with cracks, while countless underground passages in front, behind, left, and right collapsed.
Without needing to be reminded, Zhao Sheng knew what had just happened.
There were Golden Core cultivators engaged in a fierce battle, and it wasn't a tentative move, but a life-or-death struggle.
The Monk Wuxiang was probably caught in the crossfire of the battle between the Golden Core cultivators, which is why his death was shrouded in mystery.
Zhao Sheng was extremely shocked. "How did they get to the ground, and so close at that?"
The immense pressure generated by the battle between Golden Core cultivators is no exaggeration to say it weighs more than ten thousand jin. Moreover, it is mixed with their dense and complex clash of divine thoughts. The spiritual energy of heaven and earth within a radius of several miles turns from the illusory into the real, forming a strangling and intense distortion, which is truly impossible to defend against and impossible to resist.
The situation instantly turned dire. At this moment, Old Man He spoke succinctly: "Retreat, five li!"
He Ying is an earth-element cultivator, possessing the advantage of terrain, and is better able to grasp the scope of the battle between the two Golden Core cultivators.
As Zhao Sheng fled, he muttered to himself, "Five li is probably not enough. It would be better to run far away."
But soon, Zhao Sheng realized that he was far less experienced than Old Man He in dealing with real-life battles.