Chapter 430 - 207: An Earth-Shattering Save, Gaining Another Skill
Chapter 430: Chapter 207: An Earth-Shattering Save, Gaining Another Skill
Lin Ye glanced at his level.
He was only level 42. Relying solely on his Cultivation Technique for training was far slower than killing members of the other races.
The member of the Rot Eye Race he had just killed was level 47.
If the Rot Eye Race were the lowest-level beings in the Painful Labyrinth, then this place was basically a leveling paradise for him.
Lin Ye didn’t want to reach a point where his martial cultivation was ready to break through to the Divine Realm, only to be held back by his level. That would be the most infuriating kind of bottleneck.
And finally, there were the Source Crystals.
He could sense a faint radiation from Source Crystals permeating the underground labyrinth, but the concentration was very low.
He figured the truly high-quality Source Crystal Vein must be hidden much deeper underground.
He still had a massive amount of uncompressed and unrefined Gang Sha in his body, and he urgently needed high-quality Source Crystals to complete this step.
With a flicker of his thoughts, Lin Ye’s Spiritual Power spread outward.
A few seconds later, a jet-black fly thrall materialized from thin air. With a silent buzz of its wings, it flew into one of the branching paths.
Then a second, and a third...
Creating the fly thralls was second nature to him now; it hardly cost him any mental effort.
「Ten minutes later.」
With Lin Ye at the center, over three hundred fly thralls had become his extended eyes and ears, beginning a systematic sweep of the intricate labyrinth.
A flood of chaotic, fragmented images poured into his mind.
Only then did Lin Ye truly begin to appreciate the name "Painful Labyrinth."
The structure of the tunnels here defied all logic.
Some tunnels ran straight up and down, others were twisted together like braids, and some were simply dead ends.
The sights relayed by the fly thralls gave him his first, vague impression of the planet’s internal structure.
’It’s huge.’
’So vast it defied imagination.’
Trying to explore it all just by creating thralls on his own would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Lin Ye opened his eyes and glanced at the Rot Eye thrall lying dormant at his feet.
"Go find your own kind."
He transmitted the command with his mind.
The Rot Eye thrall immediately understood its master’s command. Its eight segmented legs scrambled, and it became a green blur, vanishing instantly into the tunnel’s darkness.
Lin Ye planned to use war to fuel war.
He would use this first thrall as a scout to find more of the Rot Eye Race, then kill and convert them, snowballing his army into a legion.
...
「Yanjing, Kunlun Sub-Palace.」
The atmosphere in the conference room was suffocatingly tense.
Long Bohan fidgeted, his gaze glued to the enormous screen at the front of the room.
The screen was split into dozens of smaller windows, each broadcasting a live feed from within the rift.
To the right of the screen were two prominent leaderboards.
[Team Leaderboard]
[Kunlun Martial Hall: 12,540 Points]
[Firewood Martial Hall: 11,980 Points]
[Individual Leaderboard]
[1st Place: Zhang Daoming (Kunlun) - 4,450 Points]
[2nd Place: Hu Dahai (Xinhuo) - 1,870 Points]
[3rd Place: Chen Beiwang (Kunlun) - 1,650 Points]
...
The two Martial Halls’ total scores were close; the gap wasn’t large.
On the individual leaderboard, however, the Kunlun newcomer named Zhang Daoming was far, far ahead, holding a commanding, almost stratified lead.
Long Bohan’s eyes scanned quickly down the list, but he couldn’t find the name he was most desperate to see.
’Lin Ye... didn’t even make the top ten?’
’Where did he go?’
What was more alarming were the brutal scenes he witnessed among the constantly shifting battle feeds.
One Xinhuo member, dodging the acid of a Rot Eye, was forced into a corner. In desperation, he could only activate his Space-Folding Device, vanishing in a flash of white light and exiting the competition.
Another Kunlun member reacted a split-second too late. His entire right arm was covered in the green fluid, and with his other hand, he brutally hacked it off at the shoulder!
The image of splashing blood caused Long Bohan’s pupils to constrict sharply.
’This competition is too brutal!’
’Weren’t they told it was only a medium-danger rating?’
’It’s barely started, and there are already such severe casualties and losses!’
"Mr. Xiao, it seems the members from both our sides have underestimated the dangers of this trip into the rift."
Lv Yongze’s voice broke the silence. He held a teacup, his tone unreadable.
Across from him, Xiao Yuanshan pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, a faint, detached smile on his face.
"For newcomers who have never truly set foot in the Celestial Abyss, a ’medium-danger’ rating can indeed be misleading."
"They always think low-danger is a walk in the park and medium-danger is a scenic outing."
"But they forget that the Celestial Abyss is the Celestial Abyss. Regardless of the rating, for humanity, it will always be a death zone."
"The higher-ups had their reasons for designating this a Class-B mission."
"To be blunt, I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the end of this preliminary tournament, not a single person manages to find the Ark Fire Seed Source."
Hearing this, Lv Yongze actually nodded in agreement.
"The environment of the Painful Labyrinth is too complex. The creatures they’re encountering now are merely the Rot Eye Race—the most numerous and also the weakest."
"Once they venture deeper and run into the Curse Bone Race and the Black Nightmare Race, that’s when their individual strength will be truly tested. The point gap will be blown wide open then."
Lv Yongze’s words sent a chill through the hearts of Long Bohan, Wang Jingcheng, and the others.
’Those terrifying creatures that can melt anything are only the weakest ones here?’
Just then, one of the feeds on the main screen was suddenly magnified.