Book 4, Chapter 112: Encounter During The Trip
Book 4, Chapter 112: Encounter During The Trip
Sticky, dark-green liquid spilled out of the edges of the gap, and Chen Chuan could hear strange gurgling sounds from behind the gap.
Brilliant light shone from his eyes as he released a wave of mental energy.
This proved useful. At the moment his mental energy touched the liquid, it melted like snow, but Chen Chuan was wasting his mental energy doing this.
While this method worked, Chen Chuan would have a hard time training in peace if this continued. It would be better for him to just get rid of the existence.
He picked up the Frost King Saber and swung it at the liquid that kept spilling over, and it disappeared like smoke.
His mind freshened up right away. It seemed like this method worked.
Chen Chuan brought the saber up with his right hand and placed the back of the blade on his left shoulder. After gathering power for a while, he swung the saber forward. It cut through the gap and struck the existence on the other side.
Chen Chuan thought he heard a shrill, grating screech, and the light from the gap grew stronger. The eyeballs rolled about for a while before suddenly dissipating.
Chen Chuan waited for a while. When he saw no other strange sights, he grabbed a piece of cloth, wiped the Frost King Saber, placed it across his knees again, and continued training.
Over the next few hours, similar existences occasionally showed up, but Chen Chuan was already experienced and used the Frost King Saber to chase them away.
The night went by just like that. When it was almost daytime, his second self had turned quite faint, and he could hear strange sounds coming from the distance. His instincts started whispering to him that a great danger was coming, so he could not continue training.
The gap was still around, though, and showed no signs of closing, despite more than twelve hours having passed.
Due to the Fu-Mu Entity, the moment a gap opened in Central City, it would be suppressed, but that wasn’t the case here. Even though Chen Chuan could see the gap getting smaller, it would stay around for a long time.
Chen Chuan cut it with the Frost King Saber, and the light was snuffed out like a candle flame. The threatening feeling faded away as well, so he took a moment to examine himself and found that he had improved by a lot.
Mental training depended entirely on the length of time one spent on it and the amount of quintessence absorbed. His training tonight could compare to four sessions’ worth of training back in Central City. It might be a little more dangerous, but the rewards were great.
Chen Chuan’s goal was to perfect his mind before the end of December, but if he could train like this every day, it would happen much sooner.
He sheathed the Frost King Saber and stood up before climbing out of the hole. Perhaps it was due to it flying for an entire day yesterday, but Dawncall was still sleeping. However, the moment it heard Chen Chuan’s movements, it woke up and let out a soft chirp at him.
Chen Chuan grabbed some food and water for it before lifting the flaps of the tent and walking out. The sky had already turned bright. The three bonfires had gone out, and only faint smoke was curling up from the wood.
Mornings in the merged space were humid. He could see fog coming from the forest before him, and it was coming over.
It might seem like a normal sight, but Chen Chuan could tell that the fog was actually made of small, nigh undetectable insects.
Light shone from his face, and the fog within his line of sight spread out before collapsing. At the same time, rustling sounds could be heard, and the trees near the fog of insects trembled.
Their bark fell off bit by bit and quickly absorbed all the insects. Then, the bark climbed back up, so everything returned to how it originally looked.
Chen Chuan watched for a while before whipping his head around. Dawncall ran out of the tent to Chen Chuan’s side so that he could check it, and soon, he noticed that fluff-like parasites had covered the underside of Dawncall’s wings.
The parasites had buried their heads into Dawncall’s flesh and were still crawling further in. Even if Dawncall had mutated tissue, it couldn’t stop the parasites.
Such things were a common occurrence in the merged space. Dawncall would only build up resistance gradually after spending some time acclimatizing to the place.
Chen Chuan took out a pill and fed it to Dawncall. After a while, Dawncall spread its wings, shook its feathers, and black ash fell out. It was the poisoned parasites.
Chen Chuan walked to the horses and fed them pills with various effects. Then, he led them to the river to have a drink.
The moment he got closer, though, he saw something resembling black asphalt squirming at the bottom of the river. It was staring at him through the long, narrow slits on its body, but Chen Chuan calmly stared at it back.
They continued their staring contest for a while before it shut its eyes and seeped into the bottom of the river. Soon, it vanished.
Once the horses had their fill, Chen Chuan packed up the tent and all his items before getting on the dragon-nose horse again. With a shake of the reins, he ordered the horses forward.
After around three hours of riding, Dawncall gave a warning cry.
At that moment, he heard horse hooves in the distance, and they were rapidly getting closer.
Chen Chuan had no idea who they belonged to, so he ordered his horses to stop by the river. Soon, he saw a few dragon-nose horses on the other side of the riverbank.
Their riders were wearing black armor and iron masks. They held spears and were all built like tanks, which made it clear that they were cavalrymen from the imperial army.
They didn’t seem to be expecting Chen Chuan either. While Chen Chuan was dressed in casual clothes, they could tell based on the fact that he was riding on a dragon-nose horse that he was from the Great Shun Republic’s military, so they quickly stood still.
Both sides watched each other with five hundred meters of water between them.
The cavalrymen could sense an indescribable pressure on their shoulders despite the distance. Hence, after a while, their leader barked an order, and they left.
They weren’t just running away. Two of the cavaliers brandished their spears and acted as rear guards. At that moment, though, an invisible force swept through the entire region.
Some of the cavaliers swayed on their horses before falling off.
The leader trembled, but quickly pressed his body against the back of the horse. It seemed like he had some kind of mental protection and wasn’t too affected, but before he could leave, he heard a loud explosion behind him, and a huge hole appeared on his back. Even his horse’s head was blasted open.
The headless horse tumbled forward, but the leader was a hardboiled warrior. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to run away and worried that he would leak information, he drew his saber and stabbed himself in the mouth until it sank straight into his brain. His body shuddered violently for a bit, then stopped moving.
Chen Chuan brought the horses across the river. Whenever their hooves landed, white bubbles rose to the surface of the water.
Once they stepped on shore, multiple insect carcasses were dragged out of the dirt. Some weed-like things also wilted around them. All of these were merged space creatures that were killed by Chen Chuan’s mental energy.
When he arrived before the cavaliers’ corpses, Chen Chuan looked around. There was one elite warrior and three cavaliers, the most common four-man unit in the imperial army. Judging by their armor, they were just scouts.
Based on the direction they were headed, they were likely going to the Union and the Linacrox Union’s campsite.
Chen Chuan thought for a bit. The former royal family might look to be working with the Union and the Linacrox Union against the Great Shun Republic’s army, but that didn’t mean that they were allies. It seemed like they were scheming against each other as well.
But he didn’t need to care too much about this. Regardless of where they came from, as long as they were his enemy, all Chen Chuan needed to do was kill them once he saw them.
He snapped the reins and continued onward.
As for the corpses, he had no time to clean them up, though since they were in the merged space, they would vanish without a trace in less than the span of the afternoon.
Half an hour later, Chen Chuan finally arrived at the friendly local hub, but all he saw was burnt ruins.
From the remains, it had been around six days since the hub was destroyed, and the place had been occupied by large insects with keratin shells.
Chen Chuan looked around and found some places with bullet holes and shrapnel. The place had been blasted by cannon fire.
In this region, only the Union and the Linacrox Union had the ability to do this.
As for their motive, it was likely that they had intentionally destroyed all potential threats in the area, or perhaps they just didn’t want the locals here to be used by the World Ring Defense System.
But even if the hub had been destroyed, Chen Chuan was able to confirm its existence, which told him that he had not deviated from his path.
He could also somewhat see the attackers’ path of retreat, so as long as he followed the tracks, he would find the campsite.
Chen Chuan checked his watch. It was 1 p.m., so he could travel for around four more hours before setting up camp in a safe place. Then, he would continue the next morning down the path Chen Bitong had marked. If he didn’t run into any dangers or obstacles along the way, he should be able to reach the campsite at around noon tomorrow.
While he was thinking, Dawncall let out another warning cry from the sky, and he saw a gray bird that was much larger than Dawncall charging at it.
But Dawncall wasn’t scared. It circled it in the air and flapped its wings to dodge it with agile movements.
With just one glance, Chen Chuan knew that the bird had been trained. Worried that Dawncall would be in danger, he called for it to come back, and the bird didn’t chase after it.
After a while, a group of people appeared from the forest ahead.
Their faces were covered in paint, and they wore overcoats that covered them from neck down. The leader immediately caught Chen Chuan’s attention, because he wasn’t wearing an overcoat. Instead, he wore an old development squad uniform.