Chapter 504: Strange Tree
[V6C34 – Sorrow of a Silent Parting]
Not only were distances farther than usual on this void landmass, but even the concept of time was quite blurry.
The human perception simply couldn’t sense the flow of time, and the trajectories of the sun, moon, and stars weren’t the same as on the other continents. The origin-powered field clock was still running, but with the void colossus’ will pervading every part of this world, there was no telling whether the surrounding origin power it relied on for operation was normal.
Twice did Qianye encounter dark race warriors in the days that followed, all of whom he easily dealt with. The second batch consisted of five opponents who had formed a small unit, and although there was a viscount among them, they were still wiped out with a bit of effort.
Qianye noticed that the true problems had just begun. Apparently, the experts investigating Giant’s Repose on the Evernight Continent had begun entering this world in succession.
The suppression and distorted perception brought about by the void colossus’ will had reached an extent where it would even affect one’s combat methods. To Qianye, however, this was a minor problem he could easily adapt to.
The distorted perception was directly reflected in one’s vision and hearing. Everything heard and seen here was slightly different from the real world. Under such circumstances, long-distance sniping was no longer a practical method.
It wasn't just Qianye. The dark race experts from the Evernight side had also discovered this rule. People from both factions would charge into melee combat once they were a couple hundred meters from one another.
By the time Qianye saw three vampires appearing across from him, the other party had also discovered him. These three vampires had long sniper rifles strapped onto their backs, but they had given up using them. Instead, they drew their swords and pistol to charge at Qianye under the cover of the landscape.
A silver-grey sniper rifle appeared in Qianye’s hand, with which he aimed at one of the enemies.
The three vampires were sneering. The one who had been aimed at didn’t even bother to evade and merely kept on charging.
A muffled gun-shot reverberated through the air above the stone forest, and that vampire was sent flying backward as though he had been struck by a giant hammer. There was a big, gaping hole on his chest, and the greater half of his arm had been blasted away, leaving only a small strip of flesh connected to his body.
This shot immediately stunned the remaining two vampires. They were all expert snipers, and they had tried on more than one occasion to shoot at opponents from the empire. But their accuracy would fall drastically once they were over a hundred meters, and it was virtually impossible to hit targets over two hundred.
The two parties were over three hundred meters apart when Qianye managed to hit one of them. Was this just coincidence?
The sniper rifle in Qianye’s hand rumbled once again during that moment of hesitation. The grade-six weapon’s massive firepower directly blasted a vampire’s head apart.
The third vampire was shocked out of his wits after seeing Qianye take aim at him. He immediately turned tail and ran, unable to care about the corpses of his companions. A single sprint took him a hundred meters in the blink of an eye.
He couldn’t help but glance back as the gun rumbled once again, just in time to see an origin bullet flying out from Qianye’s gun muzzle. The projectile was way off-target as it flew along an erratic trajectory. However, this queer trajectory still led to the vampire’s back at the very end, and the bullet instantly shattered his blood core.
The blue tint in Qianye’s eyes dispersed after killing the last opponent. His True Sight was useful beyond imagination in this world of distorted perception. The Eye of Truth had gradually regained its powers after Qianye had acclimatized to the pressure of the void colossus’ will. Presently, he could grasp a true vision of 500 meters in battle.
After checking the three vampires’ bodies, Qianye unexpectedly discovered that they were all people from the Monroe clan. And judging from their insignias, one of them was of a fairly high position. It was just that they were too self-confident and hadn’t expected that Qianye would be able to shoot within a range of 500 meters.
For some reason, seeing the Monroe soldiers gave Qianye a faint sense of discomfort.
Qianye then collected the spoils and was fairly satisfied by the pureblood vampire youth’s sniper rifle. It was also a grade-six sniper rifle, but it was of a somewhat higher quality than the Zhao clan’s product, and its firepower was also greater.
Qianye continued into the depths of the stone forest and toward the beast spine still jutting into the skies far off in the distance. It felt as though he hadn't gotten closer to it at all, but Qianye was used to it by now. He couldn’t tell how far away the spine was even with his True Sight.
In the days that followed, Qianye encountered two beast hordes one after the other. One of them was the twin-horned sword bone horses, while the other was made up of dozens of lion-like beasts. It was just that, with origin power equal to a rank-nine fighter, their strength was far beyond that of a lion.
The dozens of vicious beasts provided Qianye with an abundance of essence blood, so he simply took a day off to convert all of them with the Mystery Chapter before continuing his advance. After the accumulation during this period, the Wings of Inception had begun to form the outline of yet another feather. It would seem that the second Shot of Inception would appear after a couple more times of essence blood conversion.
One could never have too many of a weapon like the Shot of Inception. As such, Qianye had no intention of tampering with the darkness origin power distribution—the Wings of Inception consumed more than half, and the Book of Darkness took up most of the remainder, leaving only a small amount for the blood energies.
The world itself was fairly barren, but the creatures possessed abundant essence blood, several times that of their counterparts on the continents.
The scenery before Qianye’s eyes changed all of a sudden as he walked further on. It was as though he had suddenly reached a different world.
The ground was no longer the sandy soil of the stone forest. Instead, it was now covered in a thick layer of dark purple material with bright orange spots upon them. Walking on it felt like treading on a living being as it wiggled constantly.
Qianye knelt down and stabbed it lightly with his dagger, carving a hole on the thick layer of purple. A translucent yellow oil immediately seeped out from the opening, and the cut edges of the wound squirmed like a small, open mouth. The scene was somewhat hair-raising.
Qianye gathered some of the oil with his dagger and gave it a sniff. Then, he reached out a finger and let some of it stick to his skin. He wasn’t afraid that the material would be poisonous because he already possessed auric flame blood in his veins which afforded him immunity to most toxins.
He felt nothing out of the ordinary after touching the substance, so he tried putting some into his mouth. His test revealed that apart from the fishy taste, this material was completely edible and contained extremely high amounts of energy. According to an ordinary person’s consumption rate, a small ladle was enough for an entire day of activity.
Qianye thrust his blade into the soft purple material again and cut open an even deeper wound. As expected, the yellowish oily substance seeped out in large amounts and eventually glued the wound shut.
Qianye breathed a sigh of relief because food had been scarce along the journey after he had fallen into this world. He had supplies in Andruil’s Mysterious Realm, but it was a limited amount. With the ground full of soft purple material before him, there was no longer a need to worry about food. It was simply inexhaustible.
But what was this soft purple material and why was it here?
There was a faint mist rising continuously from the dark purple sludge, through which one’s perception could only reach ten meters. Qianye activated his True Sight and found that his vision had been constrained. He could only see about three hundred meters ahead.
However, the discrepancy in distance was enough to give Qianye a powerful edge in mid to long distance sniping.
The vast, unchanging purple ground finally saw some change after a fair distance of travel. A forest appeared in the distance, which, upon closer inspection, was filled with an array of strange plant life. Growing here were huge trees of a similar color to the ground—dark-purple with orange spots—and with giant spherical crowns shaped like beehives.
Each of these peculiar trees was a hundred meters tall, and the beehive sphere on top was at least dozens of meters in radius. They were covered in a dark-purple meshwork filled with an eerie spectrum of red, orange, and yellows substances.
After arriving at this place, Qianye immediately retracted his aura, hid behind a large tree, and observed the surroundings in detail. Only after finding no signs of other creatures did Qianye reach out to touch the tree beside him.
The tree trunk was rather sturdy and actually produced a metallic echo when knocked upon with the dagger. Sparks flew off when he tried sawing the tree with the serrations on the back of the dagger, but only some faint white marks were left behind on the tree trunk. It was unknown just what material the trees were made of, but their sturdiness had already surpassed metal alloy.
He thought of something after sensing the vibrations produced from sawing the tree trunk. He activated his origin power and once again knocked on the tree trunk with the dagger. As expected, he sensed the vibrations traveling upward along the tree trunk.
Qianye activated his True Sight and once again circulated his origin power. He placed a hand on the tree trunk and then banged on the tree with his other fist. The heavy blow caused the entire tree to tremble ceaselessly. Meanwhile, in his True Sight, the inside of the tree was raging with vibrations akin to tidal waves.
The giant tree actually possessed origin power?
This discovery astonished Qianye. As such, he smashed the tree once more and once again caused it to tremble. Qianye soon gained a basic understanding of the tree’s internal structure from his True Sight’s perception of the vibratory waves.
There were hundreds of channels inside the tree, and they were capable of transporting origin power just like the vessels of an origin cultivator. Although the origin power within the tree was quite thin, Qianye was able to sense that all of it was in liquid form. In terms of form, it could be considered an origin distillate that had been diluted hundreds of times.
However, it was nevertheless still an origin distillate, and this alone made the tree shockingly valuable.
Moreover, there were honeycomb-like compartments in the spherical crown of the tree, and a number of them seemed to be gestating something!