353: Chapter 348 The Swarm

The gray belt of ruins drew closer and closer.

Su Lin slowed his flight speed, his gaze sweeping back and forth over the floating debris.

The things here were much more interesting to look at than that brilliant nebula from just a moment ago.

Broken jade pillars, dilapidated palace domes, and some massive metal components whose original purpose could no longer be discerned, all floated silently in the Void Realm, like toys discarded by someone.

Su Hongling carried her great sword on her shoulder, her eyes darting across the debris. "Maybe we can dig up something good."

"All you have in your eyes is fighting and digging for things." Su Lin glanced at her.

"What else would there be?" Su Hongling replied righteously.

Su Lin found himself unable to refute this for a moment.

Gu Qiuyue had already flown to the side of a broken jade pillar, reaching out to touch the smooth cross-section, and a glint of excitement immediately appeared in her golden eyes.

"Revered Master, this material isn't right." Her voice rose by a few notches. "This isn't ordinary immortal jade; it's mixed with something I've never seen before. If this were melted down and recast, it could refine a top-tier Magic Treasure embryo."

"How much money can it be exchanged for?" Luo Ximei chimed in from the side, purely teasing.

"Priceless." Gu Qiuyue didn't even look up.

"Then that just means it can't be sold." Luo Ximei laughed and waved her folding fan. "Sixth Junior Sister, you need to change this habit of yours. You're still thinking about opening a shop and doing business."

Gu Qiuyue stopped stroking the jade pillar and was uncharacteristically silent for a moment.

"I'm used to it," she muttered in a low voice. "Whenever I see something valuable, my hands get itchy."

Listening to this group chatting idly, Su Lin's thoughts drifted elsewhere.

The scale of these ruins was not small. Being able to leave behind so much debris meant that some sort of massive structure had once existed here, or rather, that the nest of that bug happened to be in the depths of these ruins.

It wasn't strange that the bug chose to nest in a place like this. The Spiritual Qi within the debris was chaotic, making it most suitable for the propagation of creatures that fed on Law fragments.

"Everyone, stay alert," Su Lin said. "The further we go in, the more of those bugs there will be. Don't end up like Hong Ling, covered in bites."

"Old Man, you just love to poke at sore spots." Su Hongling scratched the still-visible red bite on her neck and muttered indignantly, "Once we find that bunch of little things' nest, I'll be the first one to charge in."

"If you charge in, you'll probably be bitten into a honeycomb before you even see what the bugs look like," Chu Weiwei added with a smile, twisting the knife.

"Chu the Third!"

"What, did Weiwei say something wrong?" Chu Weiwei blinked her violet eyes, looking innocent. "Those bugs control Space Law and are extremely fast. Your brute strength hitting them is no different from scratching an itch. To deal with them, we have to rely on Weiwei's poison."

This wasn't just bragging.

Su Lin knew clearly in his heart that when it came to dealing with these little things, Chu Weiwei was indeed much more useful than Su Hongling.

Brute force couldn't hit the bugs, but toxic miasma covered an entire area, and no matter how fast the bugs were, they couldn't escape it.

"Alright, everyone show your own Divine Ability when the time comes." Su Lin couldn't be bothered to listen to these two bickering any longer and flew towards the depths of the ruins first.

The group filed in one after another.

The further in they went, the denser the floating debris became. The light also grew dim; that brilliant, colorful nebula was blocked by layers of ruins, leaving only a few scattered rays of light filtering through.

A faint scent of decay began to permeate the air.

"Huh?" Mu Qingxue, who was flying at the very front, suddenly stopped. Her light blue eyes stared at a huge palace ruin ahead. "Revered Master, there is something strange there."

Su Lin looked in the direction of her gaze.

It was a half-collapsed palace, massive in scale; just the exposed half was thousands of feet high.

The walls of the palace were covered with dense, dark golden patterns, which faintly shimmered in the dim light.

And at the very top of the palace hung a broken plaque.

The writing on the plaque had long since become blurred, and one could only barely make out a single incomplete stroke.

"This place might have some history." Su Lin narrowed his eyes.

He could feel that an extremely ancient aura of Law remained within that palace.

This aura was not quite the same as the Law of Heaven Beyond Heaven itself; it was deeper and colder.

"Old Man, shall we go in and take a look?" Su Hongling was already impatient.

"Wait," Su Lin raised his hand to stop her. "In places like this, the more tempting it looks, the more likely it is to hide murderous intent."

He took the bug out of his storage space.

As soon as the bug came out, its compound eyes locked onto the palace, its mouthparts vibrating frantically, and its entire body struggled toward the palace.

"It seems that the nest of that bunch of little things is right inside this palace." Su Lin put the bug away, his expression growing a bit more serious.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Su Hongling rubbed her hands together.

"Hong Ling, can you be more steady?" Cold Moon, dressed in a purple-gold Phoenix robe, flew gracefully beside Su Lin. "Since Revered Master told us to be cautious, he must have sensed something."

"I'm just anxious to fight," Su Hongling muttered.

Su Lin couldn't be bothered to explain to her and slowly spread his Divine Sense toward the palace.

As soon as his Divine Sense touched the outer perimeter of the palace, it was like colliding with an invisible wall.

The wall wasn't hard; it was soft, but it carried an extremely powerful devouring force, attempting to pull his probing Divine Sense in bit by bit.

Su Lin's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately withdrew his Divine Sense.

"There is a problem with this palace," he said in a deep voice. "There is a Restriction on the perimeter that devours Divine Sense. Our Divine Sense cannot penetrate it, so what's going on inside will depend entirely on luck."

"Then we just force our way in," Su Hongling said, sticking to her usual method.

"Can't you try a different approach?" Luo Ximei rolled her eyes helplessly.

"What's wrong with my approach?" Su Hongling stiffened her neck. "If we can't probe inside, we just go in and look; isn't that it? Are we supposed to just stare blankly from the outside?"

The words sounded crude, but the logic was sound.

Su Lin thought about it; there really wasn't a better way. Since his Divine Sense couldn't probe inside, he would just have to walk in on foot and see for himself.

"Very well," Su Lin nodded. "But after we go in, everyone stay close and do not act on your own. Weiwei, have your toxic miasma ready at all times. As soon as the swarm rushes out, seal off the retreat path immediately."

"Understood, Revered Master." Chu Weiwei replied obediently, her hand already reaching into her sleeve.

"Hong Ling, you take the lead. But remember, if you encounter something you don't understand, stop first; don't be reckless."

"Don't worry, Old Man." Su Hongling shouldered her great sword and grinned. "I know what I'm doing."

Su Lin looked at her eager appearance and really didn't feel confident.

This girl said she knew what she was doing, but when it came time to fight, that restraint would have flown off who knows where. Letting her take the lead was no different from unleashing a rampaging Tyrannosaurus.

But in terms of the ability to charge into battle, no one in the team could truly compare to her.

"Let's go." Su Lin gritted his teeth and flew toward the palace first.

The group cautiously passed through the Restriction that devoured Divine Sense.

The moment he crossed the Restriction, Su Lin felt his body sink, as if he had drilled from clear lake water into a thick swamp. The suffocating feeling of being watched by countless eyes instantly enveloped his entire body.

"Hiss." Su Hongling shivered. "This place is eerie; it's far worse than that broken island."

The interior of the palace was terrifyingly spacious.

The floor was covered with a thick layer of gray dust, and every step raised a small cloud of dust. On both sides stood rows of massive stone statues. These statues had various forms; some were human, some were beasts, and others were strange creatures whose names Su Lin couldn't even identify.

On the faces of all the stone statues, an expression of extreme agony was frozen.

"These stone statues..." Chu Weiwei leaned close to one of them, examined it carefully for a moment, and her expression changed slightly. "Revered Master, these aren't carved from stone. These are living beings that were instantly petrified by some power."

Su Lin's heart sank.

He walked to a stone statue and reached out to touch the cold, stone surface.

The sensation from his fingertips indeed didn't feel like ordinary stone. Within that petrified body, a trace of an extremely faint life aura seemed to remain, only it was forever imprisoned within this shell.

"What a vicious method." Su Lin withdrew his hand, his eyes turning cold. "To petrify living beings but not let them die completely. This is to make them endure the pain of that moment before petrification for eternity."

"The guy who could do such a thing is definitely not a good thing." Luo Ximei waved her folding fan, and her white-gold heterochromatic eye also revealed a sense of gravity.

"Old Man, maybe we shouldn't go any further." Su Hongling uncharacteristically wanted to retreat. "This place is creepy. What if we also get petrified by that thing..."

"Scared?" Su Lin raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not scared!" Su Hongling immediately lifted her head. "I'm just worried about you all."

"It's right to be worried," Su Lin nodded. "So everyone, keep your vigilance at the highest level. The power in this palace that can petrify living things is definitely not a simple Restriction. It might still be somewhere, waiting for us."

Once these words were spoken, the ease on the faces of the disciples faded a bit.

Even Ye You, who was always fearless, withdrew her gaze that was looking around for food, her dark green slit pupils watching the surroundings vigilantly.

The group continued to move slowly toward the depths of the palace.

The further they went in, the more those painful stone statues there were, densely arranged on both sides, like a silent graveyard.

As they walked, a huge stone gate suddenly appeared ahead.

The stone gate was tightly closed, and it was also carved with those dark golden patterns. In the very center of the stone gate was embedded a round bead emitting a faint red light.

In the dim environment, that bead was glaringly red, like an eye lurking in the darkness.

"The nest of that bunch of bugs should be behind this gate." Su Lin took out the bug to confirm, and the bug was indeed struggling frantically toward the direction of the stone gate.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Su Hongling regained her spirit, raised her great sword, and was about to smash it onto the stone gate. "Watch me split it open."

"Stop!" Su Lin was quick-witted and stopped her. "Didn't you see that bead on the gate? The biggest taboo for mechanisms in places like this is brute force. If we trigger some trap, we'll all end up dying here."

Su Hongling's hand holding the sword stopped in mid-air, feeling resentful.

"Then what do we do? We can't just stand here waiting."

Su Lin stared at the red bead and pondered for a moment.

This bead was very strange.

In the red light it emitted, there was an extremely faint aura that originated from the same source as that petrification power.

In other words, this bead was very likely the core controlling that petrification Restriction.

Destroying it rashly would have unpredictable consequences.

But if he didn't destroy it, he couldn't get in.

"Weiwei," Su Lin suddenly said. "Come over and take a look at this bead."

Chu Weiwei flew over in response, her violet eyes, which were most sensitive to all kinds of anomalies and poisons, carefully examining the red bead.

The little face that had been wearing a sweet smile slowly turned cold.

"Revered Master, step back."

"What's wrong?" Su Hongling held her great sword, looking confused.

"What's being suppressed inside this bead is not one living thing," Chu Weiwei slowly withdrew her hand, her eyes locked onto that dim red mass. "It's a nest."

"A nest?"

"A dense nest," Chu Weiwei swallowed. "That bead is not a Restriction core at all; it's a plug."

Su Lin's pupils contracted sharply.

As soon as the word "plug" was uttered, he instantly understood.

So there was no nest behind this gate at all; the home of that bunch of bugs was contained within this bead.

And this red bead in front of him was the lid blocking them.

He only then realized a deadly matter.

The wisp of Divine Sense he had probed earlier had been devoured a bit by this bead.

This devouring was not a small matter; it was equivalent to prying open a crack in that lid.

"Everyone, get ready," Su Lin said in a deep voice, his tone carrying a rare seriousness. "I'm afraid this lid won't hold."

He didn't say this too early, nor too late.

Just as this sentence landed, the red bead that had been glowing faintly emitted a subtle, crisp sound.

It was as if something had cracked from the inside.

"It's coming."

The next moment, the red bead shattered completely.

There was no earth-shattering commotion as imagined; it was so quiet that it made one's heart crawl.

But the moment the bead turned into powder, countless pairs of dim green little eyes lit up in the pitch-black Void Realm behind the stone gate.

Dense, layered, and countless; there was simply no way to count how many there were.

"My God." Su Hongling gasped. "How many of them are there?"

Before she finished speaking, that dim green mass moved.

Thousands of translucent bugs surged out from the cracks in the stone gate, the sound of their thin wings vibrating merging together, turning into a sharp buzzing that made one's scalp tingle.

They didn't fly through the gate, but directly tore through space, poking their heads out from the Void Realm in all directions, and in the blink of an eye, they filled the entire palace.

"Seal off the retreat path!" Su Lin shouted sharply.

Chu Weiwei was waiting for exactly this sentence.

She flicked her hands behind her, and seven or eight jade bottles filled with poison powder shattered in mid-air. A deep purple toxic miasma rose from the ground, spreading along the entrance of the palace, forcibly constructing a wall of poison.

Those bugs that were rushing toward the retreat path, the moment they touched the toxic miasma, their translucent bodies immediately started emitting white smoke, falling down in droves, and upon hitting the ground, they turned into puddles of green liquid.

"Oh my, the flesh of these little things really can't withstand being cooked." Chu Weiwei covered her nose, that little face wearing back that sickly smile. "They melt with just a touch; they don't even have the value for testing medicine."

"You still have the mood to study and test medicine." Su Lin glanced at her indignantly.