343: Chapter 344 Step by Step to Pure Land, Walking in a Straight Line Through the Forbidden Zone of Rotten Flesh

Marching by night.

Lin Qi did not use any form of transportation.

The Physical Body of the Tongshen Realm granted him mobility far beyond ordinary imagination. The Dao Source circulated endlessly within him; every breath drew trace amounts of essence from the air, maintaining his body at its Peak state.

He chose the most primitive method—running.

It wasn't running in the ordinary sense.

His movement technique was a combat-ready version of the Ghost Shadow Yu Step he had practiced for decades in the game of his previous life. Every time his foot landed, the Dao Source at his sole would create a brief resonance with the earth, using the force to catapult him forward. Once his speed stacked to the limit, he was nothing more than a fleeting afterimage to an ordinary person.

Three thousand kilometers.

At his current speed, he could arrive in about six hours.

No rest was needed in between. The physical reserves of the Tongshen Realm were sufficient to support a long-distance raid of this intensity.

Lin Qi chose to travel by ground rather than by flight.

It wasn't that he couldn't fly—once the Domain of "My Body is the World" expanded, he could ignore the rules of gravity within its range. However, the energy consumption of flight was far greater than running on the ground, and a high-altitude target was exposed, making it easy to be captured by the Church's sensory network.

Keep a low profile.

This was experience accumulated from fighting bosses in his previous life—sneaking into the base was always more efficient than a frontal confrontation.

The night receded rapidly at his sides.

The lights of Tianhai City were thrown below the horizon within half an hour. For the next leg of the journey, both sides were filled with vast wilderness and abandoned clusters of Old Era buildings.

The urbanization rate of this world was very low.

The Federation's population was concentrated in several large cities, and the vast areas between cities were basically no-man's lands. These no-man's lands were scattered with monster habitats of various Ranks and undeveloped forbidden zones.

As Lin Qi transmigrated through these regions, he occasionally sensed the aura of large monsters in the distance.

But those monsters could also sense him.

The aura suppression of the Tongshen Realm was fatal to lower-order creatures. Within a hundred-meter radius, all monsters instinctively stayed away from his path, not even daring to peek out.

It was like small forest animals encountering a tiger—they couldn't run away fast enough, so who would dare approach?

This made Lin Qi's journey very quiet.

Quiet to the point of being a bit boring.

As he ran, he reviewed Ashes' memories in his mind.

The abandoned mining area of the Eastern Continent.

That mining area had been a large-scale essence vein extraction site in the Old Era. Later, the essence was exhausted, the mining area was abandoned, and with no cities nearby, it gradually became a neglected wasteland.

The Church of Calamity chose such a place as a stronghold for two reasons.

First, it was remote. If no one came, no one would find it.

Second, although the essence vein was claimed to be exhausted, residual essence veins still remained deep underground. While the energy of these residuals was insufficient for industrial mining, it was more than enough to maintain a faith channel.

Lin Qi thought of the ley line network in the D-3 Region.

It was essentially the same principle—utilizing underground essence flows for power.

The difference was that the ley lines in D-3 had been restructured by him using Laws and were clean energy. The residual vein used by the Church, however, had a high probability of being contaminated by the Origin power of the Throat of Devouring Heaven.

What would contaminated ley lines produce?

Lin Qi had seen it in the game in his previous life.

That thing was called "Earth Erosion." The surface would turn a dark red, and stepping on it felt slimy, as if stepping on a layer of rotten flesh. Earth Erosion would naturally spawn low-level faith constructs—worthless, but numerous, and they would automatically attack any life form without a Church mark.

It was equivalent to a living minefield.

So after he reached the mining area, the first thing he would face wouldn't be the High Priest's deacons, but a vast expanse of Earth Erosion and a pile of wriggling low-level monsters.

Cleanup work.

Boring, but necessary.

Lin Qi took about four and a half hours to cross the core territory of the Federation. As he approached the Eastern Continent, the landscape gradually became desolate. Vegetation was sparse, the soil was parched and cracked, and a faint smell of rust could be detected in the air.

This wasn't a natural smell of rust.

It was the unique scent emitted after essence was contaminated by low-level Laws.

He slowed down.

Not because he couldn't run anymore, but because he needed to be careful.

The closer he got to the mining area, the higher the concentration of Law Pollution in the air. This concentration could already cause dizziness and mental confusion in ordinary people, and it also had a certain impact on low-order professionals.

It had no effect on Lin Qi.

The Dao Source of the Tongshen Realm inherently possessed a purification function. Once those pollution particles touched the energy field on his body's surface, they were automatically decomposed into harmless essence fragments.

But the concentration indicated one thing—the Church's faith channel had been running for quite some time. At least three to five years.

Three to five years of continuous pollution was enough to completely transmute the land within a few dozen kilometers of the mining area.

Lin Qi stopped.

He stood by a dry riverbed, his gaze fixed toward the east.

On the horizon, the sky was tinged with an extremely faint dark red halo.

It wasn't sunrise. Sunrise was a warm orange color.

That was the light of the Earth Erosion.

"I've arrived."

Lin Qi took a deep breath, letting the Dao Source accelerate its circulation within his body.

Then he took the entrenching tool from his back and gripped it in his hand.

The Law patterns on the shovel's surface emitted a soft, dark-gold fluorescence under the reflection of the dark red halo.

The two colors converged before him. One represented his power, and the other represented the enemy's territory.

Lin Qi was in no hurry to rush in.

He first crouched down and pressed one hand against the ground.

The Dao Source seeped through his palm into the soil, extending toward the mining area along the underground residual essence veins.

This was a detection method. The Tongshen Realm's perception of ley lines allowed him to "see" distant situations through the underground essence network—provided those networks weren't completely severed.

A few seconds later, information fed back into his consciousness.

The layout of the mining area was roughly clear.

At the center of the abandoned mine pit, there was a strong source of Law fluctuation. That was the core of the faith channel—the connection point maintained by the High Priest.

Around the channel, four slightly weaker sources of Law fluctuation were distributed. Four inner-circle deacons.

On the periphery of the mine pit, a vast area of Earth Erosion covered a radius of at least five kilometers. Within the Earth Erosion were a large number of low-level faith constructs—roughly estimated to be over a thousand.

The High Priest was at the deepest point. The deacons were stationed in four directions. The periphery was a living minefield.

A standard stronghold defensive configuration.

Lin Qi withdrew his hand and stood up.

"A textbook-level formation."

He muttered to himself. He had seen too many such configurations in the game in his previous life. The big boss hides at the innermost part, elite monsters guard the outside, and trash mobs cover the entire map.

A textbook-level formation corresponded to a textbook-level strategy—

Peeling the onion layer by layer from the outside.

But Lin Qi didn't like peeling onions.

Too slow.

The way he liked was—splitting the onion directly in half.

Lin Qi shouldered the entrenching tool and took his first step toward the mining area.

His foot stepped onto the red Earth Erosion, and the ground emitted a slight "hiss."

That was the polluting power of the Earth Erosion attempting to corrode his body.

Attempting—and then failing.

The Dao Source spread beneath his feet, and the areas of Earth Erosion it touched returned to normal grayish-brown soil at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Like a drop of ink falling into purified clear water, it was instantly diluted to nothing.

Every step Lin Qi took left a clean footprint on the Earth Erosion.

He didn't stop to clean the entire expanse of Earth Erosion—there was no need. He only needed to walk a straight line.

A straight line leading to the center of the mine pit.

The low-level faith constructs wriggling in the Earth Erosion sensed his presence. They were distorted lumps of dark red flesh, some as large as dogs, others only the size of a fist. They had no eyes and no mouths, but they possessed an instinctive desire to attack.

The nearest one pounced.

Lin Qi didn't even use the entrenching tool.

He simply didn't stop his pace, sidestepping to let the flesh lump's pounce trajectory pass. After missing, the flesh lump landed on the purified ground behind him; upon touching the clean earth, it emitted a piercing hiss—and then dissolved.

Things raised by Earth Erosion would die once they left it.

So he didn't need to kill them. He only needed to walk through, letting the Dao Source beneath his feet clear the path. The things that pounced would seek their own deaths.

Lin Qi maintained a steady, unhurried pace, walking toward the center of the mine pit.

Behind him was a perfectly straight, clean road.

On both sides of the road were vast expanses of dark red Earth Erosion, wriggling with hundreds and thousands of low-level constructs.

They didn't dare approach that road.

Ahead, the outline of the mine pit gradually became clear within the dark red halo.