198: Chapter 197 The Empress's Chrysalis
Shen Shuang finished changing her bandages and walked out from behind the rocks, sitting down opposite Lin Fan.
She pulled a bottle of water from her spatial ring and took two gulps, moistening her dry, cracked lips before looking at Lin Fan.
“How did you all end up coming in?”
Lin Fan briefly explained the picnic at Qingyou Valley, the spatial rift, and the process of being sucked in.
After listening, Shen Shuang remained silent for a moment, her voice sounding a bit heavier than before when she spoke.
“When the Secret Realm descended, we were performing a routine patrol mission near Qingyou Peak. The spatial rift appeared too suddenly, and twelve people were swept inside.”
She paused.
“We encountered a swarm of insects in the first layer, and seven died. Of the three of us left, one was seriously injured near the core entrance of the first layer; I had him stay there to wait for help.”
Lin Fan nodded thoughtfully.
“I ran into him in the first layer's Crystal Forest. I gave him some medicine and hid him under some tree roots. He should still be alive.”
Shen Shuang breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back against the rock behind her.
“We've already contacted our superiors, and the military has sent squads into the Secret Realm. One group is us, and four other groups entered through other rift entrances.”
“The mission consists of two tasks—scouting the general situation of the Secret Realm and searching for and rescuing civilians who entered by mistake.”
She looked up at the gray sky, her tone somewhat complex.
“But the Rank of this Secret Realm is much higher than what the higher-ups anticipated. After entering the second layer of the Secret Realm, the communicators lost signal. We don't know where the others are, nor how many are still alive.”
Lin Fan stood up and brushed the dust off himself. Just as he was about to say something, Xu Ziyan came running over from the distance.
He was holding something in his hands—grayish-white, oval-shaped, slightly larger than a fist, its surface covered in fine golden patterns that gave off a faint luster under the gray light.
“Lin Fan! Look what I found in that butterfly's nest!”
Xu Ziyan was running out of breath as he shoved the object into Lin Fan's hands.
Lin Fan took it, and with a sweep of his left eye, a panel popped up with information.
[Item]: empress butterfly chrysalis
[Evaluation]: A chrysalis left behind after the molting of a female Empress-type Armor Beast. It contains pure residual Mental Energy and can be used as a core material for Armor Spirit evolution.
Lin Fan was overjoyed.
The empress butterfly chrysalis, another core material for Tongtong's evolution—he hadn't expected to gather them all like this.
“Good job. I'll get you a treat once we're out.”
Lin Fan carefully stored the empress butterfly chrysalis into his spatial ring.
Xu Ziyan grinned and pulled a handful of shiny Ores from his backpack.
“I also picked up this, and this, and this. Are they worth anything?”
Lin Fan glanced at them; they were all high-grade Ores, valuable, but now was not the time to discuss this.
“They're valuable. Keep them safe; we'll talk when we get back.”
Shen Shuang stood up and walked to the silver-white light screen. “This should be the third layer of the Secret Realm.”
She paused, her expression quite serious.
“If this Secret Realm only has three layers, then we still have a chance to escape. If there's a fourth layer... we can only pray for the best...”
Shen Shuang's words caused everyone to fall silent for a moment.
The fourth layer—the term was like a stone weighing on everyone's chest.
A Special-Grade Secret Realm was already deadly enough; if it was a four-layer nested one... wouldn't its grade reach the Divine-Grade?
Lin Fan didn't respond. He walked to the light screen, reached out his right hand, and pressed his open palm against the silver-white surface; the touch was warm.
“Whether it's a third or fourth layer, we won't know until we go in.”
Lin Fan withdrew his hand and looked sideways at Shen Shuang. The wound on her abdomen was mostly healed under the treatment of the Light Spirit Holy Prison Domain.
Shen Shuang stood up from the ground. The bandages on her abdomen were tugged by the movement; she frowned but didn't make a sound.
She walked to the light screen, her back to the group, her voice neither high nor low: “Everyone, let's enter together.”
Then, everyone held hands and stepped in together.
This time, there was no sense of weightlessness, no sensation of falling.
The teleportation was as smooth as taking a step on flat ground, and then the sensation beneath their feet changed.
Lin Fan looked down; beneath his feet was sand.
It wasn't the coarse, wet sand found on a beach, but dry, fine, grayish-white sand, like powder ground from bone ash.
He looked up.
The sky wasn't gray.
It was a bottomless ink-blue, as clean as if it had been washed a thousand times, with no clouds, no mist, and no Impurities.
On the ink-blue canopy hung a massive bright moon.
It wasn't the full moon that occupied half the sky in the first layer of the Secret Realm.
Instead, it was a crescent moon, thin as a silver thread, curving from one end to the other like a sickle hanging upside down in the sky.
This place was a desert.
A vast, boundless desert that exuded a bone-chilling cold in the night.
The bone-chilling cold seeped up from the sand beneath their feet, as if they were treading on permafrost that hadn't melted for a thousand years.
Xu Ziyan was the first to shiver.
He squatted on the ground and rubbed his hands. “What kind of hellhole is this? It's so cold.”
Shen Shuang's complexion didn't look good either.
Although the bleeding from her wound had stopped, the blood loss made her ability to regulate body temperature much worse than usual.
“Look.”
Ye Wushuang raised his right hand and pointed toward the depths of the desert. His voice wasn't loud, but everyone turned at the same time.
In the center of the desert, very, very far away, under the illumination of the pale golden moonlight, a pillar of light rose from the desert.
It wasn't silver-white, but deep purple, appearing exceptionally eye-catching and out of place in this desert shrouded in pale golden moonlight.
The pillar of light wasn't particularly thick; its diameter was only about one-fifth of the gate in the first layer.
But it was too high, rising from the desert floor and piercing straight into the ink-blue canopy, its top invisible as if it extended all the way above the moon.
The deep purple pillar of light stood in the center of the desert like a giant nail driven from the ground, pinning this dead desert beneath the sky.
The pale golden moonlight spilled onto the surface of the light pillar, intertwining with the deep purple to create a gloomy, oppressive halo, like the color of a bruise spreading under the skin.
“Is that thing... really the exit?”
Xu Ziyan's voice came from behind Lin Fan, clearly lacking confidence.
Yu Nian descended from mid-air and walked to Shen Shuang's side, lowering his voice.
“Captain, I took a look around from the air. There's nothing in this desert except for that pillar of light. No boundaries, no terrain changes; that pillar of light is the only landmark.”
Shen Shuang didn't respond immediately.
The wound on her abdomen was still throbbing with pain, reminding her that her current state wasn't suitable for making any risky decisions.
But in this boundless desert, not making a decision was equivalent to waiting for death.
“Whether it's an exit or a trap, we have to go and take a look.”
Shen Shuang was right.
The exits of multi-layered Secret Realms are mostly at the core of the deepest layer; this is a basic rule of Secret Realm structures.
The core of the third layer was that pillar of light. Regardless of whether it was an exit or something else, they had to go there if they wanted to get out.