196: Chapter 195 The Magic Array That Separates Auras! First Monster Hunt in the Void Corridor (2)

Lin Feng didn't respond to its potato chip topic; instead, he patted Xiao Jin to signal it to stay alert.

Xiao Jin crouched on his right shoulder, its purple antennae standing straight in the air as its compound eyes slowly scanned the ruined street ahead.

Lin Feng's aura was now completely covered by the Breath-Hiding Array. The Void Creatures that tracked targets through perception would find it difficult to lock onto him again in the short term.

But conversely—his perception of them remained clear, because only his own radiation was being suppressed, not his ability to receive signals.

They walked forward along the ruined street.

This cluster of buildings was denser than the previous one. Although most of the structures on both sides had collapsed, the remaining walls and pillars suggested this had once been a commercial street.

The shop signs had long since rotted away; some hung precariously from doorframes, while others lay half-buried in the sand and soil.

An overturned truck lay in the middle of the road, its front severely deformed. The cargo doors were wide open and the interior was empty, save for several deep claw marks on the walls.

Lin Feng stopped to take a look. There were five claw marks, each as thick as a finger, scoring the cargo hold from top to bottom as if torn open by a large feline.

He recalled a Void Creature recorded in the Bestiary—the Void Shadow Leopard, dark-attributed, skilled in stealth, with claw attacks that carried a tearing effect.

Just as he was about to continue forward, a dense cluster of grayish-white light spots suddenly burst into his perception.

These weren't scattered individuals like the Stone Scorpions from before; they were packed together like a swarm of bees, numbering at least three hundred.

They were fast, moving toward him from deep within the ruins like a gray river flowing rapidly through the collapsed buildings.

Lin Feng drew his dragon slaying sword and found a corner between two walls to stand his ground, his back against cold concrete and a fallen stone slab in front of him serving as cover.

This position was easy to defend and hard to attack. The broken walls on either side formed a natural narrow passage. Anything wanting to reach him would have to pass through the scorched open ground from the front, which had been blasted by Chaos Light Spheres.

He lowered his voice and said to Xiao Guang, "Prepare a defensive Formation."

Xiao Guang immediately put away the cola and potato chips, forming a Protection Seal and slapping it onto the rune on Lin Feng's chest.

A golden halo silently unfolded against his combat suit—not as an outward-expanding energy shield, but spreading close to the star gauze armor like a thin layer of plating over the armor's surface.

The sound of footsteps drew near.

It wasn't footsteps—it was the sound of hooves striking the ground, dense and chaotic, as if hundreds of sheep were charging from the opposite side.

The things that rushed out from behind the ruins at the end of the street looked like neither sheep nor any creature Lin Feng had ever seen.

They were about the size of large dogs, but completely hairless. Their exposed skin was grayish-white and as thin as paper, allowing glimpses of the dark purple muscle textures underneath.

Their heads were massive, their mouths split all the way to their ears. They ran with their jaws half-open, revealing two rows of sharp, thin teeth.

Most bizarrely, they had no eyes—below the forehead was only a single curved horn, its tip slightly hooked.

That horn emitted a very faint light as they ran, like a signal light flashing in the dark.

Void Unicorn Hounds.

The most common pack-based Void Creatures in the entrance area of the Void Corridor. They were dual-attributed with dark and earth, with Ranks between fifty-two and fifty-eight, mostly Elite-grade with occasional Leader-grades mixed in.

Their combat style was primitive—surrounding prey with numerical superiority and tearing them apart with teeth and claws.

Their only special skill was the horn on their forehead, which could release a short void pulse at close range. It wasn't very powerful, but it was fast, often erupting at the same moment they bit down, making it hard to defend against.

Their weakness was extremely sensitive hearing; they were susceptible to sound waves.

The Bestiary even had a small note: "Do not fight them in open ground; always ensure you have a wall at your back."

Lin Feng leaned against the wall, watching the dense swarm of Unicorn Hounds surging toward him, and suddenly found it a bit amusing.

The Stone Scorpions earlier had taken some effort, but these Unicorn Hounds actually put him at ease—their attack method was too primitive. For him, wearing star gauze armor, holding the dragon slaying sword, and having Xiao Guang's protective Formation, these pure physical-type Void Creatures were the easiest to deal with.

He didn't rush to attack but quickly switched his perception underground—he remembered that Stone Scorpions were good at ambushing from below, and that chill of being targeted from behind hadn't fully faded.

Sure enough, about ten meters beneath the surface, several blurry dark shadows were moving quickly toward him. They were slower than the Unicorn Hounds on the surface but far more stealthy.

They intended to flank him from underground while the Unicorn Hounds drew his attention from the front.

This group of Stone Scorpions was craftier than the previous ones—they were waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Lin Feng unstrapped the taixu sword from the scabbard on his back and stuck it in a spot on his right where he could easily reach it.

This sword had a suppressing effect on dark and earth-attributed creatures. If those Stone Scorpions really drilled up from the ground, the void authority of the taixu sword would deal extra damage to them.

Then he drew the dragon slaying sword with his left hand, while his right hand condensed a ball of constantly pulsing golden light.

"Xiao Guang, the ground is yours. I'll handle the ones underground myself. Just lay the defensive Formation at my feet so they can't drill up directly beneath me."

Xiao Guang's hands swept through the air, and a beam of golden light shot from its fingertips, landing on the ground at Lin Feng's feet.

A golden light-net spread out across the ground like water, covering a radius of about ten meters around him.

It was a small-scale Taixu Earth-Stabilizing Formation—a defensive Formation used specifically in the Taigu Dojo to prevent Yao Beasts from invading from underground.

The light-net did not block humans or normal terrain, but it had a strong suppressive effect against the infiltration of earth and dark-attributed creatures.

The pack of Unicorn Hounds charged into the scorched open ground.

Like the Stone Scorpions before, they split into several waves—the vanguard charged directly at Lin Feng's front, while the flanks spread out to try and circle behind him through the broken walls.

But they couldn't get around—this natural corner could only be attacked from the front. The sides were collapsed load-bearing walls, and the rebar buried inside had burst out when they broke, forming sharp iron spikes. To get behind him, they would have to jump onto the spike-filled walls and then jump down.

Several Unicorn Hounds lost their footing and slipped, their bellies pierced by rebar as they hung there screaming.

The dozen or so Unicorn Hounds charging from the front couldn't stop their momentum in time when they saw the light ball in his hand.

Lin Feng's left hand swept the dragon slaying sword in a horizontal arc. A golden blade-light skimmed the ground, and the front three Unicorn Hounds were sliced open by the edge.

There was no blood—what sprayed out after their bodies were split wasn't blood, but a grayish-white mist. A portion of the mist was absorbed by Xiao Jin's antennae, while the rest dissipated into the air.

Their corpses didn't retain their shape like normal creatures either; within seconds, they shriveled up rapidly, as if some force had sucked the moisture out from within, finally becoming grayish-white husks little different from the surrounding architectural debris.

Lin Feng's right-hand light bullet fired simultaneously, hitting two Unicorn Hounds on the left broken wall.

The shockwave from the explosion knocked several others down.

But even more Unicorn Hounds surged from the front. These things seemed to have no concept of fear—as the ones in front fell, those behind immediately filled the gap without slowing down at all.

A dozen close-range void pulses slammed into his chest and abdomen simultaneously. The pulses had very low transparency and made crisp sounds as they hit, but they were all absorbed by the star gauze armor.

A few others missed and blasted the wall behind him, creating several cracks in the concrete.

Lin Feng swung the dragon slaying sword repeatedly with his left hand while his right hand continuously condensed light bullets—no charging was required, as his mastery of the light element now allowed him to instant-cast basic skills.

Every light bullet was accurately plunged into a Unicorn Hound's mouth, exploding from the inside the moment they opened their jaws, turning their entire heads into grayish-white powder.

This fighting style had extremely low consumption—the mana cost of a regular light bullet was less than single digits, which was completely negligible for him now that he had millions of mana.

Moreover, because it was an internal explosion, it was almost unaffected by the Unicorn Hounds' own defense, making it several times more efficient than penetrating wounds.

In less than fifteen minutes, the Unicorn Hound pack charging from the front had been reduced by more than half.

The survivors finally began to hesitate. They no longer charged blindly but lingered at the edge of the scorched ground, the faint light on their horns flashing more urgently.

Lin Feng gave them no chance to reorganize. He compressed the light element in his right hand to the limit, and a golden beam as thick as a bucket shot from his palm, sweeping across the densest area.

A dozen Unicorn Hounds were pierced by the beam simultaneously, their bodies vaporizing instantly under the high temperature, leaving not even a grayish-white husk behind.

The remaining Unicorn Hounds finally turned and fled.

Their way of fleeing was strange—they didn't scatter, but retreated in one direction simultaneously. After running a certain distance, they stopped and regrouped under the silent command of a Leader-grade Void Unicorn Hound in mid-air.

Lin Feng glanced at the leader from afar, then looked down at his feet—those Stone Scorpions quietly creeping underground were still moving, but their speed had noticeably slowed.

Having been deterred once by his Chaos Light Sphere in the ruins and now seeing him clear out over a hundred Unicorn Hounds in a short time, they were starting to hesitate about whether to continue approaching.

He didn't pursue the fleeing Unicorn Hounds. Instead, he sheathed the dragon slaying sword and took out the Void Creature Bestiary from his void mithril ring, flipping to the page he had just noted.

The battle just now had confirmed a suspicion he'd had—these Void Creatures didn't drop Materials like monsters outside; instead, they turned directly into grayish-white husks.

He had previously thought it was just a unique property of the Stone Scorpions, but now it seemed the Unicorn Hounds were the same.

The chapter in the Bestiary regarding the energy sources of Void Creatures was very detailed.

"The interior of the Void Corridor does not produce spiritual power; all Void Creatures rely on void energy to sustain life. Monsters in the Void Corridor do not leave behind corpses after death; instead, they are recycled by the space itself—their shells are merely temporary carriers for void energy, and once the energy is exhausted, the shells dissipate as well."

Below that was a note in small print.

"The Void Corridor may be a modern city corrupted by the Void."

"No wonder. That explains why there are modern buildings everywhere here."

Lin Feng closed the Bestiary.

Since entering the Dungeon, his perception could hardly detect any spiritual power. He had previously thought the area was just barren, but now it seemed it wasn't just barren—it wasn't that spiritual power was thin, but that the energy Laws of the entire Void Corridor were different from the outside.

The system the monsters here used was completely different from human cultivation; they didn't rely on spiritual power to survive, but on void energy.

He hadn't paid much attention when Xiao Guang said the Spiritual Qi here was thin, but now he understood—this space produced no spiritual power at all; every creature lived off void energy.

Xiao Guang poked its head out of his pocket, still holding the tablet, its screen displaying a science document it had just downloaded.

"Lin Feng, I just checked. The energy composition of the Void Corridor is very different from the outside world. Outside, monsters get energy from Spiritual Veins, elemental nodes, or space rift radiation, but in here there's only void energy—pure, high-concentration void energy. This energy is food for Void Creatures, but for creatures like us who Cultivate with spiritual power... you're okay because your high Light Element Affinity allows you to convert some of it. But for a normal Cultivator staying here for long, their mana recovery speed will get slower and slower, and they might even have their Meridians eroded by void energy."

It flipped a page, the light from the tablet reflecting on its small golden face.

"What's more troublesome is that void energy actively repels spiritual power. When you first came in, did you feel your perception become sharper? That wasn't it getting sharper; it was spiritual power being repelled—your own energy fluctuations were being squeezed out by the void environment, which is why you felt like things were watching you from all directions. The Breath-Hiding Array I drew for you uses this in reverse, locking your spiritual power inside your body so it doesn't leak out, making you undetectable to the outside."

Lin Feng leaned against the wall and returned the dragon slaying sword to its sheath.

He raised his left hand and looked at his palm—the residual golden light there was flowing slowly under his skin, indeed more active than usual.

He had previously thought his elemental Physique was having a stress response to this environment, but now it seemed it was the repelled spiritual power struggling.

No wonder that pack of Unicorn Hounds had charged like they were crazy—they weren't just attacking him proactively; they were provoked by his spiritual power fluctuations.

He walked over to a Unicorn Hound's husk, crouched down, and gently touched it with the tip of his sword.

The husk shattered instantly, turning into grayish-white powder that drifted into the air and mixed with the surrounding sand.

"The monsters here don't drop any Materials after death."

Lin Feng stood up and sheathed his sword.

"Their energy source is completely different from ours. They don't rely on Spirit Stones or Spiritual Veins; they rely on void energy. The entire Void Corridor is like a giant reactor with void energy constantly pouring out from the depths, and they were raised in this energy."

Xiao Guang put away the tablet and looked around thoughtfully.

The fleeing Unicorn Hounds had disappeared into the depths of the ruins, and the underground Stone Scorpions had also retreated. The surroundings temporarily returned to silence.

But that feeling of being watched hadn't disappeared—it was just that those gazes could no longer find his specific location.

The Breath-Hiding Array was doing its job well.

He continued walking deeper along the ruined street.