197: Chapter 196 Skyscrapers and Void Humanoid Creatures

Lin Feng walked along the ruined streets for nearly two hours.

During these two hours, he encountered several more waves of Void Creatures, all of which were the same Single-Horned Dogs and Stone Scorpions he had seen at the entrance.

Their numbers weren't large; the biggest wave had about forty or fifty, and they were taken care of by a few of his light bullets before they could even get close.

The effect of the Breath-Hiding Array was even better than he had anticipated.

Those Void Creatures could clearly sense fluctuations of spiritual power nearby, but they simply couldn't lock onto his specific location. They were like a group of blind people groping in the dark, only discovering him when they occasionally bumped into his vicinity.

But what truly concerned him was the scale of these ruins.

He walked through commercial streets, through a residential area, and past a deserted plaza.

In the plaza stood a dried-up fountain, with a collapsed bronze statue in the center whose head had long since vanished to parts unknown.

He then crossed a half-collapsed elevated bridge, its surface broken into several sections that stabbed into the ground at odd angles, with mountains of vehicle wreckage piled beneath it.

Next was an industrial zone, where the skeletal frames of massive factory buildings rose toward the gray sky like the ribs of dead giants.

He even saw a port.

A massive cargo ship was stranded at the port, its hull rusted through, the bridge glass completely shattered, and the ship itself snapped in two as if broken at the waist by some titanic force.

"This Dungeon is way too big."

Lin Feng stood atop a collapsed television tower, overlooking the scene before him.

The Wind Wings flapped slowly behind his back, maintaining his hover.

From his vantage point, the ruins stretched to the edge of the horizon, an endless expanse of gray architectural remains with streets spreading out as densely as a spiderweb.

In the distance, several skyscrapers that hadn't completely collapsed stood on the horizon like tombstones.

Fragments of glass curtain walls still clung to the surfaces of a few, reflecting dim, silvery-white spots of light from the faint sky-glow leaking in from somewhere.

At the furthest point, he could vaguely see a massive circular structure; he couldn't tell exactly what kind of building it was, only able to barely discern its silhouette.

This wasn't just a Dungeon; this was a damn city.

A complete modern metropolis swallowed by the Void Realm.

Xiao Guang squatted on his left shoulder, holding a tablet, its two golden eyes wide with shock.

It had lived for tens of thousands of years and seen countless Secret Realms and Grotto-heavens in the Taixu Dojo, but it had never seen ruins on this scale.

The wreckage of a modern city was more shocking to it than ancient ruins—because the density of its composition was entirely different.

The Taixu Dojo was a complex of palaces built into a mountain; even the largest dojo was only a few hundred acres.

A modern city, however, not only covered a vast area but was also packed tight with complex three-dimensional structures like subways, basements, underground malls, and garages.

There was no telling how many Void Creatures lurked in those gloomy underground spaces, or if there were even weirder things down there.

The strangest thing was that he hadn't found any Void Interlayers.

Based on what his Master had told him before entering, the core reason the Void Corridor was so difficult to conquer was the interlayers—unstable spaces formed at the junction of the Void Interlayer and the material world that would appear randomly and swallow anything that came near.

But he had walked for several hours, with his perception covering a range of several thousand meters, and besides those Void Creatures, there was nothing.

No spatial rifts, no spatial fluctuations, and none of the energy turbulence that would cause the Taixu Shield to react.

This ruin seemed to be fixed in place by some force; the Void energy was dense but exceptionally stable.

"Something's not right."

Lin Feng muttered to himself.

He looked up at the sky, intending to fly higher to see the general outline of the entire city, to see if he could find the direction of the Void Interlayers, or at least confirm the general boundaries of this urban area.

He spread his Wind Wings and was just about to fly higher when a bright point of light suddenly appeared in his perception.

It wasn't Void energy, nor was it spiritual power, but an energy source that was somewhere between the two, mixed with various elemental fluctuations.

That thing charged out from the top of a half-collapsed skyscraper not far away, moving incredibly fast. In less than a second, it had crossed his perception range and was flying rapidly toward him.

Lin Feng retracted his Wind Wings, landed on the remaining platform of the television tower, and turned to look in that direction.

He had already pushed the Breath-Hiding Array to its maximum; logically, Void Creatures shouldn't be able to sense his spiritual power fluctuations, but this thing charging at him had clearly locked onto his specific location.

The thing that burst out from behind the skyscraper was humanoid.

The creature rushed from the top of a half-collapsed skyscraper, sprinting down across glass curtain wall fragments and exposed steel beams.

It ran on two legs, and with every step, the concrete beneath its feet was shaken into falling debris. The stones fell from dozens of meters high, making dull thudding sounds as gray-white dust slowly dispersed in the windless air.

Its lower limb structure was almost indistinguishable from human legs—it had knees, ankles, and even clear calf muscle lines. Its biomechanical way of running was exactly the same as a human in a short sprint.

But its arms were completely unlike a human's.

Those two arms were so long they passed its knees, nearly touching its ankles when hanging down, and its fingertips bore five ink-black nails with edges as sharp as obsidian blades.

It also dragged a long tail covered in gray-white bone spikes. The tip of the tail constantly scraped against the building surfaces as it ran, producing a tooth-aching screech as it scratched the glass curtain walls.

It stopped in mid-air right in front of Lin Feng.

It had no wings and used no levitation Spells; it just stood there on thin air. There were no traces of energy fluctuations beneath its feet, as if it were standing on an invisible platform.

It stood there, tilting its head slightly, observing Lin Feng.

Lin Feng observed it in return.

This feeling reminded him of the Alien Race Warriors he had seen in the Yanjiao Arena; although those races were humanoid, they always had features different from humans—scales, horns, tails, or abnormal skin colors.

Yet this humanoid creature before him, aside from those two long arms and the tail, actually looked more like something familiar that he had passed countless times on the streets of East Sea City.

The bag of potato chips in Xiao Guang's hand almost slipped.

It carefully tucked the bag of BBQ-flavored chips into its Storage Ring, but its eyes never left the figure hovering in mid-air in the distance.

Having lived for tens of thousands of years, it had read about countless strange beasts and monsters in the records of the Taixu Dojo and had even seen ancient Vicious Beasts of the Taotie level with its own eyes.

But the thing before them was neither a Yao Beast nor a human, nor did it look like any Alien Race Warrior it had ever seen.

It didn't have the thick, fishy stench unique to Yao Beasts, nor the pure gray-white energy halo of a Void Creature, nor the spiritual power fluctuations flowing through a human Cultivator.

But at the same time, it had everything—faintly leaking Void energy, the signature bone spike characteristics of certain Alien Race Warriors, and even a standing posture like a human's.

It was like an experimental subject where parts of various organisms had been dismantled and reassembled together.

"This thing isn't a pure Void Creature."

Lin Feng said in a low voice.

"Do you see those bone spikes on its arms? Those aren't products of Void energy; they're from Iron Bone Clan warriors—I've seen those exact same bone spikes at the Yanjiao Arena Tournament."

"...And that tail, the shape of the hook at the end is identical to a Taotie's tail hook, just scaled down dozens of times. This guy is either a monster randomly assembled by Void energy itself, or someone deliberately pieced it together using 'parts' from different organisms."

Xiao Guang's voice was kept extremely low as it replied.

The Void humanoid seemed to hear their conversation, or at least sensed that they were discussing it.

It bared its teeth in an expression that was hard to distinguish between a smile and a threat.

There were no teeth in its mouth, only a swirling ball of gray-white energy. The way the energy ball rotated was almost perfectly synchronized with the petrification light spheres at the tip of a Void Stone Scorpion's tail, only its size and brightness were on a completely different level.

Then, it moved.

It didn't charge straight at Lin Feng; it flickered to the side and appeared behind him in the next second—it wasn't a teleportation, just speed so fast that even its aura left an afterimage.

It raised its right claw, its five black nails slicing through the air with a sharp sonic boom as it slashed down toward the back of Lin Feng's head.

Clang!

The Taixu Shield automatically lit up, the golden light shield colliding with the claw as sparks flew in all directions.

The television tower platform beneath Lin Feng's feet vibrated violently, and a circular invisible shockwave spread from the point of collision, sending several cracks through the remaining concrete railings at the top of the tower.

Xiao Guang was pushed back half a step by the shockwave. Xiao Jin steadied himself on Lin Feng's shoulder, his antennae standing straight up as he let out a rapid, low chirping.

The force of this claw strike far exceeded expectations—while the Taixu Shield wasn't as effective as it would be in the Law of Heaven and Earth state where it could block Divine-Grade attacks, based on Lin Feng's current spirit value, it should have at least several hundred thousand points of absorption in this state.

And yet that strike just now had directly caused visible ripples of vibration in the light shield.

"The power of that strike just now definitely exceeded fifty thousand points."

Lin Feng quickly made an estimate in his head.

Fifty thousand points of attack was about two or three times that of an ordinary lord rank monster, and this humanoid creature before him was clearly still only in the testing phase.

What was even more troublesome was that the speed with which it had flickered behind him didn't seem like physical movement at all; it was more like it had directly changed its spatial position through some short-range Void fold.

He turned to face the Void humanoid. The opponent was shaking its right claw, which had been numbed by the Taixu Shield, while the swirling Void energy ball in its mouth emitted a low humming sound.

"What exactly are you?"

Lin Feng gripped the hilt of his dragon slaying sword, not in a hurry to draw it.

He wanted to figure out this monster's attack patterns and weaknesses first.

The opponent didn't answer, merely tilting its head to observe his face as if trying to identify something.

Then it raised its right claw to its face, retracting the five nails one by one into the slits in its fingertips before popping them out again one by one. The movement was extremely precise, not like a beast, but more like a person who relied on their hands for a living.

This feeling made a chill run down Lin Feng's back.

He had seen countless monsters: ferocious ones, cunning ones, and ones that were absurdly strong.

But one like this, exhibiting a clear 'observation-judgment' thought process and these almost human-like small gestures, made him realize: the reason this Dungeon had never been conquered wasn't because the monsters inside were stronger than the Taotie, but because something he completely didn't understand was locked in here.

It wasn't a Yao Beast, it wasn't a Void Creature, and it wasn't a Alien Race Warrior.

It was some kind of artificial product assembled from the 'parts' of all three.