210: Clues in the west

"It was just a coincidence, no trouble at all." Lin Feng's gaze swept over the quickly charred Sand Wolf corpses on the ground, his brows slightly furrowed. "These Sand Wolves seem a bit off."

"More than 'off'!" A younger Disciple next to him, his voice still trembling, interjected, his face still pale with fright.

"Senior, these Sand Wolves of the Liu Huo Desert are familiar to us Juniors. They usually roam deep within the desert. Though wild, they understand how to avoid danger and wouldn't easily besiege Cultivators like this.

But recently, for some unknown reason, batches of these mad wolves have been pouring out from the west as if fleeing a disaster. They ferociously attack any living thing they see, fighting to the death.

Our Senior Brother and I originally intended to hunt some ordinary Sand Wolves for resources, but we never expected to run into this group of completely deranged madmen."

"The west?" Lin Feng raised an eyebrow. This subtly aligned with what the market shopkeeper had said.

"Yes, the west!" The middle-aged man chimed in, still fearful, his face showing even greater worry.

"It's not just the Yao Beasts that have gone mad. I heard that Black Wind Pass, further west near the edge of the desert, has also been experiencing strange occurrences lately.

A Fellow Daoist I know sent a message a few days ago, saying that many residents nearby have become foolish and acted strangely, and the entire town is permeated with an evil aura.

We originally planned to go there for supplies and rest, but now... now how could we dare to go there!"

Black Wind Pass, located in a narrow valley at the junction of the Liu Huo Desert and the Barren Bone Mountain Range, was originally the last small Cultivator stronghold providing Spiritual Vein recuperation and material supplies for Cultivators traversing this dangerous area.

When Lin Feng landed at the valley entrance with his escape light, the simple protective Formation originally set up at the entrance was now tattered, its foundation scorched black, as if forcibly torn apart by immense power.

He reined in his aura and slowly stepped in. The scene inside the valley was chilling.

Most of the Immortal Caves and simple pavilions originally carved into the mountain had collapsed and were damaged. Amidst the ruins and broken walls, sword marks, scorched earth, and frost from intense battles were visible everywhere. But more prominently, there were huge traces of destruction, as if torn by the claws of some terrifying giant beast.

Scattered on the ground were fragments of shattered Magical Artifacts and dried, blackened bloodstains, yet not a single complete corpse could be found.

Lin Feng spread out his Divine Sense, scanning every inch of the land. Clearly, there was no sign of survivors, only dead silence.

However, beneath the ruins of the destroyed council hall in the center of the stronghold, there remained an extremely faint but unusually pure spatial fluctuation.

This energy was very peculiar, unlike anything he knew.

It was neither the spiritual light that stably dissipated after a teleportation array concluded, nor the chaotic impact that scattered after a Magical Artifact self-destructed.

What concerned him more was that the heaven-stealing vine in his Sea of Consciousness transmitted a warning.

"Not an ordinary battle... these marks, it's as if... the spatial structure itself was briefly torn open?" Lin Feng combined the warning from the heaven-stealing vine with the energy characteristics before him, arriving at a conclusion that made his own heart tremble.

However, involving spatial power would require at least a Great Cultivator of the Nascent Soul Late Stage to even barely touch upon it, and there were only a handful of Nascent Soul Cultivators on the SkyLan Continent, let alone Great Cultivators of the Nascent Soul Late Stage.

Lin Feng stood in the center of the ruins, silent for a moment.

The abnormal energy residue in the air was like spider silk, clinging to his skin, causing a faint tingling sensation.

The warning from the heaven-stealing vine was not an illusion; something truly extraordinary had happened here.

He slowly paced, his gaze sweeping around. The remains of the council hall were not shattered by immense force, but rather seemed to have been cut and torn by something extremely sharp.

The cross-sections of several thick stone pillars, requiring a full embrace to encircle, were smooth as a mirror, something ordinary combat could never achieve.

Further away, several already stiffened corpses were twisted in unnatural postures, their faces frozen in extreme terror, yet there were no obvious fatal wounds on their bodies, only a layer of withered gray color covering their skin.

"Great Cultivator of the Nascent Soul Late Stage..." Lin Feng inwardly rejected his initial guess.

The Nascent Soul Cultivators of the SkyLan Continent were few and far between; each was a renowned figure presiding over a region, and it was impossible for one to appear silently at such a border stronghold and leave behind such a violent scene.

Moreover, if a Nascent Soul Cultivator had acted, this place would have long turned to dust, not the bizarre destruction seen before him.

He looked up towards the west, in the direction of Star Burial Valley.

The tragic state of Black Wind Pass, the abnormal Yao Beasts in the Liu Huo Desert, and the severed trade routes mentioned by the market shopkeeper... all these clues seemed to subtly point towards that place designated as a Forbidden Ground.

As Lin Feng stepped into Star Burial Valley, his boot crushed half a charred leg bone.

The wind in the valley whistled, kicking up sand that pattered against the rocks with a fine crackling sound.

He squatted down, his fingertips brushing over three parallel, deep scratches on the rock wall. The edges of these marks were abnormally smooth.

Following the traces of battle deeper in, fragments of Magic Treasures were scattered among the rocks.

A broken Flying Sword was stuck in a rock crevice, the Yin and Yang fish pattern on its hilt still vaguely discernible—a mark of the Profound Cloud Dao Sect.

Nearby, a large patch of blackened bloodstains, long dry and cracked, was splattered on a rock.

In a sheltered spot beneath a cliff, he found the corpse.

It was a young man dressed in Profound Cloud Dao Sect attire, lying face up in a pile of rocks, with a bowl-sized hole in his chest.

Strangely, there weren't many signs of struggle around the body, only his right hand, with five fingers deeply dug into the surrounding earth, as if he had experienced extreme terror before death.

Lin Feng's gaze fell on the Storage Pouch tied to the corpse's waist, an inconspicuous gray one.

The Restriction on the pouch's opening was slightly loose, and a corner of a yellowish Jade Slip was partially exposed.

He picked up the Jade Slip, and as his Divine Sense probed it, a chaotic, terror-filled message poured into his mind, as if the owner had hastily recorded it:

"Third month, seventh day, people from the Heavenly Demon Palace and Blood Fiend Sect stealthily headed towards Ten Thousand Demon Abyss... followed them to see..."

"Third month, fifteenth day, they set up an evil Formation at the bottom of the valley, sacrificing living people! That Formation was unlike anything I've ever seen; there was a black vortex in the center, as if it wanted to swallow the sky..."

"Third month, twenty-first day, something went wrong! The Formation went out of control, and shadow-like things emerged from the black mist, killing everyone they saw... those things had no physical form, they could merge into the mist..."

The subsequent information became increasingly distorted and fragmented, with only one extremely terrified thought remaining at the end:

"They are not from our world... must warn..."

Lin Feng used the cover of the jagged rocks to stealthily move towards the bottom of the valley.

The deeper he went, the more violent the spiritual energy turbulence in the air became. He had to dedicate more of his mind to operating his protective spiritual light just to barely withstand the pervasive erosion.

He stopped abruptly several times, his brow slightly furrowed, his keen Divine Sense catching a faint, almost imperceptible sense of being watched. But each time he focused his mind to investigate, the feeling vanished without a trace, like mist dispersed by the wind.

Finally, he stopped on a high cliff overlooking part of the valley floor. The mist below was so thick it couldn't be dispersed; even with his Divine Sense, he could only barely make out the distorted, massive outlines of broken stone pillars.

Thus, he decisively and quietly retreated along the original path, swiftly leaving this desolate place.

Several days later, a small market town on the edge of the Liu Huo Desert.