189: Chapter 188 Advanced? Special Grade?
Lin Fan was woken up by the cold.
The moment he opened his eyes, his consciousness was still stuck in the heart-wrenching sensation of weightlessness from the fall. His body twitched instinctively, and then he froze.
The sky overhead was not that of Qingyou Valley.
It wasn't that tile-blue sky, fragmented by bamboo leaves.
It wasn't even the unfamiliar dark red sky with a heavy, dim sun that he had expected.
It was a full moon.
A massive, silvery-white full moon occupied more than half of the firmament, like a quiet eye looking down upon this land.
Moonlight poured down, not as a cold, ghastly white light, but as a warm, soft glow like milk. It felt faintly cool against the skin, yet not chilling.
There was no sun.
There were no stars.
The sky was a deep, almost ink-colored blue, as clean as if it had been washed a thousand times, without even a trace of a cloud.
That full moon was the sole light source, hanging right in the center of the sky, unrealistically large—more than ten times larger than the moon seen from Earth. The patterns on its surface were clearly visible, like a precise, silvery-white map.
Lin Fan lay on the ground, staring at that moon for several seconds before slowly sitting up.
He found himself on a patch of grass.
But it wasn't ordinary grass—the blades were silvery-white and as fine as strands of hair, emitting a faint fluorescence under the moonlight, as if countless elongated beams of moonlight had condensed into physical form.
In the distance was a forest.
But those trees weren't ordinary trees—the trunks were transparent, like crystal pillars carved from ice, and the moonlight passing through them cast light-blue spots on the ground.
A light-blue mist permeated the spaces between the trees. The mist didn't dissipate, instead flowing slowly along the ground like invisible rivers.
Further away, he could vaguely see the silhouettes of mountain ranges.
The shapes of those peaks were peculiar. Unlike the overlapping ridges of ordinary mountains, they were independent, slender stone pillars like towers, thrusting straight from the ground into the sky, their tips as sharp as needles.
The moonlight shone on the stone pillars, reflecting a silvery-white luster like rows of silent sentinels.
What surprised Lin Fan the most was that the Spiritual Qi here was incredibly dense—with every breath, he could feel spiritual power bursting in his alveoli and then flowing through his blood vessels to his entire body.
The numerical value for his spiritual power recovery rate was jumping frantically, nearly three times faster than it was back in the Federation.
Lin Fan stood up and brushed the grass clippings off his clothes.
“Ye Qing!”
Lin Fan shouted. His voice dispersed across the open grassland without an echo, as if absorbed by something. There was no response.
He shouted again: “Ye Wushuang? Xu Ziyan?”
Still, no one answered.
Lin Fan took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
They had all entered that vortex.
It was very likely they had been randomly thrown to different coordinates.
So the current situation was: he was separated from everyone else.
Lin Fan pushed that thought aside and began searching the surroundings.
He walked about a hundred paces along the grass and saw several plants by a small stream.
It was a low-growing herb with long, sword-shaped leaves and small light-blue flowers blooming at the top of the stem. The flowers had five petals and white stamens—Qingling Flowers.
A common spiritual plant within the Federation, used to concoct low-grade Spiritual Liquids, it could slightly increase an Armor Spirit's spiritual power recovery speed.
They were sold by the stalk on the market, each costing about two hundred federation coins.
But there weren't just a few stalks here.
There were hundreds, thousands of them.
Both banks of the entire stream were densely packed with Qingling Flowers. The small light-blue flowers joined together under the moonlight like a blue ribbon laid across the silvery-white grass.
Lin Fan crouched down and reached out to touch the petals of one of the flowers.
It was real, and the quality was excellent, more than a grade higher than those sold in his shop.
He slowly stood up, shifting his gaze from the Qingling Flowers to further away.
On the bank upstream, he saw red points of light—not fire, but another spiritual plant. Its leaves were heart-shaped, and its fruits were red berries hanging in clusters from the stems.
Blood Spirit Fruits, used for refining Qi and strength recovery potions. It was already difficult to find wild ones within the Federation; they were mostly artificially cultivated.
But here, they grew wildly like weeds, cluster after cluster, red as blood.
Further off, where the stream curved, there was a patch of pale golden light points.
Lin Fan narrowed his eyes, his left eye focusing automatically as information surfaced in his vision—Jin Sui Grass, used to refine high-grade spiritual power growth potions, with a market price of fifty thousand federation coins per stalk.
In the Federation, Jin Sui Grass only grew deep in the southern primeval forests. Harvesting it required a Federation permit, with an annual limit of one hundred stalks.
How many were here?
Lin Fan did a rough count; there were at least three or four hundred stalks.
He withdrew his gaze and took a deep breath.
He had a general hypothesis in his mind.
Only a newly descended, un-pioneered Secret Realm would have so many spiritual items growing in it.
And with such a concentration of Spiritual Qi, this Secret Realm was at least an Advanced Secret Realm.
Or even... a Special Grade Secret Realm!
Lin Fan felt a chill down his spine. An un-pioneered Special Grade Secret Realm was a Treasure Trove, but also a graveyard.
The priority right now wasn't gathering herbs; it was finding people.
Especially Xu Ziyan; having not yet reached the rank of Armor King, him being in a place like this was no different from walking naked into a pack of wolves.
Lin Fan stood up and hurriedly stuffed the collected Qingling Flowers, Blood Spirit Fruits, and Jin Sui Grass into his spatial ring, not bothering to clean the dirt off his hands.
He chose a direction at random and stepped into the crystal forest.
The light-blue mist reached his ankles.
He had walked for nearly an hour when his left eye suddenly felt warm. He sensed a vague spiritual power fluctuation nearby, and it was human.
He immediately rushed toward that direction!
A quarter of an hour later, he saw a person.
Unfortunately, this person was not Xu Ziyan or the others.
It was a strange man leaning against the root of a crystal tree, eyes closed, his chest still heaving.
He wore a grayish-white tactical jacket with a Federation Exploration Team patch on his left sleeve—it read "Seventh Exploration Battalion."
This was someone from the military!
Then this place really was a Secret Realm, and these people must have entered through other entrances.
Lin Fan slowed his pace, his left eye scanning the man's spiritual power fluctuations.
There were three wounds on his body. The tactical suit on his left shoulder and right calf had been torn open by something. The wounds had scabbed over, but the surrounding skin was black—a sign of poisoning.
Lin Fan knelt down and reached out to check the man's carotid artery.
He was still alive, but his pulse was weak and his skin was cold.
He peeled back the man's left eyelid to check—the pupil's reaction to light was sluggish; the toxin had already begun to affect the nervous System.
“Hey,” Lin Fan patted the man's face, “can you hear me?”
The man's eyelids flickered but did not open.
His lips moved a few times, making an indistinct sound.
Lin Fan leaned in closer.
“...Don't... don't go... to the center...”