331: Black Pine Remnant

The cold wind was like a knife, scraping against the bones with painful intensity.

The Black Pine Forest was named for its pine needles, which were as black as ink and as hard as iron. Snow weighed down the branches; at the slightest disturbance, large clumps of snow and ice shards would crash down with a dull thud.

Su Ming knelt in the snow, gasping heavily. With every breath, his broken fourth rib protested, feeling as if someone were pulling a blunt saw back and forth inside his chest.

"Cough..."

He covered his mouth, his palm filled with a startling splash of crimson.

Su Ming propped himself up on his knees and stood up unsteadily.

The cold here was not just low temperature, but a deathly silence that seeped into the marrow. In the distance, the soaring flames from the direction of Iron Wall Pass reddened half the sky, and the heart-palpitating roar of the earth's veins could be faintly heard, but within this pine forest, it was as quiet as a massive tomb.

"It's only right that it's cold." Lin Yu's Divine Sense swept the surroundings. "This place is thirty li from Iron Wall Pass, belonging to the 'buffer zone.' According to the Immortal Realm's terminology, this is a backwater that neither Yao Beasts nor Cultivators care to stay in."

Su Ming did not respond; his gaze fell upon the crude teleportation formation before him, enclosed by three ancient stone steles.

The Array Patternss were simple and ancient, even somewhat incomplete, covered by a thin layer of snow. The indentation at the core was empty; the Spirit Stones originally embedded there had clearly long since exhausted their spiritual power and turned to ash.

"Old Mo... truly plans for everything."

Su Ming reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing the cold lines on the stone stele. Although this teleportation formation was crude, the structure of the Array Patternss was extremely exquisite; it was clearly a one-way fixed-point teleportation modified by a master, specifically for evacuations in desperate situations.

"Don't get sentimental; hurry up and check if this thing still works," Lin Yu urged. "Although the probability is low, if those bugs follow the spatial fluctuations here, we'll have to prepare to be trapped again."

Su Ming nodded. Enduring his injured body, he channeled the pitifully small amount of Water Spiritual Energy within him to circulate through the Array Patternss.

"The Formation base is intact, but seventy percent of the spiritual power circuits are broken, and the core Spirit Stones are exhausted." Su Ming withdrew his hand, his expression turning grim. "To reactivate it, we need at least three High-Grade Spirit Stones, and one hour to repair the circuits."

"High-Grade Spirit Stones?"

Not far away, Lu Jun, who was slumped in the snow, snapped his head up upon hearing those words. Despair filled his eyes. "Where would we get High-Grade Spirit Stones? Even our Mid-Grade Spirit Stones were used up during the breakout!"

His shout caused a commotion among the panicked survivors nearby.

This makeshift team consisted of about twenty people. Aside from Su Ming and Lu Jun, the rest were mostly wounded soldiers scattered from various defense sectors, along with a few Formation apprentices like Lu Jun. At this moment, their faces were ashen; some moaned softly while clutching severed arms, while others stared fixedly toward Iron Wall Pass, their bodies trembling uncontrollably.

It was a fear of death and uncertainty about the future.

Su Ming ignored Lu Jun's breakdown. He turned around and cast his gaze toward the low stone house beside the stone steles.

The stone house was half-buried in the snow, its wooden door hanging askew as if it might fall at any moment. The snow on the roof was very thick; clearly, no one had been here for a long time.

"Let's go, get inside."

Su Ming tightened his tattered green robes, picked up his notched longsword, and trudged through the deep snow toward the stone house.

"Instructor Su..." Lu Jun struggled to get up and stumbled after him. "Aren't we... aren't we running? This place is too close to Iron Wall Pass; the insect swarm will definitely chase us!"

"Run? Run where?"

Su Ming didn't look back, his voice as cold as the wind in the forest. "Do you have a flying boat? Or an Earth-Escape Talisman? In your current state, can you outrun those winged Dark Gold Hunter Insects?"

Lu Jun opened his mouth but couldn't make a sound.

Pushing open the half-closed wooden door, a musty smell mixed with the scent of dust wafted out.

The furnishings inside were extremely simple. A stone bed, a wooden table missing a corner, and several long-withered prayer mats. The corners of the room were covered in thick dust.

However, Su Ming's gaze was instantly drawn to an extremely well-hidden trapdoor in the corner.

The trapdoor had already been opened, revealing dark stone steps below, with a cold wind blowing out from within.

"This is the way we came out," Su Ming whispered to himself.

The secret passage Old Mo mentioned had its exit right beneath this stone house.

"Disciple, look at the table," Lin Yu suddenly reminded him.

Su Ming walked quickly to the wooden table.

A layer of dust had accumulated on the tabletop, but one spot appeared exceptionally clean, as if it had been hurriedly wiped. In that clean area, a line of scrawled handwriting was carved with a dagger, deep into the wood; the person who carved it was clearly in a state of extreme anxiety.

"The insect plague erupted suddenly; the path north is blocked, heading south to survive. The hidden sentries have withdrawn. — The seventh day of the twelfth lunar month, Year of Bingyin, left by the Frontier Guard."

Su Ming stared at the line of text, his pupils slightly constricting.

"The seventh day of the twelfth lunar month..." He calculated silently in his mind. "That was yesterday."

"It seems this fellow ran faster than a rabbit." Lin Yu clicked his tongue. "Yesterday was the Early Stage of the insect plague outbreak; Iron Wall Pass hadn't completely fallen into chaos yet, but the hidden sentries here had already withdrawn. What does that tell you?"

"It means the insect swarm's encirclement is even larger than we imagined."

Su Ming reached out and touched the corner of the table. There was a small patch of blood that had long since dried and turned black, feeling cold and hard to the touch.

"He was injured, and quite severely," Su Ming analyzed calmly. "'No path north' means the way to the Sect has already been cut off by the insect swarm. He could only run south, to the edge of the Yao Race's controlled area to try his luck."

"Instructor Su!"

Lu Jun and several other wounded soldiers also squeezed into the room. Seeing the writing on the table, their already pale faces instantly turned deathly white.

"The hidden sentries have withdrawn? No path north?" Lu Jun's voice was trembling. "Then what do we do? We went through so much effort to escape, only to find it's a dead end?"

"It's over... everything is over..." An old soldier with a broken leg leaned against the doorframe, his eyes vacant. "I told you, those bugs are everywhere, there's no way out..."