48: Chapter 48 World-Destroying Poisonous Light

The Spiritless Ruins, second floor.

Gray fog surged, and it remained as deathly silent as before.

Gu Shen's figure solidified in the empty corridor. The Qi of Qi Refining Level 7 flowed endlessly within his body. Even without intentionally releasing it, he was surrounded by a heart-palpitating Spiritual Pressure.

This was the foundation of a Late Stage Cultivator.

He lightened his steps and walked toward the final third of the second floor that remained unexplored.

Passing through several rows of collapsed refined iron shelves, a highly conspicuous red cross pattern appeared on the wall ahead.

"A red cross... it looks like the symbol of a mortal medical clinic."

Gu Shen's heart stirred slightly. He gripped his thunder pattern gold-slaying blade and stepped inside with light footsteps.

It was an extremely spacious room. Countless transparent glass fragments were scattered on the ground. There was no smell of rot; instead, the air was filled with a pungent, strange odor—a mixture of strong spirits and medicinal herbs.

Gu Shen's gaze swept across the glass cabinets (medical cabinets) on both sides.

Most of the cabinets had been smashed, their contents weathered into ash. But in the innermost corner, there was a well-preserved refined iron low cabinet.

Gu Shen stepped forward and flicked the tip of his blade.

The lock snapped.

Inside the cabinet, over a dozen fist-sized transparent glass bottles were neatly arranged, along with a pile of white cloth rolls sealed in oil paper.

Gu Shen picked up a glass bottle and pulled out the cork. The pungent, strange smell instantly intensified.

Within his Sea of Consciousness, the Heaven and Earth Furnace vibrated slightly:

[Discovered mortal medicinal liquid: high-concentration purified water (alcohol).] [No Spiritual Qi fluctuations. Extremely pure, can be used to wash wounds and expel necrotic flesh and external evils. Cannot be refined.]

Gu Shen tore open another oil paper package, revealing tightly rolled white silk cloth.

[Discovered mortal medical item: white silk bandage.] [Tough and breathable, no Spiritual Qi fluctuations. Can be used for dressing external wounds. Cannot be refined.]

"Good stuff."

A flash of joy appeared in Gu Shen's eyes. With a wave of his sleeve, he swept them all into his storage ring.

Battles between Cultivators easily led to contamination by poisonous Evil Qi.

If Spirit Medicine was applied directly to a filthy wound after an injury, its efficacy would be greatly reduced.

This kind of potent purified water, which had no Spiritual Qi interference and could wash away external evils, along with the clean bandages, was the perfect auxiliary for treating external wounds.

He waved his sleeve.

Just as he was about to stand up...

Hiss—!

Inside the ventilation duct overhead, an extremely sharp hiss suddenly rang out, sounding like nails scraping against sheet metal.

Gu Shen didn't even look up; his Qi Refining Level 7 Divine Sense instantly captured the trajectory of the danger.

"Condense!"

Green light flared as the Wood Armor Technique was cast instantly.

A layer of green wood armor, twice as thick as before and with a surface texture like old tree bark, instantly covered his entire body.

Bang!

An extremely heavy dark shadow, carrying a thick, foul stench, smashed down like a giant rock from the ceiling onto Gu Shen's back.

Gu Shen was knocked forward into a stumble by the massive force. Eight appendages, like steel spikes and covered in disgusting tumors, stabbed hard toward his back.

Vines interlaced on the surface of the wood armor, letting out a tooth-aching grinding sound. The monster's sharp claws pierced half an inch into the wood armor before being firmly stuck by the incredibly tough wood-attribute Qi, unable to advance further. The dark green slime flowing out even caused the wood armor to sizzle and corrode.

"Seeking death."

Gu Shen's gaze was cold. Dust exploded beneath his feet as he lunged forward instead of retreating. Using his crouching posture, he suddenly delivered a backward upward slash.

Zheng!

Thunder exploded. A deep blue blade light carved a dazzling crescent through the gray fog.

Chila!

Without any fancy probing, the violent Qi of Qi Refining Level 7, combined with the top-grade lightning-attribute weapon, sliced directly through the softest part of the unknown monster's abdominal shell.

Foul green bodily fluid erupted as the monster's massive body was split in two, crashing onto the glass-strewn floor. Its eight legs twitched a few times before it died completely.

Gu Shen dispelled the wood armor and turned to examine the remains on the ground.

This was a bizarre poisonous insect about the size of a round table. Its shape resembled a spider, but its shell was covered in dense, deformed tumors oozing yellow fluid. Even its eyes had mutated into seven or eight turbid eyeballs of varying sizes.

"How could such a sickly and ugly evil creature be born in this spiritless land?"

Gu Shen frowned and pressed one hand onto the monster's remains.

Gray fog swept out.

Within his Sea of Consciousness, the Heaven and Earth Furnace roared into operation, and a clear piece of information was fed back.

[Refining aberrant living entity.] [This creature has been eroded by world-extinguishing poisonous light for many years, causing malignant mutations in its flesh. Its physical strength is comparable to a Tier 2 Early Stage Yao Beast.] [Obtained: essence white dew (Inferior) one drop. Mutated Poison Gland one.]

"world-extinguishing poisonous light? Aberration?"

Gu Shen sucked in a breath of cold air.

The feedback from the Great Furnace caused his understanding of these ancient ruins to be completely overturned.

He had originally thought this Ancient Sect of mechanisms had perished due to the exhaustion of Spiritual Qi, but now it seemed that the world-extinguishing poisonous light was the true culprit that turned this place into a spiritless dead zone! This poisonous light not only wiped out the Spiritual Qi but even polluted living things into these tumor-covered monsters.

Gu Shen looked up toward the ventilation duct the monster had fallen from.

On the edge of the duct hung half a set of human remains.

Gu Shen leaped up, using the wall for leverage, and used his gold-severing saber to hook the half-skeleton down.

The state of the skeleton was horrific; the bones were a fragile grayish-black, as if they had been dried from the inside out by some invisible poisonous fire.

What caught Gu Shen's attention even more was that the skeleton was wearing an extremely bloated, bright yellow, heavy leather dharma robe (hazmat suit). The face of the robe was a single piece of transparent glass, but it was now shattered.

"Dressing so airtight... was it to resist that world-extinguishing poisonous light?"

Gu Shen used the tip of his blade to pry open the heavy yellow robe.

From the shriveled chest of the skeleton, a palm-sized black metal plate fell out.

There were no formation patterns on the metal plate, only several striking red warning runes and an extremely eerie pattern:

A circle surrounded by three fan-shaped black petals (radiation symbol).

This pattern exuded an indescribable aura of coldness and death. As soon as Gu Shen's Divine Sense touched it, he felt a faint stinging pain.

Combining the lightning symbol he had seen on the blueprints earlier with this three-petaled death flower totem on the metal plate, the line in Gu Shen's mind finally closed into a complete loop.

"Deep underground... the thunder magnetic hub..."

Gu Shen stared fixedly at that radiation symbol, sketching the tragic picture of this Ancient Sect's destruction in his mind:

"This Ancient Sect harnessed some terrifying subterranean fire-and-thunder pool as a hub deep underground. But eventually, the thunder pool went out of control, erupting with this world-extinguishing poisonous light (nuclear leak) that can cause flesh to mutate. High-level Elders put on these heavy anti-poison robes to try and save it, but they still died under the erosion of the poisonous light."

A forbidden zone!

That was an unsolvable death trap ten thousand times more terrifying than the Blood Sacrifice Array in the White Bone Forest!

The thunder magnetic fine sand underground was certainly massive in quantity, but without an absolute means to shield against the poisonous light, a Qi Refining Stage Cultivator who went down would either be torn apart by mutated monsters or turned into a pool of pus by the invisible poisonous light.

Gu Shen crushed the metal plate with the radiation symbol into powder, erasing all traces.

"Before I find a way to resist the poisonous light, I won't even take a single look at the depths of these ruins."

The resources on the second floor had been scavenged clean, and the warning had been received.

With a thought, the gray fog rose.

...

West of Pingyang City, the dilapidated small courtyard.

Gu Shen returned to reality.

The furnishings in the room were still broken, and the sunlight outside the window was somewhat piercing.

Without any hesitation, he took out a fire starter and lit the dry grass on the bed.

Whoosh—

The flames leaped up, quickly engulfing the main room where he had been hiding for two months.

Any traces of his stay—hair, scent—were turned to ash in this mundane fire.

Gu Shen did not look back.

Carrying his cloth-wrapped thunder pattern gold-slaying blade, he lowered his bamboo hat and silently left Pingyang City through the shadows of the dead-end alleys.

Outside the city, the autumn wind was bleak.

Thirty li to the north was Dragon Tooth Valley. Further north were the vast mountains that crossed the boundary between the mortal world and the Cultivation World.

Gu Shen did not take the main road.

He specifically chose to travel through sparsely populated wilderness and deep forests. With the boost of his Qi Refining Level 7 Qi, his speed was extremely fast, like a tireless lone wolf.

Since the Blood Sacrifice Array in the White Bone Forest was already on the verge of being harvested...

...then the border regions of the Great Yu Cultivation World were definitely already surging with undercurrents.

His current goal was to return to a Loose Cultivator gathering place called Qingmu Cliff on the outermost edge of the Cultivation World. It was a place where all sorts of people mixed, information was most accessible, and it was the best transit station to exchange the top-grade resources in his hands for subsequent Cultivation Techniques and Talismans.

"In the scheme of the blood marrow lotus, the Danding Sect and the Blood Fiend Sect will eat the meat. Even if I can't even get a sip of the soup, I can use this chaos to double my survival trump cards."

Gu Shen's figure gradually disappeared into the vast mountain forests leading to the boundary of the Cultivation World.

A great wind rises from the tip of the duckweed.