Li Yan saw a dense mass of overlapping ghost figures appear in front of him. In an instant, their number reached over a thousand, and it was still increasing.
"How many yin ghosts has he refined? If all of these were people he killed, this person has already committed a sea of bloody sins!"
Li Yan quickly retreated. At this time, his left arm had already regained feeling, but a stinging pain was still coming from his bone marrow, which was caused by the Yin-Cold Ghost Poison.
Facing the combined attack of so many yin ghosts, Li Yan did not want to be trapped among them. His body quickly floated backward.
And just as Li Yan was retreating, his usually calm face finally changed. Because on his right side, another man in a blood-dripping crimson scholar's robe had quietly walked out from the thick black qi.
This person, whether in terms of dress or appearance, was exactly the same as the man in front, as if they were twins.
And as soon as he appeared, he had already waved the long flute in his hand. Without any nonsense, another tens, hundreds, thousands of ghosts flew out amidst shrill wails.
And just as this person appeared, the thousands of ghosts that had rushed out from the front had actually quickly gathered together in the air, forming a huge bluish ghost claw in the blink of an eye.
The thousands of ghosts that had just flown out from the right side also, after rushing out, similarly gathered into another huge bluish ghost claw.
The two giant claws crossed space and attacked, the palms flashing with a fishy red light, their momentum like lightning. They left two long, bluish afterimages behind them as they simultaneously clawed at Li Yan.
"Thump, thump!"
Amidst two dull, heavy sounds, Li Yan had one leg in front and one behind, his stance like a bow and arrow. His body's magical power instantly converted to the heavy earth attribute. His two arms, flashing with a golden-yellow light, crossed each other and blocked above his head.
As the sound of the impact came out, the thick black qi around them churned violently. A red and a yellow light crashed together. The two colors of light were in a brief stalemate in the air, illuminating this patch of thick black qi with half red and half golden yellow.
The red and yellow lights on Li Yan and the other two men's bodies intertwined, flickering from bright to dark. Under the shifting lights, everyone looked particularly strange and sinister.
After a brief breath and a half.
"Boom!"
Li Yan's entire person was thrown into the air, his body sent flying backward. Li Yan only felt his qi and blood churning uncontrollably in his chest.
The combined blow of two Mid-stage Nascent Soul experts, he could have blocked it with his strength.
But the two ghost claws were constantly emitting "Yin-Cold Ghost Poison." Although Li Yan's body had the Fragmented Poison Body to resist and dissolve it, it also took time for the Fragmented Poison Body to dissolve it.
The bone-chilling cold pain coming from Li Yan's bone marrow still affected the circulation of his magical power. He might as well give up on resisting them head-on.
There was another reason that made Li Yan immediately give up on clashing with them. That was that the two identical men in the blood-dripping crimson scholar's robes were still continuously waving the long flutes in their hands in the back.
For a time, the sharp flute sounds became a continuous sheet. The ghosts that flew out from the flutes, one after another, continued to gather towards the two huge bluish giant claws.
In front of Li Yan, what had originally been just two giant claws, in just one breath, had "grown" wrists behind them, and were vaguely continuing to gather into forearms.
As the arms gradually formed, the yin-cold power on the two bluish giant claws also became more and more intense, as if it could grow endlessly...
Li Yan was already horrified in his heart, not knowing how many of these ghosts the other party had refined. Now it seemed they were endless.
"Could it be that they have refined all the ghosts of the underworld?"
Li Yan's thoughts raced. Under such unclear circumstances, how could he be willing to continue the stalemate? As his strength slightly withdrew, he had already used the momentum to retreat quickly.
But he was retreating head-on. The other party's continuous attack was like a rolling tide, without any room for respite. As he retreated, the fierce force crashed over with an unstoppable momentum...
Although Li Yan had deflected part of the force, he still had to bear the brunt of most of it. It was inevitable that his qi and blood would churn in his chest.
The magical power in Li Yan's body circulated rapidly, and he forcibly suppressed the churning qi and blood. His retreating figure did not stop in the slightest. Using the momentum of being thrown back, he quickly slid backward, and in an instant, he had already retreated a thousand zhang.
The two men in the blood-dripping crimson scholar's robes looked at each other.
"What a powerful physical body!"
The two of them said almost in unison. Then, one of them whispered again.
"What vigorous qi and blood!"
"Excellent! Excellent!" As Li Yan retreated at high speed, his Divine Sense could only penetrate a hundred zhang. He quickly lost sight of the other party in his Divine Sense.
He had slid back a thousand zhang, but to his surprise, the two men in the blood-dripping crimson scholar's robes had not pursued him. At least, he had not detected them.
"Hmm?"
Just then, Li Yan, who was retreating, suddenly found that he had already passed through the thick black qi, and he was about to crash heavily into a mountain wall!
Just as he was about to hit it, Li Yan's body swayed slightly, and he instantly stabilized himself in the air.
The transition from extreme speed to extreme stillness, this speed made the surrounding space emit a crisp "pa" sound the moment Li Yan stood firm.
Then, a wave of distortion appeared around his body. That was the distortion and fluctuation of the surrounding space under this extreme change in speed.
At this moment, Li Yan found that his Divine Sense had returned to normal. To be precise, three directions had returned to their normal scanning range.
He had appeared in a wide cave. The thick black qi had stayed in front of him. In that direction, after his Divine Sense entered the black qi, it was still only about a hundred zhang in range.
And the scenery there, in Li Yan's eyes at this moment, should be the entrance of a cave he had retreated into. Outside the entrance, the black qi was churning endlessly...
Gong Chenying flew along the cave. This cave, in the eyes of a mortal, would be pitch black. A mortal wouldn't be able to walk a few steps inside before losing their sense of direction and bumping their head until it bled.
The cave was very wide, but the terrain inside was not very flat. It was sometimes high and sometimes low, sometimes slanted and sometimes straight. And from time to time, stalactites would hang down from the ceiling!
Gusts of yin wind blew from the deep and dark recesses, bringing with them a strange, "woo-woo..." whistling sound that chilled one to the heart.
Gong Chenying had been moving inside for a quarter of an hour. Apart from the howling yin wind, she had not encountered a single living thing.
"A quarter of an hour, at my speed, I've traveled at least a hundred li. There are no forks in this cave, and the end seems to be endless..."
Gong Chenying thought quickly in her heart. Her Divine Sense was also constantly watching behind her, but Li Yan's figure had not appeared behind her all this time.
That is to say, in this long time, Li Yan had not entered this cave. Otherwise, he should have been able to see the mark she left and follow her.
To this, Gong Chenying was not too disappointed. Her heart had always been strong and independent, and she did not like to rely on others all the time.
In the pitch-black cave, the wind blew from an unknown distance in the deep and dark recesses, forming all sorts of strange sounds in the cave. After a person stayed here for a while, they would start to have all sorts of auditory hallucinations.
Li Yan felt more and more a nameless pressure coming over him. It was a tightness in his chest that was difficult to release.
If a timid person were to walk inside, they would probably have been so scared that they would have collapsed to the ground and fainted.
Gong Chenying, who was flying, suddenly had the long spear on her back fly out on its own. But her forward-flying figure did not stop in the slightest.
Just as the long spear flew from behind her and straight over her head, Gong Chenying raised a single hand and grabbed the butt of the long spear. At the same time, a trace of sharp light flashed in her eyes.
As her magical power was infused into it, she thrust straight into a patch of darkness in the front right. A ball of red light erupted from the tip of the spear in an instant, reflecting a series of red shadows in the surrounding space.
Under the red light, a figure emerged. He was holding something like a leg bone. His face was pale, and his eyes were a greyish white. His thin body flew over, and he was raising the leg bone and charging at Gong Chenying.
This person only had a few strips of cloth hanging on his body. A few sparse strands of long hair fluttered. As he ran, some of the long hair hung on his face, blocking some of his features.
His eyes could no longer see. As he charged forward, he kept tilting his head from side to side, as if he were using his ears to listen to the movements around him.
But this person's movements were extremely quiet. Amidst the various strange sounds of the wind in the cave, it was impossible for a moment to distinguish his footsteps.
"Chi!"
Gong Chenying's spear pierced the other party's throat. The man, whose leg bone was still raised high, had now also swung it down forcefully, bringing with it a smell of old decay as it smashed towards Gong Chenying.
To this, Gong Chenying paid no attention at all. The moment the leg bone smashed down, she was already behind the man. At the same time, the long spear in her hand had already pierced through the man's cervical vertebrae, and the man had missed completely.
And the man's shriveled head, under the high temperature of the red-glowing spearhead, instantly turned into a puff of nothingness.
This was the first living monster Gong Chenying had encountered in the cave. But she did not hold back at all, nor did she have any intention of soul-searching.
Because behind this person, along the two sides of the cave, were densely packed, shriveled people like him. Each one was a thing that was neither human nor ghost. They were swarming towards Gong Chenying.
"Low-rank ghost creatures!"
Gong Chenying could feel waves of ghost qi from them, but the fluctuations were very small. These ghost creatures were at most equivalent to cultivators at the first or second layer of Qi Condensation.
To Gong Chenying, they were just a bunch of weak ants that could be pinched to death with a move of her finger.
In the darkness, amidst the strange sounds of the wind, there were some low roars, charging at Gong Chenying like a tide...
Gong Chenying's long spear did not even have any magical power infused into it. Just with the high temperature of the red-glowing spearhead itself, which could melt gold and iron, these ghost creatures' bodies would melt in half almost as soon as they came into contact with it.
In the darkness, a streak of red light was like a flood dragon emerging from the sea. Amidst a chorus of wails, it charged forward...
A tea's time later, Gong Chenying stood in a spot in the cave. She was standing quietly.
At this moment, the red-glowing long spear was once again on her back. And at her feet lay a few ghost creatures with still relatively intact corpses.
At this time, all the surrounding ghost creatures had disappeared. Only on the ground along the path Gong Chenying had taken lay all sorts of incomplete corpses.
Gong Chenying's palm was now pressed on the top of a ghost creature's head. With a fierce burst of force from her palm, the ghost creature under her palm fell softly to the ground.
In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, she had killed at least three thousand of these low-rank ghost creatures, and in the end, she had only left a few for soul-searching.
"Their spiritual intelligence is basically not awakened. They only have the instinct to kill. From their memories, I can see some intermittent information."
"They have been wandering here all along. They will also constantly kill each other. There is no reason. It's just that when the desire to kill arises in their hearts, they will attack their companions around them and then eat them."
"At the same time, they also have a natural fear. That is, after arriving here, they can no longer walk inside, because there are beings there that make them very afraid..."
"And, they are also unwilling to leave here and walk towards the cave entrance, because the wind there is not to their liking. The wind here is more comfortable for them..."
Gong Chenying continuously organized the information she had obtained from the soul-searching, her mind quickly thinking. She soon noticed some of the information.
"The wind at the entrance of the cave... is not to their liking... more comfortable... like... comfortable, wind... wind wind!"
After thinking about these things, her body suddenly shook violently, and a look of shock appeared on her face, which had not changed much and was as cold as frost.
"They... they are not ghost creatures, they are Wind Beasts!"
At this moment, Gong Chenying suddenly came to a shocking conclusion. And as soon as this thought arose in her mind, it set off a storm in her heart.
"Here... a fourth type of Wind Beast has actually appeared here, right at the edge of the Tianli Clan's territory!"
This answer shocked Gong Chenying beyond measure. The Tianli Clan had, since ancient times, only ever fought against the three Wind Beast clans. And within the sphere of influence of these three Wind Beast clans, the appearance of a fourth race of Wind Beasts was absolutely not allowed.
But now, a fourth type of Wind Beast had actually appeared here, a fourth race. And thinking about the current situation of the Tianli Clan, Gong Chenying instantly broke out in a cold sweat.
The three Wind Beast clans had already pushed them to the brink. Now, a fourth type of Wind Beast had appeared. In her shock, Gong Chenying had the urge to immediately go back and bring this news back.
The Great Sacrificial Priest and the others must have been to this swamp before. And the Tianli Clan had lived here for generations, for a very long time.
No matter what, some of the strong people from generation after generation would have explored this place. But why had no one discovered this secret?
Gong Chenying's whole body was trembling unconsciously, but she also knew that she needed to calm down at this moment. First, she had to be able to get out of here and fly out of the swamp.
After taking a few deep breaths, the years of fighting and walking on the edge of life and death had made Gong Chenying encounter countless dangers and crises. She quickly calmed down.
But she just stood there, beginning to think hard about some things. In the darkness, she was motionless, like a timeless stone carving, and her aura also became faint and almost imperceptible.
Time flew by. After about a hundred breaths, Gong Chenying's beautiful eyes trembled slightly, and her aura returned to normal.