Chapter 187 - Emperor’s Tomb, Aries
‘Without this light shield protecting us, we’d have been killed a long time ago.” Qi Shaofeng thought himself lucky, and the bit of resentment that he had towards Ye Chen vanished.
“Hurry, let’s go!”
Grabbing Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng, Ye Chen stomped his foot against the ground and darted for the jungle entrance.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Those purple vines would strike the light shield from time to time, and every strike made by these vines would break the light shield by around thirty percent; even worse, many times these strikes would fall on the exact same spot on the light shield. Fortunately, the light shield’s defensive powers was not static, instead, the blue airstreams were constantly flowing inside the light shield so that all the broken spots could be fixed right away; in this way, the light shield maintained a perfect balance.
The man-eating vine parent realised that its purple vines were incapable of breaking the light shield, thus it opened its mouth and belched out a thigh-thick dark-purple vine. As the dark-purple vine sped away from the parent, it speed was fast like lightning and only after it was several miles away, did a thunderous sound resound out. Unexpectedly, Its moving speed was several times faster than the sound speed.
“[Sky Devil Great Palm]!”
In this life and death moment, Murong Qingcheng once again launched a powerful move. Her slim and beautiful palm carried a power that was as deep as the ocean, and it struck the air.
Bang!
In front of her palm, every single object in several hundreds meter radius suddenly became suspended in the air, then soon became a puff of smoke. As for the dark-purple vine, although it hadn’t been reduced to smoke, it was indeed slowed down as if it had fallen into a swap. The dark-purple vine’s moving speed was instantly dragged down from three times to two times the speed of sound, and finally, to just the sound speed.
“That was all I could do,” said Murong Qingcheng with a stream of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, “I’m counting the rest on you.”
“I’ve got this.”
Ye Chen nodded and responded. He spread his soul power out towards the front and the back, where the front being the entrance of the jungle and the back being where the man-eating vines’ parent was. Running at their fastest speed for half a day, they were finally reaching the entrance of this jungle, which was now only tens of miles away from them.
As a dim beam of light flashed across the storage ring he wore on his hand, a Red Light Fire bomb appeared in his hand. He had three Red Light Fire bombs in total, he got them from the ‘Devil Prince’ Leng Wuqing, back at the Heaven Dream Ancient Region. These Red Light Fire bombs were quite powerful and were even able to hurt a medium Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist. Nonetheless, not a single medium Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist could be a threat to Ye Chen’s life now, thus, he had no reason to save these three bombs, and was instead going to use them now.
Ye Chen flicked his fingers slightly and threw a fire bomb backwards. The bomb made a beautiful parabola in the air while flying out of the light shield. Observing closely, one would realise that when the Red Light Fire bomb was only a millimetre away from the light shield,
Ye Chen shouted, “Explode!”
A raging blaze erupted in the air along with Ye Chen’s voice. The formidable power released by the bomb did not even damage the light shield a little, on the contrary, it largely improved the moving speed of the light shield and the three people wrapped inside it, almost making it shoot out like a roaring shooting star.
“What an excellent idea!”
Both Qi Shaofeng’s and Murong Qingcheng’s eyes suddenly shone in surprise. Before, they thought that Ye Chen had reached his current level only out of luck, but now, the both of them changed their thinking. Under such a pressing and dangerous situation, Ye Chen could still remain so calm, and even come up with such a clever idea to create an external force to improve their moving speed. They felt so dumb when they compared themselves to Ye Chen, as they knew nothing but to fight blindly.
Ye Chen took out the other two Red Light Fire bombs, and did exactly the same with them as he had did just now. Their moving speed was raised to such an incredible degree that, wherever they passed, the air would twist intensely and clouds of dirt would be raised, forming fierce and muddy waves that closely followed behind the blue light shield.
Pop!
The dark-purple vine finally recovered from the effect of the [Sky Devil Great Palm], and boosted its speed back up to three times the speed of sound, and rapidly chased after them.
Five miles!
Three miles!
One miles!
In the time it took ten blinks, the dark-purple vine had already reached one mile away from the light shield, and this distance was shortening rapidly.
By now, the entrance of this jungle was only two miles away from the light shield.
“Success or failure depends on this moment!”
Ye Chen still remained perfectly calm and kept running at his highest speed, as if the dark-purple vine did not even exist.
After one eye blink, the dark-purple vine was only less than three-hundred meters from the light shield.
In half an eye blink, the distance was shortened to less than fifty meters.
“Go!”
Ye Chen grabbed the Yuan light ball, which was the core of the light shield, and abruptly threw it backwards.
Swoosh!
All three of them flew out of the light shield at that moment and kept running towards the entrance.
Puff!
The light shield that was left on the ground suddenly distorted, it was then punctured by the dark-purple vine. Its great defensive power had only managed to stall the dark-purple vine for a single blink of an eye.
In this short span of time, Ye Chen, Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng had reached less than two-hundred meters away from the entrance of the jungle, and the dark-purple vine was three-hundred meters away from them.
Three-hundred meters would only take the dark-purple vine one-third of an eye blink, but the three people could never make it out of the jungle in such a short time span.
At last, the dark-purple vine punctured all three of their bodies.
No, the ones that were penetrated were Zhen Qi silhouettes.
As it turns out, Ye Chen had swiftly launched the Shadow-Dividing Light Art at the crucial moment and created three Zhen Qi silhouettes to trick the dark-purple vine; as for the real Ye Chen, he had already moved to the front and right of the dark-purple vine, with Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng carried in his arms.
In the next moment!
The dark-purple vine again, punctured their…Zhen Qi silhouettes.
Murong Qingcheng and Qi Shaofeng couldn’t help but each take a long gasp in deep shock. Neither of them could even imagine how Ye Chen did that. The dark-purple vine had been chasing them at a literal lightning speed, and they could not possibly react in time. If they were Ye Chen, they could never ever launch the Shadow-Dividing Light Art so quickly to confuse the cannibal vine. But of course, they knew nothing about Ye Chen’s especially high soul power. With his soul power, every single move made by the dark-purple vine was under Ye Chen’s watch. This meant that Ye Chen knew exactly when was the best moment to launch the move to confuse the man-eating vine.
After being tricked a few times, the man-eating vines’ parent became furious. It did not understand how these people managed to survive its deadly attacks over and over again.
A warm stream of sunshine poured on their faces — Ye Chen, Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng finally rushed out of the jungle.
Nevertheless, they could not relax yet and had to maintain vigilance. Ye Chen boosted his Zhen Qi up as much as he could, and darted to the front and right of himself where there was a tall rock hill.
Obviously, Ye Chen worried too much. The man-eating vine couldn’t come out of the woods, as if it was blocked by an invisible wall.
Phew!
Dropping the two people, Ye Chen felt a sudden dizziness that nearly struck him down.
In the past few hours, Ye Chen had squeezed all his powers and wisdom out of himself to fight against the man-eating vine, and had struggled just on the edge of death. Even though he managed to survive at last, only he knew how much energy it cost him. He was pretty sure that any other Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist would have died ten times over already under the same situation, and would never make it out of the jungle alive, not to mention that he had to carry two people along with him.
Standing beside him, Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng had been staring at Ye Chen, as if they were staring at a genuine monster.
“What?” Ye Chen asked with a low and hoarse voice.
Qi Shaofeng smiled bitterly and said, “I feel like a complete idiot when I compare myself to you, even though I’m at a higher power level than you. How, how did you even do that?”
“I just didn’t want to die,” said Ye Chen returning the same faint, bitter smile.
“For me to admire someone, this is the first time. I have to admire you, although you’re just an early Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist.” Murong Qingcheng didn’t try to hide her admiration of Ye Chen at all.
“Let’s just get out of here.”
After catching his breath, Ye Chen said. He did not want to talk too much about this.
Hearing him, Murong Qingcheng and Qi Shaofeng nodded; neither of them wanted to come back to this place ever again.
Ye Chen met around ten Long Blade Martial School’s people on their way out of the Hundred Thousand Mountain range, they were the only few who managed to survive the man-eating vines’ attacks, and now all looked especially tired and sad.
‘These few people are lucky. If they had stayed back in the jungle for a little while longer, the parent of those man-eating vines would leap out from the ground and suck them dry, and thus, their martial school would have vanished.’ Ye Chen shook his head and thought.
Not too many demonic beasts lived in this area, thus, they walked out of the mountain area in only half a day, and arrived in the territory of the Long Blade Martial School.
After another small half a day, they arrived at the only city near the Hundred Thousand Mountain range, the Sunset City.
Inside a private dining room of a big restaurant, Ye Chen, Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng sat around a table.
“All thanks to you, brother Ye. You’ve saved our lives.” Qi Shaofeng said while pouring Ye Chen a glass of wine.
Ye Chen responded, “Technically, it’s just business between us, you don’t need to thank me at all.”
Since he had already accepted five-hundred thousand low-ranked stones and six-thousand mid-ranked stones, and mid-ranked storage ring offered by Qi Shaofeng and Murong Qingcheng, he was already quite satisfied and didn’t think they owed him anything.
“You can’t put it in that way, without you, even if we possessed all the wealth in this world, we’d have no chance to use them.” Murong Qingcheng said while raising her glass and clinking it with Ye Che’s.
“Well, then I’ll let you cover the bill.”
Ye Chen raised his glass and downed the wine.
Daylight was ebbing away, and after a few glasses of wines, all three of them were a bit tired. Thus, they went back to their separate rooms.
Ye Chen lied on the soft bed and closed his eyes, quickly falling into a deep sleep, leaving only a slight bit of consciousness.
He was exhausted by what had happened in the past few days.
In another room, Murong Qingcheng took a quick shower then dragged her aching body into bed, and soon fell asleep as well. She had been continuously fighting for several days, and that had consumed a great amount of her energy. Although it seemed like she had done nothing after she met Ye Chen, she was still quite badly frightened, which was equally exhausting.
In the middle of the night.
Ye Chen woke up first.
“Ah… I feel much better. I never was that tired!”
Getting off the bed, Ye Chen closed the window, then thought, ‘I haven’t look at that white key yet, I wonder what it can do.”
Ye Chen took out the arm-long white key, then fixed his eyes on it.
It seemed like nothing special. He then activated his Zhen Qi and injected it into the white key.
Buzz!
A bright white light burst forth from the key, in which, a line of ancient characters emerged.
“Emperor Tomb, Aries!”
Furrowing his brows, Ye Chen didn’t understand how did Aries have anything to do with this key, neither did he know if it was the same Aries as in his old world. ‘But this is not that world, this is the True Spirit Continent! Maybe it just has the same name, hm, I better assume it’s something else.’ Ye Chen thought.
Apart from the confusion about Aries, Ye Chen thought that Emperor Tomb might be a powerful martial artist’s tomb, and this white key might be able to unlock that tomb. ‘Hm, no, it might only be one of a series of keys which unlocks the tomb when they’re gathered together. After all, the map I got was incomplete, it was only a piece of a bigger map.’ thought Ye Chen
If Ye Chen guessed right, he could only find the tomb and unlock it when he has all the keys.
The disappointment had only lasted a short while. The biggest gain made by Ye Chen through this journey was that he had learned a move of the Void Shattering Finger. If he keeps practising that move and achieves a small success with it, he would be able to defeat any martial artist in his generation; if he could achieve a big success with that move, his power would become immeasurably great. The scene of that terrifyingly powerful monster being pointed at by a gigantic finger and then shattering was still replaying in Ye Chen’s mind, over and over again.
“The Void Shattering Finger is way too difficult, that I can’t possibly achieve any success in it within a short time. I should just take a look at that high-ranked Earth Realm martial art book at first.” Ye Chen had gained quite number of martial books from the second floor of the goat-mouth shaped cave, and among these books, the best one was a high-ranked Earth Realm martial art book. Back then, Ye Chen did not have the time to take a look at its content, but now he finally had some free time to read it.