Chapter 87: The Means of the Immortal Sect

It was deep night.

In the cavern dwelling of the Spring and Autumn Sword Sect, Qin Yue summoned Dong Zhuang, Qin Xin, and the others to stand before him.

“I’m going out for a while. Focus on your cultivation. When you have nothing to do, read more of the copied books I left for you. As for everything else, you need not concern yourselves.”

“Will this journey be dangerous?” Ye Yu asked.

After a period of recuperation, and with cultivation nourishing her body, she was in excellent condition.

Her complexion was no longer as pale as before. Even in the ordinary disciple robes of the sect, she looked beautiful.

Dong Zhuang, Qin Xin, and the others were the same; their vitality and spirit were now profoundly different from the past.

As for the people from the Ice Abyss who had been brought here earlier, their skin had long since returned to normal. Unless one looked closely, they were no different from anyone else.

Only Qin Yue had always been impossible to tan. Even now, after washing away the juice of the Bright-Yellow Grass, he remained the same: fair to the point of glowing, dazzlingly so.

Qin Yue shook his head. “Nothing dangerous. Don’t worry.”

“You go ahead and do what you need to do. We’ll cultivate earnestly,” Qin Xin said.

“Brother, when I’m strong enough, I’ll go with you then!” Qin Zi clenched her little fist, her gaze firm as she made her earnest promise.

Qin Yue smiled, then added, “Try your best to raise your cultivation realm during this time. I’ve already taught you everything I know about the different realms. If...”

He paused slightly.

“If I can’t come back for a long time, and you sense that something is wrong within the sect, don’t hesitate. Go find Old Yu. He’ll find a way to help you leave.”

Only then did Qin Xin and the others realize that Qin Yue’s journey was not so simple, and concern appeared in their eyes.

Qin Yue said, “I won’t be in any real danger. I’m only worried that changes within the sect might drag you into them.”

The way Ling Jinsong had been openly and wantonly humiliated by Wang Hong was enough to reveal some signs.

The Sunlight Sect was not ruled by a single voice. Too many long-lived old monsters, already ascended to the Immortal Realm, could deeply influence the sect’s decisions.

Now that people from the Immortal Gate were descending to the mortal world in waves, no one could say what this sect would become in the future.

Dong Zhuang spoke up. “Rest assured. If anything really happens, I’ll protect them even if it costs me my life.”

The next morning.

Qin Yue left copies of restored Sunlight Sect scriptures and cultivation resources for Xu Liang, Wen Lang, and Ruan Jun.

After a brief explanation, he boarded the spirit vessel sent by Ling Jinsong.

The people from the Immortal Gate seemed impatient, showing no interest in what had happened within the Sunlight Sect. Not a single one asked a question.

Qin Yue even suspected that they had come specifically for him.

Before noon, the departure had already been decided.

He was not even given enough time to bid a proper farewell to Yue Mingxi, Tang Qingxuan, Ling Chen, and the others; only a hurried parting word of safety could be exchanged.

At the same time,

Xue Feng, Pang Jia, and a large crowd of Sunlight Sect members, including Ling Han, who had been stripped of his post as outer sect elder, all “went out into the mountains.”

Old Ding had said that whoever could kill the descended demonic child would be granted the qualification to enter the Immortal Gate.

If one entered the Immortal Realm from the mortal world, one could build a far better foundation and achieve far greater heights in the future.

No one could refuse such temptation.

On the spirit vessel.

Through these big shots from the Immortal Gate, Qin Yue learned quite a bit of information.

This time, a great number of young prodigies had come down from the Immortal Realm, and there were even many powerful figures famous for years; their core objective was only one thing: the descended demonic child.

The high-level figures of the world behind the Immortal Gate seemed even more certain of that person’s existence, and even more wary of him.

Old Ding finally revealed the purpose of bringing him into the Burial Immortal Desert Sea.

“We are going there to plant a special plant. We brought someone who specializes in this, but since we happened to meet the inheritor of the Green Bamboo Garden, having you along gives us an extra layer of insurance.”

In the presence of a great figure of the third realm, even though the other party was now suppressed to the level of a Returning Light Human Immortal, he was still in an entirely different league from that Wang Yan, whom he had swatted down like a mole.

Qin Yue remained extremely cautious, continuously circulating a secret technique so that he would appear to be nothing more than an ordinary Void-Perceiving cultivator.

With great respect, he said, “With seniors like you protecting us, this junior will certainly do his utmost.”

“You may rest assured,” Old Ding said again, emphasizing each word. “I keep my word. Once the task is completed, I will certainly take you with us to the Immortal Realm.”

Qin Yue returned to his room and only then let out a long breath. Contact with a third-realm expert was truly enormously pressuring.

When they reached the forbidden zone and the restrictions on the other party were lifted, that feeling would only become even stronger.

Fortunately, the restored concealment technique was formidable; the other party had not sensed anything unusual from him.

Moreover, from Old Ding and the others’ point of view, a young man like him could not possibly resist the temptation of entering the Immortal Realm.

The spirit vessel soon flew out of the small world of the Sunlight Sect and sped westward, toward the Burial Immortal Desert Sea, which lay thousands of miles away.

It was said that the Seven Great Forbidden Zones were all relics of ancient battlefields, within which traces of aura had remained to this day, creating astonishing fields of power.

They nurtured terrifying beings, while some lingering obsessions had also transformed into strange creatures of boundless might.

Yet there were also all manner of treasures there: divine weapons, magical artifacts, and even remnants of divine intent, from which one could comprehend supreme methods.

It was simply far too dangerous. From ancient times to the present, the seven great forbidden lands had swallowed who knew how many prodigies and powerful figures.

After Qin Yue came out, the communication stone remained silent.

There were not many people who could contact him. Aside from the Hu brothers he had first met, there were also Hu Jiuyan, Mu Xingruo, Feng Qianning, and the fellow disciples of the Heavenly Net Sect such as Chen Qianzhang.

If those people did not contact him, he did not dare casually use the communication stone aboard the ship, lest it lead to unnecessary trouble.

On this enormous spirit vessel, there were more than twenty people from the Immortal Gate. They did not seem like many, but according to Old Ding, when they first opened the Immortal Gate, over a hundred people came through at once.

More had continued to “descend into the mortal world” afterward without end.

The appearance of a celestial anomaly was given far greater importance in the Immortal Realm than in the major sects of the human world.

Those people were mainly searching for the descended demonic child, though they were also very interested in the ancient ruins revealed after the anomaly.

The latter was like a map where the difficulty had been reduced many times over, yet where top-tier equipment could still be obtained.

To treat the human world as a trial ground offered both experience and rewards, making it enormously tempting to the people of the Immortal Realm.

Among them, there would surely also be a small number of self-proclaimed exceptional people who chose to enter the great forbidden zones.

Just like herb gatherers: even if precious medicinal plants grew on perilous cliffs and sheer crags, they would still risk their lives to dig them up.

Nothing else mattered; the profits were simply too great.

The journey passed without incident.

Qin Yue, like the others, shut himself in his room and cultivated day after day.

When he came out this time, Ling Jinsong and Yue Mingxi had both secretly given him a large amount of cultivation resources.

By their reckoning, it should have been enough for several years of cultivation.

But for Qin Yue, it would at most last two or three months.

Still, breaking through to the sixteenth layer would pose no problem at all.

Several days later.

They finally reached the border region of the Burial Immortal Desert Sea.

The moment the spirit vessel landed, they were met by an “attack.”

A muffled buzzing rolled in from the horizon. At first, they thought it was a sandstorm passing by, until that black tide blotting out the sky and sun pressed overhead did they realize it was countless beetles beating their wings.

These things came far too fast.

Their entire bodies were black as ink, and their shells were covered in dark red vein-like patterns, as if soaked through with old bloodstains. The tips of their six legs gleamed with a metallic chill, and their compound eyes reflected a fierce scarlet glow in the sunlight.

“They’re Corrupted Divine Beetles!” a young disciple of the Immortal Gate cried out. Before the words had even faded, two of the people scouting ahead had already been swallowed by the swarm.

The disciple who had cried out retreated rapidly.

The beetles were so fast that only afterimages remained. Though they were only the size of thumbs, when they launched themselves they were like bolts shot from a crossbow, instantly tearing through the protective light barriers around those two men and the magical robes beneath.

Even more horrifying was their shells. A burly man wielding a greatsword swung down with full force, and when the blade struck the swarm, sparks burst forth; it only left a pale white scratch on the beetles’ backs.

Instead, several beetles crawled along the spine of his sword onto the back of his hand. Their pincers snapped shut, ripping away an entire chunk of flesh. Gray-black mist immediately rose from the wound, and the flesh rotted away at a visible speed.

The next instant, he was completely engulfed.

When the beetle tide landed, it spread across the wasteland like a black flood. Wherever it passed, the gravel rustled and ground beneath it, and even hard rock was gnawed into dense clusters of holes.

Old Ding and the others’ faces grew grave, and they reacted swiftly.

Someone unleashed fire-based divine powers. In the instant the flames rose, a swath of beetles was indeed burned down, but before the blaze could spread, more beetles charged through the sea of fire, trampling over the corpses of their companions.

The dark red patterns on their shells lit up, and they actually absorbed the flames, turning them into a lustrous sheen of their own.

A female cultivator who tried to ride a magical artifact into the air had just left the ground by several yards when a swarm of beetles flying in from the side smashed into her. Amid the brittle crack of a hairpin breaking, her figure was instantly swallowed by the black tide.

She only had time to let out half a brief scream before all that remained was a bloodstained dress drifting down from the swarm. Beetles still crawled over the fabric, chewing it apart until even the threads were ground to pieces.

Qin Yue looked utterly horrified. The terror of the forbidden zone was now manifested before his eyes in such an immediate, visceral way.

He had thought that at least these Immortal Realm visitors would have made some preparations.

But looking at them now, why did they seem like a hastily assembled makeshift crew?

The air filled with a thick stench of blood and decay. It was not ordinary bloodiness, but something more like the foul reek of rotting divinity mixed with earth, and merely inhaling it made one’s sea of consciousness feel heavy.

Old Ding, expressionless, took out a defensive treasure. The moment the pale green barrier expanded, it was violently shaken by the sky-filling beetles crashing against it.

Still, it finally held.

But in the blink of an eye, they had already lost three people: the two scouts in front and one female cultivator.

At this point, several other powerful elders all cast fire-based divine powers.

Outside the pale green barrier, everything instantly turned into a sea of flames.

Countless Corrupted Divine Beetles fell crackling to the ground. Even through the protective barrier, one could feel the terrifying power of those fire techniques; yet the beetles were not burned to ash.

Just as one-third of the swarm was burned to death, the remaining ones whooshed away like a rapidly flying mass of dark clouds.

“Was that meant to give us a little warning?” one elder said with a somewhat ugly expression.

“Heh, that’s how forbidden zones are. At least we came prepared,” Wang Hong said, his body radiating an astonishing sword intent.

Qin Yue’s mouth twitched slightly. Three people died in the blink of an eye, and that counted as being prepared?

Old Ding glanced at him and said indifferently, “Those who died were not real people, only puppets made of paper.”

Qin Yue was slightly taken aback. He looked toward the direction where those three had just been swallowed by the swarm, and was surprised to discover that there were no bones or blood there at all.

Wang Hong shot him a sideways glance, his eyes full of contempt. What a timid, ignorant youngster. If not for the fact that the identity of inheritor of the Green Bamboo Garden had some use, this sort of thing would have been driven out of the sect yesterday.

“Truly an immortal’s method. Amazing!” Qin Yue praised sincerely.

Just as his concealment and deception techniques prevented others from seeing through his true cultivation, he had likewise failed to see that those three living, breathing people were in fact fakes.

Although the mortal world had divine powers, it was still more like a world of high martial arts. The methods of the Immortal Gate were truly enough to stir longing.

He could not help but look at the others and think: could it be that, aside from the few powerful figures who gave his sea of consciousness such pain before, the rest are all fake too?

Old Ding said in a deep voice, “From here on, everyone be more careful.”

Then he looked at Qin Yue. “You stay close to me.”