Chapter 236: Crisis Upon Crisis

Over the next half month, Xu Chen went to explore several tribes near the Feng Clan.

This trip was just as the Elder had previously said, and it also matched his own speculations; the Ancestral Temples of the other five tribes did not have any clues leading to the outside world, only consuming a great deal of his energy and time as he helped the five tribes awaken all their dormant warriors.

Because time was pressing and there were too many people to awaken, he could not use white Qi to help them fully recover their Soul and body one by one; he only managed to awaken them before letting them take the Yang God Underworld-Transforming Pill to slowly recuperate.

However, this trip was not without gains; on the contrary, the harvest was plentiful. He obtained over a hundred stalks of Blood God Grass alone, and also harvested more than twenty God Crystals, almost scraping clean all the treasures in the God Blood Pools of these tribes.

In reality, these were the only two things he currently had any interest in.

As for exotic medicines like the Wangchuan Flower and the Other Shore Flower, although they might have heaven-defying effects if brought to the Mortal World, they only grew in the wilderness of Minghuang, so he could only leave them for later and try to see if he could collect more while searching for a way out.

Additionally, Xu Chen was very interested in the structure of the God Blood Pool and the Blue Space Crystal, so he specifically held in-depth discussions and exchanges with the Old Witch Master.

The Old Witch Master was powerful and had lived for a very long time, and he indeed had some understanding of the structure of the God Blood Pool. To repay Xu Chen for saving his life, he personally took Xu Chen to the God Blood Pool Altar to carefully explain the ancient runes and the structure of the Array upon it. Xu Chen carefully recorded all this content in a Jade Slip, preparing to keep it for slow study later.

As for the Blue Space Crystal, in fact, almost all Minghuang tribes knew how to perform some simple crafting, including the tight-fitting leather clothes they wore and those crude weapons.

These manufacturing theories were very rudimentary, relying mainly on some rune techniques passed down from ancient times.

The application was also simple and crude; they used materials unique to Minghuang, such as the bones of Nether Beasts and the shells and hides of beasts, and used powerful Soul energy to engrave runes through a certain fixed method, then communicated with them using their Soul when using them.

There was no detailed theory; everything was scattered, akin to skills passed down by folk craftsmen through generations, a purely manual tradition.

These Minghuang tribes did not even have a written language nowadays; only strong individuals who had lived long enough, like the Old Witch Master, knew some barely systematic runes to record some knowledge on the walls of the Ancestral Temple or the caves where they lived.

Therefore, in Xu Chen's view, the survival status of these Nether Human Race people was already precarious; in reality, they were exactly like the primitive tribes of the human race in the primordial era, confined to extremely small areas to survive independently.

Because survival resources were extremely limited, the number of people in a tribe could not be too large; once the population exceeded a certain amount, they had to split up and live separately.

At present, there were six tribes near the Feng Clan, including the Feng Clan itself. In fact, these six tribes were all groups that had continued from the Feng Clan's bloodline, but they had been separated for a long time and were now independent; usually, apart from intermarriage, there were no activities worth visiting or communicating about.

The Feng Clan could be considered the strongest among these six tribes. After the dormant warriors of the other five tribes were awakened, currently only four or five in each had recovered their clan patterns, and only one or two had activated Divine Pattern Battle Techniques; in one tribe, not a single person had even sensed a Divine Pattern Battle Technique.

But regardless, these warriors who had recovered their clan patterns were very likely to slowly sense the existence of Divine Patterns in the future. Furthermore, with the existence of powerful warriors who had activated Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, the development space for the tribes had been greatly expanded, at least allowing for much more Ghost Soul Water and food acquisition, enabling these tribes to continue and persist for longer in their future development.

In particular, the awakening of the Old Witch Master made all six tribes very excited and stirred.

The Old Witch Master was definitely already an extremely powerful existence in Minghuang. Having been awakened by Xu Chen through a special method and having recovered his clan patterns to sense a large number of Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, his strength was several times more formidable than before he went dormant.

According to Xu Chen's rough estimate, if the Old Witch Master's body were fully recovered, he should have the strength of a peak True Spirit Realm great cultivator, and his Soul energy would be even stronger, capable of reaching the state of the Spirit Transformation stage.

However, the environment of Minghuang was harsh, and all kinds of powerful Nether Beasts emerged one after another; even a powerful existence in the Shenling Realm could not guarantee that they could walk sideways in the Minghuang Di Jie.

At least until now, there were two Nether Beasts Xu Chen had encountered that the Old Witch Master could not deal with.

One was the scaled giant beast he had caught a glimpse of when he first encountered the Underworld River.

The other was the giant clam that he had completely fused with during the lightning tribulation.

In fact, it was only during the lightning tribulation that he truly understood the old clam's real strength, which far exceeded his initial judgment of it being a Fourth-Rank Nether Beast. Although it might not have reached the True Immortal Realm, judging from the various ancient memories remaining in the old clam's body, this old clam seemed to have appeared ever since the human race first came to Minghuang.

Ten thousand years, one hundred thousand years, or even a million years—it was impossible to judge.

However, although this giant clam had lived long enough, its intelligence was actually very low. It had lived alone in the Underworld River for years, growing a hard Shell and accumulating incomparably rich vitality, but its combat power was extremely trashy, and it was also very timid.

But even so, if the Old Witch Master were to encounter this giant clam in its prime, he probably wouldn't even be able to pry open its Shell, and if he were trapped inside, he might even be swallowed and refined, becoming the cultivation of the clam shell.

Actually, what Xu Chen did not know was that his deduction about the giant clam was hugely biased.

The clam shell had indeed lived long enough and its strength was very powerful, but those memories of the clam shell were not the clam shell's own; rather, it had obtained various scattered memories after living in the Underworld River for years and swallowing some wandering remnant souls and other things. Furthermore, the rich vitality in its body was not all accumulated by the clam shell itself, but was also fused and digested after swallowing other plankton in the Underworld River, and finally preserved through a strange pearl like a demon core.

And apart from these two powerful special Nether Beasts, there was another terrifying thing in Minghuang that everyone turned pale at the mention of: the Ming Insect.

This was a pest that made the Nether Human Race and all Nether Beasts feel fear.

Any powerful Nether World creature, once targeted by a Ming Insect, would basically lose a layer of skin even if it didn't die.

Therefore, whether it was the Nether Human Race or Nether Beasts, they generally fled in a hurry when encountering this kind of insect.

Because the Ming Insect could basically ignore any form of attack and could drill through all defenses and Magic Treasures.

The only way to counter the Ming Insect was to suppress it with powerful Soul energy.

Additionally, once a Ming Insect swallowed the Soul of a Nether Beast or a human, it would enter a dormant stage and would not appear again for a short time. This also gave all creatures in Minghuang some ways to deal with them, which was to use bait to hunt them or sacrifice some clansmen to win time to escape.

In order to make his subsequent actions go more smoothly, Xu Chen did not rush to leave after returning to the Feng Clan; instead, while continuing to repair the Old Witch Master's body and strengthen his Soul, he also kept communicating to obtain more information.

In addition, he used his rest time to help the Feng Clan refine several more furnaces of Yang God Underworld-Transforming Pill, and even learned from the Elder and others how to make some armor and weapons for the Nether Human Race. What gave him the biggest harvest was naturally the application of the Blue Space Crystal.

This kind of crystal had never been heard of in the Mortal World, but it was not rare in Minghuang; many had been passed down by the ancestors of various tribes, and in some places in the wilderness, one could also find some if they were lucky.

However, this kind of crystal was not of much use to the Nether Human Race; as long as they were adult men or women, almost everyone had one. Such a lavish possession of space Magic Treasures made Xu Chen, apart from sighing with emotion, only feel envious.

Seeing that Xu Chen was so interested in the Space Crystal, the Feng Clan rummaged through their warehouse and gave him quite a few. The largest one was a full foot in diameter and had already been polished and processed, but the runes embedded inside with Soul energy had dissipated due to the long time. To use it, he would have to re-engrave the runes to open the space, but according to the Clan Leader, the space inside this crystal was at least half the size of the valley outside, enough to fit the entire Feng Clan tribe inside.

Such a terrifying space Magic Treasure, if placed in the Mortal World, one would not know how many Spirit Stones it would take to buy it.

Or perhaps, no matter how many Spirit Stones, it could not be bought.

In the blink of an eye, another half month passed.

The Old Witch Master had recovered seven or eight tenths, and Xu Chen finally could not wait any longer and decided to set off as soon as possible.

So, after a simple packing, Xu Chen bid farewell to all the Feng Clan people and set off with the Old Witch Master. One used the Divine Pattern Battle Technique Wind Wings, and the other released two Shells, soaring into the air and rushing out of the valley. After a few flashes of teleportation, they plunged into the pitch-black, desolate, and cold world without any light.

In the blink of an eye, he had been trapped in Minghuang for at least four months.

And this journey ahead was rugged and bumpy, full of crises.

Although there were some faint clues, and the Old Witch Master also indicated that he still knew the powerhouses of several powerful tribes far away in this Minghuang and could take him to visit them to find more clues, Xu Chen knew that this way out was hard to find.

Because Minghuang was too large and too complex, and the passage to the Mortal World had been severed for too long, there were no records left.

Whether he could really escape, everything could only depend on heaven's will.

And what he did not know at the moment was that the Mortal World he was thinking of escaping back to had already fallen into unprecedented panic.

Not only around the Great Song, but even in the vast Shenzhou land where the entire human race lived, a large number of countries were suffering from unprecedented Black Mist invasions and Nether Beast attacks; the Immortal and Mortal worlds were already extremely chaotic.

All the countries and Immortal Sects had exhausted their strength but still could not resist; cultivators suffered heavy casualties, defensive lines retreated step by step, and the casualties of ordinary mortals were countless. A large number of small and medium-sized countries collapsed directly or were even completely wiped out. The prosperous human world of thousands of miles was turning into a cold, dead land filled with Black Mist, and the plague of Nether Beasts had become a sweeping trend.

(End of this chapter)