Chapter 912: Deep Within the Nest

With the scorpion queen's death, Lin Qingli breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed to the ground, fainting.

Rebel Candle Night suddenly bristled and leapt up; the scorpion queen's remains melting on the back of the dune formed a pool of golden‑red blood that was slowly flowing toward a certain direction.

"Lead the way." Yan Buji coughed up black blood laced with organ fragments, and gave a detached glance at Lin Qingli lying on the ground.

Rebel Candle Night's tail flame split into seven clusters, like the Big Dipper pointing to the end of the blood‑colored stream.

When the blood‑colored stream seeped into the base of the dune, the entire desert suddenly emitted a muffled rumble like a gut contracting.

Rebel Candle Night raised its head and let out a screech, then suddenly spewed azure flame from its mouth, burning through the beast's stomach sac disguised as sand.

"This is…"

"Cheep cheep cheep!"

"Oh, the divine fire automatically comprehended upon breaking through the Transforming God Realm… Kun‑blue True Flame, isn't that the tenth Heavenly Fire on the Heavenly Fire ranking list?!"

"Cheep!"

Rebel Candle Night proudly lifted its head.

Yan Buji smiled, patted Little Chicken's head: "It wasn't a waste of me raising you for so long."

The stench of rot hit his nose; Yan Buji sensed something, calculated spatial coordinates, swung his Rift Staff to tear open a spatial rift, and with the spiritual beast plunged into the true nest of the Xuan‑sand Scorpion Queen.

The nest's walls were covered with semi‑transparent amber‑like substances, each piece sealing the remains of a cultivator or beast.

Rebel Candle Night's tail flame swept over the nearest amber; a cultivator with a blue face and fangs inside suddenly opened his eyes, his nails crazily clawing the amber's interior.

Yan Buji immediately smashed that amber with a fragment of the Sea Kun Hammer; the corpse turned to sand dust the instant it touched air, leaving only a rusted storage ring that clanged to the ground.

"Devouring Spirit Amber…" he wiped the corpse toxin from the hammer's surface: "This beast actually extracts the prey's inner spirit into amber."

Rebel Candle Night suddenly vaulted onto the right wall; the Kun‑blue True Flame illuminated a dense field of egg‑shaped protrusions, each amber egg coiling a fist‑sized scorpion larva, its tail bearing chaotic Dao markings identical to the queen's.

Rebel Candle Night let out a gluttonous low roar, its pupils expanding into two vertical golden lines.

Before Yan Buji could intervene, the spiritual beast had turned into black lightning and surged toward the egg cluster. The azure tail flame melted the amber shells like a hot knife through wax, and the newborn scorpions were crushed head‑first by sharp teeth before they could awaken.

The dark golden fluid dripped down the spiritual beast's lower jaw, corroding the ground into thin wisps of blue smoke.

"Candle Night!" Yan Buji tried to reel the spiritual beast back, but saw Rebel Candle Night, which had devoured the young scorpions, swell dramatically, its back splitting into two nascent bone wings.

When the fifth scorpion egg was torn open, the entire nest shuddered, and all amber eggs simultaneously glowed with blood‑colored patterns. The Sea Kun Hammer in the storage bag suddenly rose on its own, its handle revealing deep‑sea runes Yan Buji had never seen.

"It's a blood‑line resonance…" he suddenly seized the raging spiritual beast's neck: "These offspring carry the ancient Kun beast bloodline!"

The scorpion queen had no water‑type Dao Mark, so how could its offspring possess such a bloodline?

Rebel Candle Night's fangs had already pierced his wrist, and a phantom scorpion tail flickered in its dark golden vertical pupils.

Yan Buji bit through his tongue despite the pain, spitting refined blood onto the Swallow Desire Pot's surface; ghostly hands extending from the pot's mouth forced the spiritual beast onto the sand.

Rebel Candle Night's bone wings on its back pierced the skin, and its tail flame changed from azure to dark purple.

The suppressed spiritual beast suddenly spoke in human words: "You… dare devour my offspring…"

The voice was unmistakably the lingering divine thought of the Xuan‑sand Scorpion Queen! Yan Buji's temples bulged with blue veins as he poured his remaining spiritual power into the Rift Staff: "Get out!"

The tip of the staff pierced the spiritual beast's forehead, and the spatial rift spread like a spiderweb.

The scorpion queen's lingering thought emitted a high‑pitched scream; Rebel Candle Night seized the chance to bite the ghost hand, and dark‑purple flames eroded backward along the Swallow Desire Pot's patterns.

At the critical moment, Yan Buji directly employed the Swallow Desire Pot, pouring out a massive torrent of desire thoughts to forcibly expel that lingering thought!

The desire thoughts touched the spiritual beast's forehead, and the lingering thought scattered like prey before a natural enemy.

Rebel Candle Night vomited a massive clump of black slime, its bone wings retracting inside, while its tail flame permanently turned gray‑white.

The little creature weakly brushed against its master's charred palm, then suddenly bit his sleeve and tugged toward the deep nest.

"Is it ahead?"

Passing through piles of cultivator corpses as tall as mountains, Rebel Candle Night halted before a rock wall engraved with hourglass totems.

When Yan Buji touched the totem, the Sea Kun Hammer fragments automatically reassembled; the handle's deep‑sea runes resonated with the wall. The rock layer peeled away like flowing sand, revealing an inner crystal‑like chamber, with fist‑sized Time Sand floating at its center, each grain encasing a miniature galaxy.

"No wonder…" Yan Buji panted, "This Time Sand is far more abundant than what I found before…"

He had just taken out the mysterious ice jade case when the Time Sand suddenly surged, the grains transforming into countless scorpion shadows that lunged forward.

Rebel Candle Night leapt into the air, its gray‑white tail flame freezing the flow of Time Sand, buying Yan Buji a brief opening.

The Sea Kun Hammer slammed heavily onto the ground, its body revealing a phantom Kun fish that devoured half of the sand grains.

Yan Buji seized the chance, using the Rift Staff to carve a spatial cage and capture the remaining Time Sand into his pouch!

"Well done!"

Yan Buji praised Rebel Candle Night, and Little Chicken returned to his sleeve to recuperate.

Eating that many scorpions at once, it should have enough to digest for a while.

Fortunately, Rebel Candle Night has a natural resistance to toxins, and the poison on Yan Buji's body was subtly being neutralized by it, which is why he wasn't at all worried about being poisoned.

Continuing deeper into the nest, besides the corpses of cultivators who had strayed into this dead zone, Yan Buji also discovered many Celestial Materials here!

"Seven‑turn Tiger Soul Crystal, Seven‑turn Heavenly Innocent Strange Orchid, Dragonbone Grass, Skewed‑edge Flower…" Yan Buji's eyes lit up.

Although he had killed many people and seized plenty of resources in the Nan Ting Mountain Region before, compared with the Celestial Materials scattered throughout this nest, it still fell short.

Yan Buji walked to the bottom of the nest, feeling the dense water‑type spiritual energy all around, as well as the water‑type laws permeating the air, and couldn't help but look around.

"No wonder."

Yan Buji crouched down and casually dug twice.

A massive Kun‑peng corpse unfolded before Yan Buji's eyes!

"What a powerful aura; even after being dead for so many years, its demonic qi is as dense as a Refining Void‑stage beast. I wonder what realm it was in during life!"

Yan Buji's face brightened with joy; the Sea Kun Hammer was about to break, and with so many Celestial Materials gathered here, it was enough for a refinement.

Although Yan Buji's current fundamental cultivation method differs from Magical Cultivation and Martial Cultivation, in fact the power within his essence can freely employ divine abilities or Daoist martial techniques.

Naturally, the few Accumulation Devices Yan Buji has cultivated for so long are now ready for refinement, to keep pace with his cultivation.

"I still have to kill people and set fires; otherwise, with so many Accumulation Devices on me, I really don't know when I'll finish refining them all," Yan Buji laughed.

Since it's no longer urgent, those hunting them are in this perilously treacherous wasteland, and the Unending Desert even has the ability to slowly Devour cultivators' power; an ordinary person trying to go deep here isn't that simple.

It would be better to say that Yan Buji can only use this short time to quickly refine the Accumulation Device on his body, otherwise he might not be able to escape the Unending Desert.