Chapter 105: Battlefield in the Abyss

“As expected!”

The scene within the Void Realm made Bai Jingjing, who had grown tense after Wuhua appeared, suddenly change her expression. Her eyes fixed upon Lin Qiu with a mixture of surprise and delight. “You really are hiding a secret.”

The tone in her voice carried a hint of excitement.

Monk Wuhua, the Demon-Subduing Venerable of the Great Buddha Sect, was a nightmare for the yokai—no one knew how many of their kin he had purified. In the city, if there was anyone the yokai feared most, it was him.

Yet Lin Qiu had managed to frighten Wuhua away!

Bai Jingjing was so exhilarated that her entire body trembled, and the look she gave Lin Qiu grew ever more curious, even strange. To be able to scare off Wuhua—what kind of secret did this man possess? The thought made her heart race with excitement.

“Pathetic, what a coward,” Lin Qiu sneered, the power he’d suppressed within him dispersing once more, circulating through his limbs and bones. He took out a small mirror, gazing at the handsome young man reflected within, his eyes filling with infatuation.

“Absolutely stunning,” he murmured in intoxicated self-admiration, though inwardly his heart raced with fear.

He had truly been terrified just now, his nerves on edge, but he had managed to drive Wuhua away, securing his safety for the time being. Yet the monk’s parting words—“We’ll meet again”—lingered ominously in his mind. Wasn’t that just like a bone-clinging maggot?

“It seems that when all this is over, I’ll have to return to the underwater world. This city is even more dangerous than I imagined. The primal yokai, the Undying Demon Sect, and now the Great Buddha Sect as well—truly enough to scare anyone to death!”

“This Wuhua is almost at the eighth tier of power. If not for the crystal cannon frightening him off, even if I killed him, the entire Great Buddha Sect would come after me in vengeance.”

“Thank goodness, thank goodness,” Lin Qiu let out a long sigh of relief. For now, he was safe.

“Wuhua, once I evolve, I’ll use you as my sacrifice!” A ruthless smile touched Lin Qiu’s lips as he turned to the others. “The people nearby have been frightened. We need to act quickly and calm them down.”

With that, the group moved into action. Armed with hypnotic pistols provided by Liu Changfeng, they soothed the panic-stricken people one by one. The device couldn’t erase memories, but it could calm nerves and restore composure. By the time everyone was settled, it was already four in the morning.

Heize yawned, transformed into his true form, and curled up in a corner of the convenience store, falling soundly asleep. Lin Qiu returned to his own room and, when no one was looking, transformed into a wisp and vanished without a trace.

Yet he was unaware that his every move was being tracked by something called the Void Realm.

In her room, Bai Jingjing’s eyes widened in shock.

“Where did he go?”

She shot upright in bed, staring at the image in the Void Realm, her heart filled with astonishment. She had been tracking Lin Qiu all along, but now he had simply vanished before her very eyes. Truly vanished, as if he’d evaporated into thin air—how had he done it?

Bai Jingjing lost her composure and quietly slipped into Lin Qiu’s room to search thoroughly, but found nothing unusual.

He really had disappeared without a trace.

“Damn it, where on earth have you gone?” Her face darkened. She’d been hoping to uncover his secrets, but now the man had vanished!

“Lin Qiu…” Her hands clenched, knuckles cracking. After a long moment, she exhaled slowly, a cold smile tugging at her lips. “You might escape the monk, but you can’t escape the temple. So long as Xu Bing is here, you’ll have to return eventually.”

With a final glance at the room, she snorted softly and quietly returned to her bed.

Meanwhile, in the oceanic realm, Lin Qiu appeared before the gates of the aquatic trial grounds where he’d last departed. The two aquatic creatures who had guarded the gate before—a sea pig brother and a sea mouse—had already been devoured by him. Later, he consumed all the other trial participants and began his evolution.

But just as he was about to break through to the fourth tier, Xu Bing had intercepted him, stealing away the power of his evolution. Yet, thanks to Xu Bing, he had acquired the Dragon Vein, transforming from a lowly gatekeeper with orca blood into a dragon-whale, inheriting the bloodline of a true dragon from the primordial era.

He’d followed the bond’s channel to the human world, where he became an enforcer for the Bureau of Exotic Beasts.

The recent days had been so busy that he hadn’t had time to return to the underwater world. But after tonight’s encounter with Wuhua, sensing the growing danger, he quietly returned to his room and slipped away.

The spiritual channel had one advantage: wherever he left from, he would return to the same place. Thus, upon his return, he found himself at the gates of the trial grounds once more.

Now, however, the place was deserted.

The opening of these trial grounds was only known to a few nearby ancient cities; the rest of the merfolk had not yet received word. After Lin Qiu had wiped out all the merfolk here, no news had spread.

A faint, cold smile crossed his lips as he transformed into a half-meter-long dolphin. He glanced at the sea beyond the gates, hesitated briefly, then flicked his fins and shot forward in a stream of light, slipping inside.

“Ding, facial recognition in progress!”

“Ding, dolphin detected!”

“Ding, bloodline cannot be identified!”

“Ding…”

As he passed through the gates into the waters beyond, a voice echoed in his mind—not that of the system, but the trial grounds’ facial recognition mechanism. Anyone wishing to enter was identified by face, species, and bloodline, and linked to an identity.

Lin Qiu was the only aquatic creature to make it in, so before him now lay nothing but ruins. In the sunken trench, countless shattered remains lay scattered: a massive ship split in two, a sharp sword buried deep in the seabed.

Lin Qiu floated in place, stunned by the sight. He even saw a gigantic mech lying silently in the trench.

“System, what is this…”

“In answer to the host, this is the battlefield of five civilizations.”

“Here, nearly all the technological legacies of those five civilizations are buried.”

“A battlefield?” Lin Qiu’s eyes narrowed in doubt. The ocean was so vast—why would the battlefield be here?

“According to signals gathered by this system, in the distant ancient past, there emerged a powerful and evil being in these seas. Its arrival brought calamity to five eras. In each era, the aquatic clans would send armies to attack. Yet this evil being was virtually immortal. Every time the aquatic warriors attacked, they would all perish here.”