Chapter 95: Qin Feng in Peril
Yun Qing waited for quite a while, but Liuliu still had not returned with anything.
That made her suspect that the blow she had landed at the cost of her own health had not struck the insect at all, but Qin Feng.
Yes, it had been Qin Feng. The blow had originally been meant for the crimson iron spirit insect, but when Qin Feng saw the stone flying toward him, he thrust out a leg to block it.
After Qin Feng had finished devouring the crimson iron spirit insect, his health had recovered to even more than before, but the missing leg could not grow back. For him, with so many legs and no sense of pain, it made no difference.
After a sweep of his divine sense, Qin Feng found two places his spiritual awareness could not penetrate.
“Wait here for now. I will go and investigate.” Taking a mortal along with him was dangerous enough, and Yun Qing had her own strange aspects as well. He did not want her involved in everything.
“Yes!”
Strength decided everything. Yun Qing could understand why Qin Feng would not bring her along to explore the unknown map.
After Qin Feng left, the system gave her no further hints for unlocking the secret realm, so Yun Qing began searching the safe zone for clues.
After checking around, the small map in the upper right corner had opened by only the tiniest amount. She had thoroughly examined the safe zone, and Yun Qing noticed that the ladder leading downward was gone.
Thinking back to the chewing sounds Qin Feng had made when he came up, Yun Qing boldly guessed, “Liuliu, could it be that what Qin Feng ate not long ago was the ladder?”
“It is possible. Without a ladder, I’m afraid you won’t be able to move freely up and down.”
“Yes. I only have ropes, and not nearly long enough ones. Going down would be manageable, but climbing back up is almost impossible. Either I need to find a way out above, or be one hundred percent certain I will never need to come back up before I go down.”
Yun Qing groped around the spot where the ladder had been and felt something there, seeming to be a portion of the ladder Qin Feng had not completely eaten.
When she held it in her hand, it looked like a strand of white, semi-transparent thread, though the dim light made it hard to see clearly.
Just as Yun Qing was about to ask Liuliu what it was, a system prompt appeared for the white semi-transparent thread: spider silk.
Spider silk: a valuable resource, suitable for making weapons or clothing.
Delighted, Yun Qing stored it away in her system backpack. A dungeon at hell-mode difficulty was truly something else; so long as Qin Feng had not eaten it, there were plenty of good things to pick up everywhere.
She waited a while longer, but saw no movement and no sign of Qin Feng returning.
She could not place all her hope in Qin Feng. She had to find a way out herself.
“Liuliu, I’m going out to check the situation.”
“Now that’s more like it. Just be careful that all the good things are eaten by Qin Feng, and you are left only with fertilizer and scraps of wood.”
“Didn’t I already pick up two decent things?”
Stepping out of the safe zone, she carefully explored the secret realm.
Yun Qing searched around the area near the safe zone so that she could flee back at any sign of danger.
Outside the safe zone, the light was dim. As far as she could see, it was a vast, flat stretch with no visible end.
As expected, she encountered no danger, nor did she get lucky enough to find any more good items. Now and then she came upon scenes of battle, the traces still fresh; they might have been Qin Feng’s doing. She did not see any monster corpses, and if nothing unexpected had happened, they had surely all been eaten by Qin Feng.
Along the way, there were many dust-covered glowing stones. She did not dig them up, leaving them to continue illuminating the secret realm. She already had plenty in her system backpack, enough for her own use.
The circle Yun Qing searched grew larger and larger, yet she still saw no trace of Qin Feng and found no other leads.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
While searching, Yun Qing heard a series of deafening explosions from afar.
“Liuliu, could Qin Feng have run into trouble or danger? That explosion doesn’t sound like it was caused by a fight.”
Qin Feng was not her teammate, so she could not see his location or health status.
“If you want to know what is happening near the explosion, you need to be within a certain range.”
“Then I’d better go take a look.”
Yun Qing stopped searching for clues near the safe zone and headed straight toward the direction from which the explosions had come.
...
The tremendous blasts were battering the formation of the fourth alchemy workshop, rapidly consuming the workshop’s stockpile of spiritual energy.
Xiao Haoran, trapped within the formation, was already at the end of his strength.
The pills, spirit stones, and every other thing on his person that could replenish spiritual energy had long been exhausted. He could only rely on his last shred of willpower to hold on.
At that moment, when no endless tide of spiritual beasts seemed to be pressing in, he sat down cross-legged on the spot, wanting to recover some spiritual power.
But before even a full circulation of his inner cycle could run, his whole body sank into sleep. His body and soul had been consumed too heavily during this entrapment, and he urgently needed sleep so that his body could repair itself on its own.
...
Along the way, Yun Qing likewise encountered no danger, only newer traces of combat.
After running more than a mile, she saw that the path ahead had already reached its end. There were only gray-black stone walls, and in one place dust was billowing thickly; that must have been the site of the recent explosion.
Yun Qing reached the place where the blast had occurred and examined it carefully. She saw brand-new marks on the ground, like cuts left by blade and sword, seeming to be Qin Feng’s.
Among the scattered ore ahead, there was no text prompt bearing Qin Feng’s name. Yun Qing could not tell whether he was buried beneath the rubble or had already gone far away.
“Senior Qin, are you here?”
No answer came from Qin Feng.
Whether or not Qin Feng replied, Yun Qing intended to remain here for a while first, because she saw a flood of text prompts:
Black iron ore, can be collected.
Perhaps Qin Feng had helpfully blasted open this mine, revealing so much black iron ore, and it all fell into her hands.
“Collection experience +31!”
Acquired: Black iron ore x1.
“Collection experience +31!”
Acquired: Black iron ore x1.
...
“Collection experience +100!”
Acquired: Black iron essence ore x1.
...
Yun Qing busied herself gathering black iron ore, working with great delight. In the blink of an eye, she already had a full stack of black iron ore.
Unfortunately, because she had not prepared enough, her pickaxe had already been damaged.
Even if the pickaxe was broken, she could still dig by hand. It would only hurt her hands a little and be somewhat slower, but the system would mend the motions for her and minimize the damage she suffered.
Yun Qing lowered her head and looked at her hands. Those once delicate hands, after so long of labor since she had crossed over here, were now covered with wounds both old and new and hardened by calluses.
Then she looked at the incomparably hard black iron ore. This thing was truly not easy to dig.
Come to think of it, Qin Feng was fond of eating ore. He might not even be here; otherwise, there would be no chance for her to collect so much ore.
Qin Feng, grievously wounded by the explosion, awoke from unconsciousness.
He saw himself lying within a strange pool. And in this pool was not water, but something the outer demon from beyond the domain called heavenly god water.
Inside the pool, he watched his own body slowly melt away. He no longer had even one leg, and the eyes on each of his legs had all dissolved into the heavenly god water as well.
His body was also melting little by little in the heavenly god water. For hundreds of years, he had long since become one with this body; his soul could not separate from it, and the body’s grave injuries left his spirit dazed.
Having only just awakened, after two breaths Qin Feng clearly understood his predicament. He could not leave this place. Feeling his increasingly blurred divine sense, he thought bitterly: I was being delusional. I have long known that this transformed body simply cannot leave this place.
But he still had many unfinished matters. He could not determine Yan’er’s situation, nor the state of the foundation he had built over centuries, nor his possessions, nor what had become of his Qin Family Manor, and so on.
Yun Qing was just about to dig at the ore with her bare hands when Qin Feng’s weak voice transmission sounded in her mind.
“Miss Yun Qing, is that you?”