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Chapter 375: Black Stone Mountain
Chapter 375: Black Stone Mountain
Chapter 375: Black Stone Mountain
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Translator: Cinder Translations
In the desert dozens of miles away from the oasis,
Song Wen, the Lizardman, and the Ghost King stood together beneath a sand dune.
The Ghost King held a massive sword, tasked with intimidating the Lizardman.
Song Wen gestured, attempting to extract some useful information from the Lizardman.
He had learned from Hu Guang that female Lizardmen could engage in some simple communication.
In Hu Guang's memory, there was a third-stage Lizard King among this Lizardman clan.
It was precisely because of this Lizard King's presence that the Lizardman tribe could secure a place in the oasis teeming with monsters.
Earlier, the Lizardman tribe had encountered a catastrophe, yet that third-stage Lizard King did not appear.
After much gesturing, Song Wen still could not make himself understood; the female Lizardman couldn't comprehend his meaning.
Finally, he drew a tall and robust figure of a Lizardman in the sand.
Only then did the female Lizardman understand.
It pointed toward the eastern horizon and started chattering excitedly.
Song Wen roughly understood that it was saying the Lizard King had gone to some distant place in the east.
Next, Song Wen took out a map.
The map depicted a semi-transparent blue stone.
This was precisely the Soul Concealment Jade he was searching for.
Song Wen initially wanted to locate the Lizard King to obtain information about the Soul Concealment Jade directly from it.
The Lizard King was the most powerful among the Lizardmen, possessing the highest intelligence, making communication much easier than with the second-stage Lizardmen.
Since the Lizard King was nowhere to be found, he could only settle for second best, trying to gather information about the Soul Concealment Jade from the peak second-stage female Lizardman.
The female Lizardman gazed at the map, lost in thought.
After a long time, it raised its hand and pointed east.
Song Wen was baffled and could not discern what it was indicating.
The Lizardman squatted on the sand, mimicking Song Wen's previous gestures, and drew several smaller Lizardmen behind the image of the Lizard King.
Then, it found a piece of broken stone about the size of a thumb and placed it in front of the drawing of the Lizard King.
The figures it drew were crooked and hard to recognize.
After staring for a long time, Song Wen finally understood.
The female Lizardman meant to say that there was Soul Concealment Jade at the location where the Lizard King had gone.
Of course, this was merely Song Wen's conjecture; he wasn't certain whether he was right or wrong.
He pointed east and then gently nudged the Lizardman with his spiritual energy, indicating for it to lead the way to find the Lizard King.
The Lizardman shook its head repeatedly, waving its hands, as if afraid of the place the Lizard King had gone.
The Ghost King suddenly raised his hand, and a pitch-black sword energy shot out, landing beside the Lizardman's feet.
The female Lizardman was startled by the swirling dust kicked up by the sword energy, and it hurriedly lifted its leg and headed east.
Song Wen retracted the Ghost King and flew behind the Lizardman on his sword.
In the daytime desert, it felt like a massive furnace, with scorching heat mixed with a trace of sunlight, making the Ghost King feel somewhat uncomfortable.
Perhaps truly frightened by the Ghost King, the Lizardman obediently led the way in front.
A Lizardman and a human traversed the boundless desert for two days.
In the distance, a black stone mountain came into view.
The stone mountain was a massive solid rock formation. It wasn't very tall, but it was extremely wide, resembling a giant beast lying flat on the ground.
The stone mountain had a hollowed-out interior, with a massive opening nearly a hundred
feet high, like a giant beast ready to swallow a person whole.
A chilling wind blew out from the cave entrance.
This cold wind was in stark contrast to the scorching air of the surrounding desert.
The female Lizardman halted outside the cave entrance, pointing at the dark cave while shaking its head and looking terrified, unwilling to step inside.
Song Wen summoned the Ghost King again, and under the Ghost King's coercion, the Lizardman reluctantly stepped into the cave.
The Lizardman feared this cave so much that it was evident there were many dangers within. Having the Lizardman lead the way was clearly insufficient.
Song Wen quietly released the Sacred Gu, sending it to scout deeper into the cave.
Inside the cave, it was pitch black, devoid of spiritual energy.
As he ventured further into the cave, Song Wen noticed that his spiritual sense was gradually being suppressed, and even the flow of spiritual energy within his body began to slow down.
Song Wen couldn't help but feel anxious; this Black Stone Mountain was too strange, and he couldn't confirm whether the Soul Concealment Jade truly existed here, or if it was worth the risk of entering this place.
However, considering that Tai He might come after him at any moment, Song Wen could only choose to press on.
The female Lizardman leading the way, however, did not share Song Wen's concerns.
It had no spiritual energy or spiritual sense from the start, completely unaware of the strange aspects of the Black Stone Mountain.
After walking for ten breaths into the cave entrance, the cave suddenly changed direction, shifting from horizontal to vertical, extending almost straight down into the depths.
The Lizardman stopped at the edge of a cliff deep inside the cave, its face filled with hesitation.
At that moment, a large black foot suddenly appeared and kicked the Lizardman in the back.
"Quack!"
Amidst the panicked screams, the Lizardman fell down.
After plummeting several hundred feet, the Lizardman slowly regained control of its body,
struggling to get closer to the cliff wall, and its claws sank into the hard rock.
The Lizardman's falling speed decreased sharply.
After leaving claw marks several feet long on the rock face, it finally came to a stop.
Looking down into the dark vertical pit below, it was filled with trepidation.
The pit seemed bottomless; if it fell straight to the bottom, even if its physical body were
incredibly strong, it would end up as nothing more than a puddle of mush.
At this moment, the Ghost King slowly flew over.
A streak of sword energy was unleashed, landing just an inch above the Lizardman's hands.
The rock was shaved away, and without a foothold, the Lizardman fell again.
Every couple of hundred feet, the Lizardman would stab its hands into the rock wall, slowing
its descent, only to leave the wall again under the Ghost King's coercion and continue falling
down.
Song Wen followed behind the Ghost King and the Lizardman from a distance of about a hundred feet, descending slowly and steadily.
After about fifteen minutes, the Lizardman, the ghost, and the human finally reached the
bottom of the cave one after the other.
Two passages appeared before them, one to the left and one to the right.
Looking at the nearly identical passages that headed in completely opposite directions, Song
Wen momentarily didn't know which to choose.
He could only turn his gaze to the Lizardman.
In response to Song Wen's inquiry, the Lizardman shook its head repeatedly, indicating it had
never been here and didn't know which path to take.
Song Wen did not rashly make a choice and quietly stood still, waiting.
About a stick of incense later, the Ghost King prodded the Lizardman and went towards the
left passage.
Just now, the Sacred Gu had scouted both passages.
It found traces of spirit activity in the left passage.
The passage further underground had become much narrower, only a few feet wide.
The suppression of spiritual sense and energy in this area had also intensified.
Soon, Song Wen arrived at the location where the Sacred Gu had detected traces of spirit activity.
These were claw marks left by a beast.
The gaps in the claw marks were quite small but extremely deep, nearly a foot deep.
At first, Song Wen thought these were claw marks left by the Lizardman, but upon closer inspection, he discovered something.
There was a faint trace of corpse energy remaining on the claw marks.
These were the marks left by a walking corpse, and it was an exceptionally powerful one.
Song Wen estimated that it was at least a second-stage bronze corpse.
Otherwise, the claw energy it unleashed would not have pierced the hard black rock so deeply.
(End of the Chapter)
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