Rise Of The Worm Sovereign

Lin Wu watched on in anticipation, wondering if they would do it or not. He observed the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle behind him and saw that she was still busy in recovering and was not paying attention to this.

'She would probably act out if she understood the human tongue and learned that I offered the Humans to take whatever they wanted from the temple.' Lin Wu thought to himself.

Lin Wu was of course not going to let them take the main thing he came here for and was merely doing this to see how far the humans could fare on their own. He didn't even know if they would be able to get past the formations on the entrance door or not.

This temple was much bigger than the ones Lin Wu had seen till now and it even had the 'landing pad' for the platform over it. This meant that it had been intentionally made like this and would only be revealed upon the appearance of the platform.

'Though… is there a Specter Skull hound in there?' Lin Wu wondered. 

He reckoned that since this temple was far from the Dread Coil Marsh, it probably would not have a Specter Skull hound hidden in it. It was not like all temples in the Marsh had them either.

Still, Lin Wu was curious and extended his spirit sense to check it out. With the help of the system, Lin Wu easily bypassed the formation blocking the entrance and let his spirit sense enter the temple.

It went all the way in and saw the hundreds of statues of the Vermillion bird in there. 

'Oh? The formations are actually active in this one… Hehe, this would make for a good show.' Lin Wu discovered as the smile on his face widened, making everyone that saw it nervous again.

Lin Wu's spirit sense easily passed through the statues before reaching the inner hall of the temple. This was again blocked by the doors, which did not let Lin Wu's spirit sense pass. But the problem was that it was not being blocked by any formations, but rather due to the material of the doors itself.

'Seems like I'll just have to wait and see what is behind it.' Lin Wu decided.

He withdrew his spirit sense from the temple and closed the formations back up before spreading it across the city. He observed the people and the objects of interest in the city. Lin Wu's spirit sense particularly went to the places which contained things such as books and records.

Since the quake had already made a lot of buildings collapse, their defensive formations were inactive, letting Lin Wu freely access them.

"System, scan these books." Lin Wu ordered secretly.

This was another reason why Lin Wu was stalling for time. He wanted to gather as much information as he could from the city as he knew that if a fight broke out, these things may not survive.

And if the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle woke up and got pissed, she may literally reduce the entire city to ashes in one attack. Lin Wu definitely did not want to waste this chance to obtain more information and upgrade the data banks.

'Who knows, I may even find something relating to the temples here… if a city as big as this was built here, then someone must have known about this temple or had a hunch about it. Hopefully, I get luck…' Lin Wu thought to himself.

Lin Wu had a lot of time to refine his spirit sense in these past few days and the range of his current spirit sense had reached to about five kilometers now. This was quite a lot for a cultivator at the Infant Soul stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

Even an Adult stage Nascent Soul realm cultivator's spirit sense might only reach a maximum range of ten kilometers. And that was IF, they spent enough effort in refining it. Most of them were simply too busy in cultivation and would not spend extra time on something like this.

Most cultivators were fine once their spirit sense reached a range of a couple of kilometers and would only let it increase passively from then on. To them, if they failed in refinement, their spirit sense would collapse and they would have to start again.

This was a tiring process for many and they would get frustrated. The longer one's spirit sense got, the more difficult it was to refine it further. But another thing that happened was that if their spirit sense did collapse during this, they were able to recover it to their previous range much faster than normal.

Still, because it consumed a lot of spirit Qi to do so and that spirit Qi would be lost upon each attempt, there were very few people that would do something like this. Usually, those that had long range spirit sense were those who specialized in Alchemical pill refinement and Formation masters.

Their spirit sense would get used over and over again, with very fine moments and control. This would lead to it getting tempered automatically, such that it would start to passively grow on its own.

Of course, this passive growth could not be compared to the growth of someone of actively refined their spirit sense. Even the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle, who was at the Shell Genesis stage of the Dao Shell realm had a maximum spirit sense range of ten kilometers. 

While Lin Wu had thought about all this, only five minutes had passed in reality. The cultivators were now discussing amongst themselves.

"Who will be the first to enter the temple?" This was the question that they all had.

Both the parties were in a conflict again and didn't want to let the other party be the first to get their hands on the temple. Their temporary truce was dissolved rather quickly.

~Sigh~

"I guess this was bound to happen. Humans often falter in the face of benefit and their greed only pushes them further…" Lin Wu muttered to himself.