Star Odyssey

Chapter 1792: Fruit

Lan Si was not the only one who entered Burial Garden at this time, and there were also some people who felt forced to enter Burial Garden due to them being in a dangerous situation.

However, most people continued to sit back and watch, intending to wait until they knew whether or not people could return after entering the gates.

The gates did not close after they opened. The Great Eastern Alliance sent in several volunteers with the goal of exiting as soon as they entered. However, even after several days passed, no one returned.

Lu Yin stood outside the gate to Burial Garden, waiting for a few days. During this time, he called Yuan Shi and other older powerhouses. Lu Yin’s goal was to learn more about Burial Garden, but not a single one of the old experts would share any details with him. The only information that Lu Yin was able to glean was that there were fiends in Burial Garden.

Fiends were humans that had taken the wrong cultivation path, and although they were evil, they were also powerful. Human fiends had been born when Burial Garden had last opened, and they had slaughtered almost all of the people who had entered Burial Garden before conducting massacres throughout the entire Fifth Mainland. Ultimately, the Hall of Honor had been forced to step forward and execute all of the fiends.

There were risks and benefits to be had whenever Burial Garden opened. The birth of fiends was also the reason why Burial Garden could never be casually opened.

Although this was what Lu Yin learned from Yuan Shi, Lu Yin felt that some fiends appearing should not be enough for Burial Garden to remain closed most of the time. There had to be a deeper reason.

"Alliance Leader, someone’s come back out," En Ya reported. "They’re on Yima Planet."

"I’m going." Lu Yin immediately headed out.

Yima Planet was a perfectly average planet, and the civilization’s development was at a similar level to what Earth had reached before its apocalypse. The people of Yima Planet were in the process of exploring nearby planets, and they were completely ignorant about anything at all regarding the rest of the universe.

The appearance of one of Burial Garden’s gates had an unparalleled impact on the residents of Yima Planet. Even in the face of death, they would have never imagined that, one day, a tomb with a gate would appear in the middle of a street.

The entire planet grew excited when the gate appeared, and every country on the entire planet asked to be able to explore it. However, because Yima Planet was a place that had not discovered cultivation, the gate could not be opened by the strength of any individual resident. Instead, it was eventually opened by the most powerful technological weapon that existed on the planet. Even then, it only opened the gate, and it was quickly decided to send in an army.

The people of Yima Planet believed that their most powerful weapons and a powerful army would be strong enough to explore the entrance to Burial Garden. However, none of them could have imagined that their entire army would be slaughtered before a single person even managed to enter the gate by a cultivator who had rushed out of the gate. This person had raced towards outer space, only to be captured by the Great Eastern Alliance.

The person was only an Explorer, and while such a person was very powerful by the standards of Yima Planet and was even able to destroy their entire planet, just one of the Great Eastern Alliance’s battleships was enough to deal with such a person.

Yima Planet entered an age of interstellar exploration all because of the appearance of Burial Garden’s gate on their planet.

Lu Yin also went to visit Yima Planet.

His hands were clasped behind his back as he observed the ruins of the buildings on either side of the street where the tomb had appeared. He was surrounded by soldiers from the Allied Forces as well as members of the Lu Elite Troops.

"Tell me what happened inside," Wang Wen commanded. He had followed Lu Yin to the planet in order to question the Explorer who had exited the gate.

The man’s name was Shi San, and he was just an average Explorer. He was so terrified at being confronted by people from the Great Eastern Alliance that his body was overcome with a sense of weakness, and he immediately shared everything he knew.

According to Shi San, he had entered Burial Garden in a distant minor flowzone. He had stayed in Burial Garden for a few days and then coincidentally stumbled upon an exit that had led him straight to Yima Planet. He also shared information regarding the environment in Burial Garden. He said that the ground was a dark red that looked as though it had been soaked in blood and that it did not seem to have been made of earth, but rather pieces of flesh.

The environment was also not homogenous. When Shi San had first entered Burial Garden, the ground had been a dark-red earth, but at the exit, it had been more like rusted metal. He had passed through two zones in Burial Garden.

"The ground was like rusted metal?" Lu Yin was surprised.

Shi San's entire body trembled as he looked at Lu Yin. They briefly locked eyes, and Shi San instantly lowered his head. "Yes, it was definitely rusty, and it actually looked like it had corroded due to sheer age rather than anything else."

"You entered a gate in a flowzone very far from Yima Planet. How could you cover such a vast distance with your strength?" Wang Wen was curious about this.

Shi San said, "I don’t know. All I know is that I traveled at my normal speed, but I somehow arrived here in just a few days."

"It could be that the entrances lead to random places within Burial Garden, but the exits are fixed. Yima Planet has one of the exits, but the gate at the Ross Empire’s mobile fortress might not be an exit at all," Wang Wen analyzed.

"Oh. Also, in addition to the different regions, there are also moving corpses in there," Shi San suddenly said.

Lu Yin's eyes instantly went wide. "Explain."

Shi San’s voice shook as he continued, "One day after I entered Burial Garden, I saw a corpse that was constantly eating dirt. It would spit it back out and then eat it again. It just kept repeating those two things over and over."

"How do you know that it was a corpse?" Wang Wen pressed.

Shi San said, "I’m an Explorer, and after living and training for hundreds of years, it’s easy to tell the difference between a corpse and a living human. I first thought that it was one of the Neohuman Alliance’s corpse kings, but I eventually realized it wasn’t. Still, the corpse moved, though it was really strange how it just kept eating dirt the whole time."

"Was there only one?" Lu Yin stared at him.

Shi San nodded. "I only came across that one."

Lu Yin’s eyes narrowed as he fell into thought, but he did not say anything more.

"Masters from the Great Eastern Alliance, can I leave now?" Shi San asked carefully.

Wang Wen grinned. "Of course."

Shi San heaved a sigh of relief.

"Just hand over everything you found in Burial Garden. Don't worry, we’ll pay a fair price for everything that you found," Wang Wen added. His smile was bright, and his tone sincere as he made these demands.

Shi San's heart dropped, and his expression grew stiff. "Sir, what are you talking about? I really don’t understand."

Wang Wen squatted down to get closer to Shi San. "You’re a smart person, and I’m considered pretty smart myself. Since we’re all smart people here, there’s no need to talk in circles: take out everything that you picked up while in Burial Garden. While I may not know if we want what you have or not, we’ll still take it all and pay you a fair price.”

Shi San gritted his teeth. "I really don’t know what you’re talking about."

Wang Wen's face turned sour. "The first thing you did after exiting Burial Garden wasn’t to check your location, but rather to head straight for outer space. There are no cultivators on Yima Planet, so there’s no one here who can threaten you, and you would have run away if you hadn’t been caught by the Allied Forces. So, tell me, why were you in such a big hurry to leave? You clearly had some reason to want to run away so quickly, or at least to avoid other people, and I can only think of one reason for that. You found something in there.”

"Hurry up and bring it out. The universe runs on survival of the fittest. Fortunately for you, our Great Eastern Alliance has a good reputation. If you had managed to run into other people when you came out, they might not have been as willing to chat with you as we have been."

Shi San was trapped, and his face revealed his bitterness as he stared at his cosmic ring and fought an internal battle. In the end, he dumped out everything in it.

Lu Yin looked at the pile, and his eyebrows rose as he stared at an oval-shaped, blood-red object that looked like a fruit. His pupils transformed into runes, and he was shocked to see that the fruit possessed enough runes to compare to an Enlighter with a power level of 300,000.

Shi San picked up the oval fruit and held it out. "This is what I found in the region with the red ground."

Wang Wen took the fruit, but since he could not see rune lines, he turned to Lu Yin with a questioning look.

Lu Yin took the thing, but he still did not know what it was.

"Only one?" Wang Wen asked.

Shi San's eyes flickered. "Now, yes. There were two, but I ate one. Actually, I only just became an Explorer, but my power level doubled in just a few days after I ate the fruit."

Wang Wen was caught off guard. "You actually went ahead and ate this thing? Weren’t you worried about being poisoned?"

Shi San’s voice turned bitter. "I wasn’t alone in Burial Garden, as I met an enemy there. It was a fight to the death, and I didn’t have any options left. After I ate the fruit, my strength spiked, and I managed to kill my opponent. This is the only one left now."

Wang Wen looked back at Lu Yin. "What do you think? Do you want to eat it?"

Lu Yin stared at the fruit for a while, thinking about it. However, instead of eating it, he called Qing Cao.

Qing Cao was the Hall Master of Windrift Hall, and he was a highly respected healer. He was the best person to ask about this fruit.

The man was still in Venom Flowzone, and Lu Yin could tell by the background of the video that the man was still in the same place as where they had met.

"You’re asking me about this thing?" Qing Cao carefully observed the fruit in Lu Yin's hands through the video call. He thought for a moment before saying, "It should be a human blood fruit."

Lu Yin's expression changed a bit. "A human blood fruit?"

Qing Cao nodded. "When the blood of certain powerhouses falls onto the ground, possibly because of special cultivation techniques or natural treasures that they’ve eaten, their blood won’t dry up or coagulate, but will instead condense and solidify to form these fruits. These things are basically formed by using the blood of powerhouses as fertilizer.

"While these fruits are rare, they aren’t unheard of. Eating one can allow a person’s cultivation to rise quickly, but not by much."

Lu Yin nodded. "I understand. Thank you."

Qing Cao asked, "Alliance Leader Lu, are you hoping to raise your strength with that fruit?"

Lu Yin quickly replied, "Of course not. I can't eat something like this."

Qing Cao smiled. "There are many different means of raising one’s strength in this universe, not just absorbing star energy. There have been some truly powerful cultivators who have created alternative cultivation methods, much like here in Venom Flowzone. These methods can be either artificial or natural. There are places with unique civilizations like here in Venom Flowzone, or the Specter clan that cultivates with death energy instead of star energy. All of these means are acceptable, so Alliance Leader Lu, if you do hope to improve your strength, there’s no need to use something that’s contaminated like this human blood fruit."

Lu Yin nodded to show his understanding before ending the call. He then handed the fruit back to Shi San. "Did you hear that?"

Shi San nodded. "I heard."

"Are you still going to eat it?" Wang Wen looked at the man.

Shi San gritted his teeth. "For lords like you, there are many options to raise your cultivation, but for people like me, the future is bleak. Even surviving requires a bit of luck. I’ll still eat this human blood fruit."

Lu Yin waved to dismiss the Explorer.

He was not surprised by Shi San's choice, and he would not criticize the decision either. Everyone had their own path, and if Lu Yin had not walked down another’s path, then he was not qualified to criticize or to try to change those choices.

"It looks like there are a lot of good things in Burial Garden. Each region might have different treasures. What are your plans now?" Wang Wen looked at Lu Yin.

Lu Yin grew solemn. "Send some people to stand guard here and have the Giants’ Army station themselves nearby. Capture anyone who exits from this gate."

Anyone who managed to leave Burial Garden might be carrying treasures, and since this exit was in Lu Yin’s territory, there was no way he would allow such an opportunity to slip by.

"Send people to all of the gates that have opened in the Great Eastern Alliance and have them see which gates can be used as exits. Then, send some powerhouses to stand guard at each of the exits and don’t let anyone who comes out of these gates escape."