Chapter 1792 - 900: Steam Ironclad Soldiers (Part 2)

His figure swayed slightly, moving like light smoke, closely following the massive iron shadow that was continuously causing the ground to tremble and mountains to shake in the darkness. Wang Daoxuan waved his horsetail whisk, creating a gust of wind beneath his feet, while Sha Lifei uttered a low curse and agilely followed like a lynx.

Something is indeed wrong here.

The deeper they went into the mountains, the stronger the sinister feeling grew.

Initially, the smell in the forest changed.

The fresh scent of wet soil and greenery vanished, replaced by a pungent, sweet yet rotten moldy odor that desperately drilled into the nostrils, spinning the mind into a dizzy state.

The fallen leaves underfoot were no longer soft, but instead carried a slippery and sticky sensation that sent chills down the spine, as if stepping on decaying entrails.

Moonlight struggled to penetrate the increasingly dense and twisted canopy, and everything in sight—be it ancient trees, vines, shrubs or weeds—was covered with a thick layer of gray-white mold tinged with a deathly green, as if splashed with thick paint.

More horrifying were the countless mushrooms sprouting densely on that layer of decay.

These mushrooms grew in bizarre shapes, with caps that were plump and colored in eerie shades of fleshy pink or ghastly white.

Most alarming of all, at the center of each mushroom cap, faintly emerged the outline of a blurred and twisted human face! Some appeared to be crying, others seemed to be sneering, silently embedded in the rotting woods, trembling slightly as the breeze passed by.

"Hiss..." Sha Lifei sucked in a breath of cold air, instinctively holding his breath.

Wang Daoxuan’s expression was also grave, clutching several Yellow Talismans in his sleeve.

"Ow—hho hho—"

Piercing, inhuman roars suddenly erupted from all directions!

Accompanied by the mad stomping of dry branches and decaying leaves, distorted figures abruptly pounced from behind the dark trees and rotten bushes!

They were mountain dwellers! And wild creatures in the forest! Wolves, elk, even several half-grown boars!

They were no longer human nor beast-like.

Their tattered clothes or fur clung tightly against skin overrun with gray-green mold and tumor-like mushrooms, indistinguishable from one another.

The exposed skin appeared poisoned, a greenish-purple hue, covered in pustules and oozing yellow pus from festering sores.

Their eyes were clouded, retaining only a bestial frenzy and hunger, charging on all fours with astonishing speed, rushing forward with a strong stench!

As they ran, the mushrooms and human-faced fungi growing on them continuously trembled, releasing plumes of faintly phosphorescent spores visible to the naked eye, like venomous mist spewed by living creatures, spreading in the air!

If ordinary cultivators or martial artists were here, they would certainly be caught in disarray right now.

They would need to dodge the frenzied infected bodies’ bites while constantly channeling Gang Qi or deploying the Poison Avoidance Technique to isolate the ubiquitous spore toxic fog, significantly reducing their combat effectiveness.

However, the "Mysterious Armor Divine Machine" that charged at the forefront was entirely different.

It had no nose and did not need to breathe.

The pervasive toxic fog spores hit its cold and thick iron armor, producing fine "rustle" sounds like rain on banana leaves, but couldn’t leave a single mark, let alone penetrate.

Faced with a swarm of charging infected bodies, its giant iron arms suddenly shook!

"Clang! Clang!"

Two piercing echoes of mechanical triggers rang out!

Beneath its armored iron fists, two thick fist swords flashed out, three feet long and gleaming coldly!

The sword blades were not smooth, etched with densely patterned grooves.

The next instant, the bulky body of the iron machine spun with a speed wildly disproportionate to its clumsy exterior!

Woo—!!!

The massive metal body stirred up a terrifying gust of Gang Qi!

The two fist swords, exhaling evil-breaking golden light, instantly transformed into two spinning death wheels of destruction!

No flashy techniques, just pure power, speed, and the natural restraint of the Evil-breaking Talisman on sinister beings!

Squelch! Crack! Thud!

The sounds of blades slicing through rotten flesh and decayed bones, and iron fists smashing skulls and torsos.

The muffled noise of tearing made one’s scalp tingle, as dense as exploding beans!

Chunks of flesh blended with shattered mushrooms, flying spray of mold stains, and those luminous spores, as if thrown into a high-speed meat grinder, instantly erupted into a bloody storm around the iron spinning whirlwind!

Dismembered limbs, shattered organs, bones knotted with decaying flesh...

Raining down with a "pitter-patter" on the surrounding decaying tree trunks and ground.

The whirlwind ceased.

The "Mysterious Armor Divine Machine" planted its heavy iron feet into the viscous, blood-soaked mire, steam roaring from its body.

Using it as the center, within a radius of thirty feet, only a chaotic mess remained, emitting wisps of black vapor.

A few infected creatures, luckily at the periphery and not swept in, seemed to be intimidated by this pure, cold slaughter machine, letting out whimpers of fear, and shrank back.

Li Yan and his companions followed behind, their boots treading on the sticky ground.

Wang Daoxuan waved the horsetail whisk, a breeze scattering the lingering spores.

Sha Lifei eyed the dripping blood and flesh on the iron armor, clicking his tongue, "What a powerful toy, ruthless!"

Following this path-clearing Killing God, in mere moments, they had brutally crushed out a path paved with flesh through the sinister forest, reaching the source of the evil energy.

This was a shaded mountain hollow.

The terrain was low, never seeing sunlight through the years, cold and damp like an ice cellar.

The soil was unsettling, as if soaked with blood, in a dark red hue.

Several mounds long collapsed beyond recognition, half-hidden in the wild-growing shrubs equally covered with thick mold, vaguely suggested the outline of ancient tombs.

Broken bricks lay scattered, covered in slippery moss and grayish-green fungus.

A dense and indescribable evil odor, a blend of earth, corpse stench, and peculiar medicinal fragrance, weighed heavily on everyone’s chest.

The Earth Energy here was evil; an ideal place for nurturing corpses.

In the deepest part of the hollow, an ancient tomb several times larger than the other mounds had been violently torn open.

Tomb bricks lay in disarray, exposing a pitch-black, bottomless hole.

Like the throat of a giant beast, bits of gray-white cold air were slowly seeping out.

Wherever the cold air passed, the ground swiftly froze into white frost tainted with mold.

Before the tomb, a giant bronze coffin was half-buried in the dark red soil, the other half exposed under the wan moonlight.

The coffin appeared ancient, covered in patina and indistinguishable patterns of intertwined dragons, its lid long vanished.

However, occupying the coffin interior was not some thousand-year-old corpse.

Where the head of the corpse should have been, grew a colossal, extraordinarily bizarre blood-red Lingzhi!

This Lingzhi was as large as a grinding plate, with a fleshy cap heavy and thick, showing a dark, dripping red hue.

The cap surface was not smooth but covered in countless delicate veins.

The strangest part was that it was not still.

The entire massive fungal body, like a sleeping giant’s heart, was pulsating in a slow, heavy rhythm, expanding and contracting!

Each expansion and contraction was accompanied by a faint "poof" sound.

Visibly, flickering with eerie phosphorescent blood-colored spores, a dust-like mist breathed out from the cap’s edges and folds, merging into the surrounding cold air, wafting across the hollow and into the distant forest.

Li Yan’s gaze was firmly locked on the pulsating giant blood ginseng, his brows furrowed deeply.

The aura it emitted was ancient, barbaric, carrying a sense of not belonging to this world.

It was by no means like those later cultivated spirits like Zhimashen Tong.

This thing, like "coal spirit" or "dragon egg," likely belonged to remnants from the era when dinosaurs ruled, or even earlier, from the Barbaric Era, resurrected after the tearing of the Daluo Law Realm.

Perhaps it once was a "God" capable of summoning winds and rains, devouring heaven and earth in some lost epoch.

And now, it’s merely a trace of sediment stirred up after the historical strata of the Dharma Realm were upheaved.

Crack, crack, crack!

Just then, the approaching Mechanical Man suddenly halted, its body convulsing.

And the Daoist controlling it from ten miles away screamed, clutching his head as he fell.

Li Yan shook his head slightly, "It seems there are still flaws; it cannot block the Soul-Eroding Power."

Speaking so, he retrieved the Hook Paper from his pocket.

The reason he tirelessly undertook these tasks was not simply for those spiritual materials from the Academy...