The Portal of Wonderland

“Raaaarghh!”

The grey Spider-mantis was now completely livid!

Its eyes shone with intense rage as its enormous body turned into a single blur of grey before pounding at Shi Mu from its high vantage point.

It was just about to reach its elusive victim when its eyes met a sudden burst of red light from below where a humongous apparition of an ape suddenly manifested from thin air. The ablaze Crimson Ape Energy Construct’s eyes were cackling with searing flames as it studied the great Spider-mantis before the Energy Construct suddenly let out an infuriated bellow.

With flames roaring, the Crimson Ape Energy Construct started to swing its two enormous fists towards the Spider-mantis, its flames completely wrapped in fire.

“Kkeee kkee kkeee~” The Spider-mantis let out a string of unnatural cackles as if it was taunting the Crimson Ape. Its scythe-like arms started waving and slicing the air at a speed untraceable by the naked eye… and weaved a mesh of blurry grey web in milliseconds!

Snap!

The two fist attacks unleashed by the Crimson Ape Energy Construct were instantly severed into several portions of harmless flames before they dissipated into the air after going through the grey web.

The Spider-mantis’s eyes glinted in glee. It moved even faster, flash-stepping itself before the Crimson Ape Energy Construct in the next nick of the second, its scythe-arms raised high in the air right before a downward dice.

The Crimson Ape’s lips pursed and exhaled a large drove of unadulterated flames, causing the air around it to start rippling with heatwaves—it was the Primordial Inferno.

It wasn’t just an abrupt move—it was a move that the Spider-mantis had never expected. With their distance being too close to each other, the Spider-mantis had not even a slim chance to evade the attack; Hence, its was hit directly in the face by the Primordial Inferno, its own body hurling backward by the momentum of the flames, causing the monster to slam onto several large trees before finally reaching the ground.

The part of its body that had bore the brunt of the attack was now completely scorched, while two of its legs were completely incinerated by the Primordial Inferno.

Cruel fury flashed in the Spider-mantis’ eyes once more. It straightened itself and sprung forward again.

Its skin may be badly injured from the fiery attack from before, but its internal organs were completely safe and intact; Not only that, losing two of its six legs didn’t seem to hinder its movement so much.

Yet, before the Spider-mantis could even jump, a golden humanoid figure with flaming wings had pounced onto him—it was none other than Shi Mu.

Now, his entire body was covered with golden scales while his own aura had climbed steeply into Late Earth-rank territory. His eyes—now draped in streams of golden sparks—were colder than usual.

“Die, you animal!”

Hovering in midair, the Black Meteorite Iron Blade blazed in black dazzling light as a single gigantic arc of pure blade energy zipped towards the scorched area on the grey Spider-mantis’s abdomen. As it hurled towards its target, the blade energy pulsated with a mien sharp enough to make the air hummed; It was clear that there was even more energy imbued in this one hit than before.

A very brief look of panic flitted through the Spider-mantis’ polygonal eyes. It crossed one of its scythe-like arms before its body, but it did not completely abandon its offensive tack—with its jaws opened wide, it spat out a big cloud of white blurry spider-web cupping downwards on Shi Mu’s head.

At the same time, its other scythe-like arm sped into a grey blur, aiming at Shi Mu’s head.

“Pfft!” Shi Mu sneered, yanking the crimson glove off his left hand to expose a single scorched-black hand hurling towards the scythe-arm.

Bwurgh! The same hand started bursting into a blossoming white flames which then spread all the way up his arm, burning Shi Mu’s left sleeve completely clean to reveal an entire arm that was so black it was as if it was once dipped into a bucket of ink—though, now, the arm was illuminated by sinister white flames.

The white spiderweb landed as expected, but it was burnt away the instant it met the white flames.

Shi Mu twirled, sidestepping the gigantic scythe-arm attack, and then flash-stepped before the grey Spider-mantis in a second.

“Ha!” With the white flames blazing brightly on his entire left arm, he balled his fingers into a fist and hammered it onto the Spider-mantis’ abdomen!

Pcchhtt! His arm went through the Spider-mantis’ body without much resistance.

The Spider-mantis’ polygonal eyes dimmed, and its body hardened, halting its moment. Then, at the next second, its gigantic body exploded into a rain of blood and little pieces.

The white flames in Shi Mu’s arm shimmered before returning back into his arm. He waved, conjuring a faint shield of red light around him to block the pieces of Spider-mantis from tainting his outfit.

He shot a scornful leer at what once was parts of the Spider-mantis and sneered. The Spider-mantis may be a powerful Peak-Earth rank demon beast, but it was no match to Shi Mu when he’s serious.

Still, it did take a large toll on his Real Qi to deliver that single white flames-fueled hit.

Now that he really thought about it, he had been frantically hopping from one planet to the other ever since he had reached Star Field Dimension, which did put his cultivation progress on hold—still, for some reason, he was just one small line away from reaching Mid-Earth rank.

Truthfully, the reason behind his lack of cultivation progress was really because Shi Mu hadn’t been able to find a suitable place to settle down. However, he did not expect that, with his body’s Real Qi reservoir full, he could actually deliver his left fist’s power twice in a battle.

Shi Mu stood still on where he was, allowing his Spirit Sense to perforate the area. After making sure there were no other demon beasts or his fellow competitors, he started towards the Spider-mantis’ head.

With a quick dice of his blade, the head cracked open wide enough for him to stick his hand into the meat in order to dig out a fist-sized Demon Nucleus. It was pulsating with incredible ripples of energy.

“Holy crap, just as expected from a demon beast that had achieved the paragon of Earth-rank, eh? Look at the energy this thing stores!” Seeing the battle was over, Cai got out from god-knows-where with a flap of its wings before landing squarely on Shi Mu’s shoulders.

Shi Mu nodded quietly, storing the Demon Nucleus into Qing Shan Order.

After that, he cut out the Spider-mantis’s two scythe-arms and kept those as well—they had proven themselves to be incredibly durable and strong in battle, which meant that they were great materials for forging spirit tools.

He then continued his reward-reaping by confiscating the two Demon race youths’ Qing Shan Orders, pouring every single Demon Nucleus stored in theirs into his own.

Lastly, Shi Mu rummaged through the blue-scaled youth’s corpse for a while, purloining his storage tool and everything stored in it without giving as much as a pause of hesitation.

With the two youths’ Demon Nucleuses and a grand reward from the grey Spider-mantis’, Shi Mu’s points had climbed quite significantly, pushing him into the top one thousand list.

“You know, Shi Tou, it’s really obvious that the easiest way to win this race is to kill and plunder other competitors, so… I think you should just stop the grueling task of slaying demon beasts and use my good eyesight to scout for other competitors…” Cai said, quite excitedly. “And then you’ll pounce on them and kill them, taking their scores away! With your power, you could rise up in ranks in no time!”

“Sounds feasible until you remember that only the skilled and the strong could make it to Mang Gu Jungle by this point. Remember, these candidates were all genius disciples from professional or prestigious sects and teachers from all around Magnum Solis,” Shi Mu warned, dismissing Cai’s idea. “If we let hubris get into our head, we may risk being the one being killed and plundered.”

He took a break for a while before departing to the depth of the jungle.

Half a day later, Shi Mu arrived at the deepest part of the jungle close to a canyon.

The deeper he ventured, the more difficult the demon beasts became; Just within this half of a day he had encountered quite a number of demon beasts, many of them already at Late Earth-rank. He managed to overcome them through the combined effort of his own skills as well as Cai’s eyesight, though.

After a grueling journey of slaying demon beasts, Shi Mu was starting to feel quite tired by this point. He scanned the surrounding and noticed that this canyon was quite tranquil and without demon beasts—which meant that it was a good place to rest,

He was just about to find a good spot to sit when Cai’s voice rang in his head. That was not all—Cai was sharing him a scene…

Shi Mu raised his eyebrow. Abandoning his plan to rest, he snuck into the canyon quietly instead. Once he was there and had hidden behind a big boulder, Cai flew down and rested on his shoulder, so that the two could look inside together.

A few hundred yards away, explosions erupted without rest. It seemed that a few figures had gotten themselves into a deadly battle!

Shi Mu’s attention fell squarely on five grey-blue eyed men in blue robes, with all of their bodies shimmering in blue light as they surrounded a girl in a white robe.

An enormous chilling aura was radiating from these blue-robed men, causing the entire area they were in to be covered by a layer of white frost. Judging from their aura, it seemed that they had all reached Mid Earth-rank power.

However, it was also quite easy to notice that these men did not emit any sort of demonic scent—they most likely belonged to a foreign race.

Shi Mu’s attention shifted from them to the maiden in a white robe—and he froze.

He knew this girl. It was the Early Earth-rank lady who had left on her own back when they were first transported here. She had even rejected others’ offer to take her into their team, hence leaving quite an impression on Shi Mu.

Right now, the girl was facing five Mid Earth-rank fighters alone without a single look of alarm or panic on her visage. Every move she made was obviously calculated, allowing her to actually stand toe-to-toe with five attackers at once.

Shi Mu was quite impressed. Even Cai was exclaiming telepathically, “Shi Tou, that lady is darn strong!”—which Shi Mu responded only be nodding his head thoughtfully as he continued to watch.

The girl’s body was shimmering in green light while her hand wielded a green, ancient sword. As the glowing, emerald sword scintillated, she swung and stabbed, displaying skillful swordplay. Just like that, the green lights from her sword formed a circle around her which protected her from the five men’s attacks.

“The girl’s only an Early Earth-rank fighter. What’s strong is her sword,” Shi Mu observed, “It must be some kind of rare regalia.”

“Oh! You’re right!” Cai replied.

As they chatted, the battle took a sharp turn. The green girl let out a soft cry, and the sword flared brightly before projecting five several-yard-long sword beams towards the five blue-robed men.

The men’s face twisted into a grimace of alarm. Their bodies shone brightly with blue light before forming a large ice pavise before them—

Boooom!

The large sword beams struck onto the icy pavise and became even more untamed, spitting branches of green bolts from the beam along with sizzling rackets.

“Divine Thunder of Yimu!” Shi Mu’s eyes flashed in recognition as he muttered under his breath.

Ke-rack! Jagged lines formed on the icy pavises’ surface, before they shattered suddenly.

The five blue-robed men started to panic, but as their defensive measures had bought them some time, they managed to dodge out of the attack’s way.

“Senior Sect Brother, this girl’s sword is too ruthless for us to break through like that. We’re wasting our time on her! We should retreat!” One of the younger members of the team whispered to a large, middle-aged man.

The man, in return, hesitated, wearing a reluctant expression.

The girl flared in green light and cried steelily, “You think you can just leave after harassing I, Jiang Shui Shui?!”

Her words barely left the air when green scales stared protruding from her arms and her forehead while her eyes turned jade green. Her pupils constricted and turned into slits, which were now staring at the five men coldly.

Behind Jiang Shui Shui, green light slithered and took the form of a gigantic green python. At the same time, her green hair was starting to glow and danced as if they were coming alive.

“Screw me! This chick is the descendant of the House of Jiang from Planet Baituo…!” Out of the five, the middle-aged man was the one to cry out loudly.

Jiang Shui Shui’s green hair suddenly grew long—and with a large drove of green light—they hurled towards the five blue-robed men. Among the lights, every single hair suddenly expanded into green, grotesque vipers with protruding fangs circling rings of glyphs in the center.

Jiang Shui Shui’s disheveled green hair had just transformed into a river of green serpents in a blink of an eye!