Chapter 83: "It Was Always Here"
He had already made up his mind about his course of action, so he avoided getting directly involved with the other group and decided to fake being injured in order to stay with the exploration team.
They were the ones who would be the farthest from Yun Hao’s eyes, and therefore would have more freedom to move around.
The last thing he wanted right now was to end up in their sights.
It didn’t take long for everyone to be split into two groups, and soon the first one, led by Yun Hao, finally set off.
The others, left behind, also started moving after a while, slowly breaking off into the various passages that lined the path.
There was a big number of these underground tunnels, but considering the number of beasts that had attacked them earlier, it made sense.
Bit by bit, the group began to shrink, and Zhu Rong, the whole time, stayed with them, still waiting for the right moment to leave.
He could feel the source of that energy fluctuation getting closer and closer, and eventually, he too broke away, choosing a side tunnel to follow.
"Hey, why are you going alone? We’re all injured, it’s better to move in small groups so we can help each other if something happens," said one of the cloaked men who had seen him heading into a nearby tunnel.
Zhu Rong wanted to refuse, but seeing that others had overheard and seemed to agree with that man, he decided to go along with it for now and let two others follow him.
Five minutes after setting off...
Two people were lying motionless on the ground, showing no signs of life.
He hadn’t planned on wasting much time with them, so he took care of them quickly and went on his way.
He had spared the two scouts earlier when he entered the tunnel because he still wanted to avoid alerting the other side.
But now that things had already gone out of control, a few little incidents wouldn’t attract much attention anymore.
He shot deeper into the tunnel, and the closer he got, the stronger that strange energy fluctuation became.
And with it, his certainty about what lay in the depths only grew stronger.
He had already scanned a good portion of the area with his spiritual sense, so he knew the tunnel was relatively clear.
So he dashed forward at full speed, covering nearly a mile in the blink of an eye, until he suddenly came to a complete stop.
His gaze fixed ahead, into the open space where a faint reddish glow was leaking out.
He walked toward it, and soon stood at the end of the tunnel, staring ahead with a complicated expression on his face.
"To think it had been here all along, right under our noses this whole time..."
His eyes were locked forward as his expression grew darker, a mix of silent emotions swirling inside him.
His fists clenched tighter as the implications of what lay before him sank in, and the more he thought about it, the more a subtle killing intent began to rise within him.
What stood before him was a massive underground chamber, clearly man made, with the floor and walls completely paved and covered in strange violet roots and tendrils, shot through with thin reddish veins.
Many of those tendrils seemed to converge on the far wall opposite the tunnel, where a huge dark red cocoon stood, glowing faintly and casting a reddish hue across the space.
The size of the cocoon rivaled that of the centipede from earlier. Clearly, there was another creature inside, one far more powerful and monstrous.
He could tell that the creature was in a dormant state, but he could still feel the invisible pressure leaking out from within, an unconscious release of its being.
"It’s already reached the Spirit Realm," he thought, easily confirming the creature’s level.
After all, this kind of pressure was one he’d felt many times in his past life, both from beasts and from humans.
So he immediately understood that this creature had already surpassed the Mortal Realm and stepped into the Spirit Realm.
He wasn’t surprised, In fact, he’d somewhat expected it.
Because this was the very same creature that, nearly fifty years from now, would reach the peak of the Spirit Realm and throw the entire Lushan province into chaos.
It was the same beast that, in his past life, leveled one third of the entire province, triggering an empire wide alarm that led to a massive military response to stop its advance and eventually kill it.
The only reason he had managed to survive that catastrophe was because by then, he had already left Qiyan City and moved far away to start a new life.
Even though he had few ties left to that city, he couldn’t say he felt nothing when he heard about its destruction.
After all, it was the place where he had grown up, and although his family had cut ties with him back then, he couldn’t say he felt no regret when thinking about what had happened.
All of it had been caused by this one beast,
a beast that had reached the peak of the Spirit Realm without ever being discovered.
A beast no one knew the origin of, one that brought only destruction and chaos wherever it went.
And now, here he was, standing right in front of it, right beneath the forest near the capital.
It had always been here, right under everyone’s noses, unnoticed for so long, until it was too late.
He had once wondered why the Yun family had been the only ones to benefit so much from all the destruction that happened back then.
Many had asked the same, but no one had ever found a real answer, until now.
"Those bastards... did they really feed the entire province to this monstrosity just to climb to power?"
When he had killed some of those cloaked men earlier, he couldn’t say he didn’t feel a bit guilty,
after all, none of them had personally done anything to him.
But now, he didn’t think that way anymore.
Now, the only thing he wanted was to see the entire Yun family burn by their own hand.