Chapter 153: The Sha Family

"City Lord, do you think we can find a dark-attribute supernatural beast? These creatures only existed in the early days of the Dark Era. Besides, we've been away from the main city for so long. Without your presence to suppress the situation, those fellows might cause trouble."

Deep within the Ghost Wood Mountains, two figures completely wrapped in black cloaks walked through a forest devoid of any mutant beasts.

"I have already investigated this region. It is a lord-level territory, yet not a single low-level mutant beast exists here. Furthermore, this place possesses the strongest dark attribute in the entire Green Forest region. If such a beast exists, this is the most likely place. As for the matters at home, you need not worry. As long as I do not die, no matter how chaotic things get, order can be restored."

Neither of the two men emitted any aura of an evolver; they appeared entirely like ordinary people. Of course, even a King-level entity would not dare to recklessly release their aura in this region. Much like the Sacred Wood Mountains, no one knew what might lurk deep within the Ghost Wood Mountains.

The cloaked figure in the rear looked around. The surrounding trees were ink-black, growing increasingly darker the further they went. This was a sign of a dark-attribute supernatural beast's territory, though it could also be due to localized mutation—after all, dark-attribute supernatural beasts were exceedingly rare, much like dark-attribute evolvers.

The deeper they went, the smoother the flow of elemental power within the cloaked man's body became. It felt as though he had returned to the main city. Had the City Lord not forbidden the release of elemental power, he would have already begun absorbing the ambient dark-attribute energy in the air.

Suddenly, a dull rumble echoed from the sky, sounding like thunder or perhaps a beast's roar from the depths of the mountains. Immediately afterward, the cloaked man saw the City Lord halt, gaze upward, and notice the emergence of peak master-level pressure around them.

The cloaked man also looked up, releasing the mid-master-level aura he had long concealed.

"City Lord, what is this?"

"I don't know. I only sensed a faint spatial fluctuation just now, and it appeared in the sky."

In their field of vision, a black cocoon roughly 1.5 meters in diameter was slowly descending from the sky.

"Roar!" Suddenly, a deafening roar erupted from the depths of the Ghost Wood Mountains. Following that, a mountain range covered entirely in black trees split open, and a purely black supernatural beast emerged from within.

"This is...!" The cloaked man's face turned pale with shock. "A King-level dark-attribute supernatural beast!"

The colossal entity before them was the target of their journey, yet neither man wore a smile. A King-level beast was already beyond their capabilities; killing it was utterly impossible.

The City Lord glanced at the cocoon, which had yet to land, seemingly beginning to understand why the King-level beast had appeared. With a flash of a black figure, the black cocoon vanished from the sky.

"Let's go back to the main city."

"What... what about the supernatural beast?"

The City Lord glanced at the cloaked man and said, "If you can kill it, our harvest from this trip will be even greater. If not, let's run quickly—before it gets angry."

The City Lord could hardly believe that such pure dark-attribute energy could exist in this world. The moment he first made contact with it, he felt as though he had plunged into an ocean of dark attributes, and he had almost failed to suppress his breakthrough.

Only after the two men departed did the King-level supernatural beast finally arrive, but what it sought had already vanished, leaving only wave after wave of furious roars echoing through the surroundings.

In the Green Forest Main City Lord's Mansion, the Heavenly Wood King looked toward the direction of Muyang City, lost in thought. Suddenly, an emergency message appeared on his smart device. After reading it, the Heavenly Wood King calmly replied with two words: "No matter."

"Apotheosis, huh. I wonder if you are blessed by the heavens or cursed by fate," the Heavenly Wood King sighed, sitting back down in his original seat.

What troubled the Heavenly Wood King was not the emergence of Apotheosis, but the humans lost during the exploration of the new space—individuals who might have become towering pillars of strength in the future.

The Heavenly Wood King had not slept well for several nights. A total of eight students and faculty from Heavenly Wood Academy and Purple Star Academy had been lost in the secret realm. He and Elder Dong had personally searched that new space several times, yet they had never encountered the different space described by Tian Xin and Xiao Ming.

"How could a simple spatial exploration turn out like this?" This was what the Heavenly Wood King found most incomprehensible. Having traversed the world for over a hundred years, he had never encountered such a situation. Why, when he and Elder Dong discovered the spatial anomaly, had they assumed it was merely a sub-four-dimensional space that would increase the difficulty slightly without exceeding expectations? Who could have predicted that only five people would return alive?

Meanwhile, at an unknown location, unknown coordinates, within a shattered space, crimson lightning churned while black fissures spread across the entirety of the realm. Blood-red rain poured backward, threatening to engulf the entire space.

Inside a completely submerged ancient castle, within one of the four passageways, among rows of small gray sculptural snakes, there were remarkably three statues.

Not a single expression of panic could be found on the three statues. One statue, half-crouched on the ground with one arm outstretched forward, clearly displayed a yearning for life on its face. The other two statues similarly held a desperate longing for life, yet regardless, they were forever frozen here.

In another chamber filled with murals, a figure sat blankly beside the paintings, hands curled into chicken-claw shapes, completely devoid of blood. As the blood rain surged through the passageway, the body instantly dissolved into white bones that washed away in various directions.

"Boom, boom, boom." The space's lifespan had finally reached its limit. Crimson lightning dissipated and rampaged everywhere, and black fissures now blanketed the entire realm. Finally, at the very final moment, the colossal entities hidden at both ends could no longer sit still.

One crimson and one gray fragment—two guardians who had fought for a lifetime—finally joined forces to protect the space that had birthed and nurtured them.

The crouching posture of space, the incomparable desire to survive—the two fragments pierced through the blood rain, crossed the ancient castle, and merged into the crouching figure.

"Boom!" A streak of crimson lightning, rivaling the scale of the entire space and akin to the judgment of a holy sword, executed the dying space. It descended instantly from the depths of the universe, as if delivering a final blow.

At that very moment, the already mottled space suddenly erupted with countless white ribbons of light, forcibly excising annihilation and devouring. Before the red lightning could strike, the entire space vanished into nothingness.

............

"Bao'er, don't run too far to play. Watch out for the bugs in the desert."

"I know, Grandpa."

An old man and a young girl walked along the edge of the desert. The old man wore a straw hat and carried a hoe on his shoulder, planning to dig up some sand-lotus roots for dinner. The little girl wore a grayish-brown grass-and-bark tunic and a small straw hat adorned with an unidentified blade of grass right in the center.

Despite wearing hats every day, the sun had still tanned her skin. Civilians living on the edge of the desert, no matter how they tried to shield themselves, were always forced by survival to struggle against the blazing sun and harsh existence.

The little girl ran along the ridge toward a shaded area, hoping to find edible sand-insects, sand-scorpions, and the like in the sand. Meanwhile, the old man walked steadily along the ridge, occasionally stopping to crouch down, scoop up a handful of sand from the ridge, sniff it, and then stand up to continue walking.

What the old man was actually looking for was a sand-sea—a localized patch of desert composed of fine sand grains, where sand-lotus roots, mutated from certain plants before the Dark Era, tended to exist.

These sand-lotus roots were not like water lotus roots; rather, mature sand-lotus roots contained internal hollows that served both to transport moisture and reduce the plant's overall water demand.

Little Bao'er was on the other side of the sand ridge, continuously turning over coarse sand grains with a small branch, trying to flush out any small bugs hiding beneath the sand.

One, two, three. Bao'er dug the pit deeper and deeper with her small branch, when suddenly her eyes caught sight of something white.

"A sand-milk worm?!" Bao'er cried out in pleasant surprise, beginning to dig downward with renewed effort. Sand-milk worms were milky white all over, tender and delicious, with an extremely high water content. Most importantly, the earth-attribute energy absorbed by sand-milk worms could nourish the body.

"Eh?" Bao'er had already dug six or seven centimeters deep, yet the sand-milk worm had not emerged. In her memory, she had never encountered such a large sand-milk worm.

Suddenly, Bao'er exerted all her strength, scooping away a large patch of sand in one go. "What is this?"

"Ah, sob, sob, Grandpa!"

The old man, who had just located the sand-sea nearby, suddenly heard Bao'er's weeping cries.

"Bao'er!" The old man looked toward the other side of the ridge and ran toward her, dropping the hoe from his shoulder without realizing it.

"Bao'er, what's wrong? Did a bug bite you? Did you see what it looked like?" The old man hurriedly picked up Bao'er, who was squatting on the ground, and checked her body for any wounds.

"No, no, Bao'er just dug up an eye in the sand." The old man caught these words intermittently through Bao'er's whimpering.

Only then did the old man look at the spot where Bao'er had been squatting. "An eye? This is a person!"

When the black fissures appeared beneath his feet, Ye Bai knew he might not make it out of this spatial exploration alive. In fact, he had realized back in the labyrinth that this space was extremely difficult to escape; perhaps not a single person would make it out in the end.

Of course, this had nothing to do with him either, regardless of who managed to survive, or who ultimately obtained the Ancestor's Body.

The moment the black fissure appeared, Ye Bai felt an odd absence of fear in his heart. 'Death—shouldn't everyone be afraid of death? Why do I feel no dread toward death at all? Instead, my heart aches a little. I miss my mother; I miss Mu'er.'

Ye Bai could not tell whether he was dead or alive. There was no pain, nor could he feel the existence of his body. Perhaps only his head remained, or perhaps his consciousness was still alive.

He could feel that his eyes were open—at least, that was the command his brain gave his eyes—yet he could see nothing at all, as if he were inside a black fissure. Oh right, he was indeed inside a black fissure.

"Hisss~." Suddenly, Ye Bai felt as though some part of his body was being torn apart, followed by waves of piercing pain in his brain. Curiously, the corners of his lips curved into a smile: "At least I'm still alive right now. I just wonder where Mother is, and when she'll be back. She'll definitely be happy when she sees our big house, and she'll definitely be happy when she sees Mu'er."

Suddenly, a loud boom echoed in Ye Bai's mind, and he felt as though something was being squeezed out of his brain. Immediately afterward, he lost consciousness.

In the dark, a "corpse," consisting solely of four limbs and a head, drifted aimlessly wrapped in a membrane of white light.