Chương 578: Chapter 190: What Happened To Chu Feng?

I stared at the trail of qi winding through the eastern mountains like a ghostly river, trying to ignore the growing sense of dread pooling in my stomach. The red sun energy within me had stabilized somewhat, but I still felt like I'd been trampled by a herd of Ironclad Bulls. My muscles ached, my meridians burned, and a headache pounded behind my eyes with the persistence of a particularly determined woodpecker.

I reached into my storage ring and pulled out a Qi Recovery Pill, rolling the smooth, jade-green sphere between my fingers before popping it into my mouth. The bitter taste made me grimace, but I could immediately feel its effects as the concentrated qi spread through my system, soothing my meridians.

"You should take a Blood Replenishing Pill as well," Azure suggested.

"Your physical essence levels are still fluctuating." I didn't argue, fishing out one of the crimson pills and swallowing it with a wince. This one tasted like iron and cinnamon, an improvement over the Qi Recovery Pill, but not by much.

"I've always wondered," I mused as we continued following the qi trail, "why can't cultivators make medicine that doesn't taste like it was scraped from the bottom of a toad's foot?"

"The texts explain that the taste is partially a result of the ingredients maintaining their spiritual properties," Azure replied.

"The more potent the pill, the worse it usually tastes."

"That sounds suspiciously like something someone would say to make people feel better about eating terrible medicine." Perhaps noticing the expression on my face, Yan Ziheng appeared on my side.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"That fight with the Stormwing Raptor took a lot out of you." I managed a smile that I hoped didn't look as forced as it felt.

"I'll be combat ready by the time we reach the shrine," I assured him.

"Just processing everything that happened."

"I'm not concerned about your combat readiness," he said, surprising me.

"I'm concerned about you." The sincerity in his voice caught me off guard.

"That technique you used..." he continued hesitantly, clearly trying to find a diplomatic way to phrase his question.

"Is it... is it safe?" I almost laughed. Safe? The Overclock Rune was about as safe as juggling knives while blindfolded on a tightrope over a pit of hungry beasts. But telling him that wouldn't exactly inspire confidence.

"It has its costs," I said instead, "but I can manage them." He didn't look entirely convinced, but nodded anyway.

"If you need support during the investigation, stay close to me. I might not be a combat specialist, but you risked your life to save mine, I'll do the same.

"Thank you," I said, genuinely touched.

"I appreciate that." Despite the urgency of the situation, our group was moving at a measured pace through the mountains. It wasn't what one would expect, most would rush to the shrine as quickly as possible, but Liu Chang had insisted on a more cautious approach.

"We just fought a major beast wave," he'd explained when Shen Xuanyu questioned the pace.

"Better to arrive at full strength than quickly but depleted." It was a sensible strategy, one that gave everyone time to recover their qi and tend to their injuries. And given the eerie lifelessness surrounding us, perhaps a slower approach was warranted. Who knew what we'd find when we reached our destination? As we walked, I glanced around at our surroundings. Something felt wrong. It took me a moment to realize what it was, there was absolute silence. No birds sang in the trees. No insects buzzed.

Not even the wind seemed to stir the leaves.

"Master," Azure said, his tone now serious, "I'm not detecting any life signatures in our vicinity." He was right. Everything that had once lived in this area, from the smallest blade of grass to the tallest tree, had been drained of life looking like perfect reproductions made of paper. When I reached out to touch a nearby bush, the leaves crumbled between my fingers, dissolving into motes of qi that drifted eastward, joining the river of energy flowing toward the shrine.

"It's like walking through a painting. everything looks right, but nothing's alive." Su Yue said beside me, her voice hushed as she watched a butterfly, or what had once been a butterfly, disintegrate into qi at her touch.

"Even the most aggressive qi-draining formations wouldn't be this thorough."

"Is that what we think happened to Chu Feng?" Yan Li asked.

"Killed by some formation?"

"It looked like he was working for someone else and wasn't able to hold his end of the bargain," Shen Xuanyu scoffed immediately. Zhang Wei shook his head.

"But working for whom? And to what purpose? If he wanted to sabotage the mission, he had plenty of opportunities during the beast wave."

"Maybe he wasn't here to sabotage," Bing Lan suggested.

"Maybe he was looking for something specific."

"The shrine," Liu Chang said thoughtfully.

"He was desperate to check out that shrine when we first arrived, but then his behavior changed completely once we got there." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. I recalled how Chu Feng had hung back during our initial exploration. At the time, I'd attributed it to caution, but in retrospect, it seemed more like... disappointment? As if he'd been looking for something that wasn't there.

"Whatever he was," Yan Li said, his voice carrying the weight of imperial authority even in casual conversation, "his qi signature at the end wasn't human. Not entirely."

"Could he have been possessed?" one of the female disciples asked, her voice small with fear. Liu Chang considered this.

"Possible, but unlikely. Possession wouldn't cause his body to end up like that."

"I think what we're dealing with is some kind of energy conversion," I said slowly, the pieces clicking together in my mind.

"Remember how the beasts also dissolved into qi? Chu Feng's transformation wasn't unique." Everyone turned to look at me.

"The beasts, Chu Feng, even the plants in this area, they're all being converted into pure qi and flowing toward the shrine," I continued, remembering how the beast waves' target wasn't the village as we had initially believed but the shrine.

"It's like... like something is luring them there to harvest their energy."

"Harvesting on a massive scale...," Yan Ziheng murmured.

"But why would a massive qi collection formation need a human catalyst like Chu Feng?" Su Yue asked, her brow furrowed. Yan Ziheng nodded slowly.

"Ancient formations often required living links which are sentient beings who could direct and control the flow. If Chu Feng was that link..."

"Then he wasn't possessed," Yan Li finished.

"He was connected to the formation somehow. When it fully activated, it consumed him along with everything else."

"But why did he plead for another chance?" one of the Heavenly Jade disciples asked.

"Right before he disappeared, he was begging someone for another opportunity." I frowned, remembering Chu Feng's final moments.

"It's as if he had a task to complete and failed. Whatever or whoever is controlling this formation, Chu Feng was working for them willingly or unwillingly."

"And now the formation is calling in all available qi," Bing Lan added grimly.

"Including its own agent." A chill settled over the group at her words. Instinctively, everyone's hands drifted closer to their weapons, eyes scanning the lifeless forest around us.

"If a formation of this magnitude exists in these mountains," Yan Li said finally, "it is all the more important that we investigate and report back to the sect." Everyone murmured agreement, though I noticed some of the disciples looked significantly less enthusiastic than before. I couldn't blame them. I wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect myself, but I couldn't leave now, I had people I needed to protect.

My parents were safe for now, evacuated to the western mountains with the rest of the villagers, but how long would that safety last? If whatever had caused this decided to head west instead of east... If only I could retreat and convince them to move far away from whatever ancient nightmare was awakening in these mountains. But I knew it wouldn't be easy. My father was stubborn to his core. His family had lived in Floating Reed Village for generations. He wouldn't leave without a fight.

It also wouldn't end well with the sect if I were to abandon my team. Not that I would, that wasn't the type of person I wanted to be. Liu Chang must have noticed my expression, because he fell into step beside me, his voice pitched low so only I could hear.

"I understand your concern for the village," he said.

"But we can't simply turn back now. We need to investigate."

"Even if what we're investigating could be leagues beyond our cultivation level?" I asked, unable to keep the edge from my voice. He gave me a long look, his expression unreadable.

"We can't return to the sect with no explanation for what happened to Chu Feng," he said finally.

"And if there is a threat here that exceeds our capabilities, better that we discover it now, so the sect can send appropriate reinforcements." I held back a sigh, but nodded in agreement. He wasn't wrong. If there was something ancient and powerful stirring in these mountains, the sect needed to know. But without the time loop safety net I'd had in the Two Suns World, I couldn't afford to be reckless. If the threat was beyond the Qi Condensation realm, we'd need to retreat, and quickly.

Though as I thought about it more carefully, a true Elemental Realm threat likely wouldn't have waited for the qi condensation stage 9 beasts to die in combat before converting them to qi. And higher realm cultivators like those in the Stellar Realm rarely bothered with something as mundane as Qi Condensation beast waves since it would be beneath their notice. More likely, we were dealing with something at the peak of Qi Condensation or perhaps newly entered into the Elemental Realm.

But with five Stage 9 cultivators in our group, including powerhouses like Yan Li with his imperial qi and Liu Chang with his Immutable Titan Scripture, we should at least be able to assess the threat level before making a strategic retreat. If we couldn't defeat it directly, we could gather crucial intelligence for the sect. Still, I'd need to stay vigilant. Even a peak Qi Condensation entity could kill me if I made a wrong move.

The pills I'd taken were beginning to have a stronger effect and I was no longer feeling as fatigued as before. I took the opportunity to check my inner world, relieved to find that the red sun was slowly returning to its normal size and intensity, though it was unlikely I'd be able to use my runes as much as I usually do. The blue sun, meanwhile, seemed to be working overtime, its cooling energy spreading throughout my inner world like a soothing balm.

"I've been reviewing the original Ke Yin's memories of this area," Azure informed me as I conducted my inspection.

"There's something odd about how the villagers interacted with the shrine over generations."

"Odd how?"

"The nature of the offerings changed over time. In the oldest memories, they were primarily food and wine given as traditional offerings for worship. But over the centuries, they became increasingly... personalized."

"What do you mean?"

"In more recent times, people would bring items with sentimental value like a child's first practice sword, a lock of hair, pieces of clothing. Things containing strong emotional resonance or physical connection to the giver." That was indeed strange. Most spirit worship involved standardized offerings, things that spirits were known to enjoy or find useful. Personalized offerings suggested something else entirely.

"As if it wasn't the offerings themselves that mattered," I mused, "but the connection they represented."

"Precisely, Master. And there's another anomaly. The shrine has gone through periods of apparent dormancy, sometimes lasting decades, before suddenly becoming active again."

"Cycles," I muttered inwardly, remembering the fragment of text I'd managed to translate earlier.

"Sleep and renewal."

"Form up," Liu Chang ordered as we rounded a bend in the path.

"Standard formation, defensive posture. No one uses active techniques unless I give the signal." We arranged ourselves according to his instructions, with Liu Chang and Bing Lan at the front, Su Yue and the Heavenly Jade disciples on the flanks, and the formation specialists (myself and Yan Ziheng) protected in the center rear. The Yan Clan team took rear guard, with Yan Li's golden qi faintly visible as he maintained a state of partial readiness.

It was a textbook approach to an unknown danger: the strongest combatants in front to absorb any initial attack, ranged specialists on the flanks to respond, and the more support-oriented members protected but still able to contribute. The path widened as we approached the Sacred Grove. I expected to see the ancient, spiritual-energy-saturated trees we'd passed through in our previous visit. But what I saw instead made me stop dead in my tracks.