The Era of Gods

Chapter 616: Chapter 616 Pursuit, Mockery, and Dead End

PS: Hehe, all owed updates for the month have been repaid, haven’t they?

It wasn’t long before Julian and several disciples appeared nearby. Seeing the body of Ai Lian, once the most favored by their mentor, on the ground, the disciples shuddered. One of them quickly shouted:

“He can’t have gone far, let’s chase him!”

A few people scrambled to enter the hole and climbed up, leaving only Julian behind with a dreadful expression on his face.

“Very good!”

An icy voice, as bone-chilling as a cold winter breeze, squeezed through clenched teeth. Julian, laughing out of sheer fury, swept his eyes contemptuously across the area, then looked up toward the hole’s entrance. With a sweep of his large sleeve, a layer of densely packed, soybean-sized black dots poured out from beneath his feet, spreading to the corpse on the ground and covering it completely. The sound of fine gnawing soon followed.

“Teacher loved you the most. Don’t worry, it won’t be long before he joins you.”

With a flash, Julian disappeared, and the corpse on the ground vanished too, leaving only dark red bloodstains to prove there had once been death here.

In the dense forest, Lin Xiao sprinted at full force, bursting past occasional monsters encountered along the way.

His agility, surpassing ten points, gave him extraordinary speed; most monsters didn’t react in time before he had already charged past, and those that did couldn’t catch up to him.

No longer concealing his strength, his pace was comparable to an average Official Wizard following the bloodline path, crashing through the dense forest and dashing dozens of miles in one breath.

However, Lin Xiao didn’t dare to let his guard down. After catching his breath and resting briefly, he continued to press forward. Unsure whether the enemy was catching up, he knew he couldn’t stop, though he was not as fast as when he was fleeing for his life.

After racing for over a hundred kilometers, he felt his physical strength was significantly drained. Continuing would severely impact his combat power. Looking around, he saw a hill covered in lush vegetation ahead and decided to rest there.

As he walked, he scrutinized himself. The armor he had been wearing was long gone, discarded. His clothes were torn from encounters with monsters along the way or from being scratched by branches. Despite this, he had no injuries; his constitution, with more than ten points, endowed him with a strong body that regular attacks couldn’t even scratch.

Stopping about a hundred meters before the hill, Lin Xiao suddenly became vigilant and looked in a particular direction.

The lush jungle was deathly silent, with no usual insect chirping, only the slight rustling sound of the breeze through the leaves.

Something was wrong!

Lin Xiao quickly drew his sword and moved sideways, stepping away from his previous spot just as an invisible force struck it, smashing the ground and creating a pit about half a meter wide and thirty to forty centimeters deep.

“What is that thing?”

For a split second, he thought he saw something pass by, but it was too fast to see clearly.

As he bent down scanning around, he suddenly looked up to see Julian standing on a tree branch above, looking down at him smugly with his right hand pointing at him like a gun.

Lin Xiao instinctively wanted to move, but before he could, an invisible force field hit him and, without time for any reaction, a tremendous force sent him flying several meters to heavily strike a large tree, dislodging a shower of withered leaves.

“What kind of attack is this?”

Curious but quick to act, he immediately turned to take cover behind the tree.

“Boom!”

The thick tree trunk, as wide as a man’s waist, exploded at the level of his height under the impact of the invisible force field, sending countless splinters flying. The tree fell down.

“Fuck!”

He was far too powerful, utterly unbeatable.

Although Lin Xiao’s physical condition was comparable to a typical Bloodline Wizard, he was not a real wizard. He had not yet transformed his spiritual power, had no powerful magic weapons, and had mastered no witchcraft. How could he possibly contend with an Official Wizard with crystallized spiritual power?

Without a second thought, he turned and ran.

Julian did not chase immediately but reached into the air as if touching something. Had Lin Xiao been there, he would have seen a strange snake thicker than a man, its body covered in crystal-like scales.

With a pointed finger from Julian, the snake wrapped around the tree rapidly descended, its already semi-transparent body becoming even more ethereal and soon vanishing from sight.

Julian stomped his foot, and countless soybean-sized black dots slipped from his pant leg, spreading rapidly down the tree trunk.

It seemed Julian had a space bag in his pant leg from which black dots flowed inexhaustibly, covering a hundred square meters. The bugs in the forest frantically fled as if they were escaping a dreadful predator.

“This won’t do, I’m done for.”

As Lin Xiao ran, he pondered and suddenly leaped forward. Mid-jump, an immense force struck him like a shell, flinging him more than twenty meters before he crashed into the forest, colliding with a four-meter-long Fierce Beast with glossy black fur and well-developed muscles that happened to be resting under a tree.

For less than a second, man and beast locked eyes before both sprung up and bolted for their lives.

A few steps away, they instinctively split to the left and right. Then Lin Xiao heard a sound like a dog’s yelp of pain that abruptly stopped.

Three minutes later, Lin Xiao was about to use a rock as a stepping stone to jump to another protruding rock nearby when it was smashed away by a tremendous force. He stumbled midair and felt an icy body wrap around him. With a slap on the cold, numbing snake body, he rebounded to free himself, only to be struck sideways by a mountain-like force the next second, spurting blood and revealing the colossal form of the Crystal King Snake.

“Crystal King Snake!”

Lin Xiao’s heart sank. This was a powerful Fierce Beast, equivalent to a Rank 2 Official Wizard, with incredibly strong crystal scales, the ability to camouflage, and the talent to control crystal force fields. Even a typical Rank 2 Wizard might not be able to handle this creature.

A mere Rank 1 crystallized wizard and a Crystal King Snake was downright bullying.

Lin Xiao just couldn’t take it anymore, gritted his teeth, turned around, and ran.

He could only run; there was no other option but to escape.

He couldn’t win in a fight, and he couldn’t cheat. Although the Creation Rubik’s Cube held many items, he couldn’t take out any of them.

He had tried to use it a long time ago, but it wasn’t that he couldn’t use it, rather any unauthorized thing simply couldn’t be taken out, as it was forbidden. Otherwise, he would have prepared to fight with all he had long ago.

It was clear that Julian, this unknown race’s Son of the Divine Realm, hadn’t really started trying earnestly yet, playing with him like a cat with a mouse. Otherwise, with Julian’s strength plus a Crystal King Snake, he could easily have killed him by now.

As he had expected, the Crystal King Snake kept attacking him, making each of his moves very clumsy. Occasionally he got hurt, but it was never fatal. Clearly, he was being toyed with.

Biting back his pain, Lin Xiao persisted. Once he confirmed that Julian wouldn’t kill him right away, he recalled the map, confirmed his direction, and dashed toward a certain location.

Aside from marking the underground palace ruins, the map also marked a few areas nearby that were forbidden territory for apprentices. He was now heading toward the closest of these—a place known as Mysterious Valley.

The name was quite commonplace, but it was very easy to understand. The valley was home to a group of… indescribable bizarre creatures.

More than ten minutes later, Lin Xiao arrived at the entrance to Mysterious Valley, but Julian was already there, standing on top of a sharp rock over ten meters high, with his arms crossed, smiling sardonically at Lin Xiao:

“I suspected you would try to use this to shake me off, and it turns out I was right.”

He turned back to glance at the foggy Mysterious Valley behind him and said:

“If you’re hoping to get away by relying on this place, you are far too naive. Even though the creatures within are dangerous, this valley has already proven to be no threat to me.”

“Perhaps you don’t know what resides in Mysterious Valley. Let me enlighten you. It is inhabited by some bizarre creatures that defy rational description, possessing many abilities that break the norm. To die in there would be the best outcome; the fear is not death, but a fate worse than death, an eternal torment.”

He smirked eerily, suddenly leaped to another tree, clearing the way with a gesture:

“Don’t say I didn’t give you any hope. I will let you enter and will definitely not attack you.”

Lin Xiao couldn’t help but swallow hard. Julian’s words and behavior instilled a sense of fear in him.

But at this moment, he had no choice. To stay meant death, to enter also meant death, possibly a fate even worse. His choice was…

He lifted his feet and walked toward the valley’s entrance.

Julian kept his hand outstretched, watching him expressionlessly as his eyes followed Lin Xiao’s advance.

When Lin Xiao reached a level position with him at the valley mouth, they locked eyes for a second, and then Lin Xiao suddenly dashed into the valley.

“Bang!”

An invisible barrier emerged, bouncing him back.

“Hahaha….”

Julian clutched his forehead, laughing hysterically, as though completely mad.

Lin Xiao’s heart sank. He reached out into the void and encountered an invisible force field that blocked his path completely.

“Hasn’t anyone told you? Mysterious Valley is a seal. If you want to enter, you have to break the seal first.”

Julian was in an exceedingly good mood and even took the time to explain specifically for him:

“Inside this valley there is a passageway to a dangerous world. Thousands of years ago, the Witch King established a seal here to prevent the monsters inside from coming out. The seal is reinforced every thousand years, and even though it has been over two thousand years without further reinforcement, the remaining seal is still not something a little thing like you can break.”

Lin Xiao fell silent as Julian continued:

“Does that feel hopeless? That’s right, you should utterly despair.”

He extended his hand with fingers curling into a grip, his face becoming increasingly grim, a murderous aura emanating as he said:

“You killed my favorite disciple, and in return, I will eat you bit by bit until you become one with me.”

“I’ll give you a quarter of an hour to run for your life. After that, I’ll come and claim it!”

After saying this, he watched Lin Xiao with a mocking gaze but did not witness the frantic fleeing he had imagined. Instead, he saw Lin Xiao looking back at him coldly, his eyes undisturbed.

“Why aren’t you running?”

“I don’t believe your words.”

From this desperate escape so far, Lin Xiao had the impression that Julian seemed a bit neurotic, with a fickle personality, spouting lies frequently; he couldn’t trust his words.

To truly heed his words and flee would mean Julian wouldn’t wait fifteen minutes before coming to kill him.

If death was inevitable, why be toyed with further?

His non-cooperation and words enraged Julian. With a wave of his hand, a large swarm of shadows emerged from nowhere, and countless Black Beetles congregated to form an over ten-meter-tall human-shaped monster made of Black Beetles, roaring at him:@@novelbin@@

“Then go die!”