Chapter 127: Deity in the Martial World (3) |
That aura… There was no mistaking it!
Su Chen had personally lived through a Dark Turmoil. He had also clashed with the corrupted powerhouses of the forbidden zones. The impression that aura left was indelible. The energy radiating from the towering pillar of light shared the exact same origin as that ominous, inauspicious presence!
In other words, this dwarf secret realm was connected to some ancient being from a forbidden zone!
Su Chen's heart sank. The situation was far from optimistic. Even the weakest forbidden zone harbored at least a Saint-level existence. This world was in far worse shape than he had imagined.
Yet what intrigued him more was why these feeble creatures had any connection to a forbidden zone at all. Under the baptism of the divine pillar, the strongest among the dwarves had only reached the fourth-tier Spirit Sea realm at best.
The moment the dwarves noticed the sudden appearance of a human, their chieftain—a squat figure wearing a feathered headdress and clutching a staff—let out a shrill, guttural cry, jabbering wildly.
"Jabber all you want. Tell it to my blade."
Su Chen swung his long knife in a clean arc. One dwarf warrior failed to react in time and was cleaved in half at the waist. The sight instantly enraged the entire tribe. At their chieftain's command, dwarf warriors charged forward without fear of death.
And then they all died.
When the chieftain saw his entire tribe cut down before this human, rage consumed him. His body swelled violently, transforming into a three-meter-tall giant. His aura faintly surpassed the limit of the Spirit Sea realm.
A trace of seriousness finally appeared in Su Chen's eyes. He raised his long blade. Totems materialized one after another before him. With a single downward slash, the totems shattered, coalescing into a terrifying hundred-meter blade beam that tore the earth apart.
This was a technique he had obtained in his previous life from a Saint King who specialized in the way of the blade—a long knife that had once carved through countless heroes.
Heavenly Yang Imperial Divine Blade.
The freshly transformed dwarf chieftain froze for an instant. Without hesitation, he turned and fled—but he never made it past a hundred meters. The blade beam sliced him cleanly in two.
After delivering the strike, Su Chen's face turned somewhat pale. Unleashing a Saint King-grade ultimate technique took a tremendous toll even on him. He harvested every energy core from the corpses, then approached the mysterious ancient tree.
Only now did he see clearly what lay beneath it: piles of human skeletons arranged carelessly. Deeper in the settlement, he discovered living humans—penned like livestock, treated worse than pigs or dogs.
When those survivors saw Su Chen arrive, hope flared in their eyes as though they had witnessed a savior.
From their trembling accounts, Su Chen learned the full story.
"The Black Tiger Gang… colluding with the dwarf tribe to slaughter their own kind?"
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Many adventurers who entered the dwarf rift had not died at the hands of the dwarves—they had been killed by their fellow humans.
Worse still, the Black Tiger Gang had been abducting people from the outside world and delivering them to the dwarves as sacrificial offerings for their rituals. Every corpse here belonged to a human.
Su Chen's expression darkened.
Piece by piece, the clues connected, reminding him of something he had seen before: in certain ignorant small worlds, the weak would revere the terrifying existences within forbidden zones as gods. They held grand sacrifices, acted as willing accomplices, and offered vitality to those beings.
In return, the forbidden-zone entities would occasionally bestow a sliver of power, granting these weak creatures the chance to grow stronger… but that debt would eventually be repaid in full. The beings in the forbidden zones were never benevolent!
These small worlds were linked to forbidden zones!
"The commotion here has probably already reached the Black Tiger Gang. If I leave the Dwarf Earthly Rift now, their people will definitely be waiting outside."
The Black Tiger Gang controlled this rift and had a fifth-tier Spirit Soul realm powerhouse sitting in command.
Though Su Chen possessed many techniques, he still could not reliably contend against a Spirit Soul realm cultivator while only at the Spirit Vein realm. The gap between the two was simply too vast.
Therefore, he decided to remain inside the Dwarf Earthly Rift for a while and cultivate until his strength was sufficient. Only then would he leave and uproot the Black Tiger Gang waiting outside.
He instructed the survivors to stay hidden inside the rift until everything was settled before attempting to escape. As for himself, he set off in search of alchemy materials.
Three days later, Su Chen gazed at the five perfectly round pills in his palm, each glowing with a faint halo. He swallowed the first one in a single gulp. His cultivation surged wildly. In less than a few hours, he broke through from the first-layer Spirit Vein to the fourth-layer Spirit Vein. Without hesitation, he consumed the remaining four pills one after another.
One day later, golden light flared in Su Chen's eyes. His cultivation soared all the way to the ninth-layer Spirit Vein. The privilege of a powerhouse re-cultivating was precisely this unrestrained.
For ordinary people, the barrier from the ninth-layer Spirit Vein to the Spirit Sea realm was a major bottleneck. For Su Chen, it held no secrets whatsoever. He spent another two days refining more pills, swallowed them, and smoothly advanced to the Spirit Sea realm.
In this world's terms, he had become a fourth-tier powerhouse. That was already enough to suppress some of the weaker Earthly Rifts.
Su Chen exhaled slowly. His goal had been achieved. It was time to leave the Dwarf Earthly Rift.
Yet as he passed through the site of the first village again, he found fresh corpses strewn across the ground. The survivors he had rescued earlier now lay dead, their bodies bearing clear wounds from human blades.
Su Chen let out a soft sigh. He had clearly warned them not to leave the rift. Evidently, someone had disobeyed, slipped out quietly, and led the Black Tiger Gang straight back inside—resulting in the complete annihilation of the survivors.
By now, the Black Tiger Gang members were likely scouring the entire rift for him.
Suddenly, Su Chen's gaze snapped toward a certain direction. With two steps, he vanished from where he stood.
...
A dozen or so men in black were searching the area. One of them—a burly man with flower tattoos covering his arms—held an iron chain in his hand. At the other end of the chain lay a blood-soaked man, barely breathing, clearly on the verge of death.
The tattooed man's face was dark with fury. "Damn useless trash! Can't even find a single person!"
When Su Chen had wiped out the first dwarf tribe, the Black Tiger Gang had already taken notice. The higher-ups had been alarmed. If word spread that they were colluding with the dwarf tribe to slaughter their own kind, the Federation's retaliation would be terrifying.
The Black Tiger Gang had adopted the principle of "better to kill the wrong person than let the right one escape." They intended to eliminate every possible witness. They had laid multiple ambushes outside long ago.
Then they captured someone who claimed to know the full truth. Under that person's guidance, the gang dispatched their elite force into the rift to eliminate the one who knew everything before the situation spiraled further.
Yet several days had passed, and they still hadn't located the person who dared annihilate an entire dwarf tribe.
"Bo… Boss…"
One of the underlings suddenly pointed upward with a trembling finger.
The tattooed man looked up.
A figure hovered in the sky above them.
The expressions of every Black Tiger Gang member changed drastically.
"He… he… can… can fly!"