True Solution of the Sword Dao

Five days later...

The Inner World, Despair Plains

Chit!

Lin Fei gently pulled the Black Demon Sword out from a corpse with a reverse grip. With a slight flick, the silver blade trembled, and all the blood traces instantly dripped off. The scarlet droplets fell onto the grass, sliding down the leaves before vanishing without a trace.

With a light flick of the sword tip, a shoulder badge immediately fell into his hand.

The person in golden clothes also came over, holding some shoulder badges.

"It’s been five days already, the mission is almost over," they said.

Lin Fei nodded.

"There should be some movement today."

He looked up at the sky, which was already dimming slightly, signifying the arrival of the afternoon.

To the west, the sun was slowly sinking. Laman’s gigantic star was becoming increasingly large and bright.

Whoosh...

A breeze suddenly blew in from afar.

Both of them looked up to see a large circular vortex abruptly appearing in the sky from the direction they came from. The vortex was black, constantly rotating counterclockwise.

A grand voice spread in all directions.

"Attention all those in black armor... the return portal has opened. Reaching the location of the black vortex will be counted as mission completion."

Lin Fei gazed at the distant black vortex.

"We don’t know how many kilometers we are from the original location, yet we can still see that huge vortex similar to the one when we arrived. This power..."

"Is completely another kind of unfamiliar force," the person in golden clothes said with a frown.

Lin Fei nodded and turned around.

"I will regulate my breathing for a moment before we set off."

"All right."

Lin Fei casually found a big tree and planted the Black Demon Sword in the ground next to it, sheath and all. He then sat down cross-legged.

"The change in True Qi is just too slow. I wonder how the new batch of True Force seeds I released a few days ago is doing." Lin Fei started to anticipate the connection with the new batch of seeds.

Slowly extending his palm, a colorless crystal suddenly appeared in front of Lin Fei, but imperceptibly, it seemed more transparent than ever, no longer exhibiting the golden halo it had at the beginning.

Lin Fei clenched his fingers lightly.

The floating Divine Artifact Crystal immediately began to spin. Streams and wisps of the Power of the Divine Artifact slowly dissipated, congregating in Lin Fei’s palm below.

After several minutes, a tiny golden particle had already quietly appeared in Lin Fei’s hand.

But Lin Fei’s brow was furrowed tightly, showing no joy of successful condensation.

"It’s getting slower and slower... from the initial instant condensation to now requiring minutes to condense a single one. It feels as though the Power of the Divine Artifact inside is about to run out." He suddenly recalled the day he inadvertently activated the crystal, that golden figure. If not for Mo Qianyun’s residual strength from the Sword Canon, he might still be unaware of what state he would be in.

Wisps of new True Force slowly enwrapped the Power of the Divine Artifact, circling it, constantly permeating into it. As the unformed True Force seed hovered in Lin Fei’s hand, it emitted fine glows of gold and light blue.

After a few more minutes, a complete True Force seed finally formed.

Lin Fei did not put away the crystal.

He carefully stared at the Divine Artifact Crystal component.

Within the seemingly colorless and transparent crystal, one could faintly make out a tiny book slowly rotating. This book was extremely small, such that even with Lin Fei’s significantly enhanced eyesight, he had to look closely to see it clearly.

This phenomenon had already occurred three days ago.

Lin Fei had long seen clearly just what that tiny book was.

The book slowly rotated clockwise, its cover a plain pale yellow, and both its width and length were similar, forming a perfect cube. However, the small characters on the cover were something Lin Fei would never forget. They were the four large characters of "Sword Dao True Solution."

"It seems to be a miniaturized version of the Sword Dao True Solution, probably appearing after burning that black substance. And it seems to be this that suppressed the production of the Power of the Divine Artifact," Lin Fei conjectured.

But the anomaly with the Divine Artifact Crystal was not a one-time event. It had happened many times.

Lin Fei was somewhat uncertain about what was actually happening.

"Even if the Divine Artifact Crystal can’t produce the Power of the Divine Artifact, it is still crucial to the connection between my several hundred True Force seeds and me; it cannot be ignored. This phenomenon should be due to some level of connection between the Sword Canon and the Divine Artifact. For the time being, I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. Once the Divine Artifact from the Night King arrives, I’ll directly switch to using that one. This one can be set aside for now." Lin Fei put away the crystal, then closed his eyes to get a sense of his current cultivation progress. Since breaking through to the Fourth Layer, his cultivation was like stagnant water, utterly motionless. The massive amount of True Force constantly transmitted into his body was like flowing into an abyss, completely devoured by his body without a trace remaining.

Opening his eyes, he stood up.

"Let’s go. It’s time to return."

The person in golden clothes nodded.

The two of them hurried towards the direction of the black vortex.

As they approached, the bloodstains on the grass became more numerous. Patches of blood red were everywhere amid the green.

A breeze passed, and the strong scent of blood suddenly filled the air.

Caw caw...

Several vulture-like black-feathered birds were clustered east and west, continuously tearing at some corpses.

Lin Fei walked up a small mound through the grasslands. On top lay a corpse clad in black armor, with some black birds squawking and fighting over tearing pieces off of it.

The setting sun’s rays shone down, reflecting a shiny dark luster on the birds’ bodies.

Lin Fei even had an illusion that the soft, carpet-like vegetation underfoot was soaked with flowing blood. It seemed as though he was walking on a carpet drenched in blood.

As he ascended, five or six black birds flapped their wings and quickly flew away with a puffing sound. Upon a closer look, nearly each of these black birds stood over one person tall, and their wing flapping appeared quite frightening.

Once the black birds scattered, Lin Fei walked up to the corpse.

Apart from the intact black armor on the body, the rest had been pecked and eaten beyond recognition of gender. An arm and a thigh had been completely torn off and scattered to the side, with dark red chunks of coagulated blood at the wounds. A strong stench of rotten flesh spread out. The skin was torn and ragged, pale with dark red and black red spots of livor mortis.

Jin Yi walked up from behind and stood next to Lin Fei, slightly covering his nose and frowning at the corpse.

"My lord, what should we do?"

Lin Fei frowned.

"His shoulder patch is still there."

Upon hearing this, Jin Yi immediately looked towards the corpse’s shoulder. Indeed, the shoulder patch on the leather armor was intact and still attached. This indicated it was not the deed of someone in Red Armor; it was very likely done by one of his own Black Armor comrades.

"Going forward, keep an eye on our own people," Lin Fei said indifferently, "Let’s go."

"Understood."

The two descended the mound and quickened their pace towards the black vortex.

The giant black vortex didn’t seem far when looking at it, but in reality, the distance was considerable. Lin Fei and his companion didn’t use their strength to hasten their journey; instead, they moved at a normal speed.

The corpses became more numerous around them, many clad in Red Armor, but even more in Black Armor. Gradually, they also began to see corpses that seemed to have died not long ago. Most still had their shoulder patches. However, most of the corpses had no Red Armor shoulder patches, suggesting a high likelihood that people were killing to take them. After all, in this ending phase, the efficiency of obtaining shoulder patches from killing those in Black Armor far exceeded that of killing those in Red Armor. Moreover, after battles, most in Black Armor had lingering injuries which had not healed fully, or they had expended much of their reserves. They were less guarded against their own, making them easier to kill.

Large groups of black scavenging birds were gathered in chunks. From a distance, they resembled blotches of black mud.

New black birds continually circled in the sky. The disgusting stench of decaying flesh utterly filled this stretch of grassland.

"Shit!"

A low curse came faintly from ahead.

Lin Fei looked up to see, at a flat area in the distance, a group of Black Armor surrounding a corpse, with a bald man among them just straightening up and cursing fiercely. His face was ashen.

It looked to be a squad also making their way back.

The bald man looked back, casting a wary glance at Lin Fei and his companion, then hurriedly led his team forward.

As Lin Fei and Jin Yi continued to advance, more and more Black Armor squads also intent on their journey began to appear around them.

These Black Armor squads were nearly all injured, with very few uninjured, and they kept a wide distance from each other. They were highly cautious of other squads.

Time continued to pass as they moved forward.

The black vortex grew increasingly larger.

The gaze of some squads around them became more suspicious when looking at other Black Armor teams.

To Lin Fei’s left was another Black Armor squad. Leading them was a middle-aged woman with short disheveled golden hair. The woman’s right cheek bore a slender red wound, the flesh turned inside out, somewhat whitened, making it look fierce.

At that moment, her group faced off against another team whose aura hinted that they were all above D-level strength. Neither side bore good intentions. Both teams were similarly sized, each with seven or eight members.

This type of scene was not uncommon in the surrounding area.

Some were failed ambushes, others intended to ambush, and still others had killed a comrade and incited a dispute over the spoils.

However, as Lin Fei and Jin Yi passed by, no team took the initiative to approach them. Clearly, their calm demeanor and the unusual cleanliness of their appearance made the surrounding teams very cautious.

Within one of the teams,

a one-eyed man acting as leader carefully eyed each returning squad.

"Boss, there are only two of them over there; they should be easy to deal with..."

"Roll! If you want to die, go by yourself!" the one-eyed man said harshly. He did not explain further but ignored them, turning his attention to other teams.

"Why..." his subordinate was still puzzled.

A woman beside him snorted with laughter.

"To last ten days here, even the luckiest of people cannot avoid battle. A person who remains clean and uninjured after battling shows their strength. Such a pairing is either extremely powerful or has absolute trump cards and killer moves at their disposal – they’re not that simple to handle."

"Whether they’re all show and no substance is not for us to test," the one-eyed man spoke with a voice tinged with a faint scent of blood.

He pointed to the right.

"The Bender brothers will give them a try for us."

The rest followed their leader’s pointing finger and sure enough, in the grasslands ahead, two enormous, robust men, each standing over two meters tall with shaved heads and wicked smiles, directly confronted the solitary man and woman.

These two hulks had waists nearly twice the width of a normal person, their hands and fists almost as large as a child’s head. One could almost describe them with the word giants. Each of them wielded a huge, nicked machete in one hand. The meter-long hefty blades looked as casual as kitchen knives in their large hands, with remnants of flesh and bone still clinging to the metal.

"The Bender brothers are a bit kill-crazy; this is the outskirts of the inspection area. After this distance, the chance of being discovered increases, so there’s little time left to make a big score. No wonder they aren’t holding back," the one-eyed man said coldly. "We’ll just pay close attention and see if these two are as strong as they appear." (To be continued. If you like this work, please come to Qidian (qidian.com) to cast your recommendation votes, monthly tickets, and your support is my greatest motivation.)