An invasion from the Abyss? I, a demonic cultivator, laughed.

Chapter 418 Floating Gunship
Meanwhile, outside the altar, in a deserted, dense forest, a phantom resembling Chu Xiu was taking shape.

However, the illusory figure was so blurry that it seemed as if a gust of wind could blow it away.

During those two hours, Chu Xiu never stopped studying the rules of space.

His idea was simple: if those extraterrestrial demons could bestow divine power remotely through higher dimensions, or even tear open rifts to allow their armies to descend, why couldn't he?
Unfortunately, he soon discovered that even powerful extraterrestrial demons, or even stronger gods, needed external forces to cross space.

Typically, it is an "anchor point" with the ability to open a teleportation channel.

For example, the extraterrestrial demon who bestowed upon him the living armor did so with the help of an item given to a murderer; the extraterrestrial demon in Pengcheng even needed to rely on the power of a forbidden object.

The extraterrestrial demons here can only be summoned by using altars to unleash their thoughts, divine power, or objects.

Without such an "anchor point," one can only try to control the "local" energy with one's mind.

Chu Xiu discovered that although his intention to descend with the lamp did not possess the power to influence the present world, as long as he gathered enough thoughts, he could gather the spiritual power suspended between heaven and earth, just like a fighting spirit.

Of course, the amount it can control is so small as to be negligible, making it impossible to use for combat; at most, it can only transmit simple messages.

"No wonder in those legends, extraterrestrial demons always begin by bewitching people with mysterious whispers."

Without the cooperation of the other side, it is still too difficult to project power unidirectionally from a higher dimension.

In fact, even conveying some vague whispers is extremely difficult. Usually, only those superior beings who have lived for tens of thousands of years can do it. That is to say, Chu Xiu has completed the cultivation of the Spirit Transformation stage. Whether it is the strength of his soul or his understanding and control of the spiritual power in the world, he has reached a new level. In addition, his body is not far from the target, so he can do this with such weak energy.

"Even though I can only convey some information, at least I can do something."

Touching his chin, Chu Xiu began to consider specific actions.

His theoretical goal was actually only one thing: to help at least one person complete the trial.

The simplest and most direct way to achieve this is naturally to delay!

As long as he can stall until his true form arrives, all trials are nothing but dust and dirt. He wouldn't be afraid even if the God of Hunting himself descended upon him.

The God of Hunting seemed weaker than the extraterrestrial demon in Pengcheng. Although Chu Xiu's energy was sealed, his spirit was stronger than ever before after he cultivated his primordial spirit. The star core, which was of the same origin as his life, also nourished him, further enhancing his spirit.

This made the bonus of Chu Xiu's Nether Chain more than double compared to before.
Furthermore, he had previously killed so many transformed creatures and stored up a large amount of divine soul energy. Although Chu Xiu had not yet completed the refining, the ghost army had recovered to half of its peak strength.

This army of ghosts alone is an extremely powerful force; he estimated that an ordinary perfect demigod would be no match for them.

Adding to that his primordial spirit and the deadly weapon, the Calamity Poison, Chu Xiu figured that even if he couldn't defeat them, protecting one or two people and making their retreat shouldn't be a problem.

only.
Chu Xiu's gaze opened in the void. After blasting a cannon with an airborne display of power, that girl, Xia, was now swaggering around, piloting her floating gunboat to collect survivors.

They even used a loudspeaker to broadcast search and rescue information repeatedly.

"Was bombarding the altar meant to instill confidence in the prey?"

After all, without that shot, who would dare board Shia's gunboat? Who could be sure it wasn't some kind of trap?
"But if that happens, once the divine messenger is able to move, he will inevitably launch a full-scale attack in a fit of rage."

Chu Xiu's gaze shifted, landing on the gunboat.

Fifteen minutes had passed since the trial officially began, but not many people had entered the gunboat.

Clearly, most of the prey still had reservations.

Shea was also worried about this.

Chu Xiu concentrated his mind to mobilize the surrounding spiritual energy, trying to condense it into a sound transmission, but this was much more difficult than he had expected. The consciousness that the lamp could cross was simply too weak.

After finally managing to gather a few words of information, the floating gunboat had already roared past.

Chu Xiu cursed under his breath and hurriedly chased after them in the higher dimension. However, when he returned to the mortal world, the scenery around him suddenly changed drastically.

This left Chu Xiu completely bewildered. This was the troublesome aspect of higher dimensions; it was not merely a scaling of the present world, but a "folded" present world. Sometimes, when one "goes left" in higher dimensions, the present world would "go right."

Moreover, this change in direction often occurs because the location being moved contains many "folds," and the scale of distance can also suddenly leap.

It's like a tangled mess of lines. If you walk along the direction of the lines, you'll walk the exact distance you need to go. But if you walk in a different direction, who knows where you'll end up?

This is why extraterrestrial beings are usually only located and summoned through rituals and other methods, and there has never been a case of extraterrestrial demons seeking them out on their own.

Chu Xiu is already overwhelmed by a mere 300-mile radius, let alone the vast starry sky.

Chu Xiu searched back and forth for a while before finally spotting the floating gunboat, now just a small dot, a hundred miles behind him. He immediately returned to his original location and then circled around like he was in a maze.

Fortunately, he was lucky this time and didn't have to go through too many twists and turns, so he successfully returned to the gunboat.

Seeing that the gunboat was about to move out of his sight again, he immediately channeled his spiritual power to lock onto the location of the four awakened ones and transmit the information!
"drag!"

A simple word rang in the ears of the four people. The sound was so faint that if the four of them had not all been King-level beings with amazing perception abilities, they would not have been able to hear it at all.

".?"

"you."

The four of them frowned simultaneously, looking at each other as if they wanted to say something but hesitated. None of them dared to confirm whether it was just the noise of air fluctuations or if someone had actually spoken.

Then another voice rang out, but this one was clearly tinged with impatience.

"drag!"

Everyone was startled and finally realized that it was not a hallucination or noise, but that someone was indeed transmitting their thoughts to them!
Strangely, the sound had previously come from in front of them, but now it was coming from behind, as if an invisible person was standing in the void in the path of the gunboat.

"May I ask which senior you are?" Xia looked around and asked.

However, no reply was ever received.

This left the four of them looking at each other in bewilderment. After a long while, Xia said, "We don't know whether the person who sent the message is friend or foe, nor do we know what their intentions are."

"But regardless, we will proceed according to plan."

Others nodded.

This made Chu Xiu roll his eyes. He wanted to go over and shout a few more words, but after thinking about it, he decided to first study how to control spiritual power, or wait for a gunboat to stop.

Otherwise, what's the point of just shouting one or two words intermittently?

"Let's go through the Inheritance Hall again carefully. I remember there are quite a few methods for setting up teleportation arrays inside."

"Since both utilize higher-dimensional space, perhaps we can draw inferences from one instance to another."

Thinking this, Chu Xiu stopped pursuing the matter and began to continue his research.

"boom!"

An armor-piercing shell fell from the sky, piercing through several meters of rock and killing one of the giant hunting lizards.

[Slayed a level 8 Warrior-rank prey, Hunting Points +71] A line of information appeared before Shia's eyes.

Hunting points are not only earned by hunting humans, but under the same level, humans earn four to five times more points than wild animals.

Shea is not a complete saint; strictly speaking, she is more like a racist because she firmly believes that, no matter how it is embellished, as long as living beings need to eat, the world is a world of eating and being eaten.

If one tries to save every intelligent life form, one will inevitably fall into an irreconcilable contradiction.

Therefore, she has always been absolutely human-centric, and is willing to ruthlessly slaughter other races in order to save humanity.

"Acquiring hunting points is absolutely necessary, as it's crucial for weakening that divine messenger."

Half an hour has passed since the ceremony officially began. During this time, Shia has been collecting human prey while using the central tower, which has a high concentration of floating gunships, to hunt nearby wild animals and earn points.

With the terrifying detection capabilities of cutting-edge technology, no beast could hide, not even those ten meters deep beneath the rock layers, and they were all blasted to death by Shia.

This scene made the other two King-level beings envious. No wonder floating gunships were standard equipment for members of the royal family, and no wonder that this one treasure alone could raise the success rate to over 70%.

It's not that its direct combat power is particularly strong, but rather that the various functions integrated into it can conveniently handle all kinds of situations.

"With so many hunting points, it should be enough to suppress the power of that divine messenger, right?"

"Not to mention the divine enhancement brought about by the hunting rules."

Ormond said happily.

At this moment, a faint halo appeared behind Shia, which was the energy boost she received after killing her prey.

This energy can be converted into one's own energy, thereby giving skills a very considerable boost.

This can be said to have further improved the winning rate.

However, there was no joy on Shia's face.

“Not enough,” she said, shaking her head.

"not enough?"

“That’s right. Although the hunting ceremony covers a large area, there aren’t many high-level beasts. What the God of Hunting really wants to see is infighting among his own kind.”

"After this round of sweeping, we have shot down most of the wild beasts hiding in the shallows, so the search efficiency will drop significantly from now on."

"But we must decide the outcome with the lizard the moment it sets off, or we will have no chance later."

Shia's words instantly wiped the relaxed expressions off the faces of the others.

“You seem to know a lot about this trial,” Ormond said.

Shea said, “This is not a secret. You should know that the Empire has regulations for collecting trial content, and these trials are divided according to their reference value, specifically based on the difficulty of the trial, whether it involves contact with high-level life forms, and whether it involves contact with special civilizations.”

"The central hub of the floating gunship stores all the highly valuable trials from the past tens of thousands of years, including no fewer than twenty directly related to this God of Hunting."

Upon hearing this, both Ormond and Xhaka couldn't help but shake their heads.

"You royals are really living a very comfortable life."

With such a system that integrates a large amount of information, I wonder how much of an advantage it can bring to the trials! Like Chu Xiu's first two normal trials, if he had known the information in advance, he could have just unleashed his full power and slaughtered everyone.

Shea glanced at the two of them and said calmly, "In short, according to the general rules of the hunting ritual, even if our hunting points are zero in the first hour, the divine messenger can only exert up to thirty percent of his power."

"The limits of power that can be unsealed each hour are 45%, 65%, and 100% respectively. After that, the Royal Guard can be mobilized for assistance."

"Only thirty percent?" Ormond's eyes lit up. "We still have a lot of hunting points from killing wild beasts, so wouldn't that mean..."

“It’s not that simple,” Shia shook her head. “This so-called power restriction is only something the other party can use when hunting. If it’s just for self-defense, there are no such rules.”

“Then there’s no difference,” Ormond said.

“No,” Zaka shook his head and said, “the difference is huge.”

Shia nodded: "That's right. The power limitation of hunting is not just the energy that can be mobilized. The divine messenger's perception, reconnaissance ability, reaction speed and so on will also be weakened."

"If we launch a sudden counterattack during our escape, even if he can react in time to switch from hunting to self-defense, the time he has to mobilize his forces will be greatly reduced!"

"That's why I say the outcome must be decided from the very beginning!"

"Then we..." Ormond looked at her questioningly.

“We must increase our strength as quickly and ruthlessly as possible,” Shia said, glancing downwards.

"Looks like we have to take a risk."

One minute later, Shia and the other three King-level warriors voluntarily entered the dense forest and began hunting human prey.

When these people were captured, given the vast difference in strength, they had no choice but to trust the four.

However, the four underestimated the difficulty of this journey. They did not realize that this was a civilization that believed in hunting. From childhood, the people here were instilled with all kinds of hunting knowledge in preparation for being selected to participate in hunting ceremonies in the future.

This makes everyone a master of stealth, so even with floating gunships, Shia and her team can't find any prey of the Fierce Rank or higher.

"No wonder the ceremony lasted a whole day. Did all these guys hide in the underground caves?"

Ormond ground his teeth, realizing that with the power of a malevolent awakened being, performing a live hole-drilling demonstration was no difficult task.

Even if the central control system of a floating gunboat is very strong, its detection capabilities will be greatly reduced after penetrating thick rock layers.

After all, this is a trial for heroic spirits. Even if the four of them choose the simple route of slaughtering their own kind, the probability of passing the trial is still not high. This is why Ormond and the other one initially opposed Shia.

"There's no other way but to split up and search," Xia said.

As if they had planned it beforehand, the four of them quickly dispersed in four different directions, while the floating gunship hovered not far away, providing them with remote information support.

Shea landed in a dense forest and gently inserted her slender left arm into the soil, instantly causing bright red blood to spread outwards.

The royal family of the Blood Crystal Civilization is directly descended from the bloodline of that false god. They have undergone special modifications, and each of them possesses the power of Blood Crystals.

This power is genuine divine power, possessing all sorts of incredible abilities.

As the blood vessels spread outwards, the energy fluctuations of all life within a ten-mile radius transformed into information streams that entered Shia's mind.

Suddenly, she smiled slightly as if she had discovered something.

"found it."

(End of this chapter)