Fire Monster

Chapter 267 Insect Swarm
The distance is about 1,200 miles, which requires two to three uses of the Dao Jade. If you walk faster, you can reach the destination in one day.

Zhao Guanshan walked quickly without delay.

But in his heart, he had a rational understanding of this matter.

Six teams of witchers were trapped in it in succession. It was very dangerous, but none of their spirits died, which seemed very strange.

Because under normal circumstances, as a witcher who specializes in dealing with spirits and demons, it is impossible for him to not be able to last even one round, and it is impossible for him not even have time to return and deliver information.

So there are probably only a few reasons.

Or there may be some powerful demon spirits there that can kill all the witchers in seconds upon encounter. However, this seems unlikely at the moment, because as long as the witcher has a physical body, the spirit is not afraid of death.

Another possibility is that there is some strange formation there that has trapped everyone and makes it impossible for them to escape.

Of course, it is not ruled out that there are really good things there, so much so that everyone is rushing to get them and forgets to come back.

Zhao Guanshan's current advantage is that he has two spiritual weapons with an enhancement of +10, and his large shield, half-body armor, helmet, and inner armor are all enhanced by +8. In addition, he has six green leaf spiritual weapons in his hands, and a sealed oil lamp that can instantly block the target's perception.

In theory, there is no essential difference between this imperially-sealed oil lamp and Zhao Guanshan's own.

But there are slight differences in the power of seal.

The magical power sealed by the former is to block perception, while the magical power sealed by the latter is to dispel and purify.

However, the lamp that Mei Xun found can be brought into the spirit world because it must have been strengthened with a large amount of spiritual ash.

If Zhao Guanshan's lamp was strengthened with a large amount of spiritual ash, that would be possible. In fact, the magic weapon in reality can be brought into the spiritual world after being covered with spiritual ash at all costs, but the cost-effectiveness is very poor.

In addition to these, the small flame in the imperial oil lamp is relatively active. As long as he wants, he can have a strange and wonderful communication with it. The specific information is not certain, but it is safe and risk-free.

Zhao Guanshan himself didn’t understand why, but this could only be considered a good thing.

About fifteen hours later, Zhao Guanshan had run nearly a thousand miles, and he activated the Dao Jade for the third time to confirm his location.

At the same time, Wang Xuan was also contacting him from behind.

"Fellow Daoist Chengfeng, what's going on ahead? Is there anything unusual?"

"There is no abnormality for the time being. The Dao Jade is working normally. If possible, I will open the Dao Jade for the fourth time two hundred miles away. If I cannot open the Dao Jade within five hours, it means that the situation here is really serious. You should stop trying to add fuel to the fire."

After saying that, Zhao Guanshan closed the Asking Jade, but the next moment, a gray-yellow smoke and mist suddenly floated from the front, as if it was attracted by the activation of the Asking Jade.

Zhao Guanshan didn't care what was there and turned around and ran, but the gray-yellow smoke chased him closely at a very fast speed and was about to catch up in the blink of an eye. He hurriedly took out the Dao Jade and activated it.

"It's an emergency. The gray-yellow smoke here will be attracted by the Daoyu Jade. I'm worried that—"

At this point, Zhao Guanshan directly closed the Dao Jade. Suspense needed to be created. Now he didn't want to be a good fighter.

Almost in the next second, the gray-yellow smoke covered the area, but Zhao Guanshan instantly raised the imperial oil lamp and activated the shielding perception.

No matter what is in the smoke and dust, no matter how strange it is, it must have come through the sensing jade, so blocking perception is definitely a useful trick.

At this moment, Zhao Guanshan clearly saw that the oil lamp with his imperial seal suddenly lit up, and a unique and strange rune flew out. A terrifying white light flashed, illuminating the area within a radius of several hundred feet.

It's really magical. So in his field of vision, this perception will be enhanced, but for the enemy target, it will be blocked. It's interesting.

At this moment, he clearly saw that there were thousands of khaki flying insects the size of rice grains hidden in the khaki smoke. As their perception was blocked, they began to circle in place.

It’s so small, can you kill it?

With such doubts, Zhao Guanshan took out the Purple Fire Dagger and began to wave it around with the help of his enhanced perception. Really, there was no need for any skills, just wave it around randomly.

Every swing could kill dozens or hundreds of these yellow flying insects, but they were too small and the efficiency was too low. In addition, this was when the perception of these khaki flying insects was blocked, otherwise, if they swarmed over him at this moment, he would probably be in trouble.

So after a few seconds, Zhao Guanshan decisively used his mind to activate the purple fire dagger. In this situation, the best way was to speed up the attack frequency of the spiritual weapon.

It is most appropriate to activate it with the mind. The reason why the consumption is so great and the damage is so high is because the attack frequency is too fast.

When attacking with hands, the number of attacks per second is at most dozens, but if it is driven by the mind, it can easily be more than a thousand times per second.

So in less than five seconds, 90% of Zhao Guanshan's mental power was consumed, and he had to stop such urging. But in just these few seconds, the small yellowish flying insects were all killed.

Extremely convenient and fast.

But what can he do? He is now a fourth-level spirit body, and all his mental strength can only last for about four seconds before he has to surrender.

At this time, Zhao Guanshan hurriedly took out a green leaf spirit weapon, and instantly recovered half of his mental strength, and the shielding effect brought by the imperial seal oil lamp was slowly dissipating. There were no more abnormal situations around him. At this time, he had the opportunity to check the spiritual ashes on the ground. There were actually quite a lot of them, and the quality was slightly better. These spiritual ashes naturally attracted each other, and gathered from a large scattered piece into a large ball, about half a cubic meter.

Without saying anything, Zhao Guanshan upgraded his combat boots to +6.
At this moment, he clearly sensed that these spiritual weapons combined had already made his spiritual body feel the weight. At this rate, he could only strengthen two more spiritual weapons to +10 at most, and then he would have reached the upper limit of his spiritual body's carrying capacity.

Next, Zhao Guanshan stayed where he was for three hours, until his mental strength was fully restored, and then he continued to move forward.

At this time, he was still more than 200 miles away from the basin pit caused by the ground collapse. No matter what, he had to see the Skull Mountain before making a decision.

As he was walking, he saw a yellowish-brown smoke slowly swirling in the desert ahead, as if it was on patrol.

Looking around again, I couldn't see any other smoke or dust. These yellowish flying insects should be in groups.

Zhao Guanshan hesitated for a moment, then crept forward quietly. These ochre-colored flying insects seemed not very sensitive to conventional perception, and they remained indifferent even when he was close to three hundred meters away.

Then he continued to move closer to a hundred meters, which startled the group of yellowish flying insects, and they flew over.

The smoke and dust covered a large area, about a hundred meters in radius.

But Zhao Guanshan had a countermeasure. The moment these ochre-colored flying insects covered him, he activated the imperial seal oil lamp, shielding and enhancing perception. Then he used his mind to drive the purple fire dagger to kill with high frequency and speed.

The whole process took less than four seconds, and the group of khaki flying insects were completely killed.

This time, Zhao Guanshan only consumed 80% of his mental energy, which was 10% less than the last time. Sure enough, this kind of thing can be mastered with practice.

After taking back the purple fire dagger, he did not rush to use the green leaf spirit weapon to replenish his mental strength, but continued to strengthen his combat boots to +7. Then, he retreated dozens of miles, rested on the spot, and waited for his mental strength to recover.

When your mental strength is restored to full value, go forward again, kill a group of small flying insects at a time, solo without any injury, and you can get about half a cubic meter of spiritual ash each time. The efficiency is surprisingly good.

Especially after he mastered the skills, the consumption of the Purple Fire Dagger decreased with each solo, and finally it was fixed at an efficiency of only 50% each time.

In this way, we can come almost four times a day, which is equivalent to obtaining two cubic meters of ash every day.

But his own consumption is minimal.

Because mental strength can recover on its own as long as there is time. After all, it is anchored by the physical body in the real world, so there is no need to worry.

The only consumption is the perception shielding caused by the imperial oil lamp every time it activates.

Zhao Guanshan noticed that for every four times the perception shield was released, the imperial seal oil lamp would have to be replenished with a full cubic meter of ash.

Otherwise, it would look as if it had been rejected from the spiritual world.

In this way, Zhao Guanshan’s net profit every day is one cubic meter of ash.

This profit is still quite good.

So one day later, his combat boots were also upgraded to +8.
Three days later, his ash shield was strengthened to +9 by him, consuming two cubic meters of ash.

Two days later, his half-armor was strengthened to +9, still consuming two cubic meters of spiritual ash.

In this way, by the time his flame inner armor, helmet, and combat boots were all strengthened to +9, twelve full days had passed.

His spiritual body was already feeling very heavy, and was about to reach the upper limit of its spiritual body's load-bearing capacity.

But during these twelve days, he wiped out nearly forty-five groups of strange little flying insects, allowing him to successfully reach the edge of the big pit basin.

At a glance, you can see Skull Mountain deep in the basin.

Then, Zhao Guanshan's face changed drastically in an instant.

Because this Skull Mountain is not made up of human skeletons, but is clearly a mountain of animal skeletons.

Or to be more precise, it is a skull mountain with three huge heads. Only half of it is visible, but its size is extremely huge, and each head is hundreds of miles long.

These three skulls alone occupied the entire pit basin.

Surrounding these three skull mountains are large, even more numerous swarms of yellow insects. They gather into larger smoke and dust, almost turning into clouds. Apart from that, nothing else can be seen.

But you can imagine that it must be extremely dangerous in there.

Even if it was Zhao Guanshan, it would be impossible for him to use the previous tactics again.

So he turned around and left without hesitation. The information had been obtained and he needed to get his reward.

(End of this chapter)