Decaying World

Chapter 159, Exchange 159 (Thanks to Alliance Leader Xie Zhenkong Zero Point Energy)
Foggy area.

In the hazy white fog, it's difficult to determine your location without the path beneath your feet as a reference.

With the help of the maps obtained from Amamiya and the Wang family, Lin Hui kept stumbling and correcting his direction until he finally found the area that had been marked on the map.

On the dilapidated gray-white rock driveway, Lin Hui looked at the road surface ahead, trampled by huge footprints, and sighed.

'The map made by the Qingfeng Temple expedition team is practically useless; the only slightly useful one is the one given to us by the Wang family.'

He reached out and pulled out the pale yellow sheepskin map that he had examined many times to determine his location.

"Starting from here, if you keep going outwards, you'll reach the Bone-Eroding Plains. Beyond the Bone-Eroding Plains lies the Jade Sea. There should be a giant stone pit here, left from the battle between the previous Rain Palace Masters. Let me look for it."

He looked around and slowed down, circling around the dead-end road to search.

Before long, they found a small, dark green pond that was more than ten meters in diameter and bottomless.

Standing by the pond, Lin Hui stopped, watching the white bone fragments bobbing and floating inside.

'The stone pit was found, and the surrounding area was searched for markers left by the government—scaled stone tablets.'

He circled around and immediately spotted a rectangular black stone tablet leaning precariously against the edge of the pond.

The stone tablet is about half a person's height, with most of it embedded in the ground. The part above ground is engraved with the three characters "Shiguyuan" in an unknown white pigment. Following the characters is a directional arrow pointing to the right side of the tablet.

Lin Hui examined it carefully and found that there was a line of small characters engraved at the bottom of the stone tablet.

'This is the boundary; there will be no more roads beyond it. Due to the extreme difficulty of maintenance, the Scale Stone Tablet will be used as a guide post thereafter. If the Scale Stone Tablet is found to be damaged, please pile the corpses of the monsters you have slain in the Fog Zone at the foot of the tablet and wait for it to be repaired—Tai Su Federation, Tu Yue City Government Office.'

'If we go any further past here, it won't be the relatively safe area that Tu Yue is maintaining.' Lin Hui looked in the direction the scale stone tablet pointed to, where the fog was thick and he could vaguely see countless unknown phantoms flowing by like water.

The number of monsters was far greater than that of the stone tablet.

He took out the improved map from the Wang family, examined it, and then compared it with the one given to him by his elder brother, Yu Gong Liu Wujun.

The Amamiya map also includes the text from the Scale Stone Tablet at this location, but with more text than the stone tablet itself, including information about the Bone-Eater Plain.

'Bone-Eating Plains: Before entering, be sure to seal all water sources to avoid acid mist and rain contamination. The acid rain cycle in the Bone-Eating Plains over the past ten years is: once every four to five days, with an average rainfall duration of two hours. Please ensure your livestock and mounts have their mouths and noses filtered.'

These reminders are clearly instructions from Amamiya to his own people who use the map, and they are much more detailed than those for other maps.

Lin Hui looked at the encyclopedia again and found the location of the Hellfire Monster Clan marked on it.

'Near a black stone forest near the Jade Sea in the Bone-Eroding Plains. The described area is quite large; it seems we can only search within a specific area.'

This time, the purgatory monsters are a race called the Oil-Footed Deer People. Their original characteristics are that they are a semi-humanoid non-human race living in the Bone-Eroding Plains and secreting a lot of oil.

They once had a brief border trade with Tu Yue Outer City, and they have their own rudimentary language, but no written script.

Six years ago, they would often save up their excess sebum and trade it in a few outlying towns outside Tuyue City.

However, the inner city's cleanup team recently issued a notice confirming that the Oil-Footed Deer People had been specially contaminated. Based on the notice's description of the contamination's external manifestations, Lin Hui confirmed that it was his own transformation into a purgatory.

Standing beside the stone tablet, he carefully checked the opening of the water bag on his body, tied it up, and sealed it.

Then check the special effects surrounding the wind, make sure to gather some normal air around you, and finally replenish the almost depleted Ningxiang.

Holding the Ruyi in his hand, he quickly walked in the direction the stone tablet pointed.

Lin Hui had walked less than two hundred meters when he felt the air around him become slightly choking, and the road under his feet had completely broken away and disappeared, replaced by a pale green, sour-smelling, semi-dry muddy ground.

There were no plants, no insects, and they hadn't even encountered any fog monsters in this direction yet. As they continued forward, the acidic smell in the air gradually became more and more pungent.

After walking another kilometer or so, Lin Hui could barely smell anything except a sour smell.

The strong, sour stench completely overwhelmed all his olfactory cells.

Having become familiar with the flat, pale green muddy ground beneath his feet, where there was no path, he gradually began to accelerate.

After a few more kilometers, the Wang family map and the Amamiya map on Lin Hui's body both began to heat up at the same time.

He took it out and looked at it.

A faint black arrow pattern appeared on the map. The arrow was pointing to his right front.

'Is this a map navigation system? A fog-of-war version?' He was immediately intrigued.

'From this perspective, it's clear there's a reason why those large caravans, surrounded by fog and unable to distinguish directions, could rely solely on these specially made maps.'

Lin Hui had heard such rumors before, and now it was confirmed why these maps were all closely guarded secrets and treasured by major clans.

So this thing has such a valuable function.

He looked around and found that everything looked the same in all four directions. Without the map, he would have no idea where he was.

In the vast, foggy region, once you lose your way, death is the inevitable outcome.

At times like these, maps are truly the lifeline for large caravans.

With a sigh in his heart, he quickened his pace, unleashed his movement technique, and rushed forward.

The pale green mud beneath our feet kept disappearing behind us, while new green fields kept appearing in the mist ahead.

Lin Hui ran for about ten kilometers and soon saw the second scale stone tablet.

Meanwhile, the map in his arms cooled down rapidly as it approached the Scale Stone Tablet. Clearly, there was some special connection between the two.

Lin Hui stepped forward and found that the stone tablet seemed to have been knocked askew by something, and there were deep chips and marks left on the edges.

He reached out and held the stone tablet on both sides, trying to straighten it, but the stone tablet did not budge.

Speechless, I had no choice but to give up.

The new stone tablet also records the handwriting and the direction of the arrow.

'Facing the stone tablet, due north—Oilfoot Tribe. Due west—Bone Jade Relics. Northeast—Jade Sea. Due south—Tuyue City.' The inscription on the stone tablet was much shorter than before, and the characters were larger, suggesting it was a blurry imitation. Nevertheless, Lin Hui still noticed obvious signs of corrosion along the edges of the characters.

He thought for a moment, determined which way was due north, then slowly drew his sword, sheathed it back into his back, and tied it securely.

laugh!
He unleashed his movement technique, even eliminating Ning Xiang, relying solely on the surrounding special effects of the wind to maintain clean air for breathing.

To be fair, the most common method used for this special effect so far is to confine clean air to isolate it from the external environment.

As for actual defense, he doesn't use it much. After all, Lin Hui hasn't encountered many opponents who can match his speed, so he almost never needs to defend.

A sour, foul-smelling wind swept past me, and the fog ahead was broken apart like ocean waves, splitting to both sides.

A few minutes later, Lin Hui suddenly frowned, faintly smelling the scent of blood.

He slowed his pace, gripped his sword tightly, and gathered his aura as he moved forward.

After walking for about half a minute, the fog suddenly dissipated, revealing a small, natural fog-free area.

From a distance, this area looks like an inverted bowl cavity, inside which, on the pale green mud, stands a rugged little village built of black rocks.

The village is marked by a three-story stone fort in the center, around which more than ten black stone houses have been built.

These houses are all simple rectangular prisms, with four large stones stacked like building blocks to form a box without a door, which is the basic structure of a house.

The black stone houses, averaging three meters high, number more than ten and surround the central stone fortress, forming a simple little village.

Unfortunately, the village was already deserted by then.

The bones scattered all over the ground prove that there were living things here not long ago, but now...
Lin Hui walked into the village and stopped in front of a large, three-meter-long skeleton.

The skeleton is that of a deer, but the body is that of a human, and the skeleton still holds a rough black stone club. The bones are covered with a layer of dried, tattered brown fur. There is no flesh left inside.

Lin Hui squatted down and examined the bones.

'There are no traces of purgatory's influence,' he sighed, and got up to walk inside.

As they ventured deeper into the area, they found mutilated and mangled skeletons of deer-men everywhere—along the roadside and near houses.

He walked all the way to the center of the stone fortress and counted at least thirty skeletons of deer-men, none of which showed any signs of being transformed into a purgatory.

"Didn't they say this place was polluted?" he sighed softly.

The sound echoed softly around, but no one responded. Only a faint whistling sound came from the cracks in the stone fortress's broken gate.

After wandering around the stone fortress, I found that besides moldy, unidentified meat and bones, there were also the skeletons of even larger deer-men.

Strangely, not a single skeleton of the deer-man was found here.

This inevitably led Lin Hui to make some connections.

He wandered around inside the stone fortress and found a large room that resembled a study.

In the room filled with black rocks, a large, irregularly shaped stone table was simply placed on the floor.

Several rough, oval-shaped stones next to the table serve as natural stools.

To the right of the table and stools, on a stone platform that looks like a bookshelf, are two brown leather scrolls, each over a meter long and as thick as an adult's fist.

The scroll was bound with a tattered black rope and placed haphazardly on the stone platform.

Lin Hui stepped forward and gently pulled the rope, unfolding it.

It was full of crooked, black scribbles, seemingly introductory characters for learning the Tai Su script.

'It seems these deer people also want to actively move towards civilization, what a pity.' He guessed that someone had taken advantage of the pollution as an excuse to slaughter the entire tribe.

Despite having a naturally fog-free zone, it still couldn't escape its fate.

pat.

Suddenly, a small, pale purple, rod-shaped transparent crystal fell out of the scroll he had unfurled.

Lin Hui picked up the crystal and examined it.

'It seems to be some kind of natural amethyst?'

In the past, he might have simply thrown it away, since amethyst is not rare, and even in Tu Yue, this kind of mineral is not a rare item.

But at that moment, as he picked up the crystal stick, he suddenly felt an itch on his shoulder.

laugh.

A sliver of purple light suddenly shot out from the crystal rod and precisely entered the second nine-eyed green crystal on his shoulder.

The next second, the second of the nine-eyed lights up with a faint glow, indicating that charging is complete.

'This thing can actually store spirit??' Lin Hui was surprised. Although he didn't know the strength of the spirit that flew out, the fact that this amethyst stick could store spirit was already quite remarkable.

At least until now, this is the first thing he has come across that can store spirits. No, it should be the second. The first thing is a head.

After putting away the amethyst staff, he looked through another scroll, but this time there was nothing hidden inside. After wandering around the stone fortress a few more times and confirming that he hadn't found anything else, Lin Hui finally left the tribe.

But he hadn't gone far when the fog-free area behind him was quietly swallowed up by mist.

'Huh? What's going on?' He stopped and looked back in the direction he came from.

'It's impossible that the mist just happened to creep in when I arrived; I must have caused some change that allowed the mist to enter this place.'

Thinking of this, Lin Hui took out the amethyst stick he had just found.

After thinking for a moment, he flashed back to the foot of the stone fortress, but the surrounding mist still surged in, filling the air.
Unable to determine the cause, he guessed it was the spirit within, but couldn't confirm it, so he decided to save time and continue forward to the next purgatory-transformation clan point.

(End of this chapter)