Decaying World

Chapter 207 207 Radiance
Qingfeng Temple.

"Miss Lin has arrived?" The Qingfeng Temple disciple guarding the gate bowed respectfully to Lin Xiaoliu as she alighted from the carriage.

Although she wasn't very fluent in the language, Lin Xiaoliu still maintained a certain air of a young lady from a wealthy family when she wasn't speaking.

She was led by a female martial artist who was specifically responsible for taking care of her, and they walked hand in hand into the gate of Qingfeng Temple and into the training ground behind the gate.

Female disciples led the way along the way.

"Is my brother here today?" Lin Xiaoliu asked simply.

The female disciple who led the way answered with a smile.

"The abbot has gone out on business today and hasn't returned yet."

Lin Xiaoliu breathed a slight sigh of relief, her tense body relaxing a little.

"Then, is Sister Xia Si there?" she then asked.

"Senior Sister Xia Si has also gone out and may not be back for a few days," the female disciple replied regretfully.

"What a pity." Lin Xiaoliu relaxed even more.

Images of her brother Lin Hui and her senior sister Xia Si involuntarily flashed through her mind.

She often encountered her senior sister Xia Si coming to ask her brother for martial arts advice when she was practicing swordsmanship.

For some reason, even though it was just a simple scene of teaching swordsmanship, she always felt uneasy and had a chill down her spine when she watched it from afar.

My brother always smiles, and so does Senior Sister Xia Si. The smiles on their faces are quite different.

But all of them made her feel cold.

The mere act of practicing swordsmanship by Lin Hui's side each day only intensified the torment in her heart.

She had told her older brother how she felt, but he would always pat her head and think she was joking.

After all, Brother Hui was only an outer-city martial artist, not an inner-force martial artist. Her older brother would always tell her that when she grew up, she would quickly surpass Brother Hui.

She's still young, so it's normal for her to find Brother Hui scary.

However, Lin Xiaoliu's lack of fluency and strength in language expression does not mean that she has a serious problem with perception.

In fact, during her time at Qingfeng Temple, she sensed danger not only from Brother Hui and Senior Sister Xia Si.

There's also that senior sister named Mingxia, and many other strange people in the temple.
'I want to go home.' Lin Xiaoliu looked at the tall Qingfeng Temple hall in front of her, and the thought rose in her mind again.

She was actually afraid of her eldest brother Liu Wujun and second sister Liu Xiao, but compared to the two of them, she was more afraid of her brother Hui, who seemed to only have internal strength.
Upon entering the innermost part of the mansion, to the area where she usually practiced, Lin Xiaoliu had just sat down when she heard faint noises coming from outside the door.

She knelt quietly on the prayer mat and began to maintain the sword she used for practice, just as she always did.

After all, it was a top-grade sword bought from the inner city, and each one cost hundreds of thousands of coins.

I had only been sitting for a short while when I felt the wind rustling behind me.

Lin Xiaoliu turned around and saw a tall man in a black robe wearing a black eagle mask suddenly appear in the garden.

"You are Lin Xiaoliu? Right?" the man greeted with a gentle smile.

"Yes"

"It seems the abbot is not here. I'll come again next time." The person who came was Tao Xuehai, who had come to deliver medicine.

"Oh, by the way, remember to tell the abbot that I've made all the people who were spreading rumors around outside the temple leave, so he doesn't need to worry."

"Okay." Lin Xiaoliu watched in bewilderment as Tao Xuehai quietly disappeared before her eyes.

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Outer fog zone.

The gray mist churned and surged.

A giant black scorpion, over three meters tall and more than twenty meters long, was waving its nine tails and frantically displaying the red, venomous stingers at the ends of its tails.

It waved for a while, and only when it was sure that the person in front of it would not make any further moves did it suddenly turn around and run away.

But after running only a few steps, a distance of only a dozen meters, a familiar figure appeared in front of him again.

Lin Hui held his sword, staring at the Nine-Tailed Scorpion.

"This is the fifth time. Still not satisfied?" He frowned slightly.

"Forget it, let's just cut it down," Lin Hui sighed.

As soon as he finished speaking, the nine-tailed scorpion opposite him suddenly stopped, his entire body crashing down with a thud. His two pincers hit the ground, and his body seemed to go berserk, frantically slamming into the ground.

The whole movement looks like he's kowtowing.

"One got it!?" Lin Hui's expression shifted slightly. He tried a few more commands, but the nine-tailed scorpion seemed like an idiot and couldn't understand anything.

It is far inferior to the Amethyst Flame Dragon.

It's clear that the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon was trained by the Mist God Cult, which is why it has a slight talent for languages.

Lin Hui was still somewhat curious about this, wondering how the followers of the Mist God Cult managed to make these monsters in the misty area gradually understand a little bit of language.

The nine-tailed scorpion in front of him is one of the monsters at the lowest level of the outer fog zone. Its shell is extremely hard, and according to his estimation, it is about the same level as the internal energy barrier of a Zhou Tian martial artist releasing his full strength once.

Anyway, that's how it feels for him when he's chopping.

What's really disgusting about this guy is the poisonous needles on his nine tails, which are extremely toxic. Furthermore, his speed and strength are comparable to a high priest.

Of course, without any means to counter the Void Force and Divine Techniques, the Nine-Tailed Scorpion would be useless against the High Priest.

But the key is that there are enough of these things.

When he went over to look for monsters, he could easily see dozens or even hundreds of them just by wandering around.

There was one every few steps, one every few steps. The ground in that area was covered with countless scorpion holes.

After confirming that the nine-tailed scorpion was obedient, Lin Hui led it back to the labyrinth ruins.

Then, at the entrance to the ruins, which was the entrance to the passage he had created himself, he made the Nine-Tailed Scorpion lie down and reached out to give it a blood seal identification.

Nine-Tailed Scorpion – One of the common monsters in the Outer Fog Zone, a gregarious creature, timid and cowardly, it survives by hunting underground using a special organ sensitive to vibrations. Like other destructive monsters in the Outer Fog Zone, its shell is covered by a thin layer of natural void energy, giving it some resistance to attacks of equal value. It can withstand void energy head-on for a short time. Its stinger venom can ignore void energy and internal energy protection, causing penetrating poison attacks.

Evolvable branch: 3'

'Impressive. This thing's shell can actually resist illusory power? It's born with illusory power? Maybe illusory power is an innate ability of these monsters, only it was learned and developed by others.' Lin Hui thought for a moment and came to a more likely guess.

He walked closer to the nine-tailed scorpion lying on the ground at the entrance and examined it carefully.

This guy is just an enlarged version of a black scorpion. Except for the nine scorpion tails growing from his rear end, he is no different from an ordinary scorpion.

Its shell was black, with two large pincers that looked like clenched fists, and its back was covered with segments resembling bamboo joints. Eight legs were distributed on both sides of its body, and it lay on the ground, not daring to move.

Lin Hui reached out and touched one of his legs.

It felt cool and smooth, like touching a mirror.

He traced the scorpion's exoskeleton backwards until he reached its stinger.

The tail stinger is a short, red needle about the length of a palm and the thickness of a finger, located at the very end of the tail and encased in soft, black keratinous tissue on both sides.

From the outside, Lin Hui could see that the red short needle looked like a crystal syringe, with a fluorescent red liquid flowing inside.

This gave him the idea of ​​extracting scorpion venom.

'Let's upgrade first. The defenders still need to be properly prepared.'

Composing himself, he decided these were all plans for the future. He stepped back a short distance and opened the evolutionary branch of the Blood Seal.

'1—Giant Scorpion: A nine-tailed scorpion three times its original size, with its strength and physique enhanced simultaneously.'

'2—Nine-Tailed Scorpion King: The king who commands the nine-tailed scorpion clan. His venom far surpasses that of ordinary nine-tailed scorpions. He can control parts of the terrain and move freely underground.'

'3—Scorpion Demon: A scorpion demon that has become a spirit, with enhanced physique and venom, and slightly awakened intelligence.'

The three directions represented three evolutionary paths. After weighing them, Lin Hui chose option 2.
Because the second one can move freely underground, it is extremely flexible.

Next are the years required for evolution, twelve years.

For him now, it's just six Purple Cloud Ganoderma lucidum plants.

It quickly determined its evolution and then began consuming large quantities of Purple Cloud Fungus. In less than half an hour, the enormous nine-tailed scorpion slowly fell into a deep sleep, and then its entire body began to rapidly petrify.

Right before Lin Hui's eyes, it transformed into a black stone sculpture of a nine-tailed scorpion.

After the stone carving held for several minutes, a series of crisp cracking sounds rang out, and large cracks appeared on its surface.

Soon, a nine-tailed scorpion that looked much the same as before appeared before Lin Hui.

But he soon noticed that the so-called "not much difference" was actually due to subtle changes.

The venom flowing from the new nine-tailed scorpion's stinger had changed from red to purplish-red.

Its outer shell also seemed to have a touch of purple than before. It appeared to be more robust.

"From now on, you'll be in charge of guarding this underground area of ​​the entrance and exit. Find your own food in the surrounding area. If you really can't find it, come find me," Lin Hui instructed through telepathy.

"Hiss!" The Nine-Tailed Scorpion King responded quickly, burrowing into the ground.

In the blink of an eye, the ground rippled like water, engulfing it instantly.

'That should be enough.' Lin Hui calculated that the Water Elemental, the Amethyst Flame Dragon, the Nine-Tailed Scorpion King, and the three guardians were roughly enough to guard this labyrinthine ruins base.

"Next, it's time to determine the disciples eligible for the seals. We need to select which disciples are qualified and which aren't yet ready. There's a vacancy in the Blood Seal system, so I should go back and assess each of the core disciples."

After finishing up the miscellaneous matters here, Lin Hui planned to leave and go back to find a loyal disciple to bestow his seal upon, so that this base could be operated stably and manpower could be arranged to maintain the Ziyunzhi Garden established by Zi Xueyu.

Such a precious medicinal herb garden requires the most loyal personnel. Even if Purple Cloud Mushroom isn't a mainstream martial arts training elixir, it can still significantly boost energy and is very expensive. Money can corrupt people; if loyalty isn't strong enough, then planting it is just letting others profit from it.

After circling around and checking the situation to make sure everything was alright, he turned back towards the boundary wall.

They had only walked a short distance when they heard a huge vibration and buzzing sound coming from afar.

The earth trembled, and the fog churned.

Lin Hui stopped and saw the ground around him trembling violently. Some rocky ruins were shaken so badly that the remaining rubble jumped up and into the air. Large clouds of dust rose up, mingling with the mist and becoming indistinguishable.

He stood quietly in place, waiting for the sound to fade away.

Over the past year, he has heard these kinds of huge footsteps almost every month.

According to Xia Si, these footsteps were the sounds made by a giant monster, as large as a mountain range, passing by.

These monsters are so large that they have nearly crushed Miyin Village into even more ruins on several occasions.

Of course, despite hearing about it, Lin Hui never actually saw the appearance of these mountain-sized monsters up close because of the thickness of the fog.

Soon, the footsteps faded into the distance and disappeared.

Lin Hui breathed a sigh of relief and quickly returned.

Half a day later, he went straight back to Qingfeng Temple and summoned Wang Hongshi.

"Master, what are your instructions?" Wang Hongshi has now officially assumed the position of the head steward of Qingfeng Temple, which can be regarded as an affirmation of his previous diligent work.

"Which of the top ten core disciples are still in the temple? Summon them all," Lin Hui said.

He specially found a small training ground in the back of the mansion to prepare for testing everyone.

(End of this chapter)