Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 1230 - 1229 - Locked In

The pair carefully moved along the narrow and dark streets of the factory complex. Lind found it all too familiar to his old modern world but it felt incredibly wrong in a cultivation one. It especially became worse with its purpose.

The glimpses from before were bad enough but taking a detailed look gave him a deeper understanding of the process.

The Fiends raised their humans and demons somewhere to simply be led to their deaths. They refined their souls and left lumps of flesh that were moved to other structures.

They were then manipulated by Fiend weavings into the headless shape they all knew so well. It was not that they lost their heads literally, but there was no need for them anymore. The mass did not change, it simply was used as efficiently as possible.

He now understood how the damn things worked perfectly. All the experiments and study of the horde were no longer needed. The cells of each creature were made as a discrete organism. They were mortals!

It was a collection of mortal beings acting as a whole. A simple cell organism was the most resilient and could be programmed to act in a group. No wonder the damn things could revive as it only took a handful to survive any attack to collect and spread the lifeforce they stole!

He also realized they misunderstood what the hordes were doing. They were dominating the 3rd layer and keeping the Sovereign Tier forces locked up certainly but that was not all.

It was a ready made supply of higher cultivation realm life force! The soulless had no need of it to function, simply Qi was enough to be converted for them to live!

The sheer power they could produce in that state shocked him cold.

Lina looked sick but she kept silent as they explored. They could not use telepathy without Qi and he had only gotten enough to recover his stamina. They would grow tired, hungry, and thirsty soon.

He had brought water, but food was kept somewhere else. He had no idea of how they kept the place working in the void but it was clear they could also protect themselves.

He saw a Fiend fly here or there but not many. Their auras were non-existent. They had attacked earlier but now he realized they were all basic.

The simplest attacks that Immortals would normally disdain but that was all they used. He had thought it was to prevent damage to the buildings but maybe that was all they could safely use?

The void was restricting them or their power was needed to keep the factory city working safely.

"What happened after we parted?" His words sounded too loud but they had to chance it. Fiends, for all their vile skills, were close to humans in physical abilities.

Their hearing was limited.

Lina quickly revealed her discoveries and actions. He was surprised she had sabotaged the bridge so successfully! It did, however, lead to a very dark possibility.

He had been looking for some time but there was no sign of another bridge anywhere aside from the looming one where they come from. It made no sense but he also noticed there was no shift in the air.

Assuming it was all contained to keep their 'herds' alive, then the opening of the bridge should be easily detected by his nose, yet there was nothing. The air was stale and thankfully deadened as well.

The factories were likely sealed as a further countermeasure against the void. The impractical nature of the location aside, security could not be questioned.

"Where are we going, Lord Frey?" He swapped the barrel to his other arm as he carefully scanned inky black skies. Silence stretched almost uncomfortably until he revealed his thoughts.

"That bridge does not explain how all this got here. There has to be another way in but it is either sealed or requires resources that cannot be easily stored here. Either way, we need to find it and hope we can use it to get back out of here." Lina's bestial features were growing stronger as time passed.

She would be a fox once more soon but he would still be able to understand her. Her cultivation, however, could begin to degrade. Unlike him, who had his harmony still going strong, she had no such defense.

Without her foundation, she would begin to regress into a beast totally. What that would do to her cultivation when she returned to the 3rd layer even Lind was unsure of. It would not be good though.

They found no patrols nor any normal security but he did detect that the 2 he killed were finally found as activity spiked enormously.

He suddenly whirled and picked up Lina like she was a child. They leapt up the walls around them until they came to a roof and he ducked behind a belching chimney. He waited as voices finally got closer.

"...ve to find that beast! Whatever it did to the selection array has locked us into battle with the demons! The vessels are being wiped out faster than we can supply them!" A smile spread on his face but it was followed by a grim frown as he heard the response.

"The Overseer is handling it. He is nearly recovered thanks to a few infusions but he wants to know how that infernal dragon got here without using the byway. That should not be possible by any method we know of." The first half no doubt referred to that arrogant male Fiend, Zuzhou.

The latter part confused him. Any life saving artifact that used spatial Laws could bring him anywhere. Why were they–?!

Why DID he get through? The void, by definition, had no Laws to use! So why was he able to successfully get through even if not to Lina's side?

He slowly looked at the looming pillar in the distance and suspected a bit of a fluke. Lina damaged the bridge in some way and perhaps enough Qi and Laws still existed to let him in or maybe it was simple luck.

In either case, his present attempts to tear through space failed each time. It meant that–

Lind's thoughts froze as he thought about why he failed. Normally, his massive aura range and clear coordinate knowledge was enough to move from one point in space to another but the artifact he gave Lina did not work that way.

It pulled him to her yet he had appeared the EXACT distance she had been to him when she entered the bridge.

The Fiends moved on but he kept them on the roof as his mind raced before he realized the problem.

There was no frame of reference in the void. To tear through space needed not only the destination but the origin as well! He looked across the roof and casually swiped his hand.

The pair vanished from the chimney and appeared at the edge of the roof with ease! It still worked! His harmony dimmed briefly but it worked!

Shock crossed Lina's face but he shook his head to keep her grounded.

"It is far more costly for me and I can only do it with my eyes. It may help but we are still locked into this place." She nodded as her ears and tails drooped.

They resumed their exploration but the words of the Fiends worried him. It made it sound like the array Lina broke did more than hide their horde from the cultivators. What if they could change the destination of the bridge?!

Still, the bridge was not able to explain the land they stood on nor the buildings themselves. Even with time and long term planning, the bridge was too small to allow mass transit of materials on any scale.

It simply would not work.

Storage treasures would fail the instant they were exposed to the void so something else was going on. Eventually, the scenery changed around them as the factories fell away.

The once narrow avenues gave way to broader streets and the Fiend population increased. The danger was rising but the pair were careful to stick to the shadows and not stand in the open.

There was no light technically but Lind was not so foolish as to believe the Fiends did not have detection arrays set up to be pointed at suspicious figures. He was less sure if a passive array was working but the lack of barriers around the buildings told him there were firm limits to the Fiend's application of their Qi.

Lina had begun to need rest more as the days dragged on but he noticed he was doing better. They still needed sleep and breaks but he could go far longer. It was not as simple as him being a dragon and she a fox. His harmony was doing some strange things to him.

Now, with all his Qi and Laws gone from his body, only it remained. His mind felt like it was close to grasping aspects of his harmony that were impossible before. He wanted to focus but the environment would not let him!

It was not the same as the last time he was in the void. Back then, he had to struggle to even move and any moment death was around him. Death was still around him but he was in prime physical shape now!

Finally, his ears picked up something new. The inky black was combined with a silence so deep it would drive most people mad. Lina was reverting so her senses were too distracted to notice but Lind was feeling the weight of the silence on his mind.

The new sound led them to a massive structure very different from the rest. Lind realized he was looking at a Relic. He knew instinctively that it was not native to the void but the feeling of Laws had returned!

Only 1 thing could retain Laws in the void, a Divine Relic!

He slowly grasped what might have happened and he only confirmed it as he carefully looked around a stone corner into a valley. A giant circle was laid out with peak Radiant Tier Fiends guarding it.

Before even a few moments passed, Qi lit up the platform and crystals appeared encased in jade! Demonic and natural elemental Qi crystals!

Some questions were answered but one thing was certain. The bridge was no escape and the clue to leaving was heavily guarded.

They were locked in the void by the Fiends!