Li Ban was just about to return to the carriage and head back to the Shadow World when he noticed Shi Ming sitting blankly beside Deng Jun, sporting dark circles under his eyes.
“Brother Shi, what happened to you?”
Shi Ming looked over and licked his dry lips. “Sigh. I’ve been dreaming for days on end. When I wake up, I feel more exhausted than if I hadn’t slept at all.”
He punctuated the sentence with another yawn.
Had it been anyone else, Li Ban would have brushed it off. But Shi Ming’s origins were too mysterious. For someone usually so carefree and fearless to suddenly be plagued by relentless dreams felt uncanny.
“What are you dreaming about?” Li Ban asked.
Shi Ming stroked his chin, his gaze turning distant. “I dreamed that I was—very, very strong!”
He pressed his right index and middle fingers together and pointed at the sky.
“I flew high above the highest clouds, dodging bolts of lightning. Scores of priests appeared in the sky, but with a single slap, I sent them all flying like swatting flies.”
But Shi Ming was not necessarily formidable only in his dreams.
“Maybe Lord Shi really was a big shot before he lost his memories!” Deng Jun chimed in with a flurry of flattery.
Li Ban asked, “Did anything feel off?”
Shi Ming massaged his neck. “Other than fighting in the dream being a bit exhausting, it was actually pretty fun. Haha!”
“Maybe you’ll remember more once we reach the Unreturning Place.” Li Ban shook his head. Shi Ming’s situation involved numerous 7th Tier Priests; at their current level, they couldn't reach those deepest secrets yet.
Just as Li Ban prepared to return to the carriage to “slumber” again, he frowned and glanced at the dirt mounds lining the side of the road.
The closer they drew to the Unreturning Place, the sparser ordinary households became.
Now, both sides of the road had given way to utter desolation.
It was a vast expanse of wasteland, marked only by scattered trees and patchy weeds.
Yet in this uninhabited wilderness, Li Ban spotted several freshly turned dirt mounds by the roadside.
They looked like grave mounds.
But who would dig grave mounds right next to a public road?
A carriage could run them over if it drifted even slightly off course.
“Careful.” Li Ban slipped to the front of the carriage, his eyes locked on the mounds. “Those mounds aren't normal.”
Shi Ming followed his gaze. While the freshly turned dirt was a bit strange, he didn’t sense any danger.
He glanced back at Li Ban. The latter’s expression was serious—he didn’t just find them strange; he was fully on guard.
“What’s wrong with the dirt mounds—”
Before he could finish his question, the mounds abruptly moved.
The top layer of soil was violently thrown aside as several humanoid shadows burst from underneath, lunging straight for Li Ban and the horses in front of him.
Li Ban expertly cast a Terror Spell.
Yet the figures ambushing them from the mounds remained completely unaffected.
Deng Jun immediately lunged forward to protect the horses.
Out in this desolate wilderness, there was nowhere to buy replacement horses.
The moment Deng Jun engaged two of the figures, his eyes went wide with shock.
They were indeed humanoid, but where a human face should have been, six emerald-green eyes grew in three pairs, stacked in three rows.
Each eye was the size of a fist, crowding out more than half of the face.
What little remained of the chin was split vertically down the middle. Beneath the torn flesh, razor-sharp teeth grew in a savage mess.
From the center of the split extended a sharp, thin tube like a reed stalk.
Deng Jun had never seen such monsters.
While the Wizard World also had bizarre beasts and spirit creatures, they were all closer to animals. There had never been an existence so humanoid yet so terrifying.
But Deng Jun was an assassin by trade. Despite his intense shock, he already gripped two short swords in his hands.
He flicked his wrists downward, and the hidden bolts strapped to his forearms shot out.
The slender iron bolts, bearing blood grooves, accurately struck the nearest monster’s throat.
Yet the monster's movements didn't pause in the slightest, nor did its face show a single trace of pain.
It was as if it had no sense of pain.
Deng Jun was about to fire another hidden bolt at the monster’s face, but upon looking up, he was shocked to find another monster already at his side.
“How? How can it be so fast? It’s almost as fast as a Priest’s teleportation!”
Deng Jun desperately raised his wrists to block the incoming strike, but the opponent's attack speed had already become a blur in his eyes.
Just as Deng Jun couldn't react in time and broke into a cold sweat, another figure instantly appeared between him and the monster. Raising a hand with even greater speed, striking later but arriving first, a sword cleaved off the monster’s outstretched arm.
Without losing momentum, the blade carved upward, sending the monster’s skull flying!
Li Ban instantly dispatched one monster, but the other had already reached Deng Jun’s other side.
Though he didn't have time to flash over again, he immediately unleashed the Protection Spell he had readied during his attack.
A circular barrier composed of thin mist instantly enveloped him and Deng Jun.
The monster’s slashing claws struck the mist.
The seemingly thin mist merely rippled slightly; it was not pierced.
Only then did Deng Jun see that all ten of the monster's fingers were stripped of flesh, leaving only bare bone barely held together by fascia.
The fingertips had been ground as sharp as awls. Not only were they covered in dirt, but they also bore dried brown bloodstains.
A scratch from those fingers would definitely not feel good.
Maintaining the Protection Spell, Li Ban couldn't simultaneously use Shrinking Ground to an Inch. He simply yanked Deng Jun over with one hand and thrust out the Iron-Eating Sword with the other.
The thin mist the monster had failed to breach was easily pierced from the inside by the Iron-Eating Sword. The tip of the blade plunged right between the monster’s six emerald-green eyes, then sliced upward, splitting its skull open.
With their skulls pierced or cleaved, the two monsters collapsed limply to the ground.
The battle was over.
Li Ban dispelled the Protection Spell and wiped the Iron-Eating Sword clean on the monster’s tattered clothing.
Deng Jun finally exhaled the breath he had been holding for so long.
He turned toward Shi Ming, finding that the man was indeed completely unharmed, though his expression was a bit strange.
Surrounding Shi Ming were four monsters; two had been decapitated, and the other two had their faces pierced straight through the center.
Moreover, the two severed heads had evidently received an extra sword strike each, cleaving them perfectly in half.
Deng Jun looked at the wounds on the heads. Amidst the pale flesh, he saw a clump of soft, emerald-green tissue the exact same color as the monsters’ eyes.
“What is that?” His face was pale, brimming with fear toward unknown creatures.
Li Ban didn't sheathe the Iron-Eating Sword. Remaining vigilant, he walked over to Deng Jun and stared down at the split skull on the ground.
“It looks a bit like a parasite that can control a corpse’s movements.” He switched to a description Deng Jun would find easier to grasp. “Or you could say a special kind of Gu worm.”
Hearing the words “Gu worm,” Deng Jun finally relaxed a little.
Otherwise, a completely unknown entity was simply too likely to invoke anxiety.
Li Ban turned to a stunned Shi Ming.
Compared to Deng Jun’s fear of the “Gu worms,” he was far more confused by another matter.
Shi Ming had been standing right next to him just now, but when the four monsters charged, they only targeted Li Ban. They didn't even glance at Shi Ming, as if he simply didn't exist here.
Every other living creature on their side, including the two horses, had been targeted. So why had the monsters specifically ignored Shi Ming?
Was his status so high that the monsters didn't dare to strike, or was his identity concealed so well that the monsters couldn't even detect him?
Shi Ming had noticed this as well. He rubbed his arms, unable to maintain his usual carefree demeanor for some reason, feeling somewhat uneasy instead.
Li Ban stepped forward and collected the two monsters’ severed heads. “When we reach the Myriad Ancient Pagoda at the Unreturning Place, we’ll ask them if they know what these things are.”
Du An passed through the Shattered Eye in a somewhat disheveled state, returning to the Wizard World.
Returning alongside him was the ice-cold Priest Jun.
The two flew together to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, where they found the pagoda's priest, Qian Que, sitting casually on the roof.
Qian Que was staring directly at the Unreturning Place beneath the Eye of the Abyss.
The Unreturning Place was the terminus of the River of Helplessness.
Flowing upward from its lowest reaches, the River of Helplessness surged here, crashing against the cliff at its end and pouring into the lowest point of the Unreturning Place.
It looked like an incomparably massive ring-shaped waterfall.
Suspended in the center of the ring-shaped waterfall was an eye-shaped spatial rift, tightly wrapped in clouds speckled with golden starlight. This was exactly the Shattered Eye that Du An had just passed through.
Beneath the Shattered Eye lay a bottomless depression.
The waters of the River of Helplessness mixed with vast amounts of raw souls, falling into the depression. It had no riverbed and no visible end.
Gone without return, hence the name “Unreturning Place.”
But all the Priests at the Unreturning Place knew that directly beneath it connected to the Shattered Realm.
No matter how copious or rapid the River of Helplessness was, or how fierce and strong the raw souls in the water were, falling into the Shattered Realm—which could accommodate countless small worlds—was like a drop in the ocean.
Nor was there any worry that the River of Helplessness would run dry.
It originated from the Nine Heavens Sea, similarly a torrent of seawater of unknown origin falling from the sky.
However, through the research of some Priests, the waters of the River of Helplessness did not simply pass through the Unreturning Place and flow back into the Nine Heavens Sea.
At the very least, the raw souls inside had never appeared twice.
Everyone knew that the Priests of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda at the Unreturning Place liked to sit on the roof and watch the River of Helplessness flow into the Unreturning Place.
Knowing neither its origin nor its end.
Just like a human life, gone without return.
But at this moment, Priest Qian Que was not staring at the waters of the River of Helplessness, but rather into the endless abyss, where tiny green fish relentlessly surged upward against the current.
Looking closer, however, those tiny green fish were bizarrely shaped. Not only did they have six massive emerald-green eyes, but their mouths were vertical slits.
And everyone stationed at the Myriad Ancient Pagoda knew that these tiny green fish weren't actually fish; they were a type of insect.
Known as Corpse Worms.
The most important duty of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda at the Unreturning Place was to clear out the insects here, preventing them from entering the Wizard World in large numbers and causing casualties among its native inhabitants.
Therefore, all around the ring-shaped waterfall of the Unreturning Place, there were numerous pagoda guards chained with iron chains, swaying and bobbing in the water, striking down the green Corpse Worms swimming upstream.
Priest Jun landed beside Priest Qian Que and turned to look into the abyss of the Unreturning Place. “The number of Corpse Worms has increased.”
He frowned and said to Du An, “Priest An, do not go to the Shattered Realm during this period. Wait until you have cleared out enough Corpse Worms and accumulated enough merit before going down.”
Du An frowned. “But Priest Zhu Yao said—”
“I know,” Priest Jun interrupted him. “You have great potential, and it isn’t that I don't want to support your promotion. But the situation is critical right now. You cannot focus solely on your own advancement and forget the duties of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.”