Chapter 251 Lone Bean Eats Dirt

Inside the exploration domain, at the entrance of the teleportation barrier, everything was silent.

The teleportation array had temporarily ceased operating. Its light had faded, and without any ripples of spiritual power to attract them, the low-level Demonic Creatures passing by treated it as if it were invisible.

It had not been long since the last teleportation. No new disciples had gathered here yet. With no people around, the low-level Demonic Creatures drifted away, leaving only a few high-level Demonic Creatures with some intelligence.

These high-level Demonic Creatures knew this was a place where food converged. It simply was not time yet. So they hid in the dark, lying in wait for a good feast.

A flat Demonic Creature was plastered against the ground. Its coloration blended perfectly into the surrounding black earth. Its char-black eyes were almost impossible to notice in the night, and its gaze never left the teleportation array.

It was the closest to the array. As long as a single person emerged from within, that person would fall into its mouth.

The Flat Ground Fish waited for a long time. At last, the array sigil flared with a streak of white light.

Its body, thin as paper, rose upright. On its belly a bloody maw split open, circular lips ringed with dense, jagged teeth, like a deep pit bristling with spikes.

It spread its body over the teleportation point, its mouth covering the entire array sigil.

It did not fear the exorcism runes carved into the teleportation array. It was too hungry. It chose to ignore the damage from the runes. Even though its tail was scorched, it still held its feeding posture.

When the second beam of white light shone, it seized its chance and snapped its mouth shut.

It had watched this spot before. The first flash of white was only a warning. Only when the second white light appeared would someone be transmitted over.

As long as it closed its mouth before the person could react, that person would drop into its stomach and become its food.

Yet things did not go as it wished. After the Flat Ground Fish clamped its jaws shut, it instinctively flicked its long tongue to coil inward. Its mouth tightened, and thousands upon thousands of sharp teeth stabbed toward the center.

It bit down on nothing.

The Flat Ground Fish hesitated for a moment. Only then did it realize it seemed to have missed its target.

It wavered, wondering whether to open its mouth and extend an eye inside to take a look. Before it could decide, its belly suddenly took a violent hit from inside out, as if something were trying to ram its way straight out of its gut.

The Flat Ground Fish writhed madly, trying to locate whatever was inside its stomach.

The next moment, the blows from within grew even more ferocious, bulging its belly outward again and again, dozens of times in succession.

The Flat Ground Fish could not endure it anymore. It opened its mouth to vomit that thing out. Its opponent instead drove something sharp straight into its flesh.

The burning stab of pain sent it into full panic, Demonic Qi bursting from every inch of its body.

But it had stepped right into a trap. The instant it drew on its spiritual power, that thing inside began to siphon it dry. In no time at all, the Flat Ground Fish’s body faded from black to a scorched yellow. Its skin shriveled, and its entire form was sucked empty.

The Flat Ground Fish crashed to the ground. The air was utterly still. Only a faint cracking sound came from its belly, like something being assembled.

After a while, a slit opened in its abdomen, and a Black Scorpion crawled out, its new shell still streaked with blood.

It blinked its beady green eyes and looked around, then climbed down from the Flat Ground Fish’s corpse.

It turned around and scuttled quickly over the black earth. Compared to the other Demonic Creatures, it was far too small.

It ignored the Demonic Creatures watching it like hungry wolves and kept crawling forward.

Eventually, some of them could not resist anymore and slowly crept toward it.

Just as one was about to touch it, the Black Scorpion stopped. It stared blankly at the grotesque monster towering in front of it, a creature dozens of times larger than itself.

The Black Scorpion let out a sharp squeak and raised its tail stinger in a show of warning.

That warning, utterly devoid of menace and even a little comical, only caused more Demonic Creatures to relax their guard and close in.

Since the arrival of the Black Tide, everything edible in this area had long been devoured. The Black Moon not only strengthened the Demonic Creatures but also made their appetites endless. Whenever something weaker than themselves appeared, they would all scramble to claim it.

Clearly, the scorpion was too small. There was no way to divide it evenly among them.

The strongest Demonic Creature among them shuffled closer. It was caked entirely in mud, vaguely humanoid in shape. But beneath the thin layer of exposed weak points on its surface there was no skin, only a swarming mass of meat worms.

It stretched out a slender arm woven from wriggling insects. The worms at its fingertips seemed to sense something, stopped twisting, and opened their chewing mouthparts.

“Zi!”

Green Bean squeaked again, but did not retreat.

It allowed that worm-hand to touch its back. The meat worms tried to gnaw on its carapace, only to be devoured instead by the black mist seeping out from within its body.

The worms’ spiritual power was drained in an instant. Countless worm corpses rained to the ground. The mud-man let out a shrill scream, and a centipede crawled out of its chest cavity, abandoning that body.

The foul, black sludge melted away, not even a last trace of spiritual power left to hold its form together.

The surrounding Demonic Creatures saw this and realized how bizarre the scorpion was. Even stranger, the black mist it had just released contained Demonic Qi just like theirs.

The strange, misshapen high-level Demonic Creatures wanted to flee, but it was already too late. Having absorbed spiritual power once more, the Black Scorpion’s body began to swell.

More black mist billowed from its shell and drifted out in all directions, swiftly locking onto the group of Demonic Creatures that had encircled it.

The mist descended, forming walls on all four sides that penned the Demonic Creatures in.

The clever earth-burrowing fiends immediately fled underground, leaving behind only the other types of Demonic Creatures that were trapped and unable to move.

The black mist left them no room to resist. The four walls suddenly contracted inward, closing in with overwhelming force and crushing the group into a single sheet of meat.

All manner of grotesque flesh and limbs fused together. The black mist drank it all in again, until the mashed meat pancake dried out completely.

The black mist gathered and condensed into a massive cloud. For its second transformation, Green Bean grew directly to over ten meters tall. Its colossal scorpion body hit the ground and the nearby earth shook.

Green Bean rolled its eyes. Now, all three pairs of eyes were open. One pair looked forward, one pair gazed at the sky, and the pair on its underside watched the ground.

With its strength fully restored, it released a powerful oppressive aura that made Demonic Creatures for hundreds of kilometers around feel threatened. Wherever it passed, nothing dared to approach.

Green Bean flipped over and rolled twice on the ground, rubbing off the grime on its carapace until it gleamed like new.

It picked up a lump of soil, stuffed it in its mouth, and tasted it. After confirming its current location this way, it prepared to use spiritual power to reach out and find someone.

But its contract with Lian Mu had already been dissolved. It could no longer sense her presence.

Green Bean dazed out for a long time. With its little bean-sized brain, it could not think of any faster way to find her. It only knew how to use the methods others had taught it. Coming up with new tricks on its own was beyond its ability.

Only one method remained, but if it relied on that, it would be much slower.

It had no other choice. Following the smell of other cultivators, it crawled in the direction where human scent lingered.

Although there was no trace of Lian Mu’s scent here, she might have traveled together with others. Searching like this was like fishing a needle out of the sea, but at least there was a sliver of hope.

Green Bean smelled and ate dirt as it went, sensing the deeper layers of scent within the soil and refusing to overlook the slightest trace.

In a quiet, shadowy corner it could not detect, another pair of eyes watched it in silence.