Fleeing in Disgrace

"Ding! Congratulations, Host, on becoming a Fourth Star Level Innate expert!"

The system notification sounded, followed by another notification from the Lord God.

Elite Reincarnator (Note: Those below the Fourth Star Level and above the reserve rank are collectively called official Reincarnators.)

Number: 111

Lord God Points: 450 (Note: When Host broke through and comprehended a skill just now, the Multiverse Reincarnation System consumed three thousand units of fortune, equivalent to 3,000 Lord God Points.)

Cultivation: Fourth Star Level

Equipment: Demon-Collecting Treasure Mirror, Blood Bone Demon Artifact (Quantity: 3)

Awakened Talent: Blood Flame (Refines essence and refines qi, purifies yang energy, and can refine all impurities. Its power is tremendous.)

"What a bountiful harvest!"

Gu Sheng was in an excellent mood. Not only had he broken through to the Innate Realm in one go this time, but he had also awakened a talent formed after birth—Blood Flame.

Blood Flame was actually inferior to the talents of a Chosen One. In essence, it was simply an alteration of his True Essence. Ordinary flames had transformed into Blood Flame with special functions, capable of refining all impurities and purifying them into useful energy.

"You succeeded!"

Liu Daimei walked over to Gu Sheng, her voice filled with disbelief. She was truly shocked. A Fourth Star Level Reincarnator—surely that made him the undisputed number one among the Reincarnators, right?

How long had this brat even been in the Lord God Space? In just over a month, he had gone from a weakling at the bottom of the First Star Level to a Fourth Star Level Innate expert, an existence that had already completed an energy-level leap. Even novelists wouldn’t dare write something like this!

"The Innate Realm…"

Gu Sheng sighed with complicated emotions. Compared with Liu Daimei, who did not understand the power of the Innate Realm, he knew much better what it meant. The Innate Realm represented the absolute upper echelon of the Nine Cauldrons World. An Innate expert could be an elder of a sect or found their own sect—someone powerful enough to make a force like the Gui Yuan Sect wary.

Innate and postnatal—though there was only a one-word difference between them, the gap was as vast as heaven and earth. Leaving a monster like Teng Qingshan aside, every Innate expert could practically kill a postnatal expert instantly.

Why? Because starting from the Innate Realm, the gap between martial artists and practitioners of other professions had narrowed. Experts who could project True Essence gained long-range abilities, and their control over power, honed through countless trials, was even stronger than that of mystics and Sorcerers.

Innate experts possessed True Essence shields. Basically, the underhanded methods used by lower-ranked experts of the same tier to ambush and harm others no longer worked. At this point, martial artists were like a fully grown Might Guy. Once an opponent was locked onto and watched by him, how many could actually escape?

"Buzz buzz~ Buzz buzz buzz~"

Gu Sheng had just been embracing Liu Daimei in celebration and letting his thoughts run wild when he suddenly felt a pang of unease. After twitching his ears, his expression turned grave, and he said to Liu Daimei, "Did you hear the sound of insects?"

"There really is something! It’s coming from beyond the stone wall over there. What’s that smell? It reeks!"

Liu Daimei carefully sensed it and reached a conclusion. Her five senses were far beyond those of ordinary people, allowing her to smell the stench beyond the stone wall.

"Buzz buzz buzz~~~"

The insect-like sound drew closer and closer. Three wisps of unknown black vapor suddenly drilled out through the cracks in the wall and flew toward Gu Sheng and Liu Daimei.

"Not good! Run!"

Gu Sheng’s expression changed. He grabbed Liu Daimei and dashed away. The things behind them had been shown to be extremely terrifying in the television series. Yue Qiluo had been helpless against them, Wu Xin’s blood had been useless, and the Daoist arts of Qingyun Temple had been nothing but decoration.

These insects were similar to Taotie. They were not Evil Spirits, yet they were unbelievably strange. Methods for dealing with Evil Spirits were ineffective against them. Worse, the insects were extremely aggressive. As long as they caught the scent of a living creature, they would attack it frenziedly. Being bitten meant certain death.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

As Gu Sheng fled, his Blood Flame stirred. The stone statues in the secret chamber containing the sacrificial altar split open one after another, and countless mummies wrapped in corpse cloth charged toward the black vapors that had gathered into streams.

These mummy-like things were Yue Qiluo’s contingency plan left behind here. In the original story, after escaping, she discovered that Wu Xin had come to her lair and gave him a grand welcome. These mummies had entertained Wu Xin and Chuchenzi so thoroughly that, in their desperation, they sought another route out, thereby bringing those strange black insects to light.

Gu Sheng had originally had no intention of disturbing them, but who could have expected disaster to descend while he was peacefully at home? After breaking through, he had somehow alarmed these troublesome creatures.

At this point, Gu Sheng knew nothing about these things except that anyone who encountered them died. Without carrying out his planned tests, he had no intention of setting himself up for trouble in advance. He had originally planned to make use of this Gold Mine later, but now it seemed that would no longer be possible.

Gu Sheng led Liu Daimei at a full sprint through the mechanism-filled passage and returned to the mouth of the tomb. He lifted Liu Daimei with one hand to the edge of the opening, then tossed her upward. The beauty stretched out in midair and successfully escaped the dangerous place.

"Buzz buzz~~ Buzz buzz~~"

By then, the cloud of black insects behind them had appeared as well. Countless black insects formed a mass of dark vapor and charged toward Gu Sheng in unison.

"You’re courting death!"

A trace of anger flashed through Gu Sheng’s eyes. He had only just broken through to the Innate Realm and had immediately encountered this sort of trouble. How could he tolerate it? He threw a punch, a True Essence barrier cloaked his body, and Blood Flame surged into the heavens. Countless black vapors were refined into a pile of dead insects.

Gu Sheng was greatly astonished. His True Essence was unique even among Innate experts. Even the force of Gang Jin possessed by Teng Qingshan, the protagonist of The Nine Cauldrons, might not be able to refine things as well as his Blood Flame.

Yet although he held the advantage against these tiny insects, he was losing more energy than he could replenish. If he continued, he feared that before he eliminated the insects, he would collapse from exhaustion.

"Mei-jie, move aside!"

Gu Sheng persisted for a while longer. The pile of corpses had risen high enough to bury his ankles. He suddenly shouted toward Liu Daimei above him, used his legs to propel himself upward, activated the True Essence barrier to shield his body, and charged straight out of the tomb passage.

"Bang!"

After Gu Sheng shot out at an angle from the tomb passage, he rolled several times across the ground in a sorry state. Then, with a violent tremor of power throughout his body, he exterminated the insects clinging around him. He pulled out a cloth bag, approached the tomb entrance, and scooped with it. After collecting a bagful of live insects, he shoved the tombstone down and sealed the opening.

Fortunately, the sun was still out. These insects would die as soon as they emerged, so they did not dare pursue him.

"It’s getting late. Let’s go!"

Gu Sheng shook the cloth bag in his hand. The force he sent through it stunned all the insects inside. After confirming that they would not die for the time being, he hurriedly grabbed Liu Daimei’s little hand and fled for his life, looking utterly disheveled and devoid of dignity.

Nightfall was not far away. Once the sunlight vanished, these creatures, which practically had no natural enemies, would become a bug in the truest sense. There was no way to fight them, so if he could not deal with them, he could only hide as soon as possible and avoid leaving a trace for them to find before night descended.

Once these insects determined his location, things would become even more troublesome. The night was their home turf. Although Gu Sheng had come up with several plans for dealing with them, he had not tested any of them in practice. How could he determine their weaknesses? Without finding their weaknesses, there was no way to deal with these insects.