Chapter 219 (Part 1): Down It in One Gulp

[Quest: Eliminate all enemy operatives on the map (√)]

[Do you accept the benchmark quest: Treasure Hunter Operation]

[Quest started. Treasure location marked. The Corpse Crystal will send signals across the entire map. Hold the treasure site, defeat the incoming Spirit Beasts, and bring the treasure back to the Sect!]

If this were a game, Youye would be hearing exactly these three voice prompts right now.

The map was cleared, and she could finally accept the benchmark quest. Ah, what a relief!

As for the difficulty of this quest, Youye hadn’t even given it a second thought.

She’d cleared the entire map—even the real players had been slaughtered by her down to the last one.

How much trouble could the few remaining Spirit Beasts in the Secret Realm possibly cause her?

She’d also observed these Spirit Beasts in the Secret Realm over the past few days.

They were indeed quite aggressive, but their strength was nothing special.

In front of their ultra-large squad, these Spirit Beasts weren’t even worthy of being called speed bumps.

After she followed the Tianmomen’s specially crafted detector deep into the Array of Bewilderment and located the exact position of the Corpse Crystal, that belief only grew stronger.

The Spirit Beasts had already started fighting among themselves here.

The Ling Wang Realm beasts that posed the greatest threat to them were all tangled up in a chaotic free-for-all, like a demonic gu-rearing contest.

The Ling Wang Realm Spirit Beasts they’d originally had to be careful around—only two or three were still standing on the field, and none of them were in good condition.

“Go! Take them out!” Youye raised her hand and pointed.

Her subordinates immediately charged forward, launching attacks at the few beasts still standing on the battlefield.

In her eyes, there were only three Spirit Beasts. With this many people on her side, taking them down would be a piece of cake.

Even overestimating the Spirit Beasts’ strength, they couldn’t possibly be stronger than the two full teams they’d just eliminated, right?

The Demonic Cultivators from those two teams weren’t greenhorns—they were true veterans who’d been through countless battles.

An average Spirit Beast couldn’t beat a Demonic Cultivator like that in one-on-one combat.

But the moment both sides clashed, the Tianmomen cultivators immediately realized something was wrong. These Spirit Beasts were far too strong.

Their strength, speed, defense, and even regenerative abilities were all absurdly powerful!

These Spirit Beasts weren’t the ordinary monsters they’d imagined—they were super-elite, mini-boss-level creatures.

They were even harder to deal with than those Demonic Cultivators!

What’s more, these beasts were utterly insane. There was no trace of retreat or fear in their black-red eyes—only a thirst for battle.

The Tianmomen cultivators surrounding them only stoked their ferocity, making them even more frenzied and dangerous.

Facing such enemies, the Tianmomen cultivators finally understood the meaning of the phrase, “All you’ve got is killing real players.”

So what if you can beat a Demonic Cultivator of the same rank?

Try going up against elite AI guarding a quest point! That’s what the Spirit Beasts were saying with their actions.

What were cultivators anyway? Thin-skinned and full of filling—nothing compared to the sturdy, durable bodies of Spirit Beasts.

You cultivators take a same-rank Spirit Technique and you’ve lost half your life. We Spirit Beasts take one, and it’s just a scratch.

The three Spirit Beasts surrounded by the Demonic Cultivators did an excellent job demonstrating the beauty of raw stats.

They didn’t perform any fancy maneuvers—they just rampaged around madly.

But even that brainless approach was enough to make the Demonic Cultivators howl in misery.

When the Demonic Cultivators’ Spirit Techniques slammed into them, the beasts just staggered slightly.

The wounds they opened would quickly close under the influence of some unknown force.

But when the Spirit Beasts’ biting attacks landed on the Demonic Cultivators, that was a life-threatening matter.

Nobody dared to test whether their bodies could compare to these monsters’ sturdiness.

These few Spirit Beasts were nearly at the level of physical Sainthood.

A single pounce and bite from them packed more punch than any technique the Demonic Cultivators could conjure.

“I get it now—they’ve all been affected by the Demonic Corpse Crystal! The crystal buried here is definitely an extremely rare find!” Youye dodged a beast’s pounce and shouted with excitement written all over her face.

The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. The more powerful the Spirit Beasts guarding this place, the more precious the treasure buried here!

“Use your Spirit Tools! Take these bastards down!”

As she spoke, she pulled a small black Spirit Tool from her Storage Pouch and aimed it at a beast that was attacking another cultivator.

A pitch-black aura surged from her body, and dark scales gradually grew over the hand gripping the Spirit Tool.

In no time, her hand had become as twisted and terrifying as a monster’s.

Under the pull of this power, the Spirit Tool in her hand slowly unfolded, taking the shape of a black flying dragon.

Youye aimed the dragon’s maw at the back of the beast’s head, shouted loudly, and unleashed the power sealed within the Spirit Tool.

A beam of pitch-black flame pierced straight through the beast’s skull, completely melting its head away.

The beast’s body shuddered from the blow, but to everyone’s shock, the headless beast remained standing. It continued attacking the Demonic Cultivators.

Youye’s attack had only slowed them down slightly.

“What the hell is wrong with these things?!”

……

“The power of the Outer Demons… how terrifying…”

Watching the Tianmomen cultivators getting dragged into the mud by the Spirit Beasts, Hua Jian couldn’t help but let out a sigh.

She hadn’t expected that her carefully laid plans wouldn’t even need to be used—the Tianmomen had already been beaten to a pulp by the Spirit Beasts.

Although, in the foreseeable future, the Tianmomen would still emerge victorious, the contrast between their previous performance and now was simply too striking.

It really proved the old saying: beating real players means nothing. Try fighting the ultra-hard AI—now that’s the real test. The Spirit Beasts said it all with their actions.

These Spirit Beasts affected by demonic aura couldn’t compare to true Demons, but even so, they were giving the Tianmomen cultivators a massive headache.

Just looking at this from one angle showed how troublesome the true Demons really were, and how much effort the ancestors of old had to expend to drive those monsters out of this world.

“The Black Dragon of the Tianmomen wants to use the Demons’ power to attain Sainthood. Looks like he’s grasping at straws in desperation.” Linglong nodded approvingly from the side.

“Who knows what’s going through his head? Maybe he found some way to harness the Demons’ power? Linglong, if you had to face these Spirit Beasts, could you beat them?”

This question made Linglong hesitate for a moment. After thinking it over carefully, she gave a relatively conservative answer.

“I can win one-on-one. I can hold my own against two. But if it’s three at once, I don’t have much of a solution.”

These Spirit Beasts were already beyond the Ling Wang Realm in terms of difficulty. An ordinary Ling Wang wouldn’t even stand a chance in a one-on-one.

But Linglong was confident she could win one-on-one—a testament to the Little Dragon Girl’s strength.

“What about you? You don’t seem to think they’re that tough.”

Hua Jian had been waiting for Linglong to ask that exact question. For other cultivators, these monsters were practically unsolvable. But in her eyes, they were just a few chunks of moving meat.

Who wouldn’t love showing off and talking big? She practically jumped up from the ground, chest puffed out and chin raised.

She pointed at herself with her thumb and answered with an air of utter pride: “Heh, forget three—even if five or ten came at me, I’d eat every single one of them!”

What was a tough challenge for other cultivators meant absolutely nothing to Hua Jian.

Spirit Beasts have strong regeneration? Great. The more flesh you grow, the more I eat. Let’s see if you can grow it faster than I can eat it!

So what if you’ve been influenced by demonic aura? Back in the day, Hua Jian here could eat actual Demons raw. You little runts think you can act tough in front of me?

Let me show you the power of this delicate little flower!

Seeing Hua Jian so confident, Linglong didn’t stomp on her tail like she usually did. Instead, she cooperatively applauded.

When it came time to give Hua Jian her emotional support, Linglong knew exactly how to play the game.

“So impressive!”

“Of course! There’s nothing in the Ling Wang Realm that I can’t eat.” Hua Jian grinned even more proudly, just short of doing the classic heiress’s three-stage laugh from an anime.

Of course, proud as she was, she didn’t overpromise. She only said she could eat anything within the same rank.

She couldn’t guarantee anything one rank higher—who knew what bizarre things existed in the Ling Emperor Realm? Maybe something out there could counter her devouring ability?

At the end of the day, Hua Jian’s devouring wasn’t some special ability. It was just how a carnivorous plant feeds.

She could eat those Spirit Beasts because they couldn’t beat her.

“Ahem, no more bragging. Looks like the Tianmomen are going to be tangled up with those three beasts for a while. I wonder if they can find the thing before the Secret Realm collapses.”

Seeing the Tianmomen’s current performance, Hua Jian was no longer worried about them finishing the quest early.

Now she was afraid they wouldn’t finish it at all.

“They should manage… There are still several days before the Secret Realm completely breaks apart.” Linglong felt she could trust the Tianmomen’s strength a bit.

It was a large-scale Demonic Sect, after all. They couldn’t possibly fail a quest with everything stacked so heavily in their favor.

If they did fail, then the strength of the Tianmomen cultivators would really need to be reevaluated.

Think about it—during all these days of exploring the Secret Realm, had the Tianmomen ever encountered any real difficulties?

No!

Their plan had gone off without a hitch, as if blessed by heaven itself.

They’d never fought a single hard battle. Every time, they managed to successfully stab someone in the back.

The heads they collected were either trash teams wandering the outskirts or powerful teams that had crippled each other and hadn’t recovered their strength.

All of this was Hua Jian’s doing behind the scenes.

If she hadn’t instigated the multi-sided war in the Array of Bewilderment, the Tianmomen would never have gotten such a perfect chance to backstab everyone.

And without Hua Jian’s advance planning, Youye with that pig brain of hers could never have come up with the idea of using numbers to overwhelm opponents in the Secret Realm.

Everyone else thought the Tianmomen had laughed last, but the real winner was Hua Jian!

And now, these bastards who’d been given a tailor-made easy mode were playing in the mud with the AI.

Their performance was a bit embarrassing.

Did this mean that without the tailored setup, their true strength was this?

Sure, the Spirit Beasts were a bit strong, but the way they were fighting was still too disgraceful.

Thankfully, the Tianmomen had thoroughly embarrassed the Demonic Sect. Although they were playing in the mud with the beasts, they still held the advantage.

It didn’t take them too long before they eliminated the three powerful Spirit Beasts guarding the Corpse Crystal’s location with a glorious battle exchange of zero casualties, and they began digging under the detector’s guidance.

Don’t ask why it took so long. Just look at the final exchange ratio—zero to three!

Honestly, over ten people fighting three Spirit Beasts—would it even make sense for any of them to get killed?

Ahem, anyway, the Tianmomen had successfully completed the first phase of the quest.

Next, they needed to dig for the Corpse Crystal while fending off the incoming tide of Spirit Beasts.

Based on the strength these Tianmomen cultivators had just displayed, Hua Jian figured she’d better not stuff too many Elite Monsters into each wave of the beast tide.

If she crammed in too many at once, these guys really would get killed by her before completing the quest.

“They should face three waves of beast tide before finding the Corpse Crystal. So, two deaths in the first wave, one each in the second and third waves.” Hua Jian muttered to herself, casually sealing the fate of these Tianmomen cultivators.

She wasn’t exaggerating in the slightest. Right now, the Tianmomen cultivators had no idea there was an enemy like her hidden in the Secret Realm.

When they attacked those seemingly weak waves of beasts, they would definitely let their guard down.

When beasts lunged at them, they wouldn’t be overly cautious.

So when the Spirit Beast corpse they’d just pierced suddenly exploded, and a Man Eating Flower burst out from the corpse to snap at their heads—would they really have time to react?

That’s why they’d be caught off guard in the first wave, and losing a few more people was completely understandable.

Even if they raised their guard afterward, with reduced numbers and increased beast tide intensity, a few more deaths would be perfectly normal.

All of this was so logical that no one could possibly see anything wrong with it.

At most, the Tianmomen cultivators might wonder why these Spirit Beast corpses had parasitic plants growing inside them.

And even if they eventually suspected the Wanhuagu, they’d just think it was a ‘surprise’ the Wanhuagu had deliberately prepared to trap cultivators who killed Spirit Beasts.

They would never suspect that this was actually a trial Hua Jian had specially prepared for them.

“A smooth journey isn’t a good thing. It’s time for your luck to change.” Watching the relaxed expressions on the Tianmomen cultivators’ faces, the corner of Hua Jian’s mouth curled into a dangerous arc.

Enjoy this brief moment of peace. Soon, you’ll understand that this is the last bit of comfort you’ll ever have.

“Let’s go. We need to move closer so the signal is better.” Hua Jian minimized the surveillance feed, turned her head, and spoke to Linglong, who was sitting on the ground.

She needed to control those parasitic plants infecting the Spirit Beasts, which required her to get a bit closer to the battlefield.