Chapter 362: The Power of Raising a Hand…

Chapter 362: The Power of Raising a Hand…

Zheng Yichen’s own projection spell worked differently than others. His projection didn’t need to worry about soul-related stuff. As long as he had enough mental energy, he could do it. Still, using a projection to act required caution. The more complete the projection’s body, the more mana it guzzled. Plus, his mental energy had to constantly support it. If this projection got destroyed before he could pull his mental energy back, it’d hurt him.

Forget losing mental energy limits; he could recover that with rest. The real problem was the headache. The pain was like his head getting chiseled, smacked right through his skull and into his brain.

In this kind of place, who knew what could happen? A projection might get wiped out before he could react. An Alchemical Puppet could at least block the first surprise attack. “I’m an idiot!”

Walking along, Zheng Yichen knocked his own head lightly. Beside him, he tore open a rift leading to his Personal Space. The moment it appeared, thick Dark Element flooded into it like water gushing through a broken dam. Zheng Yichen wasted no time, shoving his Magic Weapon Summoning Book straight into the gap to plug it. Then, through the book, he rummaged around inside the Personal Space and pulled out two more Alchemical Puppets.

Both new puppets walked beside him. These were backups. If the one he currently used got wrecked, he’d swap to these two sturdier ones. Go deeper? Zheng Yichen wouldn’t even be able to open his Personal Space at that point. The one thing bugging him was that, in here, any large-scale sensing methods failed. Couldn’t see anything either.

The Dark Element was just too overwhelming. Mana spread from his hands now barely reached ten meters before hitting its limit. Push it further, and this relentless Dark Element forcefully shoved back, trying to assimilate it. Totally unreasonable. So now, those two puppets also served as relays, helping Zheng Yichen expand his search range.

With this insane level of Elemental Power, if there was anything special here, it was likely in this area. Keep walking forward? He had no clue where he’d end up.

Less than a hundred meters from Zheng Yichen, another figure moved slowly in the same darkness. In any normal place, they would have spotted each other instantly. But here, both were practically deaf and blind. Even as the distance between them shrank below fifty meters, neither had a clue about the other.

“…This thing’s about done for.” Zheng Yichen touched his arm. Through his mana sense, he clearly felt a large crack on the Alchemical Puppet’s arm. The Disguise Skin, once near-identical to human skin, had silently turned bone-dry and stiff. Every move he made caused tiny cracks to spread. This big crack on the arm? That ripped open just from a slightly bigger move earlier.

He explored less than fifty meters further before the puppet’s outer skin started flaking off in layers. It didn’t even hit the ground. The thick Dark Element just turned it straight into black dust. Zheng Yichen didn’t even get a chance to sense it with his mana before it vanished completely. Abandoning this almost totally ruined puppet, Zheng Yichen shifted his focus to one of the backups.

The Disguise Skin on this puppet also felt dry and stiff, but at least it held up better than the last one. The first one had just been active in this environment too long. By boosting the mana covering it, it should last longer. If this search turned up nothing… Zheng Yichen decided he’d immediately make a new Alchemical Puppet made from Enchanted Material mainly tuned to Dark Attribute. Regular Alchemical Puppets just couldn’t handle this place… even ones strengthened with dark attribute resistance might not suffice… Then… he’d have to try coming himself.

Just how valuable was an Element Heart?

Worth more than all thirty of the ‘Element Converters’ currently used by the Underground Base. Not necessarily in raw power, but certainly in overall usefulness and value.

And missing out on this? Zheng Yichen honestly couldn’t accept it.

“Hmm?” Walking forward, the Undying Witch frowned slightly. Deep within the canyon, visibility was zero. Sounds, any noises, they were muffled and swallowed by the curtain of Dark Element. Yet, strangely, the ground beneath was incredibly smooth. Not even a single rock or pebble! Everything had been utterly ‘crushed’ by the overly thick Dark Element.

But just now, while walking, it felt like she kicked something… like a lump of nothing. A tiny, fleeting sense of something wrong in her path. And anything unusual here was suspicious. What she sought shouldn’t leave any sign like this… Frowning, she brushed her fingers against the ground. A sharp sting bit where skin met earth – damage caused by the Dark Element excessively soaking into it.

Powder? Debris…?

No! It wasn’t natural. Something else had been moving here! Moving now!

The Undying Witch instantly quickened her pace. Moving faster pressed the Black Mist close against her body even quicker, but she pushed the concern aside. She knew this place well; she’d noted it long ago. She knew exactly what should be here. Back then, it simply hadn’t matured yet, so the spot seemed unremarkable. Only now, with the thing truly ripe, would the abnormality manifest.

And this timing was crucial. The main forces were entirely focused on Windwhisper Valley. Once things played out over there… She could not only grab the item she desired here but also complete another major task afterward. Yet now… signs of another entity active? Right here?

Those faint particles suggested the active presence probably crumbled under the environmental pressure, turning to ash. But could she rely on it being completely destroyed? Finding a place like this again – one capable of producing exactly what she needed? Impossible within two hundred years! Even if another existed, if its elemental make-up didn’t match? Useless.

“Huh?” Reached the end… Zheng Yichen, controlling the puppet, suddenly felt it “thump” into a wall. He stopped immediately. Reaching up, he felt the puppet’s head. From just that light bump, the Disguise Skin completely peeled away, and a dent appeared on the metal skull itself… A light tap did that? This thing was almost finished. Gotta search fast.

He pulled out the Magic Weapon Summoning Book and pressed it flat against the ground. He drove the book’s stored mana out, flooding a large area with its power. His own mana channeled from his projection body was already squeezed to a pitiful range of less than five meters here. Using the Summoning Book, Zheng Yichen could easily push the detection mana pulse over a hundred meters without breaking a sweat.

The wide sweep immediately picked up an abnormal ‘foreign object’ in this spot. It also tripped the alarm for the figure following him. The instant Zheng Yichen’s spread mana sensed her position, she also detected him through those intrusive tendrils of energy!

“You dare?!” Sensing the mana touching her feet, the Undying Witch snorted coldly. The heavy Black Mist pressing around her suddenly parted! Not shoved back by force, but yielding, opening a brief gap. Through it, she ‘saw’ the source pumping out that mana. It was… a rusted-looking metal skeleton? Wrong. An Alchemical Puppet. Right now, that puppet snatched up a book pressed to the ground. A visibly solid mana shield wrapped around it as it sprinted towards the perceived location of the Element Heart. What truly shocked her? That shield wasn’t any known Magic.

It was purely layered, raw power made into a shield. Where the surrounding Black Mist touched this shield, it parted like the element itself was obeying commands. Who could possibly command Elemental Power here, in this near-solid environment saturated with it? Yet this sheer mana did exactly that. The Black Mist sealed the gap she glimpsed through an instant later. That rusted puppet disappeared from view. She didn’t hesitate. Her arm lifted upward.

Her pale arm changed. First flushed pink… then deepening to blood-red. Beads of blood welled up across her skin. The consequence of that simple lift? The thick, near-solid Black Fog nearby was violently hurled upward, creating a brief ‘vacuum’ roughly two meters high!

“Wha? Daytime?” As the nearby Black Mist momentarily lifted, the working optics in the Alchemical Puppet pierced through the ordinary darkness. Zheng Yichen looked around in surprise. He saw the churning Black Fog overhead. His mechanical jaw twitched. What kind of power was THAT? Seriously? How?!

Elemental Power wasn’t exactly physical weight. Yet concentrated enough, it would feel unimaginably heavier than solid matter. Sure, lifting physical stuff just takes brute force. But lifting hyper-concentrated Elemental Power? That’s a contest of pure, unique personal power against the element’s sheer density. And what did Zheng Yichen witness?

That white-haired, gray-eyed woman literally lifted the concentrated Dark Elemental Power around her with one bare arm. True, that arm looked awful – blood droplets constantly dripping from it. But she lifted it. Zheng Yichen admitted he couldn’t replicate that feat, even using the Magic Weapon Summoning Book… Dang, only a crazy person would attempt something so pointless and exhausting!

Thankfully, he’d reached his target. Floating less than two meters away was a black crystal, about the size of a human eye. How black? The Alchemical Puppet’s night vision couldn’t detect it. When Zheng Yichen looked that way through the sensors, a piece of his visual field just went missing there!

This wasn’t normal blackness. More like light itself got sucked in! No hesitation. He reached out to grab the black sphere. Yet, right before his fingers touched it, a single strand of grayish power flickered past. The puppet’s outstretched arm fell away silently, clattering on the ground. Looking down, Zheng Yichen realized the entire puppet body had been cleanly severed to a stump – arms and legs gone. What about the backup? Uh… vanished. Chopped down. Now he was stuck. Again.