Humanity's Great Sage
Chapter 472: The Black Tortoise Sect

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The group thinned the horde of avian Spirit Beasts chasing after them as they escaped. It wasn’t until a quarter of a day later that they finally eliminated all of their pursuers.

For a time, they simply floated in the air and watched their surroundings for more hostiles. The Myriad Beasts Domain was vast, but there wasn’t a corner of the world that hadn’t been ravaged by the Spirit Beasts. The entire world reeked of death and carnage.

At the front, Xia Qianqian, Zhou Hai and Pang Dahai engaged each other in a quick discussion before Xia Qianqian ordered, “Let’s rest for an hour!”

The group descended on the mountain range right underneath them and quickly found a resting place.

Lu Ye tossed two Spirit Pills into his mouth before holding a Middle Grade Spirit Stone in each hand. He didn’t need to absorb the Spiritual Power in the Spirit Stones to recover his strength, but the pretense was necessary to keep the others from recognizing his abnormality.

It was at this moment a fat man sat beside him. It was none other than Pang Dahai.

It had been over two years since he met the man at Evil Moon Valley, but he was even fatter than he remembered. Lu Ye did not understand how it was possible for a Cloud River Realm cultivator to fail to control his body shape.

Lu Ye could not help but recall Le Shan when he saw Pang Dahai. He was the one who spread his nickname “Lu Yi Ye”. Sᴇaʀᴄh the N0vᴇlFire(.)nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

“Your Tamed Beast is quite handsome, Fellow Cultivator Ye?” Pang Dahai said smilingly.

“You can tame one yourself after we’re done here, Fellow Cultivator Pang. The one thing the Myriad Beasts Domain doesn’t lack is Spirit Beasts.”

“I have tried raising Tamed Beasts in the past, but for some reason, they always end up in my stomach,” the man said the scariest thing in a nonchalant tone while rubbing his belly. He then lowered his voice and added, “I noticed that the Myriad Beasts Sect cultivators are uniquely skilled in the Way of Beast Taming. They seem to be capable of merging their vitality with their Spirit Beasts to improve their own combat prowess. You should ask them about it if you’re interested in the technique. They probably won’t reject you considering your identity.”

The man had clearly seen some things during the earlier battle; things that clashed with what he knew about Beast Tamers. At the very least, he was sure that no Beast Tamer in Jiu Zhou could have performed some of the feats the Myriad Beasts Sect cultivators had displayed.

“I’ve already obtained them,” Lu Ye replied in a low tone as well.

Pang Dahai raised an eyebrow before giving him a thumbs-up.

Lu Ye wasn’t content to end the conversation here, however. He asked, “By the way, there is something I want to ask you about, Fellow Cultivator Pang.”

“Speak.”

“I noticed that you brought up the insectoid nest the moment we told you about the parasites. Why is that?” 

He didn’t understand why everyone else seemed certain that there was an insectoid nest somewhere in the Myriad Beasts Domain. He would’ve asked it sooner, but the timing wasn’t right until now.

“Did you experience an insectoid attack during your time at the Spirit Creek Battlefield?” Pang Dahai asked.

Lu Ye nodded in acknowledgement.

“Good. That’ll save me some breath. Since you’ve experienced an insectoid attack, you should know that the Insectoids do not grow out of thin air. They are all born from an insectoid nest. Going by that logic, the parasites that control the Spirit Beasts must be born from an insectoid nest as well.” Pang Dahai explained patiently, “You’re still new to the Cloud River Battlefield, but you’ll come to understand that the Insectoids are usually the big bad behind many Hidden Realms. Generally speaking, the best way to deal with insectoids is to take out their nest. Otherwise, you can kill a billion insectoids, and you’ll still be nowhere close to eliminating them. Also, Insectoids exist not just in the Hidden Realms of the Cloud River Battlefield, but also Jiu Zhou itself.”

By now, Pang Dahai had Lu Ye’s full attention.

“The reason none of us thought that the big bad behind this Hidden Realm before Xia Qianqian told us is because we’ve never encountered this type of insectoid before. Or perhaps we have encountered them in the past, but they’re so well hidden that we never knew they existed until now. We’re really glad you discovered the truth, you know that? If not for you, we’d still be stuck defending against an impossible tide of Spirit Beasts.”

They would’ve died if that was the case.

Pang Dahai put a hand on Lu Ye’s shoulder and said seriously, “If you run into a similar situation in the future, always remember to take the insectoids into consideration. And if you do find an insectoid, remember that locating the insectoid nest is the key to solving the root of the problem once and for all.”

Lu Ye nodded in acknowledgement.

“How far are we from the Black Tortoise Sect, Great Elder?” Lu Ye turned to the Great Elder and asked.

The old man answered, “Looking at our current pace, I reckon it will take another four to six hours to get there.”

“All things considered, that’s close enough.”

Lu Ye silently compared the directions he got from Amber earlier to their current destination. It was a good match. He was growing more and more certain that the Black Tortoise Sect was the right destination.

The group resumed their journey after an hour had passed. Everyone looked much better after catching an hour’s rest.

They did not encounter any resistance or even a single Spirit Beast on their way to the Black Tortoise Sect. It was as if every Spirit Beast in the Myriad Beasts Domain was concentrated at Bilandia.

Over four hours later, after they flew over a meandering mountain range and several Spirit Peaks, the Great Elder finally pointed his finger and declared, “That’s where the Black Tortoise Sect is!”

They followed his finger and saw what looked like a massive black tortoise sitting on top of the landscape and looking down on them from above. There were many rundown buildings on the back of the tortoise.

It was clear that the Black Tortoise Sect used to be a powerful sect. Unfortunately, the Insectoids had completely destroyed them.

The Black Tortoise Sect’s headquarters wasn’t completely devoid of life as they expected, however. To everyone’s surprise, they saw a massive amount of Spirit Beasts concentrated within the ruined sect!

It was a welcoming sight because it meant that their guess was most likely correct.

Right now, practically every Spirit Beast in the Myriad Beasts Domain was besieging Bilandia right now. It was why they hadn’t encountered even the shadow of a Spirit Beast on the way.

With that in mind, it made no sense that an army of Spirit Beasts would be gathered at the Black Tortoise Sect, a place that was destroyed at least a year ago. This meant that the insectoid nest was most likely here, and these Spirit Beasts were stationed here to guard it.

“There’s a lot of them,” Pang Dahai said solemnly while looking left and right.

Although this army of Spirit Beasts was nowhere as big as the one besieging Bilandia right now, it still wasn’t something their group of slightly over a dozen could handle. Therefore, the question became: how could they locate the insectoid nest without alarming these Spirit Beasts?

Insectoid nests were usually located underground. It made conventional search methods practically useless.

The good news was that every insectoid nest had at least one entrance leading to the surface. All they needed to do was locate one of these entrances. Still, there was a massive plot of land they had to cover. It was going to take a while to say the least.

“How many ghost cultivators do we have?” Pang Dahai turned back to the group and asked.

Xia Qianqian looked around with an awkward expression, “We had two, but…”

One of the ghost cultivators got separated from the group while they were breaking out of the encirclement. The Myriad Beasts Sect obviously did not have a ghost cultivator or even stealth capabilities since they were all Beast Tamers. Xia Qianqian and Pang Dahai were spell cultivators, and everyone else besides the two body-tempering cultivators in their group were combat cultivators…

Everyone looked at their one ghost cultivator. She was a petite woman with strange patterns etched on her neck. She knew they were asking too much from her, but she still forced herself to say, “I’ll give it a try.”

She descended on the ground and vanished soon after.

It was at this moment Lu Ye offered, “I’ll look around too.”

Xia Qianqian spun on him in surprise, “You’re a ghost cultivator too? Just who are you?”

At first glance, it looked like Lu Ye was a Beast Tamer since he was carrying a Tamed Beast. However, his fighting style was that of a combat cultivator, and he also knew how to cast some spells at the level of a true spell cultivator. Now, he was implying he could scout like a ghost cultivator as well. It was insane to say the least.

“No, no. I have some Concealment Talisman Paper with me,” Lu Ye lied.

The concealment effect of a Concealment Talisman Paper was nowhere near as good as a ghost cultivator’s concealment skill, but that was fine, because he wasn’t planning on using one anyway. He was going to use Glyph: Invisibility to hide himself. Its effects still couldn’t compare to a ghost cultivator’s skill, but it wasn’t far behind.

“Alright. Be careful,” Pang Dahai advised. 

Lu Ye nodded and landed in the opposite direction of the female ghost cultivator.

A while later, Lu Ye landed in the middle of a forest and looked up. He was unable to see Pang Dahai and the others because they were hovering real high in the sky to avoid being detected by the Spirit Beasts. He then turned himself invisible using Glyph: Invisibility before whispering, “Yi Yi.”

Yi Yi emerged from Amber’s body and said, “Leave it to me.” She then dashed straight into the underground.

The Black Tortoise Sect’s territory was huge. Without sufficient manpower, they could spend an entire month here and still not locate the entrance. That was why Lu Ye had not expected their singular ghost cultivator to find the entrance in time.

Yi Yi was a different story. As an apparition, she possessed the special ability to pass through solid objects like they did not exist, and she should not encounter any difficulties as long as she didn’t stray too far away from Amber. This was a characteristic not even the greatest ghost cultivator in the world possessed. With her help, they should be able to locate the underground insectoid nest within a reasonable timeframe.

As for Lu Ye, he wasn’t, actually, going to do anything. He just had to wait patiently for Yi Yi to give him the signal.

In the best case scenario, Yi Yi could even destroy the insectoid nest herself and resolve the crisis once and for all. She was strong enough to do that now.

Time passed bit by bit. An hour later, Lu Ye finally received a message from Yi Yi saying that she had found the insectoid nest. As it turned out, it was located three hundred meters beneath the ground. No wonder the Myriad Beasts Domain cultivators had failed to find anything when they searched this place. It was far beyond the range of a Cloud River Realm cultivator’s perception.

Yi Yi was currently checking if she could destroy the insectoid nest by herself. Unfortunately, she quickly sent another message saying that there were too many Spirit Beasts guarding the insectoid nest. She alone would not be able to destroy the entire nest in an instant.

Lu Ye had ventured into an insectoid nest once during his time at the Spirit Creek Battlefield. Therefore, he was fairly familiar with its internal structure. He immediately told her to stay her hand and just focus on finding a tunnel that would lead to a surface entrance. This was way faster than trying to locate an entrance on the surface.

Another hour passed, and Yi Yi messaged saying that she had found an entrance. It was located in a mountain well behind the Black Tortoise Sect.

He waited until Yi Yi had returned to him before meeting up with Xia Qianqian and the others.

Everyone turned around to face him with expectant expressions. When he nodded said, “I found it!” They all let out an audible sigh of relief!

After he told them where the insectoid nest was located, Xia Qianqian frowned deeply. “How are we going to deal with the army of Spirit Beasts blocking the way? It’ll take too long to thin them little by little, but if we don’t they’re definitely going to catch us in a pincer attack.”

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