Nightmare's Call

Chapter 452: Fragment: Part 3

Lin Sheng thought for a moment and decided not to waste his time. Looking back, he motioned Djall Demonhand and the head of the sorcerers.

“I will go by myself. You all keep your eyes peeled.”

“Aye, Lord, at your service.”

The two replied in unison. Lin Sheng nodded. Armor of Dawn appeared on his body, and then a dark-energy crystal shield, then semi-dragonized body with dragon scales on. This was Lin Sheng’s ultimate defensive ability.

Armor of Dawn on the outside would take the first hit from any attacks. The middle layer of the dark-energy crystal shield was a buffering structure that could isolate all types of shock-wave attacks. The innermost layer of dragon scales and the dragonized body of Rock Dragon would be the last line of defense. It was for the enemy who could break through all his defenses and thought victory was in sight, only to find inside a layer even nastier than the Armor of Dawn. Just thinking of their frustration and hopelessness was making Lin Sheng laugh.

“It’s time to check how good my triple-level defense system is.”

Draped in heavy white armor, Lin Sheng looked calm as he strode into the Darkspirit Gate. As soon as he passed through the gate, the surroundings changed. He found himself in a vast plain burning with a white flame. Ground fire pillars were everywhere, spurting out from the cracks in the ground up to tens of meters in the air, forming a strange scenery on the land. What surprised Lin Sheng more was the temperature of these white fire pillars. They were not high-temperature fire but extremely cold flame that could cause frostbite to any living things.

“How could flame exist in subzero-temperature form?” What he saw was a big blow to his understanding of science. He looked around the teleporting station of the Darkspirit Gate. Bodies of the stitched-monster dark spirits were everywhere. The extreme temperature had suppressed the vitality of their bodies and frozen them in place before they could make it out of the place. But it was also because their bodies blocked the white sparks in the surroundings, it gave the two surviving stitched monsters the chance to escape back to the other side.

Right ahead of the bodies of the stitched monsters, a small column of white flame spurted out from the ground, shooting up a dozen meters into the air and a few meters across. Sparks were flying everywhere. But Lin Sheng let the white sparks drop onto him. As soon as the sparks hit his armor, they vaporized in an instant. It was the powerful holy power that was driving away the sub-zero-degree flame. Lin Sheng replenished his exhausted holy power and checked his exhaustion rate.

“Just about what I estimated before. The damage rate of the flame is about the level of Five Wing. That’s at a hyperbole scale...”

He scanned his eyes over the plains. There was no end to the land. All he could see were white sparks dancing around. When even these little sparks could do such damage, the last thing in Lin Sheng’s mind was to get hit by the fire column in the face.

“Ordinary living creatures would have found it hard to survive here. Not unless they are of Six-Wing in survival strength.”

After some lamenting and awing himself with nature’s power, he started to study the distribution pattern of the fire columns and work out a safe path. He had also sensed an unexplained perturbation in the air. This perturbation was precisely what he had read about in the ancient record. It was a special sign that told him the thing existed. Earlier, in the Dragon’s Borrow across the dark spirit cave, the feeling was not as strong. But here, he could almost vividly see the perturbation.

Lin Sheng had quickly found a route. He moved, one step at a time, very unhurriedly maneuvering forward to avoid the fire columns. He would stop every time after moving some distance, observing the distribution pattern of the fire columns ahead, then moved again. Some sections had dense fire columns. He had to get so close to them that if he was not careful, he would be game over. Sometimes he had to walk past a section where the fire columns would change their mind and decided to spurt from other spots. Lin Sheng had a close call when a two-meter-across fire column spurted out of nowhere, barely scraping his back. The Armor of Dawn protected him, vaporizing a good part of the fire as his holy power reacted with the white flame. But that one hit only, Lin Sheng felt, had also vaporized one-tenth of his holy power reserve. It was just a size-S ground fire column. He could not imagine what would happen had it been a dozen-meter-across fire column. He could have been dead or at least severely injured.

“I have always been the one who uses size to scare off an enemy. This time, I did not expect things could be reversed.” It was like getting a taste of his own medicine.

He moved, stopped, then moved again. Soon, following his soul’s perception, he was moving in the direction of the perturbation.

A day had passed. And then another day. With such a level of endurance, Lin Sheng’s physique had shown his extra-human characteristics; going without food and water for days was nothing to him. In fact, he could stop eating and keep moving for a month or so and would still not bat an eye. Just that the monotonous scenery of the plains was starting to bore him. There were no living things here. Just the world’s worst-tempered and unpredictable subzero-temperature fire columns kept him company. This place was not for any form of living things.

On the tenth day, Lin Sheng was still making his way toward the perturbation as what his soul had perceived. At last, he saw the place with the signature perturbation that he had seen in an ancient record of the Fairy Empire. It was a black crystal column shrouded in white flame.

The crystal column stood on a black rocky surface, growing together with a large stone column, showering in the white ground fire. It looked inconspicuous, void of any unique features. Had Lin Sheng not read about it in the ancient record and known the way to look for it, he might have returned empty-handed, not knowing the importance of this crystal column.

The dull-looking crystal column looked like another stone column on the outside, the kind which he would not pick up from the ground if he stumbled upon one. But now, he was staring at it like a hungry dog to a bone.

The search for the Dark Wheel, Lin Sheng thought, was just a legend in the ancient records. He was with the mindset of trying his luck earlier and paying a little more attention to the special perturbation mentioned in the ancient record.

What he did not realize was that because of the amount of soul power he had devoured and the uniqueness of his soul, he had a very sensitive perception. But from the ancient record of the Fairy Empire, he knew he had a very special soul. Had any other people or creature absorbed soul fragments in the dreams as he did, their souls would have broken up, they would have lost themselves and went insane. Or they could be devoured by the powerful consciousness of the soul fragments and becoming another person and resurrected in this world.

But none of these two scenarios happened to Lin Sheng. His soul was tough. Each absorption of soul fragments was making him stronger. His soul became massive and broad. The thousands of soul fragments, memories and personality had equipped him with a complicated yet comprehensive perception ability. It was this ability that detected the unique perturbation.