The Desolate Era

Ji Ning continued to clamber downwards, traversing yet another ten thousand kilometers. On the way down, he picked up another twenty-plus Chaos treasures. The reason why he picked up no Protocosmic spirit-treasures was because the gray wind here was so strong that even Protocosmic spirit-treasures would be slowly ground to dust by it. Only Chaos treasures were able to survive the wind for extended periods of time.

“Eh? I reached the bottom?” Ning held onto the walls with his six long arms as he stared downwards.

Rumble...

The gray wind formed a swirling maelstrom at the bottom, but the pit itself had come to an end. All Ning could see was the small part of the enormous maelstrom that was visible from his location.

“This should be the bottom. This is where the wind transforms into a maelstrom, at least. That means that the treasures left behind by the dead cultivators should all be here.” Ning began to grow rather excited. Hellsword had two Dao weapons on him, and Ning had already picked up over a hundred Chaos treasures and a top-grade Dao warblade on the way down. The number of treasures at the bottom had to be immense.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

The closer he got to the treasures, the more careful he became. He slowly climbed downwards, carefully inspecting his surroundings as he did so. The gray wind here was so powerful that if it wasn’t for his azureflower energy, there was no way he would be able to climb around here.

“The maelstrom is pretty large.” As he continued to climb downwards, the true size of the gray maelstrom of wind began to reveal itself.

“What?!” Ning was stunned.

The enormous maelstrom covered an area of roughly a thousand kilometers. On one end of the maelstrom was the deep pit which Ning had just emerged from, while on the other end of the maelstrom was another pit that seemed just as deep and dark. Quite a bit of the gray wind would occasionally howl towards and go through the second pit as well.

“This is...?” Suddenly, Ning had a thought. The image of the ‘Hundred Streams’ once more appeared in his mind, with those rivers all surging forward before coming together as one.

“Now I understand. This is what senior Waterwind spoke of when he said he saw the marvelous sight of the Hundred Streams of the Windsource. What I experienced just now should’ve been just one of those flows.” Ning immediately understood.

The Hundred Streams of the Windsource represented a hundred of these tunnels that coiled deep into the planet before joining together at a common location. Each tunnel had to be more than a million kilometers long. The Hundred Streams contained all of the Daos which had been mastered by the ancient power behind this estate!

Waterwind had viewed several of the flows and gained many insights into them. Thus, he had left behind his diagram atop the walls of that cave.

“The pit I just climbed out of and the pit on the other side should belong to the same flow.” Ning nodded slowly to himself. “It’s much like how the waters of a river will occasionally form small whirlpools when going past certain bends. So I’ve only been on a single stream this entire time. Still, it makes sense. Even someone as unfathomably powerful as Waterwind was only able to investigate a few of the streams.”

“I’ll wager that quite a few of the treasures ended up being piled up here somewhere.”

Now, Ning finally understood. After he had been drawn in here from the outside world, he had begun his journey through a single stream and had now encountered the first ‘bend’ in the stream. This meant that he was most likely in the outermost layer of the Hundred Streams!

“The farther down I go, the more dangerous it will probably become!” Ning mused to himself. “Even Daolord Badlands and senior Waterwind were unable to fully conquer this ancient ruin. If I try to go much deeper, I’ll probably be throwing my life away.”

Upon realizing that he was still at the outermost layer of the Hundred Streams of the Windsource, Ning immediately came to his senses.

“I should take away these treasures, then get the hell out of here.” Ning immediately came to this decision, then once more began to carefully crawl forwards. Soon, he reached the bottom.

The maelstrom itself didn’t have too much of a sucking power to it, just some tearing power. The margins of the maelstrom were actually quite peaceful, and many treasures had been swirled about and tossed to the edges of the maelstrom. Ning saw that there had to be hundreds, perhaps over a thousand treasures with tremendously powerful auras that were scattered around the edges of the maelstrom.

“Seven Dao weapons?” Ning was delighted when he saw this. “And that’s just what I can see with the naked eye. There are probably several other Dao weapons that are hidden within storage treasures.”

“Hmph.” Ning willed the azureflower mist energy to reinforce his legs, allowing him to easily walk across the bottom of this chamber. The sucking power wasn’t that strong here, allowing him walk about quite freely.

Ning silently crept forward, soon arriving in a region that was roughly three hundred meters long. There was no wind here at all, and quite a few treasures had been piled up here.

“This is great.” Ning waved his hand, collecting the treasures.

Whoosh.

That small corner contained dozens of Chaos treasures as well as a Dao weapon. The Dao weapon was an odd-looking fist-sized slab. Ning used his divine power to bind it, and upon doing so Ning realized that this ‘slab’ was actually a flexible sword of incredible sharpness that could also be used as a whip.

“Eh? What are these fragments?” Ning glanced at the unremarkable fragments nearby.

Ning waved his hand, picking up a fragment of a sword handle. “What’s this?” Ning frowned. He could clearly see deep indents on the surface of the handle.

“Are those...fang marks?” This thought suddenly flashed through Ning’s mind.

“Come here.” Ning waved his hand, causing the many shards and fragments to all fly into his estate-treasure. Within the estate-treasure, Ning’s coresense wouldn’t be disturbed by the gray wind, allowing him to more carefully inspect the fragments. What he found was a very strange object located within the large pile of ordinary fragments.

Ning waved his hand, causing the strange object to fly out and come to a rest within Ning’s palm. It was a large, palm-sized bluish-white scale.

The fragments he had picked up were of all different colors, and so Ning hadn’t noticed the scale earlier.

“A scale?” Ning glanced at the patterns on the scale. It looked quite like a scale that would appear on some sort of a beast.

“And those fang marks...fangs that were able grind apart a Chaos treasure...and a scale? I can’t stay here. I need to pick up these treasures, then get out of here.” Ning didn’t even dare to imagine what creature had caused this. He hurriedly flew towards a different corner of the chamber, but as he did so he saw a streak of light fly against the gray wind, emerging from the depths of the chamber and flying towards him with astonishing speed.

Ning blanched when he saw this.

Good heavens.

Even though he had become dramatically stronger, he still had to use his arms and hands to crawl around this place. However, that streak of light was not only moving against the wind, it was doing so at an utterly inconceivable speed.

“Flee.” Ning no longer dared to tarry. His hands stretched out thousands of meters as he hurriedly began to crawl upwards and flee at high speed.

“My...my treasures...”

Just as Ning had picked up that scale, a creature had stirred from deep within this chamber. Its entire body was bluish-white, it had a crystalline mane, the head of a tiger, a body that was completely covered in scales, an extremely long tail, and four mighty limbs.

After being born, it had lived its entire life here within this endless tunnel.

It would occasionally discover some sabers, knives, staves, hammers, and other weapons that fell into its lair. These weapons were useless to it, but it liked to collect them and hoard them! It even placed a few of the scales it had shed in the corners of the chambers where there was no wind, so as to signify that those treasures belonged to it!

“You actually dare to rob me of my treasures.”

“Die.”

“Die!”

It was enraged. It immediately transformed into a streak of light, flying against the wind towards the invader.

“What sort of a freak is this? How can it possibly fly directly against the wind of the Hundred Streams? Does this scale belong to it?” Although Ning had fled after taking just one glance at the creature, he was still able to tell that it was a strange beast that was completely bluish-white in color, while the scale he had acquired was also bluish-white. “And those shards of treasures that had been bitten apart...did those teeth marks come from it?”

“The undamaged Chaos treasures were all high-grade or top-grade in quality, while the broken ones were all fairly low quality Chaos treasures.”

“Still...for it to be able to chew Chaos treasures apart...”

Ning immediately understood that this monster was most likely far too powerful for him to handle.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!!!

Ning’s six arms moved in a blur as he frantically clambered upwards. He had never crawled as fast as he was crawling right now. Before this, he had been moving very slowly, for fear of something dangerous happening. Now, he was climbing at his absolute maximum speed. In almost the blink of an eye, Ning propelled himself upwards ape-style by more than ten thousand kilometers.

Whoosh!

But despite how fast Ning was climbing, that bluish-white streak of light flew upwards even faster, even though it was going against the wind. In fact, it had caught up to him!

“Damn. I found so many treasures. Am I going to die here now? This sucks!” Ning turned his head, staring at the ferocious, bluish-white monster that had drawn close to him.

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