Li Ze felt as if he were stepping into clouds, his feet soft and yielding, giving him a dizzying, unsteady feeling. Everything around him was a hazy white mist; he couldn't see anything more than a meter away. He tried to probe with his divine sense, but found that it couldn't penetrate the white fog!
What's going on? What are these white mists? Could this be the reason why the jade slip malfunctioned and countless cultivators are trapped here?
A sense of panic arose in Li Ze's heart. He couldn't use his eyes or his divine sense. If something in the white mist ambushed him, how could he dodge it?
If a layer of magic were to cover his body, how long could he maintain it?
Covering the body with a layer of magic power consumes too much energy, and if cultivators discover it, they will definitely attack him en masse.
If magic doesn't work, what about malevolent energy?
If there is enough malevolent energy, so dense that it becomes tangible, wouldn't it be able to intimidate anything in the white mist?
Li Ze didn't have an answer in his heart, but he felt it was worth a try.
The malevolent energy in the ruins was extremely dense. Li Ze absorbed some of the malevolent energy and sent it into his body, while the rest adhered to the surface of his body.
In no time, the temperature around Li Ze plummeted, and his body, filled with malevolent energy, began to throb with pain. The malevolent energy continuously transformed into demonic power within his body, entering his demonic core. In less than two hours, his demonic core was also full.
That wasn't all; his body continued to absorb the evil energy, and it just wouldn't stop!
Li Ze's expression hardened. Ignoring everything else, he sat down on the spot and instantly entered a state of cultivation.
On the other side of the ruins, a group of people were walking slowly hand in hand through the white mist.
"Let's count off now, one!" Mo Xingjue, who was walking at the front, shouted loudly.
"two!"
"three!"
......
"Twenty-seven!"
After the twenty-seventh, the sound abruptly stopped.
The crowd remained silent for a long while.
"The last time we counted, it was thirty-one, but now there are four fewer people."
"Did anyone hear anything?"
"Is it lost, or—"
The unpleasant words weren't spoken aloud, but everyone present knew.
At this moment, their bodies trembled uncontrollably. Since entering the ruins, forty-six of their fellow disciples had disappeared!
Who will be the next person to disappear?
They hurriedly gripped each other's hands.
"We're not going any further. Let's rest where we are. Everyone, move closer to me," Mo Xingjue said. They had been walking for a long time, only to find that no matter where they went, it was all just a vast expanse of white, with no difference whatsoever. Since that was the case, they decided to stay put and think of another way.
The twenty-seven disciples sat on the ground, their knees, shoulders, or backs pressed together, feeling the warmth emanating from each other, which brought them some peace of mind.
Mo Xingjue circled around the disciples, moving quietly and wary of any danger lurking in the white mist.
Suddenly, Mo Xingjue's ears twitched. Almost at the same time, the longsword in his hand flew out, and a piercing cracking sound came from the air, as if something had broken.
"You all stay where you are, I'll go check it out," Mo Xingjue instructed.
"Senior Brother, please be careful!" the junior brothers and sisters urged him with concern.
Mo Xingjue grunted, took out a rope, and tossed one end to Liu Haozhi, "Hold on."
Liu Haozhi grabbed him, saying, "Don't go too far."
“Not far, probably only ten steps away,” Mo Xingjue said, about to walk towards the place where the commotion had just occurred, when suddenly his expression changed and the spiritual energy blade in his hand flew out in another direction.
There was another sharp cracking sound, followed by what sounded like some hardware object crashing to the ground.
Mo Xingjue flashed forward, picked up the dropped items, and quickly retreated back to the side of Liu Haozhi and the other disciples.
"Senior Brother, what did you pick up?" a disciple asked.
Mo Xingjue lowered his head, and only then did he have time to look at the things in his arms. They were several hard, black pieces of wood that looked like dead wood.
“This looks a bit like a human hand and foot,” said Sun Chenghao, who was closest to Mo Xingjue.
His words immediately sent a shiver down everyone's spine. He, however, remained calm, grabbing a piece from Mo Xingjue's arms and examining it, saying, "Could this be a puppet?"
"A puppet?" Mo Xingjue frowned. He had been in this world for over thirty years, but he had only focused on cultivation and finding people. His knowledge was not as broad as that of Sun Chenghao, who was more than twenty years older than him.
Sun Chenghao nodded, "It does resemble a puppet. It's not from a human body."
Upon hearing this, Liu Haozhi also grabbed one and examined it closely. He came to the same conclusion as Sun Chenghao: "This is indeed a puppet. I have had the privilege of seeing puppets before. The traces of spiritual energy and array fluctuations on it are very similar to those I have seen before."
"So these puppets captured our fellow disciples?" a disciple asked.
"It should be."
Next, Mo Xingjue eliminated several more puppets, and successfully pieced together the remaining limbs to form a human-shaped object, confirming their conjecture.
These puppets vary in strength; the strongest they have encountered so far is at the Golden Core stage, and the weakest is at the Foundation Establishment stage.
"I wonder if he'll reach the Nascent Soul stage?" Sun Chenghao murmured.
"It depends on the cultivation level of the master who created them. Only if the master has the cultivation level of the Nascent Soul stage can they create puppets of the Core Formation stage," Liu Haozhi said.
Sun Chenghao's expression turned serious. "Doesn't that mean that if the master is at the Nascent Soul stage, he can create a puppet at the Divine Transformation stage?"
"Theoretically, that's true, but it also depends on the puppeteer's skill in puppet making. After all, making a puppet at the Nascent Soul stage is no easy task; just collecting the materials to make a Nascent Soul stage puppet can take tens or even hundreds of years," Liu Haozhi said.
Upon hearing this, everyone's hearts, which had been in their throats, slowly calmed down. It was good that there were no Nascent Soul stage puppets; they certainly didn't have any Nascent Soul stage experts here.
Unexpectedly, Mo Xingjue then spoke up, "If it were in ancient times, finding materials might not have been so difficult."
Others: "......."
Just as the disciples of Fengyang Sect were filled with unease, fearing that there really was a Nascent Soul stage puppet here, a cry for help suddenly came from afar.
"It sounds like Shangguan Meng's voice."
"And there's Fellow Daoist Leyou."
"They're running in our direction," Mo Xingjue said in a deep voice, gripping his long sword tightly, his sharp eyes flashing coldly in the white mist.
He didn't make his move until Leyou and the others were only about three meters away from them.
"Phew, we escaped again." The Floating Sect disciple slumped to the ground, leaning half his body against the Fengyang Sect disciple. "You guys are the best. With Senior Brother Mo around, I feel more at ease."
"We've also lost dozens of people," a disciple of Fengyang Sect said with a sorrowful tone.
"That's still better than us. We still have six left." The disciples of the Floating Sect had reddened their eyes.
The two looked at each other in silence and kept quiet.
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