"Out of a ten-man team, three are already dead or injured. Is this common in previous years?"
"No, no, very rare in previous years," his teammate replied. "The Grass Sea Hunt has gone on for hundreds of years. Every type of Donao beast has a targeted way to fight it, though occasionally a new variation appears. Normally, our squad can handle five or six at a time without an issue. And besides—"
He paused. "When we encounter a herd, multiple teams will cooperate as well."
Even though the participating teams were all competitors in the Fu Realm, intelligent creatures understood flexibility; under heavy pressure to survive or when there was profit to be made, cooperating once in a while was no trouble at all.
He Lingchuan said helplessly, "So if you meet a beast tide, you just lie down and die?"
"Usually we avoid it," the teammate shook his head. "We aren't stupid. If the herd is too large, we stay as far away as possible."
"In all these years of the Grass Sea Hunt, what threatens us most is actually the air of the Fu Realm." He gave a wry smile. "Over the years, the majority of deaths have been from suffocation. Some suffocated in their sleep, while others failed to grab a cleansing bead and choked to death."
"That..." Indeed, sleeping in the Fu Realm was a major problem. Who could replace their cleansing bead every quarter-hour while fast asleep?
It all depended on teamwork—taking turns so someone kept watch while others slept.
He Lingchuan pointed toward the low hill and asked them, "Then how do you explain the situation before our eyes?"
The teammates looked at each other. One of them said, "Occasionally, a beast tide will go mad and chase people."
After all, this was another world; even if Beijia had cultivated familiarity here for hundreds of years, accidents could never be completely ruled out.
"For what reason?"
"The lead beast went berserk, or something was driving the tide from behind."
As he spoke, the teammate drew his blade to dig out floatstone. There were too many beast carcasses here, more than half of which had not yet been harvested by hunters.
To everyone, this was treasure.
A Donao beast the size of a giant ox yielded a piece of floatstone as large as a cantaloupe. Scraping away the mucus on its surface, the teammate grinned from ear to ear. "This one can be counted as at least three grades!"
Something gotten for nothing was always sweet.
When the participating teams returned to the mortal realm, they were required to sell all the floatstone they had obtained to the authorities. The authorities purchased it at a uniform price. As for the measurement, a goose-egg-sized amount of purple floatstone served as the standard unit, designated as one grade.
Floatstone was like the Donao beasts' hide: the more powerful the beast, the lighter the color.
He Lingchuan glanced at the floatstone. It was an irregular cylinder, pale purple, and completely translucent throughout. Donao beasts used floatstone to counter gravity; otherwise, their bodies could never grow so large.
While his teammate was cutting into the carcass, He Lingchuan suddenly noticed the sand by the man's feet shift as if sinking.
"Watch out!" By instinct, he reached out, grabbed the man's shoulder, and yanked him backward.
Just as the teammate's body was pulled off the ground, a loud whoosh tore through the earth, and a turbellarian burst forth!
Its body was thicker than a large tire. Though it had no legs, the momentum behind its leap was not weak in the slightest; four zhang of its six-zhang body shot straight out, its mouth gaping to the limit.
Had the teammate remained where he was, he would likely have been swallowed whole!
In that split second, He Lingchuan caught a clear look at its snout.
Inside its mouth grew ten entire rows of fine teeth arranged in a spiral, extending from its maw all the way down into its digestive tract. With just a single twist of its body, any trapped prey's flesh and hide would be neatly sliced and portioned by the serrations, delivered straight to its stomach!
Truly, straight to the gut in one step.
When it opened wide, the outermost fine teeth jutted outward; when it shut its mouth, they curved inward, making escape virtually impossible for any captured prey.
This was He Lingchuan's first time taking action in the Fu Realm, and he had ultimately misjudged his power and speed, failing to pull the man away as swiftly as usual.
Besides, his teammate did not weigh a hundred-odd jin anymore, but upwards of five hundred.
As a result, while the turbellarian did not swallow the man whole, its head tilted, and its jaws clamped onto his leg!
The man let out a sharp cry of agony. His calf immediately felt the gentle embrace of the turbellarian's serrated teeth.
Once sucked in by such a thing, breaking free was extraordinarily difficult.
He Lingchuan drew Fusheng with a backhand motion and slashed down.
The cold gleam of the blade flashed through the air, cleaving the turbellarian's head halfway through.
Green ooze spattered out.
The tactile sensation of cutting into it was far from smooth, remarkably like slicing into a tire—both hard and tough.
Presumably, because creatures of the Fu Realm fed on minerals and earth, their flesh and hide were naturally anything but soft.
He Lingchuan deployed his protective astral qi; otherwise, having that acidic slurry splash across his face would corrode his skin away.
Hissing in pain, the turbellarian shrieked, and two more depressions suddenly sank into the sand.
Two more turbellarians surged out, lunging straight at the group.
With sharp eyes and swift hands, He Lingchuan hurled the wounded man directly onto a nearby boulder.
These monsters could lurk beneath the sand, but surely they couldn't lurk beneath solid stone.
One of the turbellarians shot straight toward him.
When launching ambushes from underground, these creatures were indeed very much like compressed springs, fast and steady. But He Lingchuan was prepared; with a dodge using Returning Swallow, he was already two zhang away.
Combat was the quickest way to adapt to the local gravity.
His limbs still felt heavy, but he was no longer at a complete loss as he had been at the start. Best of all, Fusheng felt weightless in his hands, even more nimble than his own arm.
In the Fu Realm, it performed splendidly.
Before he had even settled his stance, He Lingchuan unleashed a sleeve arrow with a flick of his wrist.
The short arrow shot out slightly slower than it would in the mortal realm, likely because the arrow shaft had grown heavier, no longer matching the specifications Li Qingge had meticulously calibrated.
Nevertheless, this hardly mattered; the arrowhead still plunged fiercely into the turbellarian's body.
The creature had been lunging at another Chiyan guard, but He Lingchuan gripped the spider-silk line and hauled it off course, swinging it like a windmill straight into the third turbellarian.
The two monsters slammed into each other, writhing on the ground in a tangled heap.
The other two teammates charged forward as well, their blades falling like rain.
All three beasts were wounded; hissing and screeching, they found a burrow and plunged underground.
He Lingchuan turned to look around. Several more turbellarians still circled nearby, but none came forward to cause him trouble. Those that fled had left several massive circular holes in the ground, though sand from the surroundings slid inward, gradually filling the pits.
The injured man was still shaken. His teammate hurried over to stem the bleeding, detoxify the wound, and bandage it up.
"Be careful not to let joy turn to sorrow," He Lingchuan said, shaking his head. "Didn't they say turbellarians don't care for human flesh?"
"Probably guarding its food—thought I was going to steal its meal. These things have no brains." As the wound was disinfected, the man hissed through his teeth from the pain. "Still, turbellarians this large are rarely seen."
"Rarely seen?" He Lingchuan chuckled self-deprecatingly. "Is my luck just that good?"
"It's probably because there are too many beast carcasses here, drawing in the worm generals or even a worm king," another said. "If a worm king shows up, this won't be a place we want to linger."
"How big is a worm king?"
The man pointed to the pits and said, "At least three to five times bigger. Ordinary weapons can't even scratch its hide."
He Lingchuan replaced his cleansing bead with a fresh one. After observing from the hillock for a while, he suddenly leaped down to the ground.
"I was standing here earlier, yet none of the turbellarians behind approached. Why?"
These worms clearly belonged to the same nest, and they even looked out for one another. Yet while he stood there, the turbellarians in the rear refused to advance, actually hesitating.
His teammates, of course, could not answer his question.
After inspecting the area, He Lingchuan pointed to several footprints on the ground. "What kind of Donao beast made these?"
The footprints ran in a line, each about the size of He Lingchuan's foot. The creature that left them was likely a quadruped, but the prints were shallow in front and deep in the back, each showing three parallel toes. This showed the beast's center of gravity was shifted backward, meaning it could at least stand semi-upright.
Moreover, dragging marks trailed behind the footprints—perhaps a tail?
He Lingchuan did not know enough about Donao beasts, and these footprints alone revealed little. Beside them, however, lay two corpses—both frozen solid into giant blocks of ice.
One was that of a Donao beast, and the other was human.
He Lingchuan tapped them twice with the spine of his blade; they gave off a crisp clinking sound, clearly frozen solid inside and out.
There was no ice or snow on the ground nearby. These two unfortunates could only have been attacked by some divine ability or spell—
Or an innate talent.
The three teammates came over to look, then shook their heads, indicating they did not recognize it.
Yet gazing at the two frozen corpses, He Lingchuan felt a stir in his heart:
"Are there many varieties of Donao beasts that use ice abilities?"
"I've only heard of the frost silver beast."
"I haven't heard of any other Donao beast skilled in such an ability either."
Hearing this piqued He Lingchuan's interest immediately. The teammate quickly added, "Still, we can't be sure these two were killed by a frost silver beast. That monster is far too rare, and it only lives on freezing mountain peaks."
As soon as they had entered the Fu Realm, the surface temperature was over ten degrees below zero; every breath spoken came out as white steam. He Lingchuan looked toward the distant high peaks, unable to fathom how frigid the temperatures must be up there.
For a frost silver beast gifted with ice abilities, the summit of a mountain was indeed an ideal habitat.
No wonder very few people had obtained frost pellets over the years. Leaving aside the difficulty of slaying a frost silver beast, merely scaling those high mountains was a lethal challenge in itself.
Under these gravitational conditions, visitors from the mortal realm already suffered from irregular heart rates and blood pressure, struggling just to walk. To climb treacherous peaks and court death by ratcheting up the difficulty would be deliberately tormenting oneself.
Besides, could the density of Donao beasts on the high mountains possibly be greater than below?
In fact, before entering the Fu Realm, he had purchased a good number of light-body talismans, which had long been essential supplies for hunters. But an ordinary light-body talisman could only offset half a gravity's worth of weight and lasted at most half an hour; meanwhile, specially crafted light-body talismans designed specifically for the Fu Realm's conditions that completely nullified the gravitational effects only lasted a few dozen breaths at best.
Moreover, none of them were cheap.
Therefore, outside of emergency situations, most hunters rarely used such talismans.
He Lingchuan moved southwest with the squad, asking about the frost silver beast's appearance as they walked.
Unfortunately, though everyone had heard of the frost silver beast, none had ever seen one.
"The mountain summits are practically forbidden zones anyway. Besides, none of us ever wants to cross paths with a frost silver beast."
He Lingchuan pointed ahead. "Yet it seems to have followed the beast tide toward the southwest."
If it truly was a frost silver beast, why would it abandon the safety of the high mountains to come down to the ground?
That was a question no one present could answer.
Two spiral lacerations had been carved into the wounded man's calf, but the wounds were not deep. He Lingchuan retrieved a two-wheeled cart from his storage ring for him to ride in, and another teammate pushed him along.
Under this kind of gravity, blood pooled down into the legs, making it even more vital that the wounded man not walk.
Fortunately, the wound had been treated promptly and their medicinal pills were potent; this sort of superficial injury would mostly close up within two quarters of an hour. Otherwise, He Lingchuan would have told them to push him straight back to the mortal realm.
Chapter 645