By a rough estimate, at least three to four thousand Donao beasts had fallen. He Lingchuan had no idea whether more had been slaughtered by the Thunder-Wielding beasts or slain by the violent gale.
Paid for with the flesh and blood of their companions, the surviving Donao beasts had all forged through the rock maze and surged into the rocky hills beyond.
Looking upon this strewn mess, He Lingchuan suddenly felt there was little difference between cultivators like them and the Donao beasts.
Lightning still flashed and thunder still roared within the rock maze.
One glance told everyone that the Thunder-Wielding beasts were still alive.
Their lord was also still alive.
"Go harvest the floatstone, quickly!" He Lingchuan pointed to the miles of Donao beast carcasses and told his teammates, "Pair up, and watch out for sneak attacks!"
For hunters, this was a glorious hour where gold carpeted the ground!
Others entered the Fu Realm to make a living and earn money, but He Lingchuan had a different purpose. Leaving the carcasses scattered across the ground untouched, he forged single-mindedly toward the rock maze.
Several others shared the exact same thought.
It seemed everyone understood that the closer a beast carcass lay to the rock maze, the richer its harvest was likely to be.
Yet the battle within the rock maze was far from over.
Only as He Lingchuan drew near did he see just how tragic and grueling the scene was.
The lightning barrier erected by the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth had already collapsed. Carcasses were densest around where the barrier once stood, piled two to three zhang high, most charred to cinders.
Yet over half of its own kin had fallen as well.
However mighty this lord-tier monster was, it had ultimately been unable to withstand the dual assault of the beast tide and the dust storm. Its entire body was battered with wounds; gazing at it from a distance, He Lingchuan even noticed blood spraying from its snout and maw.
The dust storm had raged for three and a half shichen, and it had held out right here for three and a half shichen. Exhausted to the absolute brink, every breath it drew spewed a dense mist of blood.
Yet its opponents had also suffered casualties.
He Lingchuan had counted them before: originally there had been seven Wu beasts, but only five remained standing now. Their leader in particular was covered in burns and lacerations, flesh torn open, with hardly a patch of intact hide left anywhere on its body.
The Thunder-Wielding Behemoth hated it the most, so naturally it had received the lion's share of its attention.
Not daring to provoke either of these monsters, He Lingchuan steered clear and circled around from a distance, searching for the dead Wu beasts.
That was his primary objective.
Not here, not there—nowhere to be seen.
Suppressing his agitation, he began a second sweep.
With Donao beast carcasses strewn in every direction, finding a Wu beast's corpse among them was no easy task.
This time he remembered the mirror and slipped it onto his arm. The soul-snatching mirror had no eyes, but its ability to locate objects far exceeded his own.
Soon enough, the mirror began shouting, "Stop, stop, stop! To your left, your left! No, wait, a bit further right."
Five zhang away, there was only a pile of Thunder-Wielding beast carcasses.
"Look down!" the soul-snatching mirror said bluntly. "That young Thunder-Wielding beast—you need to look at its belly!"
He Lingchuan indeed spotted the back of a young beast pinned beneath an adult Thunder-Wielding beast, only half the size of a fully grown one. But the soul-snatching mirror said its belly?
He circled around to the front, and gasped in surprise:
Inside the young Thunder-Wielding beast's belly lay a Wu beast!
The Wu beast's upper torso stuck out, its head crushed flat, while everything below its waist remained inside the young beast's belly. It looked as though it had been crawling out from within the young beast when, before it could escape, an enraged adult beast charged over, trampled it violently, and snuffed out its life!
Seeing this, He Lingchuan could reconstruct the scene in an instant.
Ninety-nine percent chance the Wu beast had killed the young Thunder-Wielding beast, hollowed it out into a makeshift sack, and crawled inside.
What good was doing that?
Perhaps... at least to shelter from the fierce winds outside?
Then he noticed fragments scattered in the Wu beast's claws, on its body, and on the ground.
The fragments did not look like stone, mottled with blue-and-green snowflake patterns; intact, they must have been extraordinarily beautiful.
Before thought could turn to action, just as He Lingchuan moved forward after that glance, someone darted out from the side and severed the Wu beast's head with a single slash!
The strike flowed like water, expending not an ounce of wasted effort. Even under more than triple gravity in the Fu Realm, it lost none of its steadiness, precision, or lethal resolve.
Impressive skill! He Lingchuan's pupils contracted instinctively as he looked at the newcomer.
Hu Bin?
"Oh, Young Master He." Grinning as if he had only just noticed He Lingchuan, he offered a casual greeting. "You made your way over as well?"
Yet everyone knew this was no place for casual chatter.
"Would Brother Hu be willing to part with that Wu beast head?" He Lingchuan cut straight to the point. "I will pay a handsome price."
If it could be bought, there was no need to rob; robbing wasted time.
"This?" Hu Bin lifted the Wu beast's head and shook it twice. "What do you want this for? Floatstones are lying all over the ground for the taking."
With corpses blanketing the plain, everyone was frantically lopping off heads.
Time was precious, and digging out floatstone took too much effort. Unless a beast head was too massive, everyone simply chopped off the heads, stowed them away, and waited until they had leisure later to split them open.
"I'm refining a magic artifact and need its brain pellet."
Hu Bin let out an "oh" and smiled amiably. "Sure. Bring me forty cleansing beads, and the head is yours."
Forty beads? He Lingchuan's face darkened with displeasure. "Perhaps Brother Hu might name another price?"
Everyone had just endured the dust storm; no one had that many cleansing beads on hand. Moreover, the gale had only just passed, and there was no telling how far out they would have to travel before finding cleansing bead grass again.
Right now, every single cleansing bead was a lifeline, yet Hu Bin dared to demand forty in one breath?
This was deliberate obstruction.
"No other price. Just this," Hu Bin said, shaking his head. "Or you can go kill a Wu beast yourself. There are still five or six live ones over there."
He Lingchuan's eyes flickered slightly. Since this man refused to do things the easy way, why not...?
Striking to kill and turning predator against predators were things he had done plenty of times before.
Yet no sooner had the thought surfaced than three or four figures emerged from the surroundings, all members of the Jinjiao clan squad.
Captain Zhou stared at the two of them. "Is there a problem?"
Giving the man credit for mediating disputes earlier, He Lingchuan gave it a try: "I want the Wu beast head, but he refuses to sell."
"All I asked for was forty cleansing beads. Hand over the beads, and the beast head is yours," Hu Bin said unhurriedly. "Cleansing beads are completely worthless outside, while a Wu beast head can fetch at least seven or eight thousand taels out there. In the end, you're the one coming out ahead."
Captain Zhou coughed lightly. "Young Master He, trade is voluntary; it cannot be forced."
The others gathered around as well, backing Hu Bin up.
To fight, or not to fight?
During the three and a half shichen of the dust storm, He Lingchuan had slowed his breathing and consumed only seventeen cleansing beads. But after lending three to his squad members, he had only nineteen left.
That seemed more than enough, but cleansing beads burned away rapidly in a fight. On top of that, nobody knew how far they would have to travel to find cleansing bead grass and restock.
Thus, every single bead was precious.
Time and cleansing beads were the most vital strategic resources right now.
The soul-snatching mirror hastened to advise its master, "Isn't there another dead Wu beast? Search again! It's not worth fighting them."
He Lingchuan cast Hu Bin a look, turned around, and walked away.
The man's voice called out from behind: "The offer stands for one shichen!"
He Lingchuan said nothing and continued searching for the corpse of the other Wu beast.
"That man is targeting me."
The soul-snatching mirror let out a soft exclamation. "Aren't all hunters like that?"
"Forty beads—that price was very cleverly calculated. Any less, and I could scrape it together; any more, and I'd reject it out of hand." He Lingchuan glanced back and saw Hu Bin still watching his back. "Under normal circumstances I could gather enough from my teammates, but at a juncture like this, none of them can spare any for me."
After enduring such an exceptionally long dust storm, his teammates were running low on cleansing beads too; every bead was meant for saving lives. Demanding beads right now was tantamount to demanding their lives!
Furthermore, everyone currently faced a time trap: with every passing second, they had to escape the dust storm's blast zone before their cleansing beads ran out and reach other areas to gather more.
The length of that journey was unknown, so they had to keep an ample reserve.
At best, most hunters' cleansing beads couldn't last two shichen. Some squads had set off immediately after the dust storm subsided, reluctantly leaving a field full of Donao beast corpses unharvested simply because time was running out.
Dust storms in the Fu Realm covered an immense area; dispatching someone ahead to forage was out of the question, as a round trip alone would take more than two shichen. No one dared take such a risk.
Therefore, squads like Chiyan's could linger for at most half a shichen before they, too, had to leave.
Was Hu Bin hoping he would turn against the Chiyan people, or launch an attack on another squad?
After all, robbery was the fastest way to get supplies.
Yet Hu Bin intentionally stuck with the Jin family squad, making it difficult for He Lingchuan to rob him outright.
A hunter from the Jin family squad jumped down from the top of the corpse pile and landed right on the Wu beast's claws. With a squelching crunch, the fragments shattered into even smaller pieces.
"This is a Wu beast?" The hunter took out a blade to slice away the hide and claws. Materials harvested from Donao beasts could fetch a good price, and rarer ones commanded even higher sums.
After taking two steps, however, he noticed some grayish-cyan mucus sticking to the sole of his boot.
"What kind of junk is this?"
Yet on this chaotic battlefield, what strange filth wasn't present? Paying it no mind, he rubbed the sole of his boot against the ground and went off to harvest floatstones from other Donao beasts.
Meanwhile, He Lingchuan, accompanied by the mirror, commenced a fresh search.
Yet there was nothing.
He was already drenched in sweat, his legs feeling like lead, yet nowhere could he find the remaining Wu beast's corpse.
Perhaps it had been buried by sand, or perhaps someone else had already lopped off its head. On a battlefield this chaotic, who could say?
He Lingchuan could only turn his gaze to the living Wu beasts.
He wouldn't even dream of targeting their leader, but among the other Wu beasts, was there an easier mark?
After observing them for a bit, he found one.
One Wu beast had a broken left leg and two distinct burn marks across its abdomen, one of which had blasted a hole through its belly. Not only was it limping, but its head hung low, clearly on the verge of collapsing from severe injuries.
The problem was that another Wu beast stayed right beside it, barely leaving its side.
Monsters like these actually possessed emotion and bonds.
The most troublesome part was that they were both close to the two behemoths clashing in the middle of the field.
If He Lingchuan wanted to slay a Wu beast, he had to get close to the center of the battlefield.
A fight was unavoidable after all. He let out a sigh, popped a pill into his mouth to hold under his tongue, raised his saber, and stepped forward.
The deeper he moved toward the center of the rock maze, the more He Lingchuan felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.
The stray electric currents in the air nearly made his hair stand straight up.
Several dozen living Thunder-Wielding beasts remained, clustered inside their nest in an outward-facing circle to resist the Wu beasts' onslaught together.
When he climbed atop a mountain of carcasses and looked down, the sight before him made everything click:
Upon a mound of sand in the dead center of the beast nest lay two round eggs!
Chapter 651