Chapter 244 – Village, Clues

The map of the Wailing Ruins was downloaded in advance from the secret realm management center before entering.

Almost half of the map is marked as unexplored areas in black, while the explored areas are marked with different danger levels labeled “D~S.”

At the top of the map is a small bright red “restricted area,” marked with prominent red letters reading “Do Not Explore.”

In the top left corner of the map, the total exploration progress is shown as 59%, and the current exploration progress as 0%.

Lu Yuan checked his location, which was exactly at the entrance point at the bottom of the map.

Above him was a large explored area, with most of the unexplored black areas located in the upper half of the map.

“Clearing the secret realm of evil deity sect followers, obtaining useful information about the secret realm, and collecting special materials from the secret realm… these can all be converted into corresponding exploration progress, but need to be settled after leaving the secret realm…”

Lu Yuan casually opened the Wailing Ruins exploration task bar and noticed that all tasks could be broadly divided into these three categories.

“Let’s explore one of the black unexplored areas first. Whether or not to delve into the red restricted area, I’ll decide later…”

Lu Yuan glanced back at the entrance.

He saw the glowing entrance seam begin to vibrate violently, as if something was trying to break in from outside.

He guessed that it was the mystic deity team he had encountered outside. Lu Yuan, being somewhat socially awkward, did not want to run into them. He randomly chose a direction and started running.

The explored areas were very calm, showing no trace of the evil entities described in the documents.

The barren land was completely devoid of vegetation, with only occasional ruins of low buildings.

These ancient and simple ruins reminded Lu Yuan of old, ramshackle earthen houses that had collapsed from years of neglect in rural villages.

“The internal theory among the Yellow Bear is that the secret realm was created by the Ancient Evil Deity as a habitable place for followers. To be able to create an independent world like this for people to live in, just how powerful is the strength of an ancient evil deity?”

Lu Yuan pondered silently as he walked.

The deeper Lu Yuan ventured into the secret realm, the smaller he felt.

Such feats of creation, he had only read about in novels before.

When those imagined sentences from books manifested into reality before his very eyes, the deep-seated reverence and trepidation towards such unknown powers were beyond words.

Lu Yuan halted his steps within a relatively large area of ruins.

He dispersed his misty mental power, meticulously searching through the ruins, but found nothing.

He wasn’t disappointed, though, because this area had already been explored.

Level 3 [Eye of Doom], activate!

Lu Yuan suddenly activated this skill. His pupils turned pure black with a streak of pale white in the center as he surveyed his surroundings.

It was a spur-of-the-moment attempt.

The feedback surprised him a little.

He clearly saw that the death energy, which seemed to drift aimlessly in the air, actually flowed like water from higher elevations to lower spots, converging towards several general directions.

Comparing it with the Secret Realm Map, he chose the nearest direction and headed that way.

While moving, Lu Yuan also activated the skills Level 3 [Crow Language] and Level 8 [Death Energy Entanglement].

The fog-like mental power quickly radiated out upon activating the [Crow Language] skill.

Before long, he received dense feedback.

Black dots appeared in his vision, rapidly converging towards him.

As they got closer, Lu Yuan realized that the crows he summoned this time were quite unusual.

“Dead?”

He casually grabbed one of the crows, surprised to find that the crows summoned from the secret realm were completely decayed, with no flesh and only a few feathers clinging to their bodies.

Their entire bodies were enveloped in thick death energy, with hollow eye sockets, yet they could still fly.

Although the feedback was particularly murky, it still allowed Lu Yuan to monitor his surroundings.

With his current 22 intelligence points, his mental power detection range was less than three hundred meters.

Having crows as scouts was far more efficient than relying solely on himself or a half-dead drone.

“Undead crows, huh…”

Lu Yuan released the crow in his hand. Intense death energy surged from all around, enveloping him.

It looked like silent black flames or a rotting cloak caught in a gale.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes, recalling his past battle with Karofis, the powerful divine messenger of the Crow Deity Sect.

The death energy around him slowly gathered at his back, gradually taking the form of two giant, roughly-shaped black wings.

“Fly!”

He stomped forcefully, leaving a large crater on the ground with a thunderous boom.

In the next moment, he shot up tens of meters into the air like an arrow.

Then he began to fall.

During the descent, he frantically flapped the wings behind him.

It only slightly slowed his fall, and he continued plummeting uncontrollably.

Finally…

“Boom!” He landed heavily on the ground.

“My body density is too high, my weight is many times that of Karofis. The death energy isn’t strong enough, and my technique in manipulating it is too crude…”

Lu Yuan summarized his “failure,” exhaling lightly, but wasn’t particularly discouraged.

His primary goal in coming to the Wailing Ruins was to level up his [Death Messenger (Extraordinary)] and to hone his [Death Messenger] skill.

He continued to move forward, persistently attempting to harness death energy for flight, his movements clumsy but enjoying himself nonetheless.

Unknowingly, the death energy around him thickened.

Even without activating his [Eye of Doom], he could see massive black fogs of condensed death energy covering the path ahead.

“Whimper—”

Vague, mournful cries seemed to drift out from within the black fog.

“Flap—”

Several undead crows, under Lu Yuan’s control, flapped their wings and darted into the fog.

Lu Yuan gathered the death energy, allowing the Level 1 [Underworld Garment] to quietly appear on his body, forming a thin, semi-transparent film of light, as he took slow, deliberate steps into the fog.

The map indicated that he had now reached an unexplored area.

The information relayed back by the undead crows was fuzzy, only barely allowing Lu Yuan to make out that this place seemed like an abandoned congregation area.

It looked like… a small village?!

A misty cloud of mental power spread out in the black fog, its detection range compressed to less than a hundred meters due to the suppression of the death energy.

The drone carrying the resource package behind Lu Yuan emitted static noises, similar to signal interference, but he remained calm as he ventured deeper.

“Screech—screech—”

Suddenly, there was a strange noise ahead.

It sounded like someone dragging something heavy and coarse along the ground, causing a scraping sound.

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered as he activated his [Eye of Doom].

Through the black fog, he saw a dense, human-shaped mass of death energy approaching him.

No.

It was not just one mass.

“Screech—screech—”

Similar sounds emanated from various directions, some close, some distant, casting eerie, indistinct shadows in the black fog.

The unknown, the mysterious, the fear… all of it came rushing in at once.

For a brief moment, Lu Yuan felt as if he was playing a horror game.

However…

“The protagonist of a horror game would just run away, but I… I can force my way through.”

Lu Yuan sighed softly, and the fleeting tension and horror he had felt vanished instantly.

Under the mental power detection, the full form of the approaching entities in the black fog appeared before him.

They were tall or short, with stout bodies entirely wrapped in tightly bound dark gray cloth strips.

Each figure dragged a weapon in their hand.

Pitchforks, hoes, scythes…

They all appeared to be agricultural tools.

Lu Yuan’s expression remained calm as the death energy around him surged violently with a whoosh, transforming into thick, tentacle-like black pillars that shot out in all directions.

“Boom!”

One pillar struck the nearest stout and decayed body with great force.

It didn’t even utter a sound as it was blasted back, flying seven or eight meters away.

Then…

It shook its head and wobbled back to its feet.

The spot on its body where Lu Yuan’s death energy had struck was now concave, with the dark gray cloth strips wrapping its body torn apart.

But as the surrounding death energy poured in, the concave area smoothed out and the shredded cloth strips were re-woven and mended perfectly.

“Underworld Garment?!”

Lu Yuan immediately recognized that the dark gray cloth strips wrapped around the figures were actually an external manifestation of the [Underworld Garment].

He couldn’t help but mutter under his breath, “Damn it, even the minions have a higher level underworld garment skill than me… What kind of game am I playing?”

He felt helpless.

But he had to keep going.

Repeatedly reminding himself internally—”I am a mage now, I am a mage now!”—he continued to control the black tentacles of death energy, sweeping them across the area.

This was the simplest technique for manipulating death energy. The Divine Servants of the Crow Deity Sect he had encountered before primarily used this technique to control death energy.

The skill that Karofis used to condense death energy into Moon Blade projectiles was something he had attempted several times, but he was still pretty inexperienced at it.

However, using death energy to attack monsters born of death energy meant the intrinsic decaying attribute of death energy had almost no additional effect.

The death energy around here was particularly dense, making the monsters dragging agricultural tools resilient like cockroaches—falling down only to get back up again and again…

Lu Yuan hammered away for quite some time without managing to take down a single minion.

He finally couldn’t take it anymore…

“Boom!”

With a fierce stomp, the ground below him exploded.

Transforming into a fierce black shadow, he dashed into the black fog.

Intense death energy wrapped around him like a cloak, encasing his arms and body.

He casually slapped one of the monsters.

Pressing down with nearly a hundred tons of force, the creature immediately exploded into pieces with a “bang.”

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

One hit for each.

Before long, every figure around Lu Yuan had been cleared out by his bare hands.

He stood in place, expressionless, watching as the monsters’ bodies rapidly decayed into gray dust after losing their death energy support.

Within that dust, a pea-sized dark gray bead was revealed.

Lu Yuan’s eyes flickered, and he bent down to pick it up.

After searching around, he managed to collect about twenty similar beads.

Lu Yuan picked one up and examined it closely.

Judging by its form, this bead was no different from the red beads Lu Yuan had previously obtained from the Crow Deity’s Divine Servants, except for the color.

The latter resembled a crow’s eye, while the former… looked like the eye of a dead crow.

“I wonder if I can absorb this?”

As Lu Yuan pondered, his fingers had already crushed the bead.

The dark gray bead shattered and quickly disintegrated into dust, thick dark gray liquid flowing out and seeping into Lu Yuan’s skin.

In an instant, notifications popped up continuously on his professional panel.

On the [Death Messenger (Extraordinary)] panel, both his professional experience and [Death Energy Entanglement] skill experience points were increasing.

“Guess they work the same…”

Lu Yuan felt a surge of happiness.

Suddenly, countless fragmented and dim images flooded into his mind abruptly.

In a trance, it seemed as though he was suddenly in the middle of a vast field.

The sky before him split into two colors.

Half was a clear blue, while the other half was a murky, thick dark gray.

A massive wave of black fog surged like a tide from the opposite end of the sky, devouring everything in its path.

An indescribable sense of fear and despair gripped his heart.

Uncontrollably, he let out a shout from his mouth—”@￥%!”

And then he was entirely engulfed by the boundless black fog…

“Buzz—”

Lu Yuan’s body shuddered slightly, and he snapped back to reality.

He stood there dazed for a while.

Then, he bent down and slowly picked up a pitchfork-like agricultural tool lying next to the monstrous remains at his feet.

Without the enhancement of death energy, the tool was nearly rotted and in terrible condition.

Lu Yuan meticulously examined every part of the tool.

Finally…

He found a few strange, unfamiliar, and crooked characters on the handle of the pitchfork.

Oddly, it seemed he could comprehend the meaning behind these characters, and he couldn’t help but read them out loud—

“May the Holy Light grant Anscar abundance and prosperity.”