Translator: CinderTL
The white-haired elder ignored Song Wen.
He found Song Wen increasingly burdensome.
If he hadn't considered that Song Wen might still be useful later, he would have eliminated him long ago.
"Fellow Daoist Kong Jin, what do you suggest we do to break this impasse?" the white-haired elder asked the scholar.
The scholar replied, "Our only option now is to level all these small earthen mounds. If this is a natural Formation, it will collapse once the mounds are destroyed."
The white-haired elder frowned slightly, his voice tinged with worry.
"If we destroy these mounds, the commotion will surely alert the demon beasts and poisonous insects in the valley. We could find ourselves in grave danger."
The scholar countered, "We're already in grave danger. If we can't escape this area, we'll eventually die from the poisonous miasma."
The white-haired elder hesitated, turning to the dwarf for guidance.
The dwarf said, "Let's do as Fellow Daoist Kong Jin suggested."
With the dwarf's support, the white-haired elder no longer objected.
To minimize noise, the three of them decided that the dwarf, skilled in Water Attribute spells, would take action.
Song Wen had never participated in their discussions from the beginning. No one cared about his opinion, and he was automatically ignored.
The dwarf opened his mouth and spat out a walnut-sized bead that hovered in mid-air, radiating a faint blue glow.
As the dwarf formed a magic seal with his hands, concentric rings of water slowly materialized around the bead.
The water flowed like ribbons dancing in the air—light, agile, and completely silent.
"Go!" the dwarf murmured.
The water flowed outward, surging toward a mound of earth over a dozen yards away.
The water struck the mound without a sound, silently seeping into the earth through cracks in the rock.
Moments later, the mound, towering over a dozen yards high, suddenly began to collapse inward, as if its interior had been eroded and hollowed out by the water.
The dwarf and the white-haired elder's expressions immediately tightened as they vigilantly scanned their surroundings, fearing that the sound of the collapsing mound would attract demon beasts or poisonous insects.
"Don't stop," the scholar urged. "Level all the nearby mounds."
The dwarf immediately realized that instead of worrying, it was better to seize the moment and escape this area as quickly as possible.
He changed the magic seal in his hand, and suddenly, several streams of water condensed around the blue orb, surging toward the surrounding hills.
Soon, these hills also began to collapse.
Dust filled the air, and rocks tumbled down.
"Buzz... buzz... buzz..."
Amidst the sound of falling debris, a faint, unusual buzzing sound could be heard.
The four people's expressions tightened. The very situation they had dreaded had arrived.
After a hill collapsed, a deep cavern several dozen feet wide was revealed, from which swarms of poison bees poured out.
Each bee was about the size of a fist, entirely deep purple, with wings that emitted a faint, eerie glow. They swarmed directly toward Song Wen and the others.
"Bewitching bees!" the white-haired elder's expression shifted slightly. "Run!"
With that, he immediately retreated backward.
The other three quickly followed suit.
As the dwarf retreated, he channeled the blue orb, conjuring countless water arrows.
The water arrows rained down like a torrential downpour, blanketing the sky as they shot toward the poison bees.
The poison bees weren't particularly strong individually. Any struck by a water arrow would explode instantly.
However, as their bodies burst apart, a faint, peculiar fragrance wafted through the air.
"Don't kill them!"
Seeing this, the white-haired old man urgently shouted to stop the dwarf.
"Bewitching bees aren't strong on their own, but they contain 'bewitching heart fragrance' within them. Inhaling it can disrupt one's mental clarity. Our previous disorientation wasn't due to any natural Formation; it was the insidious effect of this fragrance."
Hearing this, the dwarf immediately changed tactics.
Instead of forming water arrows, he conjured a water curtain to block the bewitching bees' advance.
The bewitching bees, however, charged forward fearlessly, repeatedly crashing against the water curtain.
As they plunged into the water curtain, they were ensnared and trapped within, unable to escape.
Yet, even though the bewitching bees were confined, the peculiar fragrance continued to grow stronger.
"It's useless. Bewitching bees can actively release bewitching heart fragrance, though the process is slower than the instantaneous burst upon death," the white-haired old man warned.
The four cultivators found themselves in a difficult situation.
The bewitching bees were impossible to kill without risking their own lives, and letting them live was equally dangerous. It was a seemingly unsolvable dilemma.
At this moment, all four felt their heads spinning, as if they were drunk.
Fortunately, the water curtain blocked the bewitching bees, allowing the cultivators to quickly distance themselves. The intoxicating fragrance also faded. After a thousand or so bees emerged, the deep cave stopped producing more.
It seemed that only these thousand or so bewitching bees inhabited the cave.
But before the four could catch their breath, a large hole suddenly collapsed into the summit of a nearby hill. From this opening emerged poison bees the size of watermelons.
These poison bees had striking red-and-black striped bodies, with pale blue Tail Stingers trailing behind them, clearly loaded with potent venom.
"What kind of poison bee is this?" the scholar asked instinctively.
"Netherworld bees. They live in symbiosis with the bewitching bees, and their Tail Stingers are highly venomous. Their poison is so potent that a single sting can kill a nascent soul cultivator."
As the white-haired old man spoke, he conjured a torrent of wind blades and unleashed them at the netherworld bees.
This attack was his full-power strike. Not only did it obliterate all the netherworld bees that had emerged, but it also reduced the hill from which they had emerged to a pile of rubble.
Yet, the white-haired old man's face remained grim.
His eyes darted warily across the surrounding hills.
"We might be in serious trouble. Bewitching bees and netherworld bees are social poisonous insects. There's no way the few we've seen are the only ones here. Countless more must be hidden among these hills."
The dwarf exclaimed, "Then what are we waiting for? Let's run!"
The white-haired old man replied, "Can you even run? Don't forget why we're trapped here. The bewitching bees have lived in this valley for ages, and the bewitching heart fragrance they've released over the years has permeated the poisonous mist. It subtly distorts our senses, causing us to lose our way."
The dwarf asked, "So we have no way to counter it?"
"Not entirely!" The scholar gazed at the undulating hills nearby and continued, "Besides the bewitching heart fragrance, the hills' monotonous similarity is another reason we're lost. If we leveled all these hills, we wouldn't be trapped anymore."
The dwarf countered, "But that would only attract more bewitching bees and netherworld bees. If the concentration of the bewitching heart fragrance increases further, we might not even be able to stay clear-headed."
(End of the Chapter)
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