Chapter 352: The Sky Road
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
In the night, a large swarm of back bats swept over the sky and disappeared. In the middle of the swarm of bats, there was a white figure. Nangong Wuyue looked at the two of them disappeared in the horizon and muttered, "Will Vivian drop Lily halfway into the woods..."
Hao Ren gazed into the distance and said, "She already dropped Lily—when they just flew into the woods."
Nangong Wuyue, "…"
"Don’t worry, Lily’s body is strong. This kind of thing won’t hurt her. And this is what they usually do to each other," Hao Ren said like it was something very normal, "every night when Vivian fly out for a stroll, Lily will hold a slingshot and watch her behind the window. These two are just like that, no cure."
As a ‘high-speed combination’ in the squad, Lily and Vivian were responsible to explore the sentry post of the blood lake. However, the knights had set up layers of ground defenses outside The Gnarled Grove to ward off the rock giants, and there was almost no gap between the various sensitive magic towers and patrolling sentinels. Hao Ren did not want to cause trouble in unrelated matters, so advised them to cross the line of defense from the sky. Lily could not fly, so Vivian had to bring her along. And the moment they just across the line of defense and flew into the woods, the vampire girl dropped the Husky down right away.
Y’zaks and Becky had already left. At now, only Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue were still there. Under the chilly double moonlights, Hao Ren glanced at the Dragonspine Ridge through the moonlight, then tossed the data terminal into the air and said,"Let’s go!"
"So lazy…" The data terminal turned into a blue light and disappeared into the air, leaving the word slowly dissipated in the air.
A few seconds later, Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue had reached a place about a hundred kilometers from the south of Leyton town via the data terminal’s teleportation function. This was where the occurrence of the strange collapse and changing shape in the Dragonspine Ridge took place. Hao Ren, who had just recovered from the momentary vertigo of the teleportation, was startled by what he saw:
Seeing a thing for oneself is better than hearing about it. It is hard to imagine how mountains could change its shape and form ‘Sky Road’ just by others’ words. Now he understood why Bishop Gelton and Ophra confirmed that the changing shape of southern part of the Dragonspine Ridge was caused by the power of ancient evil Magic: In the night, the dark mountains twisted into bizarre shapes like ferocious demons. On the wall of the mountain that should have been smooth, there were countless stalactite-like stalagmites stuck out of it, the small ones were dozens of meters long, and the big ones pierced across the sky. The so-called ‘Sky Road’ was, in fact, a huge ‘stalagmite’ which extended out like this. The huge stalagmite of hundreds of meters wide, which pierced across the mountains of Leyton in the night sky and fell straight into the twisted woodland, was unlikely to be a natural formation, but there were no man-made traces. It looked more like ‘grew’ from the mountain.
The reason why the Leyton’s line of defense worked was that entering The Gnarled Grove from the Dragonspine Ridge, there were ‘geological folds’ that were lower than the ridge but were steeper and harder to climb. The folds encircled The Gnarled Grove and Leyton town was the only entrance. So when the rock giants appeared, those giant monsters that could not climb the mountain were blocked by these folds. But now the ‘Sky Road’ stretching out of the Dragonspine Ridge had completely crossed the defensive line from the sky. The rock giants entering the sacred ground through here were almost unimpeded.
This ‘Sky Road’ often collapsed, changed shape, and even changed the end of the road. The Knights had no way to set a fixed line of defense at the end of the road. No wonder they were so busy dealing with rock giants.
But probably the intelligence of the rock giants was limited. They did not know how to deploy their superior forces to a cluster onslaught, except for their actions half a month ago. Rock giants would storm the nearest stronghold from the mountain they cracked from. Otherwise, if all the rock giants in the entire mountain range were gathered at one point and swarmed into The Gnarled Grove from this ‘Sky Road’, the Church Knights would not be able to beat so many monsters.
But now there is no rock giant coming down from the south peak. It is also possible that the rock giants were dormant now. Hao Ren did not find any monster wandering around. The magnificent and bizarre stone ‘Sky Road’ was just quietly lying across the night sky, looked harmless.
Hao Ren raised the data terminal in his hand as if he was using a searchlight. The data terminal was puzzled by his behavior and asked, "What are you doing?"
"Aren’t you a sensor? I’m scanning the surroundings..."
The Mobile Data Terminal paused for a moment, and then flew out of Hao Ren’s hand and yelled, "Can’t you use your brain? You can just tell me!"
Then the data terminal emitted a faint blue light to roughly scanning the surroundings. More than 10 seconds later, it fell back to Hao Ren’s shoulder and said, "The ‘Sky Road’ itself has no magic residue. Those are just simple stones. The source of this unusual phenomenon should be on the mountain."
Hao Ren looked up and found a way to climb the ‘Sky Road’ and said, "Let’s go up. It is said that if the ‘Sky Road’ sense an outsider, you will be ‘dumped’ down. Go up and try." He looked back at Nangong Wuyue and asked, "Are you waiting here or...?"
"I’m not here to drag you down!" Nangong Wuyue put her hands on her hips and said, "Siren has no other skills, but the survival capability is stronger than you. I’m expert in exploring this kind of dangerous place, okay?"
While Nangong Wuyue was talking to Hao Ren, she was surrounded by the mist that shielded the sight. After the mist dispersed, she had turned into a beautiful snake. She threw the frozen clothes ball into Hao Ren’s hand and said, "Keep it. When we get up there, let me go ahead of you. I hear there’s miasma on the mountain—I’m good at dealing with that stuff."
Hao Ren kept Nangong Wuyue’s clothes. He then looked at her soft and smooth tail, and then looked at the rugged rocks and asked, "Is your body structure suitable for mountain climbing? Don’t break your skin again…"
Nangong Wuyue slapped her tail and said, "You should watch the Animal World more often to increase the general knowledge of animals!"
After that, she twisted her body climb up the mountain. Her body was fit perfectly on those rugged rocks, moving gracefully but also speedy. Hao Ren quickly followed her to run up the mountain and said, "But the Animal World has never talked about the snake that specializes in mountain climbing..."
The two were running fast, and soon they came to the place where the ‘Sky Road’ began. When he climbed up, Hao Ren noticed that the part of the ‘Sky Road’ connected to the mountain was not as abrupt as it seemed. At the junction of the two roads, there was quite a large flat transition zone, and on both sides of the ‘Sky Road’ along the mountain, there were winding broad ramps that extending to both sides, but due to angle problem he did not notice these structures just now. The purpose of these flat and broad transition zone was obvious: to help the rock giants to come here easily. After all, those monsters could not climb the cliffs.
"This kind of exquisite and thoughtful design should be man-made," Hao Ren said and pulled the corner of his lips, ready to find the area where the mountain began. But first, he frowned, "What smell?"
The air was filled with an unpleasant smell as if the plants were rotting, and it was so subtle that it was almost impossible to tell. If Hao Ren did not have the senses beyond the ordinary people, he would probably just ignore it or think it was just the smell of rotten grass and wood. But before Hao Ren finished talking, a cool and moist breeze dissipated the unpleasant smell. Nangong Wuyue was moving her arms with water mist to disperse the poisonous mist around and said, "This should be the miasma. It’s dangerous because it’s non-toxic when it’s just inhaled. It will react to the warm environment in the lungs for a minute before it starts to kill."
Hao Ren immediately frightened and said, "I just breathed in!"
Nangong Wuyue gave him a side glance and said, "Don’t worry, my mist can detoxify it. And with your physique, a little bit of poisonous mist won’t kill you. "
Hao Ren felt that Nangong Wuyue was fully functional—she could cure, heal, detoxify, provide a protective shield, and could even dispel poisonous air. Where can you find this kind of high-end support? Her only problem was that she could not fight…
"Now let’s test how this mountain ‘senses’ that someone is climbing the ‘Sky Road’." Hao Ren looked to the long ‘bridge’ across the horizon not far away and said, "I want to see who is staring at this side. By the way, when I fall down, remember to use teleportation to pull me back. It’s gonna be really hurt to fall down from such a high place and then hit by dozens of tons of stones…"
The data terminal banging on Hao Ren’s back and said, "OK, OK, just go!"