Unfathomable Senior

Chapter 634

“Haha, I knew that we would have made it, we are back, Senior Brother! ... Senior Brother?”

“Huo Qiang, where is Dong’er, wasn’t he in front of you?”

“Well...He turned around to diffuse some of the fire energy and tossed me into the teleportation array, then I think he was grabbed by some of those squiggly things...”

A confused Huo Qiang was rubbing his head while looking at the group of cultivators in the volcanic region. The spot they arrived at was actually the exact same one they entered the trap. It wouldn’t be strange for their allies to appear somewhere now but without the man that they were supposed to rescue here, they couldn’t really return.

“We must go back, what if he can’t find his way back here without us?”

Huo Qiang shouted out while turning towards the spot he arrived from. However even if he attempted to bulldoze his way back to the location he came from, there was no way of going back.

“Qiang, that’s not how teleportation arrays work, you can’t just go back. It was a one-way tunnel and the trap that sent us there is already out of energy.”

Zhang Jin was a bit calmer than the hot-headed Huo Qiang that was punching at the air. No one from this group actually knew how their Patriarch was able to create the array. In theory, they should be able to reverse engineer his method and use the ambient energy from the previous zone to create a similar array. This was easier said than done as they had no way of knowing how he was able to analyze the faint traces of Qi tied to the other location.

“Does this mean that he is trapped there?”

“Perhaps, Liena won’t like this...”

Just as all seemed to be lost, both nascent soul elders felt something. There was a ripple in the space and it started expanding.

“Wait, something is happening, prepare yourselves!”

Everyone pulled out their weapons and fists to stare at the spot in front of them. Suddenly a torrent of black goop shot out from thin air to coat everyone in a strange-smelling substance. This wasn’t all as screams of their favorite Patriarch followed soon after.”

“AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

His form which was usually white as a snow flower tumbled through while being black as obsidian. He was spinning around like a helicopter propeller and collided with the first person that was standing there, Huo Qiang. The collision caused the volcanic rock under them to shatter and sent many jagged rocks flying everywhere. Everyone was quick to disperse to get away from the liquid and mass of tentacles along with it.

...

“Uh... I made it?”

Zhang Dong gathered himself to his feet as he arrived at the other side of the teleportation array. He had been forced to save his junior brother from tumbling to the wrong side of their escape route. If he didn’t act then he would have been stuck there with the flying tentacle monster and its goons. Yet after shifting his position a bit he had been caught by a vast quantity of tendrils. They were quite slimy and not something that he liked touching his body.

“Yeah sure...”

He was now clean but Huo Qiang had been covered in the sticky stuff as well. The cleaning technique allowed the clothes to be cleaned as well. Within a few minutes, the two best combatants were back to their old looks and the black sludge was evaporating due to the heat.

“Now that we are back here, we should find the Golden Palace and rendezvous with the others, lead the way, gramps.”

“Sure thing, just follow this old man.”

The description of this place that he was given didn’t give it justice. The place was just a wasteland composed of lava and volcanoes. All the air here was filled with strange vapors that were of various colors, most of them black or filled with yellow sulfur. This was not a place a regular human would be able to survive, without the enhanced cultivator bodies that everyone here had it would be impossible to breathe.

“Be careful Senior Brother, the volcanic beasts here are quite ferocious.”

“Are they?”

It was surprising to hear this quote from the battle maniac that was his junior brother. Normally he would be ecstatic to engage in battle with new creatures. If they were giving Huo Qiang trouble then even he needed to watch his back. After scanning the area with his spiritual sense he sensed some of these monsters nearby.

‘Hm, are they body refiners? Don’t feel that much Qi coming from them.’

When glancing toward one of the pools he felt a living organism. It wasn’t alone nor was it moving, like a predator waiting for a victim to get closer. When performing a more thorough search he could detect many similar lifeforms everywhere. It was like they were also underwater creatures like all the others, just instead of water they were using lava.

“Wait...”

“What is it Dong’er? If we hurry up we should be able to arrive at the palace within a day’s time.”

“We might have to move a bit faster then...”

“How so?”

Zhang Jin’s cultivation wasn’t as advanced so he couldn’t feel it. The environment was also working against them as the monsters that were gathered here blended in with the lava and Dao of Fire quite well. There weren’t just a few beasts looking at them, it was closer to hundreds or perhaps thousands.

“I think that our arrival here had woken up the natives.”

“Are we being watched?”

Everyone started looking around as they couldn’t see anyone within the flaming environment. Their leader knew though that perhaps the teleportation array or his cleaning method had roused some of the beasts here from their slumber.

“Yes and I’m not sure if they will let us just pass without a fight, get ready.”