Chapter 22: The Bizarre Taste of the Weird Entities…

Perhaps because the situation was so urgent this time, the speed Li Meng maintained while heading toward the destination was beyond fast.

Even the current Hidden Hunter rank Qiu Qiqian, who was still in her Spiritual State, could only keep up thanks to the binding effect between her and Li Meng.

“Ah, that’s right,” Li Meng suddenly thought of something while they were moving.

“Those Guiyi I just cut down with the Dark Breath Flow… I think I forgot to pick up the Wart Crystals they dropped.”

Li Meng slowed down slightly to make it easier to talk to Qiu Qiqian.

“Don’t worry, I picked up some of the most valuable ones for you,” Qiu Qiqian replied as she was being dragged along by the binding effect.

She pulled a few out from the pocket of her trench coat; she had used her Black Arm to snatch them along the way.

Li Meng glanced back at Qiu Qiqian and gave a slight smile before facing forward again.

“Xiao Qian is the most thoughtful, after all. But… you didn’t take the chance to sneak a few for yourself, did you?”

“H-How could I… haha.”

Qiu Qiqian scratched her cheek, her gaze instinctively drifting to the side.

Even without looking at Qiu Qiqian’s guilty expression, Li Meng knew she had definitely sneaked a few.

However, she had no intention of scolding her.

She simply teased her gently.

“You really are something. Well, eating a few this time isn’t a problem. After all, if we eliminate the master of this Inner World, it will drop a Wart Crystal that is at least Titan Grade. With that, the other crystals won’t be as important.”

“Titan Grade?”

Qiu Qiqian remembered Li Meng saying before that a Titan Grade Guiyi was…

Qiu Qiqian noticed that on both sides of the passage being pierced by Li Meng’s Nether Breath, the walls did not always maintain the appearance of a normal world’s walls.

Instead, cracks and bloodstains would manifest from time to time, appearing for only 2 or 3 seconds before vanishing.

It seemed that Li Meng’s Nether Breath was currently clashing with the Nether Breath within this Inner World.

The Guiyi they had encountered before were completely unable to reach this level of influence.

“We’re here,” Li Meng said suddenly.

Her speed did not decrease in the slightest as she used her body to slam open a door ahead that was marked with a ████ sign.

The moment she burst through the door, Li Meng used incredible leg strength to come to a sudden halt.

Qiu Qiqian was finally free from being forcefully dragged by the binding effect, floating behind Li Meng like a kite.

At the same time, after the two of them burst inside, the door behind them was instantly slammed shut by an invisible force.

Qiu Qiqian and Li Meng turned their heads to find that the door had been sealed tight by several flesh vines spreading from the walls.

While they were traveling, Li Meng had been using her own power to block the Guiyi’s erosion.

Now that she had reached her destination, the original passage naturally merged back into that Guiyi’s Nether Breath.

The room was a wash of crimson… It looked extremely unsettling.

Underfoot was nothing but a slimy, meat-like substance.

If Qiu Qiqian were standing on it in a physical state, she likely would have vomited from disgust.

In comparison, Li Meng’s willpower was much stronger.

She was completely unaffected by the things on the floor, continuing to walk forward as she followed the flow of Nether Breath in her vision.

However, the further they went, the more intense a pungent odor became.

It was like the smell of rot mixed with the scent of blood and other gasses…

It wasn’t a gas from the real world.

After all, as a Guiyi in a Spiritual State, Qiu Qiqian was not affected by physical matter.

This meant these gasses were simulated by Nether Breath specifically to disgust them.

But that smell… seemed to be coming from above.

Qiu Qiqian looked up.

Hanging from the ceiling were hundreds of corpses — hundreds of people.

Their skin had been stripped away, their eyes gouged out, and their limbs severed.

They looked like… processed prey.

The vast majority were adults, but even a quick glance revealed the silhouettes of several children among them.

The overwhelming visual impact, combined with the nauseating smell, caused Qiu Qiqian to feel a powerful wave of revulsion.

She quickly covered her mouth and forced herself to endure, even though she knew the most she could do was vomit up a bit of Nether Breath.

Even though Qiu Qiqian, as a Guiyi, could sense that these things were just fakes constructed from Nether Breath, the powerful visual shock combined with the odor was still too much.

“These Guiyi… they really have a sick sense of humor. Why go through all this trouble?”

Qiu Qiqian covered her mouth, her face significantly paler.

“This is to lower our mental strength,” Li Meng said, glancing at the scene above.

She wasn’t frightened; instead, a rare trace of anger appeared in those gray eyes.

“When Guiyi know an enemy is difficult to handle, they will try to use their Nether Breath to construct scenes that terrify their opponent. By lowering the opponent’s mental strength, they can more easily absorb their vitality. Before you were captured, Xiao Qian, you probably played ghost around normal people to make it easier to drain them, right? It’s similar to that.”

“I-Is that so?”

In truth, the Qiu Qiqian of that time had no idea she could make it easier to drain vitality by disturbing someone’s mind.

She had simply wanted to play pranks on people.

“Still, deliberately constructing a scene like this… is truly unpleasant.”

Li Meng’s gaze sharpened.

In an instant, a massive amount of Nether Breath erupted from her body.

The resulting shockwave was so strong that even Qiu Qiqian had to raise an arm to shield herself.

The scene constructed by the Guiyi naturally faded away under the washing force of Li Meng’s Nether Breath, finally revealing the true appearance of this deepest space.

It was pitch black here, much like the Periphery they had first entered.

The biggest difference was that they could actually stand on the ground.

In the sky, the so-called corpses had already dissipated, turning into silver stars scattered across the black curtain.

But with a bit of attention, one could see that those silver stars were just eerie lights emitted from white pupils, similar to the Drowning Savages from before.

Indeed, at this very moment, a massive number of Guiyi were floating above their heads.

However, those Guiyi seemed to be observing, merely staring down at them in silence.

On the ground, the original meat-like, slimy substance had at some point turned into a layer of shallow water that just covered their feet.

Since Qiu Qiqian had already switched to her Spiritual State to hover in midair, she didn’t have to feel the water that clearly looked suspicious.

As for Li Meng… she could feel something slimy swimming past her feet from time to time.

But when she released a tiny bit of Nether Breath, that feeling vanished without a trace.

Finally, they both looked forward.

There, with their backs to them, stood a group of children.

They just stood there in the water, staring blankly in the same direction, looking at something unknown.

How… could there be so many children gathered here?

Were they brought inside?

“Xiao Qian, are those… definitely real children?” Li Meng asked the girl beside her.

“Yes, I can feel it. Those children are all living humans. But… something is wrong. There is a bit of Guiyi Nether Breath mixed in with them.”

“Hmm… Could it be… Anyway, let’s go check on them first.”

Splash, splash…

With a few light steps through the water, Li Meng quickly arrived behind one of the children.

She reached out and touched the child’s neck, seemingly confirming something.

The temperature and pulse were still there, but… compared to a normal person, it was definitely wrong.

Li Meng hurriedly turned the child around, about to ask something, but was stunned into silence by what she saw.

Seeing Li Meng freeze, Qiu Qiqian leaned in to check the situation.

Her pupils also shrank violently at the sight.

The child before them… had no facial features.

The entire face was like a mannequin in a shopping mall.

One could only see a faint, blurry outline of where the features should be; other than that, it was a complete blank.

Li Meng tried to talk to him and patted his shoulder to get his attention, but no matter what she did, the child made no movement and gave no reaction.

It was as if… all his senses had been stripped away.

“Semi-Aberration…”

Li Meng whispered, her voice trembling slightly.

After being influenced by Nether Breath or other means, some people would enter a state of Semi-Aberration.

Unlike the “half-something” transformations seen in anime or novels, this state provided them with no empowerment whatsoever.

They lacked the strength of a Guiyi and the intellect of a normal human.

They were like the “chang” ghosts in the idiom “helping a tiger to hunt.”

Only by killing the “tiger” that served as the source could they be liberated.

At that moment, because of her unique Guiyi vision, Qiu Qiqian noticed something Li Meng had missed.

On the child’s abdomen… there was a thread passing through his clothes and connecting to him.

Qiu Qiqian reached out, and the moment she touched the thread, it was as if a butterfly effect was triggered.

The entire thread instantly thickened and turned red.

Something could clearly be seen flowing inside it.

Only then did Qiu Qiqian realize that it wasn’t a thread at all — it was a blood vessel.

Thanks to Qiu Qiqian’s touch, Li Meng, who originally couldn’t see the vessel, was now able to perceive it.

She was startled by the sudden appearance of the red light.

Furthermore, it wasn’t just the blood vessel connected to this child that was revealed.

When Li Meng looked around, she discovered that every child had such a vessel attached to their abdomen.

They spread out and drifted.

Countless blood vessels like these were eventually pulled in the same direction… converging in one place.

Toward that meat-mountain-like Guiyi…