Chapter 417: No Turning Back (2/2)

Thanks to his effort, the remaining Specters that had been blocking the long mountain valley finally scattered.

Gu Haofeng was the first to pass through the valley, and stood in an open area. Upon getting a glimpse of the vast terrain before his eyes, he gasped and exclaimed, “My god!”

Upon hearing his exclamation, the Worldly realm experts also rushed out of the valley.

Dong Li also sensed the anomaly. She stopped bickering with Nie Tian and also ran out of the valley.

Nie Tian went after her.

There was a lake not far from where they were standing, which was wreathed in misty, cyan phantasm Qi.

Thousands of Specters were hovering within the phantasm Qi, which was far denser than the phantasm Qi in the valley. Meanwhile, the sounds of battle kept echoing out from the areas around the lake, where large numbers of huge, oddly-shaped rocks could be seen.

It seemed that other Qi warriors had beaten them to this place. However, since the huge rocks blocked their sight, they couldn’t see what they were fighting.

Numerous human corpses were scattered around the lake shore, each of which had bulging eyes and blood coming out of their eyes. Apparently, they had died from having their souls taken away.

A large number of Specters were screeching as they hovered in the rich phantasm Qi over the lake, which hurt Nie Tian’s eardrums and shook his soul.

A few vague figures could be seen among the Specters, as if they were controlling them.

From the look of it, those vague figures were the so-called Phantasms. They blended in with the Specters around them. They would appear every once in a while, though they couldn’t be located most of the time.

Staring at the bizarre scene above the lake, Cao Qiushui muttered, flabbergasted, “W-what happened here?”

The Phantasm relic is in the depths of that lake. But now that so many Specters and Phantasms are hovering above the lake, what should we do?”

BOOM!

At that moment, a loud sound rang out from the mountain valley behind them.

Nie Tian jerked his head back to see what was happening.

He saw that a wall of faint, cyan light had suddenly appeared at the mouth of the valley, cutting them off from the path they had taken to get here.

Three of Dong Li’s subordinates hadn’t come out of the valley when the wall of cyan light appeared, and thus they were separated from the group.

With Gu Haofeng and the Worldly realm experts out of the valley, the Specters regrouped and madly attacked the people who were now trapped in the valley.

Surrounded by numerous Specters, one trapped Qi warrior after another went down.

By the time Dong Mingxuan, Shen Zhong, and the others realized what was going on and rushed back to their rescue, they found that they couldn’t go through the wall of cyan light.

Gu Haofeng bombarded the ward repeatedly with his thunderballs, yet the cyan ward didn’t change a bit.

Then, they watched their friends from the Realm of a Hundred Battles become swamped by a large number of Specters, while there was nothing they could do.

With ghastly faces, everyone wracked their minds for a way to save their companions.

However, even Shen Zhong and Dong Mingxuan couldn’t break the strange ward, which was apparently created by the powerful Phantasms after exhausting all of their power.

It wasn’t long before everyone stopped making attempts one after another.

The reason was that all those who hadn’t passed through the valley in time were killed by the Specters.

Cao Qiushui’s face turned pale as he watched discarnate souls rising from the cold corpses of the Cao Clan members, who used to be his friends, absorbing phantasm Qi, and transforming into Specters. “There’s no going back now...”

Nie Tian’s heart also grew incomparably heavy.