Chapter 772 - Deadland (2/2)
The energy around Gan Qie seemed stable now. Hearing footsteps approaching, Gan Qie turned to look. As he turned, Shao Xuan saw a new fresh look in his bloody eyes as well as two beast fangs in his mouth.
Shao Xuan was speechless. So much had changed overnight.
Seeing Shao Xuan’s surprised look, Gan Qie looked at the claws on his hands. Gaining control over the new energy in his body, the totemic lines slowly faded and his brown claw-like nails also retracted. The fangs in his mouth also disappeared. Now, no one would be able to tell how much destructive energy was contained in his seemingly weak body.
Gan Qie’s physique had also changed. There were some newly evolved structures in his skeleton now. Every inch of his bone was extended and new bones appeared in his arms and feet. Some of these changes weren’t as obvious because they were covered by his skin, but they were still noticeable.
Fire seed can bring changes to a person’s body and can even change a person’s internal structures. This was the first time Shao Xuan noticed this on a person’s body. Many warriors could also transform after activating their totemic energy, but that was just a temporary change for battle. After ending the battle and deactivating their energy, they would return to their initial looks. Gan Qie’s case was not like this. The changes in his body were permanent and these structures wouldn’t disappear even when he retracted his energy.
Shao Xuan was also doubtful about the fact that Gan Qie could absorb the energy from the three puppets and make this energy his own. This was not something anyone could do.
Gan Qie seemed mentally awake and had no intention to attack. Just like before, Shao Xuan asked him, “What are your plans now?”
“I’m thinking about joining arms with the Flaming Horn tribe. What do you think?”
What he meant was he would follow Shao Xuan back to the Flaming Horn’s territory and that he wouldn’t head to the desert for now.
Shao Xuan looked at Gan Qie in surprise and nodded, “We can discuss more about this later. We must find you a cloak first.” After yesterday’s battle, Gan Qie’s cloak had been destroyed. Shao Xuan felt he shouldn’t bring him around uncloaked.
Upon hearing this, Gan Qie noticed that he wasn’t wearing his cloak. No wonder he felt so uncomfortable. The sun was out.
Gan Qie looked up at the sun. The sun could not do him real damage and could only make him feel uneasy at most. He just didn’t feel good under the sun, and after he absorbed the other three’s energies, this feeling grew even stronger.
Not far away, Chu Xu and Su Le’s corpses were already covered by a thick layer of sand. Their corpses could no longer be identified even if they were found because they were so badly damaged. Even if people from Rock Hill City came here, they might not be able to recognise these two bodies. Yesterday when Gan Qie attacked them with fury and hatred, his energy was scorchingly dry.
The sun was already up high when Shao Xuan and Gan Qie left the desertified land.
Five figures appeared on a mountain nearby. They were tribesmen who lived in this region.
“What do you guys reckon happened here last night?” a person asked as the group climbed up the hill. His watchful eyes scanned his surroundings as he spoke in a careful tone.
Their tribe lived nearby, so they heard the sounds from the previous night and even felt a strong energy that made them shiver. They just didn’t dare to come out then because they couldn’t see well in the dark and they were afraid of losing their own lives. Another reason was that they were not confident in their own strength and didn’t think they could escape in time if anything bad happened. The energy last night was too overwhelming for them.
“Was it a fearsome beast?” someone guessed.
“No way. There are no fearsome beasts in this area, unless someone brought them here. Our shaman even said that the powerful energy belonged to a fire seed. But no one knows what happened last night.”
“Was a tribe merging their fire seed?”
“We came here so many times, how can there be a tribe we don’t know about? The truth is there are no tribes here!”
As he said this, the group of five arrived at the peak of the mountain. Their tribe was quite some distance away, so every time they returned home, they would have to go up a mountain on one side and travel down the other. Since there were fruits at the mountaintop, they often picked some on their way back home.
These tribesmen panted and wiped the sweat on their foreheads as they carried bamboo baskets on their backs. The place in front of them was where the energy came from the previous night.
As they watched the damage done to the land there, they were so terrified that their arms froze midway as they wiped away the sweat on their foreheads. Their eyes widened in shock and their jaws dropped. They stayed speechless for a while.
After rubbing their eyes, they looked again. Indeed! It was still the same!
“What…what happened here?!”
The five people on the mountaintop were all shocked by what they saw.
As far as their eyes could see, everything that used to be green dried and wilted. It was springtime and flowers should be blooming, but everything here was dry and dead. There was no colour and life here. Everything from the green in the trees to the colours in the flowers and grass was now dry and yellow.
It was as if the life force had been stripped from this land entirely. This land was now a deadland.
When they finally got to their senses, they ran wildly back to their tribe. They had to spread the message and let everyone in their tribe know to not come here. What if people came and died just like the trees and grass did?
Very soon, word spread about this land and different versions of stories were told about this desertified region. Some stories said that a king beast appeared and others claimed that some tribe had deliberately caused this. Some even said that it was the people from the other side who did this. Well, there were many stories told about this desertified land, but no one knew the truth since nobody was there when it happened.