Chapter 179. Demons and Monsters (3) X-Tailed Fox’s Spiritual Pressure

     Ye Mo lay down in white space and entered the dungeon directly.

     She found herself lying in damp, filthy mud, surrounded by a cacophony of noise—clanging, thudding, booming—mixed with human shouts, bird cries, and beastly roars. The air was thick with the stench of grass, mud, blood, rot, and other foul odors, so revolting it made her want to vomit.  

     She opened her eyes.  

     The first thing that caught her eye was the remaining swamp covered with waterweed. The swamp had swallowed up half of her body. Half a meter away from her, a corpse with a human face and a horse body was lying on his back. He was torn into two halves alive, and his blood stained the grass and soil. He died with his eyes open.

     The swamp before them held more than one corpse. There were many animal carcasses with no discernible human features, as well as human ones in varying states of decay. Some were just skeletons, and even incomplete skeletons were numerous.

     “…”

     Could this location be a mass grave?

     This swamp was vast, with countless corpses and bones, the time of death uncertain, more like a burial ground for the dead.

     Ye Mo curled her little finger. Then, using the vision of hawk eye, she saw the opposite side of the pile of corpses, the source of the commotion.

     Above the endless forest, several giant foxes with one, two, three, or four tails were engaged in fierce combat with several primitive giants who were up to four meters tall.

     Whether it was the X-tailed foxes or the humans, their fighting mostly relied on their own natural weapons: tails, claws, teeth, fists, long legs, and so on.

     As well as their own magical talents.

     The difference from the Irish copy is:

     First, their combat power was very strong. The foxes’ speed was so fast that only afterimages remained, and their wind blades could easily harvest a forest. The giants’ defense was unbelievably high; a single kick or punch could crush a forest into biscuits, even causing the ground to sink. They were hundreds, even thousands, of times stronger than the water-type carp in the Ireland instance.

     Second, the X-tailed foxes were not magical beasts. Perhaps only the legendary evil dragons possessed intelligence among magical beasts, but these X-tailed foxes could all speak human language and could curse at people using some language of this world.

     Rather than calling them beasts, it would be more accurate to describe them as chi, or perhaps monsters, demons, or spirits.

     In a corner of the forest, a group of more than a dozen young humans, all over three meters tall, were gathered. Regardless of gender, they possessed wild, muscular bodies and messy, seaweed-like long hair. They were observing or learning how to hunt.

     Among this group of young people, Ye Mo saw Wang Xue.

     Yes, Wang Xue!

     She was standing among this crowd of young, strong individuals, positioned towards the back.

     The first time they entered the dungeon, the distance between her and her little partner was less than 200 meters. But the problem was that they now clearly belonged to different factions.

     As if she had sensed something, Wang Xue also turned to the swamp tacitly, and the two looked at each other briefly.

     Tagore was indeed truthful: “The furthest distance in the world is not the distance between life and death, but when I stand in front of you, yet you don’t know I love you.”

Ye Mo and Wang Xue both subtly shifted their gazes. One closed her eyes, and the other lowered her head, beginning to accept and process the memories from this dungeon world.

     …

     Without a doubt, this was a China-based dungeon.

     Various intelligent beings lived in this world. All things possessed sentience; animals could become spirits, and so could plants, trees, stones, and soil, all possessing intelligence.

     Humans were just one of the myriad creatures and could also belong to the category of chi mei wang liang (魑魅魍魉 – Demons and monster s). Gui (鬼 – ghost) did not mean ghost, but rather soul, and hun (魂 – spirit/soul) represented wisdom.

     The age of living beings was calculated by their spiritual intelligence. When beings, including humans, awakened their spiritual intelligence, they would have their own talents, such as strength, speed, water, fire, etc., as well as other diverse and unique talents, either one or multiple.

     For example, humans, the Qingluan (a mythical bird), and the Xuan Turtle had a talent where 99.9999% of their offspring were born with spiritual intelligence, a reproductive talent that other races envied greatly.

     Different kinds of intelligent creatures grow at different speeds, but they can all absorb the spiritual power of heaven and earth to grow, produce different inner pills, become stronger, and their lifespans are constantly increasing. When they grow to the limit, the so-called talent is not so important.

     The above describes a world tens of thousands of years ago.

     Wars between the various races were inevitable, but a certain balance was maintained until ten thousand years ago when the spiritual energy between heaven and earth weakened, and cultivation resources declined.

     The balance was broken.

     Thirty thousand years ago, the first war involving thousands of races finally erupted, resulting in countless deaths and injuries. The stories of those fallen legendary powerhouses still circulated among various beings.

     But that wasn’t the end of it.

     The spiritual energy of this world continued to weaken, and cultivation resources continued to decline. Wars, especially between different races, would occur every few centuries, or decades, or even years.

     Not only that, but the number of plants and animals that awakened their spiritual intelligence was also constantly decreasing, and the innate potential of newborns was also gradually declining. Many creatures were panicking.

     Intelligent beings even began to devour the spiritual cores of other creatures to cultivate themselves, making everything even more unmanageable. Different races continued to fight for resources, possibly compounded by old grudges, right up to the present.

     And the half-human half-beast, half-turtle half-snake, and half-luan half-fox creatures were a type of hybrid being resulting from the union of different races, or perhaps a form of atavism, because such unions between beings were not uncommon ten thousand years ago. Some beasts even had a mix of several genetic lineages.

     The vast majority of hybrid beings had mediocre talents. They were disliked,despised, discarded, killed, etc.; or they were exceptionally talented, but that meant they required more concentrated cultivation resources, yet they clearly carried the genes of their enemies.

     The word “gene” was what Ye Mo called it using scientific terminology.

     In short, by now, hybrid creatures were almost unwelcome by any race. They struggled to survive in the chaotic wars between various tribes, possibly living even worse lives than those plants, wild beasts, and stones without spiritual intelligence.

     A moment of carelessness could lead to them being caught in the crossfire and killed, like the human-faced horse in the swamp, and then discarded in a mass grave for not developing an inner core.

     The original owner of Ye Mo’s current body was abandoned by her tribe around the age of 10 for growing multicolored deer ears. She lived in hiding in this swamp for several years but was exposed due to the great war between foxes and humans.

     They were the culprits behind all these injuries.

     Now, Ye Mo’s mission was precisely these hybrids, or perhaps called mixed-blood spirits/demons, which meant she had many enemies, including the humans and foxes before her.

     Oh right, excluding Wang Xue.

      …

     After the memories finished integrating, Ye Mo had intended to use her mental illusion to adjust her posture. Just as she enveloped herself in mental energy and sat halfway up, an unprecedented sense of crisis suddenly arose.

     “Cough cough cough!!!”

     Accompanied by a suffocating mental pressure, Ye Mo spat out a mouthful of blood foam.

      The mental pressure originated from three foxes: one four-tailed fox, two three-tailed foxes, and three two-tailed foxes. The four-tailed fox, in particular, was a whole level stronger than her in terms of mental attribute.

     The two-tailed fox’s attack made Ye Mo stumble in her most confident domain, and at the same time, it taught her what it meant that “there is always someone better” and “the sky beyond the sky.”

     The X-tailed foxes and the giants were still fighting. The mental pressure just now was merely a casual move as they incidentally spread their battle to the swamp.

     “F*ck your mother!” by Wang Xue.

     Rumble—

   【Detected survivor Ye Mo breaking the agility limit, agility attribute +1.】

    【Detected survivor Ye Mo breaking the mental strength limit, mental attribute +1.】×2

     With a loud crash and the splashing of mud, a deep pit appeared in the swamp where the deer-eared human half-demon was located, but the mixed-blood demon was nowhere to be seen.