Chapter 208: Weathering the Disaster
Swarms of flies were obscuring the sky.
Wei Yuan was sitting in his chair and holding a cup with one hand, sipping tea that didn’t actually exist. His other hand was reaching toward a fly that had crawled into the room. Once he caught it, he threw it into a bell and tossed both into his Dao Foundation.
The flies kept coming. For every fly that vanished, another would dart in. However, they all became sluggish and dazed the moment they entered the room. Sometimes, Wei Yuan simply stretched and paid them no attention. They would plummet head first to the floor, limbs twitching and unable to move.
A five-level pagoda had been set aside on the table, constantly emitting intangible waves. Another two were sitting on the window sills, meaning that a total of three Five-level Mortal-Suppressing Pagodas were guarding this small space. The Cold Flies were low-tier existences to begin with, so they naturally couldn’t resist the suppressive effects of the three pagodas.
After catching dozens of Cold Flies in succession, Wei Yuan stole a glance at the Shamans. Their shelter was enveloped in a light barrier, and countless Cold Flies were swarming it and gnawing on it frantically. However, the flies could barely make a dent on the warm, resilient barrier even though it was completely swamped. The barrier alone could hold out for another hour, not to mention it was constantly being replenished.
Wei Yuan pointed a finger and summoned a barrier of light around his house as well. There were over a hundred of such Dao spells, and Wei Yuan knew at least eight of them.
The Cold Flies swarmed the light barrier as soon as it appeared. Wei Yuan immediately felt his Dao energy being drained at an insane rate—he couldn’t keep up with the consumption at all. Very soon, the light barrier was devoured completely. It hadn’t even lasted ten breaths!
Feeling a bit mortified, Wei Yuan switched to an advanced version of the spell This time, the shield he summoned boasted an orange-yellow hue that looked extraordinary at first glance. The Dao spell boasted twice the defensive power, but thrice the energy consumption. Within the system of Dao techniques, it definitely counted as a rare advanced Dao spell.
The effects and potency of a Dao technique were generally fixed. Only a small minority boasted varying effects depending on the grade and volume of one’s Dao energy. It was perfectly normal to pay three times the amount of Dao energy just to gain double the potency. Further up the ranks, and it was perfectly possible that dozens of times of energy couldn’t yield even a two-fold improvement.
As soon as the orange-yellow light barrier appeared, Wei Yuan’s Dao energy immediately surged out as if a floodgate had opened. This time, the barrier lasted a bit longer—a full thirty breaths to be exact—but fundamentally, there was no difference.
Wei Yuan actually knew an even stronger version of the Dao spell; one that cost thirty times the Dao energy to triple the defensive power of the basic version. However, he believed there was no need to cast it—he would only be humiliating himself further.
In any case, the experiment clearly demonstrated the terror of the Cold Flies. Without a shelter, neither Dao technique nor primordial spirit would stand a chance against them.
However, the light barrier enveloping the Shamans’ shelter seemed to be mocking him in silence.
Wei Yuan abruptly leaped to his feet and gauged the distance between them. Then, he produced a long cauldron, loaded it with a five-level pagoda, set it up by the window, and aimed it at the Shamans’ shelter.
The five-level pagoda shot out of the cauldron, crossing dozens of li in no time and crashing into the Shamans’ light barrier!
The light barrier was usually thick and viscous. The small pagoda was stuck in the substance as soon as it made contact. Wei Yuan wasn’t done, though. With a thought, he made it explode. The ensuing Dao energy storm immediately caused the light barrier to flicker and waver!
Inside the shelter, the Shamans were knocked all over the place by the explosion. A female Warlock had rolled into Sacred Heart’s lap, while a male Warlock had landed on Painted Heart’s back.
“What happened?” A female Warlock cried in panic.
Sacred Heart finally turned serious and cast a slightly pained glance in Wei Yuan’s direction. He said in a deep voice, “He blew up his own Dao Foundation. Alas, the explosion caused by an Earth-tier Dao Foundation is... Hmm? Earth-tier?”
Suddenly, Sacred Heart sensed something was wrong. There was no way his opponent was only at the Earth-tier. There should be very few like him even among those with immortal foundations.
He hurriedly looked outside just in time to see several flashes of light—multiple five-level pagodas were relentlessly hurtling toward them!
Meanwhile, Wei Yuan was enduring repeated stabbing pain to his mind while unleashing one five-level pagoda after another. Every time he launched one, he would place another into a long cauldron, infuse it with Dao energy, and fire it at the Shamans’ shelter. It detonated each time it became lodged in the protective barrier.
Each five-level pagoda was equivalent to an Earth-tier Dao Foundation, and its explosive power was incomparable to what it was before. Even the light barrier erected by a Great Warlock was visibly diminishing with each shot. Looking at the results, Wei Yuan estimated that every three or four shots would take out about ten percent of the barrier’s strength. Naturally, he felt motivated to continue his attack. Ever since Big Senior Sister had given him the five-level pagoda, he had been crafting them whenever he had a spare moment. Now, over fifty small pagodas were lined up beside his jade hill.
The bombardment of mortal-suppressing pagodas were such that even the Great Warlock, despite frantically channeling mystic energy into the defensive barrier, was unable to stop it from weakening. It quickly reached the point where it could shatter at any moment.
Suddenly, an arcing blade of light appeared in the air, slicing two approaching mortal-suppressing pagodas into four pieces!
Wei Yuan forced himself to look outside despite the pain wracking his mind. He saw that the protective barrier had vanished—the Great Warlock had deliberately withdrawn it. He had no choice; no defense could hold out against an onslaught forever. Even a Great Warlock like him couldn’t withstand Wei Yuan’s relentless barrage.
After the barrier disappeared, the Great Warlock had struck down two of Wei Yuan’s pagodas in anger. It was more as a venting of his rage than anything else.
However, Wei Yuan had long since concocted his next move. Instead of engaging the Great Warlock in an angry duel, he fired five small pagodas at the shelter in rapid succession, each shot following an erratic trajectory. The Great Warlock severed two that were aimed directly at the shelter, and ignored the other three that veered off course so much they landed several zhang away from the shelter.
But when Sacred Heart sensed the Dao energy erupting at high speed in all three locations, he suddenly realized what was happening and turned pale!
The three seemingly misfired pagodas had exploded one after another, unleashing violent shockwaves that carried dozens of Cold Flies and countless rock and debris straight toward the shelter!
The Shamans’ shelter was specifically designed to ward off the Cold Flies; its structural strength was mediocre at best. How could it possibly withstand the impact of three Dao Foundations self-destructing at close range?
The building shook violently, instantly warping out of shape. The next moment, the entire roof was blown away!
Countless Cold Flies, like shark smelling blood, swarmed toward the Shamans in an instant.
One Cold Fly that had previously burrowed its way into Wei Yuan’s house only to be suppressed to hell and back by three mortal-suppressing pagodas suddenly twitched like it had sensed a mysterious call. It actually attempted to crawl out of the window to join the assault against the Shamans.
Wei Yuan reached out and grabbed the Cold Fly by its stinger, yanking it back. Then, he tossed it into his Dao Foundation.
It was at this moment a beam of white light burst out of the Shaman’s shelter. While holding Painted Heart with one hand, he shot into the sky and flew away in the opposite direction of the fly swarm’s onslaught. Neither he nor the Painted Heart was harmed because he had enveloped them in a milky white barrier of light, but it only took the blink of an eye for the Cold Flies to swarm them completely. Countless more were flying toward them like a storm, instantly transforming it into a massive fly ball over ten zhang in diameter!
Alas, the Great Warlock was truly formidable. Even in this state, he was flying unimaginably fast. They vanished into the horizon in the blink of an eye.
Meanwhile, piercing screams were ringing out from the collapsed shelter. The Cold Flies had swarmed the four Warlocks who failed to escape in time. They were devoured in an instant.
The scene was as bloody as it was terrifying, but it came as no surprise to Wei Yuan. The reason he came to the Coldbelow was to destroy the kingdom of the Shadow Warlock, Shu Li, while inflicting as many casualties as possible upon the Shamans. The exploration of this strange realm and the loot he obtained were merely the side benefits.
After the Shamans had died or escaped, Wei Yuan became the Cold Flies’ sole target. At the moment, the small house was completely covered in flies that were constantly searching for an entrance to get inside. One by one, they crawled in through the window only to be snatched into his Dao Foundation the next second.
That said, the vast majority of the Cold Flies took flight again, merging back into the swarm and continuing to fly off into the distance.
An hour later, the fly swarm finally receded, and the so-called “Day of Flies” had finally passed. Wei Yuan proceeded to dismantle and retrieve his makeshift house before walking over to the former site of the Shamans’ shelter to inspect it. The area was completely blank and devoid of substance. Those dead Shamans had disappeared so thoroughly it was as though they had never existed in the first place.
After that, Wei Yuan stopped lingering and returned to the Homeworld. This expedition had turned out to be exceptionally fruitful. Not only had he obtained both butterfly daggers, completing the set, he had also eliminated several Shamans of considerable strength.
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