Chapter 858 Golden Spike Flower and A'Hua

A muffled "boom" exploded above the dome of the Pure Land world!

Tie Wu, who was working diligently, was startled by the muffled sound.

He stood on his shovel and looked towards the direction of the sound.

"Holy crap???"

A hundred-meter-long snake raised its body high, blocking out the sun.

Anyone who saw this scene would be incredibly shocked.

Is this the pet that Lord Shenzuo brought back???

Is this something that humans can tame???

What did it eat to grow up like this?!

The next moment, Tie Wu's eyes met those of the great serpent, and he saw the indifferent gaze in its golden eyes… The pressure transmitted purely through spiritual power caused his soul to tremble uncontrollably.

That great serpent… even he, in his prime, would not be its match!

"My King…"

The great serpent said coldly, "There's a spiritually impure bug in the Pure Land. Should I crush him for you?"

Spiritually impure…

This was probably referring to Tie Wu's past faith in the "God of Wine." Having received the God of Wine's divine power, his soul was indeed no longer pure. Even though he now believed in him, he could not erase the imprint of the God of Wine deep within his soul.

"No need."

Gu Shen smiled faintly. "He is now my believer and a tree planter in the Pure Land."

"My King is indeed magnanimous."

The great serpent's gaze towards Tie Wu remained cold, but the tone of its mental wave softened a little. "In this realm, his soul will surely receive ample purification."

This mental transmission was not concealed from Tie Wu.

The great serpent's voice, buzzing like thunder, echoed in the clouds above the dome.

Tie Wu's scalp tingled.

Mainly because this thing was too oppressive… Fortunately, Lord Shenzuo had stood up for him.

"Lord Shenzuo… is this your pet?"

Tie Wu asked cautiously, his face pale.

"Yes."

Gu Shen smiled and patted the great serpent's head, saying, "Jin Sui Hua (Golden Spike Flower), how about this name…"

Lord Shenzuo's naming sense… seems a bit terrible.

Tie Wu secretly slandered in his heart, but his expression remained unchanged. He hurriedly rejoiced and clapped his hands in agreement, "Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!"

Wonderful?

A hint of resentment and complexity flashed in the great serpent's golden eyes.

Jin Sui Hua… Although the meaning of this name is very good, it sounds really lacking in momentum.

Especially Gu Shen's final nickname.

"From now on, I'll call you A'Hua."

A'Hua?!

Are you kidding me? It's a majestic hundred-meter-long snake!

If it had to announce its name during battle… was it supposed to say it was Jin Sui Hua, also known as Sui Hua, or A'Hua, under the throne of the King of the Underworld?

The radiance of the Pure Land slowly dissipated.

The icy wind howled.

Gu Shen returned to the maze with the great serpent.

He took out a piece of wood and said seriously, "There's something very important. Do you remember… this piece of wood?"

The only gain from Hong Zhong's mission to return home, and also the token of his testimony, was this piece of wood.

【Deep Sea】 could not determine the true owner of this piece of wood.

But Gu Shen picked up this piece of wood again… and he sensed the aura of his teacher!

This was very important!

The piece of wood was scattered in the great serpent's dream…

Could it be that his teacher and the others had been here before?

"This piece of wood…"

The great serpent's pupils instantly narrowed.

The scales on its body were trembling, and its tone became solemn. "Of course I remember. Three travelers once passed through here… Two of the transcendents were very strong and not easy to provoke. Because they did not truly enter the maze, I did not forcibly cast a dream on them."

Three travelers!

And two extremely powerful transcendents… Teacher, and Senior Sister!

Gu Shen instantly locked onto the true identities of these three people. His intuition was correct. His teacher had indeed appeared here… But the next moment, he couldn't figure it out.

The three of them had initially left from the super-large disaster zone of 【Piyue City Fortress】…

How could they have come here?

The Gubao Fortress was located far to the north, and the direction of Piyue City was tens of thousands of miles away, and could be said to have no connection.

"Wait a minute…"

Gu Shen recalled the great serpent's words, and he caught a very important point. "You just said that they didn't truly enter the maze, but just passed through here?"

"That's right…"

The great serpent nodded slowly.

It saw Gu Shen's confusion and explained, "My King, you probably don't understand this territory… Due to the existence of a large number of points of order collapse, space sometimes becomes distorted. Some locations may be not far apart in a straight line, but in reality they are separated by a natural chasm. By the same token, two locations that are thousands of miles apart can be easily reached through a path of order collapse."

【The Old World】, where order collapsed and rules were destroyed.

Anything was possible here!

"Then, what is at the end of this maze…?"

Gu Shen looked at the great serpent.

Those explorers who carried out the exodus mission were considered lucky to have reached here, one in a hundred. They saw an "oasis" at the end of the maze.

But the so-called oasis was just a dream.

"Reporting to My King…"

The great serpent's voice sounded somewhat sarcastic and mocking.

It moved its coiled body and changed to a comfortable reclining position, and said lazily, "At the end of the maze… there is nothing."

Gu Shen was silent.

"Over the years, I don't know why… so many explorers have come to decipher the secrets of this collapsed snow mountain."

"Didn't they ever think that not every maze has an exit?"

"Here, there is only an entrance, no exit… Rather than calling it a 'maze', I prefer to call it a 'nest'."

The great serpent had thought about it for a long time and used such a wording. The Fireseed had given it unprecedented wisdom, and the soulfire it had absorbed over the years had allowed it to glimpse some fragmented memories from the warm world in the south.

"The only meaning here is to witness my reunion with you."

Gu Shen fell silent again.

He reached out and touched the cold rock.

So… his teacher and the others, walking outside the maze, were actually due to the effect of "regular points," which looked close but were actually extremely far apart… And those falling pieces of wood were pulled into the dream by the great serpent's domain by chance.

Well… that's the only explanation he could come up with so far.

It seemed that the method of finding his teacher's traces from the maze was not feasible.

"By the way… there's one more thing."

Gu Shen asked again, "Do you still have any impression of those explorers who arrived at the maze last time?"

The great serpent nodded honestly.

Its mental strength was very strong and could weave such a realistic dream, even deceiving the source quality sensing equipment. Its memory was naturally excellent. Everything that had happened every day for the past twenty-one years was stored in its mind.

"I want to know what happened during the last exploration. How did these people… die?"

Gu Shen said solemnly.

As soon as he finished speaking.

The wind and snow around him flew backwards rapidly, and the dream changed at this moment.

A familiar voice sounded behind him.

【"Thirty-eighth route exploration, seventeenth time… no problems so far, the source energy fuel needs to be replaced."】

Gu Shen turned around.

He saw a six-person team.

And the person leading the team and giving orders at the moment was the team leader, "Hong Zhong."

【"All members replace the source energy fuel and prepare to return."】

This team had arrived at the "end" where he had originally arrived. Next… the source quality instrument would show a sensing error, and everyone would realize that their retreat had been cut off.

Gu Shen stood quietly in the gap of the space-time rift like a nonexistent shadow, watching the subsequent progress of this exploration mission…

The scene was replayed.

This team was more united than he had expected.

Everyone decided to continue moving forward… And until here, everything was normal, but then they would step into "Jin Sui Hua's" dream. With the strength of this team, this was an unsolvable dream.

How did Hong Zhong escape?

In the dream, these people saw the "oasis" and the non-existent hope at the end of the maze…

And when Jin Sui Hua was about to "take away" their spirits.

Hong Zhong suddenly woke up from the dream!

He broke free from this dream alone… Then he unhesitatingly attacked, smashing Old Yao's source armor with a knife, pulling out this source energy fuel core, and then fleeing the maze at full speed.

He did all this smoothly after returning to reality.

As if someone was guiding him.

The remaining memories were not important.

Jin Sui Hua could see that Gu Shen just wanted to know the details of this man's escape… It froze this mental image at this moment and said faintly, "That man has a very strange 'sealed item' on him, which seems to have an unbelievable power to guide fate. His spirit was almost lost, but he suddenly woke up at a critical moment, and he found the only correct way to escape at the critical moment."

Gu Shen narrowed his eyes.

It was said that Hong Zhong was an extremely lucky veteran in the investigation army, and he had returned safely from every mission he had participated in…

This guy's luck was indeed heaven-defying!

Even when encountering a disaster-level dream like "Jin Sui Hua," he could still escape.

Obviously, this was no longer something he could do with his strength.

There must be some amazing sealed item on this guy… perhaps it was obtained from a certain exploration mission in 【The Old World】.

Gu Shen stretched out his finger and moved it slowly.

Jin Sui Hua's dream flowed with his will and returned to the moment when Hong Zhong woke up.

He tried to find the whereabouts of that sealed item in the dream.

But unfortunately.

He couldn't find it… Hong Zhong was wearing a source armor, and he couldn't see any action to use the sealed item. The entire awakening process was spontaneous.

It was likely a passively defensive sealed item.

It would actively activate when the owner encountered a disaster.

"However, that guy is definitely dead."

Jin Sui Hua said coldly, "His spirit has been corroded by me… It won't be long before his spirit is eternally dead, and not only that, this trace of corrosion will also spread. If you don't want the soulfire in this maze, you can also find his mental imprint after you return. You can extract a lot of souls, the Pure Land is too empty now, and it just needs manpower."

"???"

Gu Shen's expression changed instantly. "What did you just say, your corrosive power… will also spread?"

Jin Sui Hua nodded.

"Aren't you going to build an army in the Pure Land?" The great serpent hissed and said regretfully, "Over the years, I have been working hard for your coronation… but there are too few people who arrive here."

Gu Shen was speechless.

He never expected that this great serpent would do such crazy things… Perhaps the Underworld King was close to madness when he threw it out back then.

To pull the souls of living people into the Pure Land and build an army, how insane would that be?!

"Don't do this kind of thing again in the future."

Gu Shen frowned and immediately gave the order, "My Pure Land has other ways to expand, there is no need to use this method to extract souls. This method will bring me a lot of trouble… From now on, you must not actively kill humans."

Jin Sui Hua's pupils were blank, and it subconsciously nodded, remembering this order.

Although its soul had grown for twenty-one years, it was almost a blank sheet of paper.

The only guidance it had received was the remaining will of the Underworld King.

It had no concept of good and evil…

As for life and death, it was born in the Underworld King's Pure Land and did not care about the "life and death" of these ants.

Gu Shen finally knew why the previous Underworld King would end up in such a miserable situation…

If there really was a "fate" rule operating in this world.

Then what the previous Underworld King had done, even just the tip of the iceberg that he knew, was enough to attract a lot of misfortune!

"Do you know what consequences that trace of corrosive power will lead to…"

Gu Shen's expression was ugly, and he scolded in a low voice.

The great serpent lowered its head, looking aggrieved.

"That trace of corrosive power is not very strong… it will only spread within the mental sea." Jin Sui Hua defended in a low voice, "As long as the mental strength is strong enough, it is enough to resist it. If that's not enough, your great power is enough to solve it."

Gu Shen's expression was complicated.

This great serpent's mental strength was terrifyingly strong!

Even Yuan Yuan had no way to see through the dream it weaved.

And the remaining corrosive power… even if it was just a faint trace, there were very few people who could resist it.

He knew that Jin Sui Hua had grown to its current appearance entirely because of the guidance of the previous Underworld King… This ignorant creature, the only thing it could rely on after birth was the remaining spirit of the Underworld King Fireseed.

That spirit was extremely evil.

What it instilled in Jin Sui Hua was also hunting and devouring.

Over the years, only "Hong Zhong" had been lucky enough to escape, and Jin Sui Hua left behind corrosive power only out of the hunting instinct of a hunter at the top of the food chain.

However, the current situation was very bad.

Anyone who had been in contact with Hong Zhong might encounter Jin Sui Hua's "mental corrosion"… Didn't this mean that if not handled properly, then there would be a mental virus sweeping through Gubao Fortress?

No… even worse!

The Investigation Army Second Team strongly requested that Hong Zhong be taken back to the mainland… Once agreed, the scope of the spread would become uncontrollable!

He had to leave immediately!

Gu Shen could only pray that A'Liu'er and Lin Lin could detect the trace of corrosive virus in Hong Zhong's mental sea in advance, and at least strongly reject the Investigation Army's request to take back the "hero."

……

……

(ps: Finally broke the monthly ticket curse, it was too difficult, tAt, at the beginning of the month, I continue to ask for monthly tickets! There will be more updates tomorrow!)