Chapter 1097: Storm Island

Everyone saw Chen Ling flip casually, and the red theatrical robe sat steadily on the shadow centipede's head. Meanwhile, this fourth-tier Calamity, with a face so fierce it could stop a baby from crying, was now lying on the ground like a quail, shaking as if it had vibration mode turned on.

As it shook, Chen Ling, sitting on its head, seemed to feel uncomfortable. He extended his index finger and knocked on its skull with his knuckles, not too lightly or too heavily:

"Stop shaking."

The shadow centipede immediately stopped shaking and lay on the ground as if dead.

The air fell into dead silence.

All the Fusionists, including Zhao Yi, were dumbfounded... Chen Ling had tamed a fourth-tier Calamity of the Ghost Mockery Abyss with just one slap. Was this the deterrent power brought by a World-Ending Calamity?

Ever since he had eaten a few audience members raw on stage, Chen Ling could feel that he had changed. In terms of aura, body, and even spirit, he was different from before.

The most representative point was that now, from dozens of meters away, he could feel the faint, chicken-like aroma of the Ghost Mockery Abyss Calamities...

Chen Ling licked his lips, suppressing the craving deep in his eyes for the chicken beneath his feet, and spoke calmly again:

"Crawl."

Hearing Chen Ling's faint lip-licking sound, the shadow centipede first shuddered, then upon hearing the command to "crawl," it frantically crawled forward without hesitation, fearing that if it were even half a second slow, a large chunk of its head would be bitten off.

"Hey... Chen Ling! Wait for me... Do you even know the way, rushing so fast??"

Seeing this, Zhao Yi immediately flipped onto Old Wolf's back, and the latter also tacitly changed into the form of a skeletal grey wolf, quickly following.

After riding the Calamities, the group's speed stepped up to another level. The barren earth of the Grey Realm receded rapidly beside them. Occasionally, they could see a few Calamities passing by, but perhaps because they lacked human aura, these Calamities had no interest in them at all.

Since there were no clocks, Chen Ling didn't know how long they had been traveling in the Grey Realm, but judging by the vague domain map in his memory, they had completely moved away from all human domains and were heading deep into the wilderness that had never been recorded in this era.

Was the base camp of the Fusion Faction actually this deep in the Grey Realm...

The red theatrical robe billowed in the Grey Realm. Unknowingly, a cold wind swept in from the end of the horizon, blowing the tips of everyone's hair, and at the same time, it was accompanied by a slight sense of dizziness, making it hard to distinguish direction.

"This is..."

Chen Ling keenly felt that this wind was not right and frowned, looking at the end of the lead-grey sky... Vaguely, he could see a huge, pitch-black vortex of clouds slowly churning in the air, looking from afar like a fortress full of oppressive force.

And at this moment, that black cloud fortress seemed to be moving toward this direction.

Chen Ling had never seen such a celestial phenomenon in the Grey Realm. As they approached, the terrifying storm constantly impacted all areas outside the black clouds. Eerie black shadows moved through the cloud vortex like lightning. If one looked carefully inside, one could see a huge black shadow being wrapped in the storm...

Like an island.

"Damn it... we can't go any further, we have to take a detour." Old Wolf's voice sounded immediately.

"What is that thing?" Chen Ling asked, frowning.

"Storm Island."

"Island? An island in the sky of the Grey Realm?"

"[The Island Nightmare of the Sleeping Storm, the Bizarre Ghost at the End of Thoughts]." Old Wolf stared fixedly at the aerial island shrouded in the storm, his tone extremely serious.

"That is the territory of another World-Ending Calamity, the 'Calamity of Thought'."

"Calamity of Thought..."

Chen Ling muttered this name.

Led by Old Wolf and the others, Chen Ling immediately changed direction and detoured to the other side.

"Is that the legendary Calamity of Thought?" Zhao Yi, sitting on the back of the skeletal grey wolf, couldn't help but turn his head to look at the Storm Island again. "Why can its territory float?"

"Storm Island has no fixed location. Some say it moves with the storm, some say it moves following the 'thoughts' of the Calamity of Thought, and others say... when you think of Storm Island or the Calamity of Thought in your mind, it can come to your side at any time."

Old Wolf was sweating while running wildly, his entire being more nervous than ever before.

Not only him, but the other Fusionists also had ugly expressions; they hadn't been this nervous even when facing the Silver King and the Judgment Proxy in the Infinite Domain.

"Damn it... how could we run into Storm Island?"

"I don't know. The Fusion Faction has survived in the Grey Realm for hundreds of years, and there have been few recorded cases of Storm Island sightings in history, let alone in human domains... How could we run into such a low-probability event?"

"Don't panic, everyone. We only saw Storm Island from afar, and our actual position is very far from it, so there shouldn't be a problem."

The cold wind overflowing from Storm Island swept through every corner of the world. After being swept by it, it felt as if one's thoughts had stagnated... Chen Ling, sitting on the shadow centipede's head, seemed to sense a gaze and subconsciously turned to look at the dark sky where the wind and clouds were churning.

The storm swept through, and the black clouds pressed down on the city. Gradually, everything before Chen Ling's eyes was ignored and disappeared, leaving only that pitch-black island, exuding a suffocating aura in the storm.

The island continued to enlarge in Chen Ling's pupils...

Vaguely,

There seemed to be a pair of hollow eyes silently staring at him on the island.

Just then, a flash of scarlet crossed Chen Ling's eyes. Somehow, he snapped back to his senses and immediately averted his gaze, no longer looking in the direction of Storm Island!

Wrong!

This route...

Countless thoughts flashed through Chen Ling's mind. He immediately opened his mouth and pushed the secret technique of the word "Thought," [True Words], to the limit, his voice sounding like thunder exploding in the air:

"Wake up, everyone!! We are approaching Storm Island!!!"

Zhao Yi, Old Wolf, and the others, who were running straight toward Storm Island, seemed to wake up from a big dream, a trace of reason returning to their hollow eyes... When they saw the aerial island getting closer and closer right in front of them, their expressions turned extremely ugly!

In everyone's vision and cognition just now, they were clearly moving away from Storm Island, but in reality, they were charging straight toward it, as if a pair of hands in the dark had blinded their thoughts.

If Chen Ling hadn't shouted to wake them up in time, they would probably have rushed into the center of the storm in at most a minute...

What would happen then, no one knew.

"Run!!"

Old Wolf roared, and everyone turned direction at the same time, running for their lives out of the storm!

Except for Chen Ling, everyone's hearts were pounding wildly, and their backs were soaked with cold sweat before they knew it... They hadn't felt this sense of life-and-death crisis for who knows how many years.

The shadow centipede's dense, tiny legs were also moving at the limit. As a Calamity, it was also scared out of its wits. But even as they kept moving away from Storm Island, Chen Ling, sitting on its head, could still feel a gaze watching him from far behind...