Chapter 82: There Is One More Survivor!

The moment he saw this line of text, Chen Ling was stunned.

Before he could recover, a beam of blood-red light suddenly erupted from the ground and darted into the token in his palm.

The surface of the Bai Qi Token was stained with layers of blood-red color, which then quickly faded... Chen Ling clearly felt a sharp, murderous intent radiating from it.

【Audience Expectation +7】

Chen Ling didn’t know what had happened, nor did he know why the Audience Expectation would rise with the infusion of that blood-red light. He didn’t have time to think about it, because the moment the light vanished into the token, the entire giant pit began to shake violently!

The edges of the pit in the distance vanished rapidly. The earth turned into countless fine grains of sand, like a collapsing sandbox world, annihilating at an astonishing speed into the void at the bottom of the Ancient Treasury...

A wave of annihilation was surging toward Chen Ling, covering the sky and earth!

Chen Ling’s pupils constricted. He turned and fled without hesitation, his body lunging like a sword toward the direction he had come from. Amidst the collapse of this giant pit, which could have held hundreds of thousands of people, he was like a tiny, struggling ant chasing a glimmer of survival.

Chen Ling pushed his speed to the limit. Just as the collapse was about to engulf him, he narrowly escaped the perimeter of the giant pit and stumbled onto the flat ground.

“Damn it… what happened?”

Chen Ling wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and looked back. The giant pit had completely disappeared, replaced by a hollow void... Looking down, it felt like peering into an abyss.

The next moment, the earth began to restore itself. The void was filled by soil surging from nowhere, and within a few short seconds, it was completely leveled, as if the giant pit had never existed.

Seeing this, Chen Ling couldn’t help but recall the scene where the killing intent projection automatically restored itself after being killed...

So, that giant pit was also restored by some mechanism of the Ancient Treasury of the Military Path?

Chen Ling glanced at the token in his hand, his confusion deepening. But he had no time to linger; if nothing went wrong, those three Law Enforcers would be opening the gates to the Ancient Treasury soon.

He hid the token close to his body and rushed back to the trial area. He first ran to the entrance of the Ancient Treasury, disfigured the faces of all the District 1 Law Enforcer corpses, and threw them all into the cliff. After a moment of hesitation, he randomly threw two corpses of the Aurora City Law Enforcers down as well.

After doing all this, Chen Ling randomly chose a spot where the corpses were the most numerous and chaotic and sat down.

Boom—

At the same time, a low, humming sound came from the entrance of the Ancient Treasury.

The Ancient Treasury of the Military Path had been opened.

Chen Ling narrowed his eyes. He picked up a short blade from beside him, pressed the edge slowly against his abdomen... and slashed with force!

His waist and abdomen were sliced open, and a large amount of blood gushed out. Chen Ling’s face turned visibly pale. Enduring the excruciating pain, he lay back among the messy corpses...

In the pool of scarlet blood, that face, pale to the point of having no color, revealed a strange smile.

“The performance is over.”

He closed his eyes.

……

Outside the Ancient Treasury of the Military Path.

The massive ship swayed gently with the waves. Under the black sky, three figures in trench coats stood at the bow, watching the vortex that was slowly opening.

“Time’s up.” A Fourth-Rank Law Enforcer said with his hands behind his back, “I wonder how many will step onto the Path of the War God this year.”

“Based on previous years, seven or eight would be good.”

“I expect even fewer this time... Don’t forget, Yan Xicai brought that kid from the Path of the Book God in. Since he wants to snatch others’ killing intent, the chances for the rest to advance are naturally smaller.”

“Yan Xicai is cheating so blatantly; will the higher-ups really do nothing about it?”

“Mind your own business.” The Fifth-Rank Law Enforcer said coldly, “We just need to follow orders.”

The two Fourth-Rank Law Enforcers immediately shut their mouths.

As the vortex grew larger, half a minute later, it returned to the size it had been when everyone entered. They stood at the bow, waiting for the Law Enforcers who had completed the trial to return.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes...

Three minutes later, the vortex remained deathly silent, with no sign of anyone coming out.

“What’s going on? Did they get the time wrong?” The Fourth-Rank Law Enforcer was very puzzled.

“That shouldn’t be... Could something have happened inside?”

“What could happen in such an outer-rim trial? Losing one or two people is the absolute limit.” The other Law Enforcer shrugged, “They probably have some who aren’t reconciled and want to try again... Let’s wait a bit.”

The three waited for another ten minutes, but the vortex remained unresponsive.

“...Something’s not right.”

The Fifth-Rank Law Enforcer frowned. After thinking for a moment, he said, “Let’s go in and take a look.”

“Huh? But our rank is already above the Fourth Rank; won’t we be repelled by this place?”

“The situation is urgent. As escorts, we have the secret treasure given by Aurora City as a token, which allows us to operate inside for a short time.”

He stood at the bow, bowed solemnly toward the giant black sword that pierced the sky, and then leaped, disappearing directly into the vortex. The other two Law Enforcers exchanged a glance and followed suit.

A feeling of dizziness washed over them, and the next moment, the three were standing steadily on the edge of the cliff.

A pungent smell of blood immediately flooded their nostrils!

The three Law Enforcers frowned simultaneously. When they saw the situation at the edge of the cliff, their expressions changed drastically!

More than a dozen Law Enforcer corpses were scattered all over the cliff, most of them seemingly killed by bullets—it was the very group that had entered the Ancient Treasury earlier!

“What happened?!” the Fourth-Rank Law Enforcer exclaimed in shock, “How... how did so many people die??”

The Fifth-Rank Law Enforcer’s face was ashen. He quickly walked among the corpses, locked his gaze on one figure, and slowly squatted down...

“Something’s wrong.” He grabbed the corpse’s face and looked at it carefully for a while, “Among the Law Enforcers who entered the Ancient Treasury this time, there is no one like this.”

“Are you saying someone infiltrated the Law Enforcer team?”

“Who?”

The Fifth-Rank Law Enforcer didn’t answer. He stood up immediately and walked quickly toward the depths of the Ancient Treasury.

The deeper they went, the more corpses there were. The vast Ancient Treasury was deathly silent, and this silence was deafening to the three Law Enforcers.

“Is that... Yan Xicai?”

A Fourth-Rank Law Enforcer raised a trembling hand and pointed to a corner.

The other two turned their heads abruptly and saw a thin figure twisted into a pretzel in a pool of blood. They were stunned for a long time before they came to their senses... It wasn’t that they didn’t recognize Yan Xicai, but rather that Yan Xicai, drained of flesh and blood, looked too different from before.

If they didn’t carefully examine the details of his face, it would be hard for the three to connect this dried corpse, dead with eyes wide open, to the arrogant Young Master Yan on the ship.

“It really is him...” the other Fourth-Rank said hoarsely, fear appearing in his eyes, “Even Yan Xicai died in the Ancient Treasury. There’s going to be a huge mess in Aurora City.”

“Quick, see if there’s anyone still alive!”

The three searched separately. One of them arrived at the foot of the hill where the fighting had been most intense. Dozens of Law Enforcers and Fire-Tamper corpses were piled together, as if they had gone through a life-and-death battle in a meat grinder.

The more they searched, the colder their hearts became. In the last hundred years, there had never been such a large-scale death of newcomers... They couldn’t understand what had happened here in just 24 hours.

Among the corpses covering the ground, a figure that had already lost its breath moved its finger slightly.

“This!!” The Fourth-Rank Law Enforcer’s pupils constricted, and he immediately shouted, “There is one more survivor here!!”