Chapter 0210: Journey Alone

Chapter 0210: Journey Alone

Qin Yun quickly refined a Soul-chasing Rune. After activating it, the rune emitted a soft glow, levitated, and slowly drifted in a specific direction.

"It's that way!"

After stowing the rune, he immediately set off, making his way through the ruins.

"Looks like there aren’t many Demon Beasts in the fourth zone either, but I wonder what the third zone is like?" After leaving the ruins, Qin Yun cautiously jogged along the deserted streets.

He always traveled at night and hid in abandoned buildings during the day to refine Beast Skin Runes.

"The Immobilization Rune should be quite useful, but I wonder what grade of rune is needed to immobilize an eighth-level Demon Beast?" For now, Qin Yun was crafting mid-grade Beast Skin Runes.

To enhance the Immobilization Rune’s effectiveness, he carved two sets of immobilization runes and one set of Power Enhancement Runes onto a small piece of beast skin.

"I guess I need to start working on top-grade runes!"

Qin Yun crafted a mid-grade Beast Skin Immobilization Rune, knowing that for top-grade runes, he would need the skin of a ninth-level Demon Beast.

After crafting the rune, he infused it with his Vajra Inner Energy to bring it to its optimal state. The beast skins that Yang Shiyue had treated for him were all of exceptional quality.

The best results when refining Beast Skin Runes came from treating the skins with Vajra Inner Energy from the beginning. After crafting, infusing more Vajra Inner Energy into the beast skin allowed it to store enough power until it was fully charged, making the runes’ energy stronger when activated.

It could be said that the mid-grade Beast Skin Runes Qin Yun crafted now were of the highest quality.

To ensure the best quality, Qin Yun spent a considerable amount of time crafting each rune, as they were crucial for his survival.

Without other team members, facing an eighth-level Demon Beast wouldn’t be so easy.

Five days went by.

Qin Yun traveled at night, following the guidance of the Soul-chasing Rune, and entered the third zone!

"Is Yin Sheng in the third zone? This guy must have gathered quite a few companions!" Although Qin Yun wasn’t familiar with the third zone, he could tell it was the third zone from the better-built structures and the dense spiritual energy.

At night, First Town was bathed in the faint light of the stars and moon, which didn’t hinder Qin Yun’s ability to blend into the darkness.

Boom!

The sudden loud noise in the distance secretly pleased Qin Yun.

"Yin Sheng must be over there! If he’s fighting Demon Beasts, I can take advantage of the chaos to strike him."

After spending some time in the third zone, Qin Yun hadn’t spotted any Demon Beasts. However, the third zone was vast, and there were certainly hidden beast hordes.

Qin Yun cautiously approached the battle area.

Upon getting closer, he clearly sensed Yin Sheng’s inner energy, along with seven other warriors at the eighth and ninth levels of the Martial Body stage.

“The Tianling Empire still has some strength!” Qin Yun thought, noting that they had several ninth-level Martial Body warriors and quite a few eighth-level ones, which indeed allowed them to claim the title of an empire.

However, their luck wasn’t great, as the beast hordes invaded just as they became an empire.

“The Tianling Empire likely took advantage of the Demon Beast invasion to annex several smaller countries. With the backing of the Ling Martial Academy, the other smaller countries had no choice but to join them.”

Qin Yun approached the intense battle area where Yin Sheng and his group were fighting a small horde of Demon Beasts. The horde consisted of over a dozen eighth and ninth-level beasts, each three to four meters long with sharp teeth—carnivorous creatures that resembled golden bulls.

“Could this be a patrol team of Demon Beasts that was ambushed by Yin Sheng’s group?” Qin Yun hid in the darkness and slowly approached an eighth-level Martial Body warrior.

The battle here was fierce, with chaotic energies swirling around. The warriors, fully engrossed in combat, couldn't sense Qin Yun as he moved unseen in the shadows.

Qin Yun pulled out a mid-grade beast skin Immobilization Rune and hurled it at a middle-aged warrior in the eighth level of the Martial Body stage.

Once activated, the Immobilization Rune unleashed a surge of invisible energy, engulfing the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man froze in place, his face contorted with fear.

"Roar!" A golden bull, bellowing like a tiger, lunged forward. Its horns impaled the middle-aged man, and it began tearing chunks of flesh from his body.

At that moment, Qin Yun drew a blade and used Jushensha on the bull, followed by the Six Forms of Wind Slash, cleaving the golden bull in two.

"Success!"

He then used the same tactic against Yin Sheng's remaining allies, eliminating four more. Including the earlier bull, he now had three eighth-stage Demon Beasts and one ninth-stage Demon Beast.

"Fall back!" shouted an elder in the ninth level of the Martial Body stage.

Yin Sheng also realized something was off. They had been holding their ground against the bulls, but now they had lost four men. If they stayed any longer, they would be annihilated.

Qin Yun remained hidden in the shadows, observing as the bulls pursued Yin Sheng. He silently trailed behind them.

After over an hour of chasing Yin Sheng and his group, the bulls finally halted. Ten bulls remained, including one ninth-stage Demon Beast and nine eighth-stage ones.

Qin Yun stopped and concealed himself near the bulls, debating whether to attempt taking them down. The bulls were all injured to varying degrees, especially the ninth-stage one, whose wounds were particularly gruesome.

"If Brother Li and the others were here, we could take them down easily!" Qin Yun clenched his teeth, uncertain if he could handle so many bulls alone.

He counted the remaining Immobilization Runes—twelve in total.

"I'll throw ten at once and try to immobilize all the bulls. If I can't hold most of them, I'll have to retreat."

The bulls were still clustered together, not having spread out.

He took a few deep breaths, then hurled ten Immobilization Runes, covering the entire group of bulls.

As the Immobilization Runes detonated, the bulls instantly found themselves paralyzed by an unseen force.

Even the ninth-stage bull was frozen in place!

"Just as I expected, the bulls' injuries have weakened them, making it impossible for them to break free from the Immobilization Runes right away."

Qin Yun drew the Giant Spirit King Hammer, charged forward, and channeled all his inner energies—Inner Element of Meditation, Inner Element of Shock, and the Thunderfire Inner Element from the Heavenly Lion arm—into the hammer.

The alchemical patterns and violent runes within the Giant Spirit King Hammer absorbed the inner energy, becoming even more volatile and emitting deep, rumbling growls.

"Forge Dragon Fifth Form: Falling Star!"

Qin Yun brought the hammer down with immense force on the ninth-stage bull's head. "Boom!" A burst of raging thunderfire erupted, piercing through the bull's skull.

The ninth-stage bull was felled with a single strike!

Capitalizing on the momentum, Qin Yun continued smashing the heads of the other bulls, using the Falling Star form to shatter each skull with a single strike.

Each strike sent shockwaves rippling through the ground, tearing open cracks in the earth.

All the bulls collapsed to the ground, lifeless. Qin Yun panted heavily, his heart pounding with exhilaration.

"I took down these Demon Bulls!"

He glanced at the Giant Spirit King Hammer in his hand, still finding it hard to believe that he hadn't used all his inner energy, despite being incredibly tense and pushing himself to the limit.

After stowing away the Demon Bull corpses, Qin Yun quickly found a spot to recover the significant amount of inner energy he had expended. The Demon Bulls he had hunted were worth over twenty million Xuan points.

Now, the magic crystal cores he had collected could be exchanged for nearly eighty million Xuan points.

After resting, dawn had arrived, and he resumed refining Immobilization Runes.

"Being a Runes Master is awesome!" Qin Yun couldn't help but marvel again at how effective the Immobilization Runes were against the Demon Beasts.

Eighth-tier Demon Beasts, once immobilized by his runes, were essentially unable to move.

"If I encounter a ninth-tier Demon Beast in top condition, my Immobilization Runes won't be very effective. They would only work on injured ones." Qin Yun became more eager to refine high-grade Immobilization Runes.

However, he didn't have any ninth-tier beast skin.

"I'll try using Demon Beast skin!" Qin Yun pulled out the hide of a ninth-tier Demon Bull.

The bull's skin was golden, as thick as a brick, and incredibly tough, feeling like solid stone when pinched.

Qin Yun used the Giant Spirit King Hammer to pound the thick Demon Bull skin, applying the heat from the runes to refine it into a thin sheet, and then processed it with his Adamantine Inner Energy.

"It works! Demon Beast skin is just as good as beast skin from other creatures!" Qin Yun couldn't help but smile, thinking that in the future, this kind of Demon Beast skin would be abundant and easy to acquire.

Once refined, it would become an extremely valuable and useful beast skin rune.

Refining high-grade spirit runes required engraving more runes, and it was necessary to carve Source-Gathering Runes inside the spirit runes to store a large amount of energy, enhancing the power of the runes.

Now, he needed to engrave two sets of immobilization runes on each side of the beast skin and use intense mental energy to carve Source-Gathering Runes and a set of Immobilization Runes inside the skin.

He had experience engraving runes inside materials while refining the Giant Spirit King Hammer, so he wasn't daunted by this task.

The main challenge was engraving so many runes in such a small space without them interfering with each other.

To refine a high-grade Immobilization beast skin rune, he spent an entire day and night working non-stop.

"It’s indeed challenging to refine!" Qin Yun was very tired after succeeding.

Normally, in such an environment, he should have retained some inner energy to guard against unexpected situations.

But Qin Yun was so engrossed that he exhausted all his inner energy in one go, just to refine a high-grade Immobilization Rune.

Lying on the ground, he silently berated himself for being so reckless.

Fortunately, nothing unexpected happened. After resting for over an hour, he recovered and, under the cover of night, continued to track Yin Sheng.

"Yin Sheng, you’ll eventually die at my hands!" Qin Yun’s body exuded shadow power, seamlessly blending into the darkness.

Using his Soul Pursuit Rune, he continued to track Yin Sheng.

On the way, he encountered several powerful beast hordes, but luckily, none of the Demon Beasts noticed him.

Facing powerful Demon Beast hordes, even someone at the Martial Arts realm might hesitate to engage, let alone him alone.

"Demon Beasts indeed consider humans their primary food source, and sometimes they even eat their own kind, so they are also wary of each other."

On a street, Qin Yun saw broken Demon Beast bones, remnants of a meal.