Entering the abode

Bai Yun shook his head as he stood there. Two streams of blood slowly trickled out from the corner of his eyes. Not only that, his vision was a bit blurry. This was the backlash of projecting a killing intent that was too much for his current body to bear, even if it was only for an instant.

Bai Yun quickly looked at his eyes with his god sense, after which he sighed thankfully. A single glance was enough for him to understand what had happened. It seems as if his injuries were only temporary. It was the same as if a mortal looked at a bright light without any protection. His sight would return in a few hours. Or many be a few days.

He regretted attacking the one armed man with killing intent. Not only had he gotten hurt, but he had also shown a part of his killing intent to the one armed man. He did it simply because of a childish desire to one-up the one armed man. It was entirely pointless. Even though he could explain it away as being an innate killing intent, if the one armed man got suspicious, he would be in trouble.

As Bai Yun closed his eyes and stood there slowly running his qi through his eyes to speed up his recovery, more and more of the kids started to fall and give in to the illusion. One by one they were all thrown out. Finally, only twenty-four kids, including Bai Yun were left. Only four of them were from the outer section while the remaining twenty were from the inner section.

At this time, the one armed man finally stopped emitting killing intent. One by one the rest of the kids in the group started to wake up. Some of then were too tired to stand up and just sprawled down on the floor. There were even some of them who started to vomit after waking up.

But as Bai Yun watched there were five people from the inner section that stood up with great difficulty. Each of them stood there with their heads held high and their hands behind their backs. They were all trying to exude an aura of confidence and ease. But he could tell that each of them were trembling quite a bit.

These must be the leaders of the inner section. They were putting on a show to tell everyone that they were much better than the others.

Bai Yun simply watched them for a while before he closed his eyes again. It wasn't as if he could see well anyway.

The one armed gave the group only a minute to catch their breath. Then he suddenly said "That's it. If any of you here are still interested in coming, then stay here. We will be leaving in two minutes. The ones who think that this is too much can leave. This test was not placed for no reason. The entrance to the secret abode that we found contains a formation that is spewing a lot of killing intent. Thus if you cannot even withstand this level of killing intent, then there is no point in coming."

Even though the one armed man said so, no one decided to leave. They all stood there and quickly tried to recover as much as they could. Everyone here had spend too much of their qi and mental strength to resist the killing intent given off by the one armed man.

Two minutes quickly passed. Just as the group was getting ready to leave, the floor of the warehouse suddenly lit up. Bai Yun felt terrifying spacial fluctuations coming. He realized that the warehouse had been laden with a space transfer formation.

Bai Yun was familiar with these formations. There were generally two types of space transfer formations. They were point to point formation and general transfer formations.

Pont to point formations were set up between two points in space. They were extremely powerful and had very stable internal spaces. Anyone could easily travel using these formations.

But the general space transfer formation was different. It created a pseudo spacial nexus and anyone could travel from one pseudo spacial nexus to another pseudo spacial nexus as long as they had the correct spatial coordinates of them. But for these, a spatial passage was prepared between two points immediately and temporarily and thus the passageway was not only costlier to make, but they were also highly unstable. Thus it usually required people to be in the dao step or have similar strength before they could use one.

And the pseudo spatial nexus that were made by formations were a copy of naturally occurring spacial nexuses. The naturally occurring spacial nexuses were weak points in the space that could be used to travel from one such spacial nexus to another. The main difference from the two was that the travel using naturally occurring spacial nexuses was far smoother than the pseudo ones, and also they do not degrade over time, unlike the pseudo ones. This caused the pseudo spacial nexus to have a high cost of maintenance. But naturally occurring spatial nexuses were extremely rare and was mostly in the hands of top factions of the universe.

A second later the point to point formation activated and everyone disappeared from the warehouse. Bai Yun closed his eyes and carefully felt the transfer. Usually, it was not possible to tell where one would be transferred to using such a formation. But due to his high attainments in both formation as well as space dao, he was able to faintly guess the direction and the rough distance that they traveled. But the only problem was that his perception was not able to follow it exactly. The only reason he could even guess that much was because of the formation was drawn in haste.

A few seconds later the space transfer ended. Bai Yun found himself in the middle of a large field. Everybody looked around. They were surrounded by tall mountains with sharp cliffs. They could all hear sharp winds billowing about. With a start, Bai Yun realized that he was in the Blue Moon mountains. He realized that the blood moon must have teleported them directly to the secret abode.

But this filled Bai Yun with confusion. The secret abode was certainly valuable. But blood moon had promised that the members of the outer section can keep whatever the found.

But the amount of money that blood moon had already spend on the mission so far was simply absurd. Setting up a point to point space transfer formation was not cheap. Doing this all for a few qi condensation realm kids seemed to be not worth it. Especially for a faction from the underworld.

By now the rest of the people who had come with Bai Yun had also calmed down. Since this space transfer formation was laid down in a hurry, it wasn't too stable. Bai Yun was prepared for it and it did not affect him. But some of the others, especially in their tired state, was finding it a bit disorienting. They had difficulty standing up and one of them even vomited.

"You are here." The one armed man said suddenly. "The entrance to the secret abode is right in front of you." He said pointing to a cliff in front of him. Bai Yun could not see anything, but he figured that the whole thing was hidden by some formation.

"All the members of the inner section can go and enter the formation directly and wait outside the gate. The members of the outer section wait outside for now." The one armed man continued. Bai Yun realized that the one armed man was about to tell them of the true objective of the mission.

The inner section members quickly followed his directions and walked in the direction that the one armed man had pointed towards. They only walked halfway to the cliff when they disappeared from the view of the ones waiting outside.

"All right." The one armed man said. "The call for the mission said that you can collect anything that you find inside. And it is true. But there is one exception. If you find the control node of the secret abode, then you are to turn it into us. Anything else that you find inside is yours. And it's not like you would lose anything by giving the control node to us. You would not be able to take control of the secret abode with your cultivation. If you cannot agree to this we will not allow you to enter the secret abode." As he said this, a faint killing intent permeated the surrounds, suggesting that refusing their offer wasn't an option

Finally, the true aim of blood moon was shown. Considering the strength of the formation, and the fact blood moon was unable to break into it, it was highly likely that the secret abode was an artifact. A true artifact might be common in the Immortal World, but Bai Yun figured that there would be only one or two dozen of them in the entire Howling Wolf world. And it was true none of them had sufficient cultivation to control an artifact. So none of the people here had any reason to refute them.

In a second all of them had agreed and added the condition that they would give the control of the secret abode to blood moon upon exiting if they found it. But Bai Yun did not have the death contract, so he only pretended that he added it into the death contract. It wasn't as if they could tell the difference anyway.

Once they all signed the contract, they were allowed to join the inner section members. They quickly entered the hiding formation and looked inside. The inner section members were waiting for them in front of a huge red door seven meters tall and more than three meters wide.

Not only them, but Bai Yun also saw three other members of blood moon waiting nearby. Bai Yun was unable to tell their cultivation at a glance, but he could see that they were all very strong. Probably placed here by blood moon to hide the formation and to prevent anyone from getting too close.

"You can enter the secret abode now." One of the masked men standing there said. As he did so, another member went to the secret door and start to undo a seal that they had placed on the door to hide it.

Bai Yun joined the rest of them and stood there watching the door. He was intrigued by the various carvings on the door. They gave off an aura of nature as if the person who created it had a deep understanding of the dao. There were carvings of various beats and various demons and others, all of them arranged in beautiful patterns.

Just as he was standing there analyzing the door, he suddenly felt someone's eyes on him. He turned to see one of the members of the inner section staring at him. Even though he could not see well, he realized that it was one of the five who struggled to get up in the end by his aura alone.

"Hmm." The inner section member snorted and turned away with haughtiness when Bai Yun's eyes crossed with his. Bai Yun looked around in confusion only to see that many of the inner section members as well the outer section members were staring at him, with open hostility in their eyes. Bai Yun was confused for a while as he did not remember angering any of them. Then he realized what had happened.

His performance in the killing intent test was too eye catching. While everyone else was only able to barely pass it, he was standing there in a very carefree manner. This must have ignited the competitive spirit in them.

Having a competitive spirit was fine, but he was surprised by the open hostility that he sensed in their eyes. It was only childish to hate someone just because they were better than someone in one small area.

It was only then than Bai Yun realized that they were indeed children. Bai Yun was used to dealing with people like Bai Ling-er and Zhang Zi, who were much more mature compared to their age. It made him forget that not all people at his cultivation was like this. In fact, almost all of them should be like this.

As he looked back at the door, they had finally finished unsealing it. As the door started to open, they could feel a terrifying killing intent billowing out of it. Most of the people once again froze when they were faced with that killing intent.

Bai Yun stared at the door. He could only see a swirling darkness inside it. Everything inside the secret abode was hidden behind the formation.

Bai Yun glanced at the rest of them and then he moved forward towards the door. When the inner section members, especially the leaders, saw Bai Yun moving forward while ignoring the killing intent, they clenched their hands and then followed after him.

And then Bai Yun plunged into the darkness behind the door.