194: Chapter 193 The Gray Void Corridor! Stepping into the Unconquered Level 50 Dungeon Once Again

After the blue-white light dissipated, Lin Feng's feet touched solid ground.

It wasn't the flat metal platform of a teleportation array, but a soft, slightly elastic ground.

He glanced down.

It was sand, grayish-white and very fine; stepping on it felt like stepping into flour, and every step left a shallow footprint.

The air was permeated with a faint smell of rust, very similar to the scent he had smelled near the void fissure in the Old City District, but stronger and colder.

He looked up and saw a hazy, gray sky.

There was no sun, no clouds, and no outlines of any celestial bodies, only a uniform, deathly gray, like a piece of crumpled old cloth spread overhead.

Light spilled down evenly from all directions with no obvious sense of orientation, making the shadows of everything very faint.

He was standing in the middle of a set of ruins.

Beneath his feet was a broken highway; the road surface had been ripped open by some massive force, and steel rebar protruded from the shattered asphalt like broken bones.

A few scrapped car wrecks lay by the roadside, their bodies rusted beyond recognition, windows completely shattered, and tires as flat as dried orange peels.

One car's door stood open, a thick layer of dust accumulated on the driver's seat, and several grayish-white fungal plants grew on the steering wheel, trembling slightly in the windless air.

On both sides of the highway were collapsed buildings.

Some were half-collapsed, with a few pillars slantingly supporting the remaining floor slabs.

Others were just piles of rubble, their original shapes no longer discernible.

The architectural styles were chaotic—there was the wreck of what looked like a modern office building, yet right next to it was the spire of a Gothic cathedral, and further away, the broken pillar of a Chinese archway lay on the ground.

Fragments of buildings from different eras and styles were spliced together, like a puzzle that had been scrambled and randomly reorganized.

"So this is the Void Corridor..."

Lin Feng murmured.

He remembered his Master saying that the Void Corridor connects to the Void Interlayer, and the spatial structure inside is extremely unstable, sucking in and mixing architectural fragments from different dimensions.

Now it seemed his Master's description was conservative—this place was practically an architectural mass grave.

He walked forward a bit, and a crunching sound came from beneath his feet, mixed with the occasional metallic clatter from afar and a very low hum, like something massive breathing in the distance.

Xiao Guang poked its head out from his shirt pocket, its golden face exceptionally striking in this dark, gray world.

After looking around for a while, it gave its judgment.

"Lin Feng, the Spiritual Qi here is so thin it's almost undetectable. It's the complete opposite of a place rich in Spiritual Qi like the Kunlun Ruins—it's a different level of barrenness. Also, there's a scent in the air I'm very familiar with; it's a bit like the smell of Xiao Jin's Guardian Shield, but much fainter. It's void energy, which isn't a good sign—places rich in void energy usually have monsters that like this environment lurking around."

As it spoke, its small hands were already in a starting gesture, ready to deploy a defensive array at their feet at any moment.

Xiao Jin lay on Lin Feng's right shoulder, its purple antennae twitching rapidly in the air like a radar scanning for signals.

The compound eyes on its head rotated half a turn and suddenly fixed straight in one direction, a low chirp emitting from its throat.

It wasn't the usual spoiled cry it made when asking for snacks, but a short, sharp note of clear alertness.

It sensed something approaching from that direction—not just one, but many, moving fast, and their aura was different from any Spirit Stone it had gnawed on in the Secret Realm before.

Lin Feng felt it too.

His Elemental Perception, far from being suppressed after entering the Void Corridor, had become even more acute—his affinity with the light element and earth element seemed to have activated a stress response in this environment, expanding his perception range by nearly thirty percent compared to the outside.

He closed his eyes, and his Eye of the Elements automatically deployed; the dark world transformed in his mind into a 3D map composed of various colored elemental light points.

The earth element was a stable brown, the dark element a flickering black, and at the boundary between these two colors, clusters of dark brown energy sources were moving rapidly upward from underground, as if something was burrowing from deep within the sand toward the surface.

He opened his eyes and drew the dragon slaying sword.

The golden patterns on the sword's blade lit up in the gray light, like glowing blood vessels pulsing.

The surface of the sand began to bulge, and one bump after another appeared around him.

The bumps quickly expanded from the size of a fist to the size of a basin, then suddenly burst open.

The things burrowing out of the sand made Lin Feng's brow furrow slightly.

They were scorpions, but different from the sand scorpions he had seen in the Desert Golden Sea.

These scorpions were grayish-white all over, their carapaces covered in a layer of fine dark patterns that looked like cracks in a dried riverbed.

They weren't particularly large, about a meter from head to tail, but their tails were exceptionally long, making up nearly two-thirds of their body length.

Their tail hooks were held high, and at the tip was not a stinger, but a pulsing ball of black energy that made a sizzling electrical sound.

Their eyes were tiny, almost vestigial and invisible, but two pairs of antennae on the front of their heads were twitching rapidly, as if detecting some signal in the air.

Lin Feng recalled the "Illustrated Guide to Void Creatures" his Master had given him and flipped to the pages marked "Common Creatures of the Void Corridor."

Void Stone Scorpion, dual Dark and Earth attributes, around level fifty, pack-dwelling, excels at ambushing from underground.

Adults have Elite-tier strength; the black energy ball on the tail can fire a Petrification Ray, and targets hit will enter a brief state of stiffness.

The weakness is the abdomen—the joints in the carapace are the most fragile; light and fire attacks are effective counters.

Two things to note during combat: don't get surrounded, and don't stand still long enough for them to lock onto your position.

He memorized the weaknesses noted in the guide, raised his left hand, and golden light gathered in his palm.

The Void Stone Scorpions had fully emerged from the sand, forming a loose encirclement around him.

He did a rough count; there were about twenty of them.

Most were about a meter long with grayish-white carapaces, Elite-tier.

At the very back was one over two meters long with a darker carapace, covered from head to tail in a faint black light membrane; it should be the Boss-tier Stone Scorpion Leader.

It was different from the other stone scorpions—it didn't rush forward but stayed on a fallen concrete slab at the edge of the ruins, tail held high. Its black energy ball was several times larger than the others, rotating like a dim lantern under the gray sky.

"Zhi zhi!"

Xiao Jin suddenly let out an urgent cry, its antennae pointing straight behind Lin Feng.

Almost simultaneously, the sand three meters behind Lin Feng wordlessly exploded, and a giant Void Stone Scorpion nearly two and a half meters long catapulted out from underground.

It was a size larger than the Boss-tier leader, its carapace nearly deep black, and the black petrification energy ball on its tail left an afterimage as it stabbed directly at the back of his neck.

This fellow had been hiding deeper underground; even the Eye of the Elements hadn't captured its presence immediately—it wasn't a normal Elite monster, it was at least Boss-tier and excelled at concealing its aura.

Lin Feng didn't even turn his head.

He swung the dragon slaying sword in his right hand backward and upward, the golden sword light slashing out in an arc to precisely slice into the carapace joint of the ambushing giant stone scorpion's abdomen.

That was exactly the weakness marked in the guide—light attacks had a countering effect.

The sword edge cut into the carapace gap, making a soft sizzling sound like a red-hot iron bar pressed against a wet cloth.

The giant stone scorpion let out a sharp hiss and was sent flying, flipping twice in the air before smashing into the ruins and shattering a concrete wall that was already teetering.

[Killed Void Stone Scorpion (Elite), Experience +85,000]

Lin Feng withdrew the dragon slaying sword, its tip pointing diagonally toward the ground.

Xiao Guang poked its head out of his pocket to glance at the still-twitching giant stone scorpion, a look of disdain appearing on its small golden face.

"This fellow's concealment technique is cruder than the worst guardian Restriction in the Secret Realm—at the Taixu Dojo, this level of aura masking wouldn't even pass the entry exam. However, the dark patterns on its carapace are somewhat interesting; they look similar to a type of stone rune from the ancient era."

As soon as it finished speaking, the twenty-odd Void Stone Scorpions around them moved simultaneously.

They didn't rush in one by one; instead, as if unified by some command, they pressed in from the left, center, and right at the same time.

The stone scorpions on the left wing crawled rapidly along the ground, tails held high, black energy balls rotating and charging at the tips.

The stone scorpions in the center advanced head-on, spitting out fine gray sand as they crawled—a smoke screen formed by the mixture of Petrification Breath and dust in the air, specifically designed to interfere with the prey's vision.

The right wing circled to high ground in the ruins, using the broken walls for cover to jump down from above, their Petrification Rays pre-charged and aiming while still in mid-air.

Xiao Jin's antennae twitched rapidly, its six golden legs making a harsh scraping sound against the rubble floor.

It used its front legs to point toward the concrete slab where the Boss-tier leader was, chirping urgently—it keenly sensed that these stone scorpions were coordinating too well; the offensive rhythm was being completely controlled by a commander.

Lin Feng saw it too.

These stone scorpions weren't mindless beasts—they had tactics, a division of labor, and a commander.

He swept the dragon slaying sword in his right hand, the golden sword light drawing an arc in front of him and forcing back the three scorpions lunging from the front.

Golden light gathered in his left palm, and a compressed light bullet was fired directly at the Boss-tier leader's position at the edge of the ruins.

To catch the bandits, first catch their king.

Boom!

The light bullet exploded on the concrete slab, sending stone fragments flying.

But that Boss-tier stone scorpion was smarter than expected—the moment the light bullet was about to hit, it let go of the concrete slab's edge and dropped into the gap below, leaving only its high-held tail to sway gently in the smoke, as if mocking Lin Feng's prediction.

The stone scorpions on the left wing took the opportunity to finish charging, and five or six grayish-white Petrification Rays shot toward Lin Feng from different angles.

Lin Feng's Taixu Shield instantly deployed, the golden light shield rising in front of him; the Petrification Rays hit it, splashing circles of grayish-white ripples.

Using the shield for cover, he moved three positions to the right, dodging the stone scorpion jumping from above while simultaneously thrusting the dragon slaying sword in his right hand upward, piercing its abdominal carapace joint and sending it flying into the ruins.

But there were too many stone scorpions, and they gave him no room to breathe.

Just as he finished one off, three more would fill the gap.

Wearing them down like this wouldn't consume much mana, but it was too much of a waste of time.

He deployed his Wind Wings and took off, flying a dozen meters into the air.

The stone scorpions below immediately adjusted their tactics—they stopped jumping blindly and instead concentrated on the ground beneath Lin Feng, over a dozen tails rising simultaneously.

A dozen Petrification Rays shot into the air from various angles.

Lin Feng turned sideways to dodge; his light shield blocked some, but one still grazed his left shoulder.

A thin layer of grayish-white stone crust formed on the surface of his left arm, only to be shattered in less than a second by the self-healing power brought by the Source of Life's health regeneration.

The accumulation of petrification stiffness was interrupted, but his mana consumption rate began to accelerate.

Lin Feng hovered in mid-air, looking down at the group of stone scorpions with their tails raised, and said something to Xiao Jin.

"I'll give you two golden Spirit Stones when we get back."

Then he deactivated the Taixu Shield.

Xiao Jin's antennae snapped upright, and the light in its two compound eyes instantly switched from "alert mode" to "get-rich-quick mode"—what did two golden Spirit Stones mean? It was enough for it to squat by the Restless Soil for several days! It patted its carapace with its front legs, making a metallic clanking sound to indicate the deal was struck.

At the same time, Lin Feng sheathed the dragon slaying sword and brought his hands together in front of his chest.

Eight-colored light began to converge—gold, crimson, azure, cyan, earthy yellow, purple, silver-white, and pitch black.

Eight colors rotated and intertwined in his palms, fusing into a ball of constantly compressing Chaos-colored light.

The group of stone scorpions seemed to sense something was wrong and began burrowing into the ground, dense bumps appearing on the sand's surface.

But Lin Feng was faster—he pushed his hands downward, and the Chaos light ball flew out, smashing into the ground.

Boom!

There was no sound of an explosion, but rather a silent, gray shockwave that spread out along the ground in all directions.

The ground swept by the shockwave first sank slightly, then was wiped as if by an invisible hand—stone scorpions, sand, and rubble were all instantly vaporized, leaving only a perfect circular scorch mark dozens of meters in diameter, its edges clean as if drawn with a compass.