200: Chapter 199 Little Jin's Treasure-Hunting Talent! Battle Ruins in the Office Building

Lin Feng flew along the edge of the ruins for a while before suddenly stopping in mid-air.

The Wind Wings flapped gently behind his back, maintaining a hovering posture.

Below was a collapsed commercial district, where the wreckage of several office buildings leaned precariously against one another.

The glass curtain walls had long since shattered, leaving only bare steel frames exposed like naked ribs.

He expanded his perception to its maximum range, capturing all void energy fluctuations within a few hundred meters—a few low-level Void Creatures wandered aimlessly deep within the ruins, nothing unusual.

It was too quiet.

So quiet that it felt wrong to him.

Since entering the Dungeon, he had been pushing forward based on intuition and perception, but he had overlooked the simplest question.

"Xiao Jin."

Lin Feng turned his head to look at the Void Holy Beetle perched on his right shoulder.

"Is your treasure-hunting Talent useful here?"

Xiao Jin was chewing on a piece of purple Spirit Stone and stopped upon hearing this.

Its antennae stood straight up in the air.

It tilted its head and thought for a moment, a faint golden light flashing through its compound eyes—then it stuffed the Spirit Stone into its mouth, its six legs treading on Lin Feng's shoulder a few times as if warming up.

It had almost forgotten it possessed this ability.

After following Lin Feng out of the Secret Realm, its daily routine consisted of gnawing on Spirit Stones, eating Restless Soil, and occasionally spitting out Soul-Confusing Incense when Lin Feng fought others.

Its treasure-hunting Talent hadn't been used for a long time, but it was a Void Holy Beetle after all.

Treasure hunting was an instinct etched into its genes, just as cats catch mice and Xiao Guang recites array seals; it required no practice and came naturally.

Xiao Jin closed its eyes, and the pair of purple antennae atop its head began to glow slowly.

Purple light patterns spread from the base of the antennae to the tips, growing brighter and brighter, their rhythm synchronized with its own heartbeat—this was the physiological response when its treasure-hunting Talent was activated.

It turned its head from left to right, then right to left, its antennae drawing circles in the air like two radar antennas scanning for a signal.

After a long while, it suddenly snapped its eyes open and let out a sharp chirp.

"Chirp chirp!"

Lin Feng looked in the direction Xiao Jin's antennae pointed, which was toward the southeast.

That area was also a field of ruins, with no obvious difference from the surroundings—several collapsed office buildings huddled together, sandwiching a narrow street blocked by rubble, with the wreckage of an overturned bus at the corner, its front end crashed into the display window of a ground-floor shop.

That street looked very similar to the commercial streets he had passed before; the only difference was that the number of Void Creatures wandering the periphery of that area was lower than elsewhere.

It wasn't that there were none, but that they were unnaturally sparse, as if something had drawn an invisible boundary there that Void Creatures instinctively avoided.

"What's in that direction?"

Xiao Jin gestured with its front legs for a long time.

Its six golden legs traced various complex geometric patterns in the air, its antennae twisted, its body tilted, and then it suddenly sprang up to perform an exploding motion.

It couldn't speak human language, but Lin Feng understood.

There weren't many treasures, only one, but it was huge—and something was guarding it.

Lin Feng looked at the circular building ahead and then at the direction Xiao Jin pointed.

The secrets within the circular building could wait, but for a treasure that caused Void Creatures to actively avoid it and had a guardian, his intuition told him he should check it out first.

He changed direction and flew low toward the location Xiao Jin indicated.

As he approached that area, Lin Feng clearly felt the surrounding void energy change.

The void energy he had felt in the commercial and residential areas earlier, though dense, was chaotic, like a pot of boiling porridge with disordered energy vortices everywhere.

But this area was different—the void energy was restricted to the periphery by some force. Although the source was still operating, once he reached a certain distance from that office building, the energy noise weakened significantly, like suddenly stepping into a sealed, soundproof room during a thunderstorm.

The consumption of the Breath-Hiding Array also decreased significantly as a result.

This was abnormal.

All the monsters and buildings in the Void Corridor were being eroded by void energy, yet this place alone seemed to be protected by something—or rather, designated as a forbidden zone by something.

He landed on the roof of a half-collapsed building, retracted his Wind Wings, and crouched at the edge of a broken wall to look down.

Below was a street about ten meters wide, its surface scattered with rubble, glass shards, and the flattened wreckage of several cars.

Across the street was that office building.

It was about thirty or forty stories high, with a massive crack splitting the building down the middle. The upper half leaned to one side at an angle that made one worry it would collapse completely at any moment.

However, from the cross-section of the crack, one could see that the steel rebar inside the building was still intact, without rust or traces of void energy erosion, completely different from the surrounding ruins.

The outer walls of the office building were covered in a certain grayish-white vine-like plant.

The vines were thick, their surfaces covered in dark patterns similar to those on a Void Stone Scorpion's carapace.

Those vines covered most of the walls and shattered windows, but the vines at the main entrance had been cut by something—not broken after naturally withering, but severed by a Sharp Weapon, the cuts smooth and even, as if directly cleaved by something like a sword or blade.

More fragmented traces of battle were scattered at the entrance.

There were several deep claw marks on the steps, wider and deeper than the Void Shadow Leopard claw marks he had seen on the truck's side panels, with extremely faint dark purple corrosive traces remaining on the edges.

There were scorched black marks on the walls from high-temperature burning.

Several grayish-white bone spikes were embedded in the shattered glass curtain wall of the first floor.

The shape of the bone spikes was identical to those on Iron Bone Clan warriors, but they were thicker and longer than those on that Fusion monster.

And then there was the ground—it was covered in a thin layer of grayish-white powder, the hollow remains left by Void Creatures after death. The powder was too thick; it didn't look like the amount that would accumulate from the death of just one or two Void Creatures.

Lin Feng jumped down from behind the broken wall and landed on the steps of the office building entrance.

He crouched down and used his finger to dab a bit of the grayish-white powder on the ground, rubbing it between his fingertips.

It was very fine, very dry, and lacked any moisture.

He looked again at the deep claw marks on the steps—the concrete at the edges of the marks was deformed from pressure, something that wasn't possible with the claw strength of an ordinary Void Creature.

He had seen similar characteristics in the illustrated handbook; a Void Creature capable of leaving such high-pressure impact claw marks was at least a Level 65 or higher Void Split-Claw Beast.

That creature's size was close to that of a truck, and the grip strength of its claws could easily crush a car into a metal disc; an ordinary Explorer would have no way to fight back against it.

Xiao Guang poked its head out of his pocket, and as it looked at the battle traces on the ground, its expression became somewhat complex.

It had lived for tens of thousands of years, experienced the downfall of the Taigu Dojo, and participated in the life-and-death battle between Lin Feng and Taotie. It knew very well what battle ruins of this level meant—someone capable of dealing with so many different types of Void Creatures simultaneously had to be at least Level 70 or higher and possess at least two or more different elemental attack methods.

"These battle traces weren't left at the same time—the claw marks at the entrance and the scorch marks on the walls are at least several days apart. The combined death count of the two types of Void Creatures is at least thirty or forty. To be able to keep so many Void Creatures at bay and persist for so long... Lin Feng, your parents held out here for a long time back then."

Lin Feng did not speak.

He stood at the entrance of the office building, looking at the glass door half-covered by vines.

It was a double door; one side was already shattered, while the other hung crookedly from the frame.

There were several cracks on the wall above the door frame, their position and direction suggesting they were caused by a push from inside the door—the reaction force from someone inside pushing hard against the door when it was struck from the outside.

An image flickered in his mind of his father bracing the door while his mother used some ice-attribute skill to create an ice wall in the hallway outside.

It was only in recent years, after scouring all available data on the Void Corridor, that he had found the clues left by his parents.

Now, he stood on the very path they had truly walked, looking at the door they had defended.

He reached out and pushed open the crooked glass door, stepping into the office building.

The lobby was very dark, with only faint daylight filtering through the broken windows.

The floor was scattered with broken glass, overturned office chairs, and several torn documents.

In a corner, a grayish-white fungus was growing from a crack in the wall, emitting a faint fluorescence.

The shape of those fungi was very strange; they didn't look like ordinary mushrooms, but more like energy crystals condensed directly from void energy.

The elevator shaft at the back of the lobby had completely collapsed, and the iron door of the fire escape was deformed from being struck by something, though it could still be pushed open.

He saw more high-temperature scorch marks from the blood of Void Creatures on the walls.

On the west side of the lobby, an originally intact white wall had been torn apart. Dried bloodstains trailed along the broken wall all the way to the fire escape entrance, as if someone who was heavily injured had climbed upstairs with difficulty while leaning against the wall.

Lin Feng did not take the fire escape but followed the opposite direction of the bloodstains—toward the inner back row.

The walls there were even more severely shattered; entire sections of partition walls had been smashed through by something, revealing rows of long-corroded metal office cabinets behind them.

The drawers of the filing cabinets had been pulled open by external force, and the papers had long since turned into grayish-white powder under the erosion of void energy, but several fragments of Void Creature carapaces were embedded in the cabinets.

The fragments were very thick, the kind of bony armor layer found only on small boss-level or higher Void Creatures.

In a very narrow gap between an overturned filing cabinet and the corner of the wall, he saw something.

A Storage Ring.

It lay there at the deepest part of the gap, half-buried in dust, the engravings on the ring's face faintly shimmering with a dim light in the darkness.

Lin Feng's breath hitched for a moment.

He bent down to pick up the ring and wiped the dust off its face with his finger, revealing a line of small characters engraved inside.

It wasn't his parents' names, but the name of the Explorer team they belonged to back then.

This ring was a relic of one of their teammates.

He held the ring in his palm and stood there for a long time.

The surrounding void energy fluctuations lingered at the entrance, seemingly wanting to invade, but were blocked outside by some lingering power.

A low roar came from outside, like some massive creature awakening from a deep slumber.

The sound was very close, right on the ruined street outside the office building.

The ground beneath his feet began to vibrate, and dust from the ceiling fell in showers.

Lin Feng stored the ring into his void mithril ring and turned to walk quickly out of the door.

The rubble on the street was bouncing, and the ground vibration grew more intense, as if something extremely heavy was crawling toward him from deep within the ruins.

Something massive was standing up from the ruins and looking at him.

That thing rose from the depths of the ruins like a walking building.

Its height was not much shorter than the surrounding buildings. It had a humanoid silhouette, but it had far more "parts" than the previous Fusion monster.

Its left arm was a giant tentacle formed entirely of condensed dark purple energy, its surface densely covered with fist-sized suckers—sharing the same source as the petrification energy spheres on the Void Stone Scorpion tails Lin Feng had seen when he first entered the Dungeon, but at a concentration more than an order of magnitude higher.

Its right arm was half of an Iron Bone Clan warrior's giant battle-axe, the blade inlaid with dark golden scales that glinted coldly under the dim sky.

A slowly rotating grayish-white void energy core was embedded in its chest, surrounded by dense dark purple vascular patterns. Every pulse of the vessels would spread a wave of energy pressure outward.

And its eyes were just like the captured Fusion monster's—devoid of Soul, possessing only pure killing instinct.

It stood fully upright from the ruins, its height just a few stories shorter than the office building.

With every step, the ruins beneath its feet were crushed into powder.

The low-level Void Creatures that were originally wandering nearby began to retreat frantically; even that boss-level Void Unicorn Hound turned and led its pack fleeing deeper into the city.

The grayish-white vines on the office building's outer wall began to yellow, wither, and break as it approached—the terrifying void energy was causing even the originally protected area to begin eroding.

Xiao Guang stored the tablet into its Storage Ring and formed hand seals, the backup seals of the Six Harmonies Heaven-Sealing Array already gathering momentum in its palms.

Lin Feng drew his dragon slaying sword and taixu sword. With both swords in hand, he slowly ascended with his Wind Wings.

He looked at the massive Fusion monster, and those soulless eyes looked back at him.

This battle had to be fought, whether he wanted to or not.