"Big guy, should we run too?"
Sui, who had been silent while sitting on He Ao’s shoulder, leaned in closer to his ear and whispered.
She had been listening to Denon’s plan the whole ti, aware that this mont required discretion, so she had remained quiet from the start.
"Yes."
He Ao nodded lightly, raised his hand, and tucked Sui into his chest, choosing not to follow the combat team and instead approached the wolf pack on one side.
Sui was unusually quiet, and with her silence, He Ao felt he was about to forget her presence.
As He Ao acted, he also got a clear look at the wolf-like creatures in the mountains.
They appeared wolf-like but weren’t entirely wolves; their bodies were long and sleek, resembling elongated strips, with four even longer limbs extending from their bodies, swiftly moving against the ground.
Their mouths opened at the ends of their elongated heads, revealing thick saliva.
Now, the group was very close to the wilderness ahead, less than fifty ters away.
For the Transcendents, this distance was just a few steps away.
But the wolves were evidently faster.
They were so frenzied and hungry that should the wolves at the front impede those in the back, the front wolves would be ruthlessly torn apart, with even their fragnts devoured by the trailing wolves.
Like a fierce torrent, they rushed down the cliffs of the mountains, emitting intense howls, attempting to swallow everything among the mountains.
He Ao’s gaze shifted upward, bypassing the combat team ahead, breaking out from another side, and his gaze also partially fell on the combat team.
The exit from the mountain was swiftly narrowing, with wolves sliding down from the high mountains trying to block the path ahead.
Yet Denon and his combat team were no pushovers; they quickly changed their formation, forming a spearhead and charged forward.
In an instant, they pierced through the exit.
At the sa ti, they clashed with the outer wolves.
Various Extraordinary Weapons were wielded by the team mbers, thodically defending against the wolves’ onslaught, with the initial contact wolves swiftly torn apart to the sound of clashing.
Their flesh rapidly consud by the following wolves.
However, the entire combat team pushed forward, carving an opening and swiftly squeezing out like a spearhead.
Any mber injured on the outside was quickly replaced by soone from the inside.
Ultimately, the entire combat team defied the wolves’ attack, broke through the rapidly narrowing exit, and entered the wilderness.
The fierce wolves, upon seeing the team enter the wilderness, stopped and rely stood at the boundary between the mountains and the wilderness, gazing at the people in the wilderness, howling vigorously but daring not to cross the boundary.
As for He Ao, he quietly observed from behind a large rock nearby.
He had encountered the wolves earlier than the combat team, choosing to bypass them and directly collide with the fast-approaching wolves.
But unlike the combat team, the frenzied wolves did not attack him; they looked at him and quickly made way, seemingly frightened by him, allowing him to pass silently from the wolves.
However, thinking back now, He Ao suspected that the wolves were not afraid of him.
He reached out to touch the long spear strapped to his back.
Vestara’s Spear.
The wolves were probably afraid of the spear or what it represented.
He had just used the capabilities of the spear to enter the Dusk Wilderness without drinking the blood of the Courtyard Giant Snake.
Considering the spear’s supposed origin from the Abnormal,
perhaps this spear indeed ca from the Dusk Wilderness.
Given the elent of regular ans of exiting, taking sothing out from here didn’t seem difficult.
Just unclear where this spear originally belonged.
The content Denon relayed about this anomaly didn’t include clues to the spear.
In fact, the Abnormal Association wasn’t even sure if the spear truly originated from the anomaly.
He Ao’s certainty ca entirely from his Divine Sense, which could directly identify if an item was an anomaly product.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, He Ao glanced at Denon and his combat unit nearby.
At the mont, they were seated on the wilderness, swiftly dressing their wounds.
Denon indeed gathered elite warriors; under such intense collision, the team faced no fatalities, and the injuries were uniformly spread, with only a few severe cases.
In front of these warriors, Denon was aiding the wounded while cautiously surveying the surroundings.
Soon, he noticed He Ao behind the rock, breathed a sigh of relief, and subtly nodded to He Ao, while discreetly leading the group.
He Ao nodded slightly in return.
Then he lifted his gaze upwards.
The area they were in was a patch of reddish-brown wilderness, different from the terrain they encountered when first entering the anomaly, appearing darker in hue, with giant rocks scattered about, ranging from several ters to dozens of ters.
Above these rocks, in the blood-red firmant, amidst the crimson mist, floated a giant snake.
This snake’s body was enormous, semi-concealed within the mist, occupying almost the entire sky.
Yet the snake was long silenced.
Its body shattered into segnts, its head severed, floating among its body, gazing into the distance.
And Denon was also gazing upwards at the giant snake’s corpse.
Soon, the team had dressed their wounds and consud healing dicine.
They stood up, led by Denon, advancing toward the direction the snake’s head was facing.
This ti, He Ao did not follow but turned his gaze and found where the snake’s severed tail pointed.
That tail pointed in the opposite direction of the snake’s head.
"Are we splitting up?"
The small figure crawled out from He Ao’s embrace, sat on He Ao’s shoulder, and quietly inquired.
"Yes." He Ao nodded slightly, advancing in the direction the tail indicated.
Soon, Denon and his combat team vanished in the faint dusk glow, and He Ao swiftly passed through the giant rocks.
The glow of dusk seed to have paused, locked in the sky, making it impossible to discern the ti.
He had walked quite so distance, even the concept of dusk’s glow appeared to dim.
He Ao lifted his head, looking ahead.
A majestic, nearly all-encompassing shadow suggestive of the world’s wall appeared in He Ao’s field of view.
From a distance, it seed as if the entire world ahead was shrouded by this imnse shadow, extending from one side of the horizon to the other, stretching from the earth to the topmost of the firmant, until being completely concealed by the clouds.
Crystalline undulating patterns covered the surface of the shadow, twisted and torn space-ti surrounding it.
Mountains rose and fell beneath this shadow, so lying prone on the earth, others extending deep into the crevices of those shattered spaces.
He Ao gazed at the magnificent shadow, observing its colossal form.
After sketching out the entire shadow, he realized what it was.
A ’stump’.
The mountains were its roots, the crystals its bark, it stood between heaven and earth, even a simple stump reached into the depths of the clouds.
Yet the ’soil’ it ’nestled’ in was not earth, but fractured spaces.
Its roots penetrated these spaces, perhaps drawing energy from them.
He Ao lowered his head, gazing at the broken space and scattered ’mountains’ beneath the stump, he raised his head and glanced at the giant serpent’s corpse overhead.
The serpent’s tail pointed in his direction, towards a gap in the mountains.
[Through the withered roots of the World Tree, following the direction of the Courtyard Giant Snake’s tail, you can reach the Spring of Wisdom.]
He Ao gazed at that enormous stump, Denon’s description of the ’dark path’ echoed in his mind.
Is this the ’World Tree’?
He Ao lowered his gaze and continued forward, quickly approaching the root’s edge that resembled mountains.
This stump had been here for who knows how many years, stones paved the enormous roots, embellishing them to resemble undulating mountains.
The dusk radiance accompanied He Ao’s approach and gradually dimd.
This radiance had no specific source, existing purely as a conceptual presence.
This concept of dusk seed to be weakened before this giant tree.
He Ao raised his head and looked at the sky.
Part of the Courtyard Giant Snake’s body was already obscured by the stump’s imnse shadow, but fortunately, the tail remained visible.
Following the direction of the tail, He Ao continued walking.
As he delved deeper, more fractured spaces appeared around him.
So space fissures extended for thousands of ters, with a thick root plunging into the fissure.
He Ao stood at the edge of the fissure, peering inside, seeing only so chaotic, twisted scenes, and fragnts of land drifting in the void.
Like remnants left after so space had shattered.
This anomaly seemingly encompassed more than one ’space’.
Of course, it could be that this anomaly was bizarrely fragnted since its formation.
Nonetheless, the enormity of this anomaly surprised He Ao, he even thought this wilderness was larger than the combined area of the twenty-six cities in the northeast.
No wonder it was classified as a level 0 anomaly.
He Ao withdrew his gaze from the space fissures and cautiously continued forward along the fissure’s edge.
The enormous serpent’s tail still hung high in the sky, guiding him, the surrounding radiance growing dimr, as though transitioning from dusk to night.
As the shadows deepened, He Ao’s perception was suppressed to its limit, even his Divine Sense could not extend more than three ters from his body.
He Ao moved forward, passing one space fissure after another, Sui perched on his shoulder, curiously glancing around.
The spaces behind these fissures were mostly shattered, filled only with swirling void, and fragnts of land and sky drifting within it.
As if this anomaly had once experienced a massive and dreadful war, shattering the entire world, leaving only this wilderness.
Occasionally, He Ao would pause in front of so fissures, observing the fragnts drifting in the void.
Those fragnts had fallen into utter desolation, devoid of plants or life, yet faint traces of dilapidated buildings could still be seen.
So fragnts were so close that He Ao could make out intricate patterns on the buildings, and even scattered, seemingly human-used utensils and weapons.
For a mont, He Ao felt as though he was exploring relics of the Martial Arts World.
But this giant tree and these spaces clearly resembled a more thoroughly destroyed fantasy world.
While the Martial Arts World no longer had civilization, at least so plants remained, a semblance of life persisted, but in this ’Dusk Wilderness’, nothing remained.
He Ao raised his head, looking at the imnse stump shadow that almost covered the sky and everything within his field of view.
In Denor’s ’data’, this tree was called the ’World Tree’, sounding like so core hub of the world.
Now, what remained was a gigantic stump and roots penetrating into each devastated space.
He Ao lowered his head, continuing forward.
If this thing ford out of thin air as an anomaly, it truly was intricate and rich with detail.
The surrounding radiance had completely faded, plunging into utter darkness.
He Ao looked up at the sky, the Courtyard Giant Snake’s tail still floated in the blood-colored firmant, the sky not entirely obscured by the stump, but perated by surrounding ’dusk’, subtly transitioning into ’starlight’.
And in this dim starlight, vague rustling sounds could be heard.
An invisible ’gaze’ erged from the mountain-like roots surrounding He Ao.
He Ao looked towards the source of those gazes, but as he raised his gaze, they would instantly vanish.
He withdrew his gaze and continued forward.
The void was filled with a faint blue starlight, and as he ventured further, the sense of being watched grew stronger.
Denor’s data did not ntion these gazes, likely sothing even they were unaware of.
Yet He Ao knew before he entered this anomaly, there were nurous unexpected encounters, which was the reason Denor warned him of the task’s danger.
However, these gazes didn’t interfere with He Ao, they rely watched from afar without approaching, whether out of fear or caution.
Soon, He Ao finally reached the end of the direction pointed by the serpent’s tail.
He looked up, at this point, the Courtyard Giant Snake’s tail was no longer visible.
Ahead, a root rose high, forming a wide ’entryway’ with the ground.
Beyond the entryway, thick fog perated the area.
The surrounding space subtly writhed as if connecting to so unknown region.
It seems this truly was a ’dark path’.
Through the withered roots of the World Tree, reaching the Spring of Wisdom.
He Ao slowly lifted his footstep and walked forward.
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