Chapter 659: Dispute
A rough estimate put the duonao beast casualties at three thousand at the very least. He Lingchuan had no idea whether the thunderclap beasts had killed more of them, or whether the raging sandstorm had.
At the cost of their companions’ flesh and blood, the surviving duonao beasts had already waded through the stone formation and charged into the stone mountains behind it.
Looking at the corpses scattered across the ground, He Lingchuan suddenly felt that these cultivators on his side were not all that different from the duonao beasts.
Within the stone formation, lightning still flashed and thunder still roared.
One look was enough for everyone to know that the thunderclap beasts were still alive.
Their lord was still alive too.
“Go dig out the floating stones. Quickly!” He Lingchuan pointed at the duonao beast corpses stretching for several kilometers and said to his teammates, “Work in pairs. Watch out for ambushes!”
For hunters, this was the beautiful moment when gold lay scattered everywhere.
Others entered the Fu Realm to make a living, to earn money. However, He Lingchuan had a different purpose from them. He ignored the duonao beast corpses spread all over the ground and headed single-mindedly toward the stone formation.
Quite a few others had the same idea.
It seemed everyone understood that the closer the corpses were to the stone formation, the higher their yield might be.
But the battle in the stone formation was far from over.
Only after He Lingchuan drew closer did he realize how brutal things were here.
The lightning barrier laid down by the Giant Thunderclap Beast had already been breached. The corpses were thickest around where the barrier had stood, piled as high as seven meters in some places, most of them reduced to charcoal.
However, its own kin had also suffered, with more than half of them dead or wounded.
No matter how powerful this lord-level aberrant creature was, it had ultimately been unable to withstand the double assault of beast tide and sandstorm. Its entire body was covered in wounds. When He Lingchuan saw it from afar, he even noticed blood spraying from its mouth and nose.
The sandstorm had lasted seven hours, and it had held out here for those same seven hours. Now, it was exhausted to the limit. Every breath it took brought out a thick mist of blood.
However, its opponents had also lost some members.
He Lingchuan counted. There had originally been seven nothing beasts, but only five were still standing now. The leader in particular was burned all over, its flesh split open, and there were scarcely a few intact patches of hide left across its body.
The Giant Thunderclap Beast hated it most and had naturally given it the most attention.
He Lingchuan did not dare provoke those two big bosses. Keeping well away from them, he circled around and searched for the dead nothing beasts.
Those were his primary targets.
But even after searching for some time, he did not find any of them.
He suppressed his impatience and began searching a second time.
Duonao beast corpses lay everywhere in a chaotic mess. Finding the corpse of a nothing beast here was no easy task.
This time, he remembered the mirror and tucked it against his arm. The Soul-Stealing Mirror had no eyes, but when it came to finding things, it was much better than he was.
Very soon, the mirror called out, “Stop, stop, stop! To your left, your left! No, a little more to the right.”
About fifteen meters away, he saw a pile of thunderclap beast corpses.
“Look down!” said the Soul-Stealing Mirror. “Look at that little thunderclap beast’s belly!”
He Lingchuan did indeed see the back of a small beast, seemingly crushed beneath an adult thunderclap beast. It was only half the size of the adults.
Wait, the belly?
He walked around to the front, and what he saw startled him.
Inside the little thunderclap beast’s belly, there was actually a nothing beast!
The nothing beast’s upper half was outside, its head already flattened. Everything below the waist was inside the little thunderclap beast’s belly. It looked as if it had burrowed out from inside the young beast’s body, but before it could escape, the furious adult thunderclap beasts had charged over and trampled it to death.
The moment He Lingchuan saw this, he could reconstruct what had happened.
In all likelihood, after the nothing beast killed the young thunderclap beast, it had crawled into its belly and hollowed it out before hiding inside.
What was the benefit of doing that?
Well, perhaps, at the very least, it could avoid the wind outside?
But then he immediately noticed fragments in the nothing beast’s claws, on its body, and scattered over the ground.
The fragments did not look like stone, because they were patterned with blue-green snowflake-like speckles. When whole, it must have been especially beautiful.
In that instant, He Lingchuan gave it only a glance before stepping forward. But then, someone suddenly darted out from the side and cut off the nothing beast’s head with one slash.
That cut flowed as smoothly as drifting clouds and running water, without the slightest wasted strength. Even in the Fu Realm, where gravity was more than three times heavier than in the mortal realm, it did not lose any of its steadiness, accuracy, or ruthlessness.
Excellent skill! He Lingchuan’s pupils instinctively shrank as he looked at the person.
It’s Hu Bin?
“Oh, Young Master He.” Hu Bin seemed to have only just noticed him and grinned in greeting. “You came over too?”
But both of them knew this was no place for idle conversation.
“Brother Hu, would you be willing to part with that nothing beast’s head?” He Lingchuan did not waste words. “I’ll pay a high price.”
If he could buy it, he would not rob it. No need to waste time.
“This?” Hu Bin lifted the nothing beast’s head and shook it twice. “What do you want this for? There are floating stones all over the ground.”
Corpses lay everywhere here, and everyone was working hard to cut off heads.
Time was precious, and digging out floating stones was too troublesome. Unless the beast head was too large, everyone simply chopped the head off and stored it away, waiting until later to open it up.
“I need the brain core to refine a magical artifact.”
Hu Bin gave an “oh,” then smiled and said, “Sure, give me forty rinsing beads, and the head is yours.”
Forty? He Lingchuan’s face darkened. “Brother Hu, can you ask for something else?”
Everyone had just survived a sandstorm. No one had that many rinsing beads on hand. Besides, the storm had only just passed, and no one knew how far they would have to go before finding rinsing bead grass again.
Right now, every rinsing bead was a life-saving bead, yet Hu Bin dared ask for forty in one breath?
He was deliberately making things difficult.
“No, that’s what I want.” Hu Bin shook his head. “Either give me the rinsing beads, or you can go kill a nothing beast yourself. There are still five or six alive over there.”
He Lingchuan’s gaze flickered. Hm, if he insists on doing things the hard way...
Killing and robbing—he had done plenty of that before.
But just as the thought arose, three or four more people appeared around them, all members of the Golden Horn Clan’s team.
Captain Zhou stared at the two of them and asked, “Is there a problem?”
Given that this man had mediated disputes earlier, He Lingchuan gave it a try. “I want the nothing beast’s head, but he won’t sell it.”
“I only want forty rinsing beads. Give me the rinsing beads, and the beast head is yours,” Hu Bin said unhurriedly. “Outside, rinsing beads are worth nothing at all. But once you take a nothing beast’s head out, it’ll sell for seven or eight thousand taels at least. In the end, you’re still the one profiting.”
Captain Zhou coughed lightly. “Young Master He, trade has to be voluntary. It can’t be forced.”
The others also gathered around, standing behind Hu Bin in support.
Hm, so do I fight or not?
During the seven-hour sandstorm earlier, He Lingchuan had slowed his breathing and used only seventeen rinsing beads. He had given three to his teammates and now still had nineteen left.
That seemed like more than enough, but once fighting began, rinsing beads would be used up quickly. Besides, none of them knew how far they would have to go before finding rinsing bead grass and replenishing their supply.
So right now, every bead was precious.
Time and rinsing beads were the most important strategic resources right now.
The Soul-Stealing Mirror quickly advised its master as well. “Wasn’t there still one more dead Nothing Beast? Keep looking! It isn’t worth fighting them.”
He Lingchuan glanced at Hu Bin, then turned and left.
That man’s voice came from behind him. “The offer is valid for two hours.”
He Lingchuan said nothing and continued searching for the other nothing beast corpse.
“That man is targeting me.”
The Soul-Stealing Mirror gave a surprised “eh” and asked, “Aren’t all hunters like that?”
“No, forty beads, that price is calculated very carefully. If it were just a bit fewer, I could gather them. Any more, and I definitely wouldn’t take the deal.” He Lingchuan glanced back and found Hu Bin still watching his retreating figure. “Normally, I could ask my teammates to pool their rinsing beads, but at this moment, none of them can give me any.”
After the unusually long sandstorm, his teammates did not have many rinsing beads left either. Every bead was meant for survival. At a time like this, asking for beads was barely any different from asking them to die.
And right now, everyone was facing a time trap. Every second that passed, they had to leave the sandstorm’s affected range and reach another area to gather rinsing beads before their current supply ran out.
No one knew how long that journey would be, so they had to reserve as many beads as they could.
At a full stretch, most hunters did not have enough rinsing beads to last four more hours. Some teams had already left after the sandstorm ended, painfully abandoning the duonao beast corpses scattered across the ground simply because they did not have enough time.
The Fu Realm’s sandstorms affected a huge area, so sending dedicated people out to harvest was not workable. The round trip alone would take more than four hours, so no one dared take that risk.
That meant that a team like Chiyan’s could linger for at most another hour before they too had to leave.
Was Hu Bin hoping he would turn against the Chiyan men, or attack another team?
After all, robbery brought goods fastest.
However, Hu Bin had deliberately joined the Golden Horn Clan’s team, and He Lingchuan truly could not openly rob him.
A hunter from the Golden Horn Clan’s team jumped down from the top of the corpse pile and happened to step on the Nothing Beast’s claw. With a wet crack, the fragments scattered even more thoroughly.
“So this is a nothing beast?” The man took out a blade and began cutting off its hide and claws. Materials from duonao beasts could be sold for money, and the rarer they were, the higher the price.
But after taking two steps, he noticed a sticky, half-green, half-white fluid on the sole of his shoe.
“What’s this?”
Yet on a battlefield this chaotic, what strange thing was not here? He did not care, merely scraped his sole a few times, then went off to harvest floating stones from other duonao beasts.
Meanwhile, He Lingchuan took the mirror and began another round of searching.
Still nothing.
He had run until sweat covered his head and his legs felt filled with lead, but he still could not find the remaining nothing beast corpse anywhere.
Perhaps it had been buried by the sand. Perhaps someone else had already cut off its head. In a battlefield this chaotic, who could say for sure?
He Lingchuan could only turn his attention to the living nothing beasts.
He did not even dare think about the leader. But among the other nothing beasts, was there perhaps a softer target?
After observing for a while, there was.
One nothing beast had a broken left leg and two clear burn marks across its belly. One of those burns had even punched a hole through its abdomen. Not only did it walk with a limp, but its head also hung half-lowered. Clearly, its injuries were severe, and it could barely even hold on.
The problem was that another nothing beast stayed almost right beside it, scarcely leaving its side.
These things actually have bonds like this?
Most troublesome of all, both of them were not far from the two giant beasts fighting in the center of the battlefield.
If He Lingchuan wanted to kill a nothing beast, he would have to approach the heart of the fight.
In the end, a battle was unavoidable. He sighed, held a pill in his mouth, and advanced with a blade in his hand.
The closer he came to the center of the stone formation, the more his hair stood on end.
The stray electricity in the air nearly made his hair stand on end.
There were still several dozen thunderclap beasts alive. They remained gathered in the beast den, their heads facing outward in a ring as they fought as one against the nothing beasts’ attack.
After climbing onto a mountain of corpses and looking down, He Lingchuan suddenly realized why the thunderclap beasts were so adamant on defending their den.
On the mound of sand at the center of the beast den lay two round eggs!