Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 3067: The Blackbone Sea

The fire vanished into Lin Mu’s skin. Fire, Earth, and Metal elemental energy swirled into his cores, his body glowing faintly like an ember-stoked furnace.

"This heat is barely a snack," Lin Mu murmured to himself as he absorbed their attacks with ease.

A moment later, he crushed the lizards under the weight of a gravity field dense enough to rupture stone. The earth cracked, and the air shimmered with sheer force as the beasts were flattened like leaves in a storm.

Their remains were harvested with practiced precision.

The magma-spined scales of the lizards were especially useful. They could be used in refining defensive armor or even in stabilizing mid-tier formations that required strong fire affinity materials. Lin Mu added their Earth and Fire Qi to his cores without hesitation, feeling the elemental resonance within him strengthen even further.

Little Shrubby, however, had entirely different plans.

That night, their camp was filled with the rich, smoky aroma of cooked lizard tail glazed with ashroot oil and fire fern powder. The meat sizzled over the open flame, and faint embers danced in the air like fireflies.

Elyon blinked, nostrils twitching. "Is that... cinnamon and molten marrow glaze?"

Little Shrubby nodded smugly, apron tied around his neck like a chef at a five-star spirit restaurant. He stirred the fire not with a stick, but with his Absolute Flame Command, guiding the flames with flicks of his paw and subtle intent.

Another day, another threat.

The Immortal Flame Salamanders came next—sleek, serpentine amphibians that could swim through lava and ash alike. Their smooth crimson scales glistened like polished gemstone, and their golden eyes betrayed an intelligence not seen in common beasts.

Unlike the other creatures, they didn’t rely on brute force. They were cunning predators, often shadowing the party for miles, watching silently from treetops or camouflaged in ash pits, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. They preferred to ambush when their prey was tired or separated, using coordinated attacks and environmental traps.

One such ambush was set at a sulfurous ravine that stank of rot and brimstone. The Salamanders surged forth from beneath the cracked earth, forming a river of writhing red and orange bodies that hissed with Qi and corrosive steam.

Lin Mu raised an eyebrow at the spectacle.

Then his aura flared, and reality bent.

The Salamanders were abruptly lifted off the ground, suspended mid-air by invisible force. They twitched helplessly as Lin Mu’s gravity field intensified. Trees bent and groaned under the weight, rocks cracked and turned to powder, and even the air itself seemed to hum with compressed tension.

"Fool me once," Lin Mu said coolly.

A second later, the Salamanders exploded into chunks of Qi-rich meat.

It was just more meat for Little Shrubby to cook later.

Elyon eventually caved in and requested a written copy of Little Shrubby’s recipes. The meals were absurdly delicious and nourishing to both body and spirit. Just one bowl of salamander broth was enough to restore a low-tier cultivator’s stamina for several days.

Though the journey was riddled with danger, there were moments of calm and reflection scattered throughout. Sometimes the party would rest on high ridges, watching moonlight filter down through thick ash clouds like ethereal spears of silver. Other times, they found shelter near cliffside waterfalls, the water faintly warm from the geothermal veins running deep beneath the crust.

Elyon, in those moments, would quietly watch Lin Mu.

’How much time would it take to master so many Daos? How many lifetimes of suffering, how many worlds of experience must he have endured?’

Gravity, Sword, Space, Flame, Earth, Metal, and even Life Essence... Elyon could count the affinities on his fingers, but the depth of mastery in each was unfathomable.

Even Daoist Chu, a battle-hardened veteran who had witnessed countless immortal wars, admitted in hushed tones, "He’s not walking the path of a cultivator anymore. He’s carving his own Dao."

And yet Lin Mu never flaunted his power. He walked calmly, spoke sparingly, and always kept his gaze fixed ahead—as if he were watching something far beyond their world. Something no one else could see.

As the second week came to a close, the land around them began to change.

The trees gradually turned into blackened husks, their charred branches clawing at the sky like withered hands.

Pools of glass-like stone shimmered in the sunlight, reflecting the ash-grey clouds above. The wind began to carry a distinct scent of brine—though stale, as if the sea air had been trapped in stone for millennia.

"We’re near," Lin Mu said one evening, looking toward the darkening horizon.

Ahead, the land began to dip.

And in that vast depression lay a black, glimmering basin that stretched as far as the eye could see. It shimmered like ink under the twilight sky.

The Blackbone Sea.

Its shores were littered with the twisted remnants of coral and bone-white branches fossilized in volcanic glass. The waters were unnaturally still—black as oil, without tide or breeze. And far in the distance, like the yawning eye of some great submerged beast, the Crooked Abyss opened wide.

Its presence could be felt even from here.

The journey was over.

The next Chapter had already begun.

"So how do we get to the Crooked Abyss?" Meng Bai asked. "Go around it or just fly over?"

"We should walk along the shores," Elyon replied grimly. "The Blackbone Sea might look still and dead, but it hides many dangers beneath its surface. Flying over it is asking for death. Many vicious aquatic beasts are known to dwell here."

"We’ll go along the shore then," Lin Mu agreed.

"It’ll also allow us to keep an eye out for any ambushes," Daoist Chu added. "If there are enemies, this is where they’ll appear."

And so, the group began to move.

The first few minutes were uneventful, save for the stale, briny wind that blew in strong gusts from the Blackbone Sea.

"Ugh! Why is it so strong?" Meng Bai wrinkled his nose in discomfort.