The Vermillion flames turned the marsh into a sea of flames, evaporating the water and drying out the mud. The beasts that were nearby also died as for the ones that were hidden in the ground, were boiled alive.

A minute later, the flames died down and all that was left behind was a desolate and empty area filled with ashes. All the trees had been reduced to ash, including the beasts. The ground had cracked due to drying out and no sign of life could be seen.

"Humph! and they dare appear in my presence." The Silver Beak Sky Soar eagle stated before starting to preen her feathers.

***

Down at the temple, Lin Wu had exchanged a few more blows with the Specter Skull hound and was trying to end the beast quickly.

But the beast kept on dodging and blocking. Evidently, it was trying to stall for time and wanted for the Marsh Ghosts to appear so that it could consume them and restore all of its injures.

After a minute though, it got anxious as no ghost had appeared.

"Seems like your attempt failed. Now stop struggling and DIE!" Lin Wu yelled with a distorted voice before colliding with the beast.

~Kiii~

The Specter Skull hound let out a pain filled shout as it got badly battered. It had become stunned from the impact and Lin Wu decided to take advantage.

"GET OVER HERE!" Lin Wu said, before shooting out his tail.

~yelp~

The Specter Skull hound let out another painful shout as it was hit with Lin Wu's spiked tail that pierced into its body.

"Gotcha!" Lin Wu exclaimed before pulling him into his 'embrace'.

More and more spikes protruded out of Lin Wu's body as he started to coil around the Specter Skull hound. The hound kept on letting out growls of anger and pain, as Lin Wu kept on constricting his body.

~Crack~

The mask like face of the beast suddenly cracked into multiple pieces as dark blood seeped out from the cracks. The beast could no longer let out any more sounds as his mouth had been clamped shut by Lin Wu's body.

~shatter~

Its ribs and bones shattered as Lin Wu finally exerted his full power at once, reducing it to a mush.

~huu~

Lin Wu let out a breath of relief once he confirmed that the beast had died. But he found something to be strange here.

"Huh? Where is its nascent soul?" Lin Wu said.

Usually once a beast or a cultivator that was at the Nascent Soul realm or above died, they would escape using their nascent soul unless it was destroyed along with the body, beforehand. But Lin Wu had surely not done that.

"System, scan this corpse and tell me what you think." Lin Wu ordered.

~Ding~

——

SCANNER ACTIVATED: Target's interference field has been nullified upon death.

TARGET IDENTIFIED: Specter Skull Hound

CULTIVATION BASE: Equivalent to Child stage Nascent Soul realm Beast.

NASCENT SOUL: None

INFO: The Specter Skull hounds are unique beasts and don't cultivate spirit Qi. They cultivate Nether Qi which composes their bodies and that is also how they can consume ghosts to replenish their stores of energy along with their injuries.

Their bodies are unique in such that while they are physical in nature, they are still composed of the intangible Nether Qi. This is the reason why sensing them with the spirit sense is difficult and why they can negate quite a bit of attacks.

Their Nether Specter Toxin is deadly to most beasts, but the host is highly resistant to it in his crystalline form.

——

After having read the entire thing, Lin Wu realized that this was a completely different type of being he had just killed. It was a type of beast that should have not even been present in this world. Yet here it was, but they didn't know why.

Lin Wu looked at the corpse of the Specter Skull Hound, which had now started to dissipate into thin air. It was as if its body was sublimating and there was nothing Lin Wu could do to stop it.

"Hmm… system can you store this Nether Qi and analyze it?" Lin Wu questioned.

~Ding~

——

ANSWER: The Nether Qi is currently beyond the scope of the system and cannot be stored. The system will need to gather more data and upgrade its data banks before it is able to handle a new type of energy such as the Nether Qi.

——

"I see… guess I was hoping for too much. But still, this means whatever this is, it is beyond any normal cultivators capabilities." Lin Wu stated.

Lin Wu understood that the Specter Skull hound was likely the guard dog of this temple. Though he didn't know why this temple had one, and not the other one. And if that one had it then why was the one that was killed by Shirong being controlled by those people in strange garbs.

There were many questions that arose in Lin Wu's mind and he got entranced by the secrets of this word.

~Sigh~

"Better to focus on the task at hand." Lin Wu said before moving towards the statue of the Vermillion bird.

He touched the small bloodline crystal that was hidden in the beak of the statue before storing it in his storage. Lin Wu made sure that he was not feeling anything strange before leaving the temple.

He ended up shrinking his body so that he could get through the trapdoor before rising up through the soil. But while coming up, he sensed something different.

"Why is it hot here?" Lin Wu wondered.

He continued going up and realized that the ground here was much drier than before. He spread his spirit sense and discovered that the upper layers of the ground had been fully dried out and even the trees there were gone.

"What the hell did the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle do?" Lin Wu wondered.

He soon reached the top of the hole and resurfaced.

~Rumble~

The Eagle Beast stared at the place from where Lin Wu had entered the ground and saw that it was shaking again.