Chapter 503: Sound Wave Ambush

Su Che planned to use the barbaric beasts to reduce the enemy force, which certainly carried certain risks. First, he had to consider whether ambushing others would result in punishment from the game’s controller, the “Mysterious Old Man.” Second, he needed to think about whether the people from the Spirit Realm would notice and retaliate.
“The game rules don’t forbid ambushing others. This journey-based game is inherently competitive, and the last ten players will be executed…” Su Che weighed the pros and cons. “Since it’s a competitive game, from a bystander’s perspective, the fiercer the competition, the more interesting it is. I guess the Mysterious Old Man won’t mind if the competition between players becomes even more brutal.”
“As for whether the people from the Spirit Realm will discover it and retaliate, it doesn’t really matter. Even if I don’t scheme against them, they’ll scheme against me sooner or later. There’s no possibility of peaceful coexistence…”
In short, Su Che’s main points were two: act first to gain an advantage, or suffer the consequences; to succeed in such a risky situation, one must be bold and careful!
However, this plan relied heavily on Tian Yin, with Su Che playing only a supporting role. Tian Yin knew more about the characteristics of the barbaric beasts, and her sound wave abilities were necessary to carry out the ambush undetected.
“It’s okay, don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
Tian Yin knew Su Che was still worried about possibly being punished by the Mysterious Old Man, so she reassured him.
“Alright, let’s start then.”
Su Che nodded, wrapping his left arm around Tian Yin’s soft waist as his vital energy slowly flowed into her body. Next, he would control her legs to maintain a normal walking posture.
This was because the sound wave ability Tian Yin was about to use required her to be fully focused due to her impaired consciousness—she couldn’t be distracted, not even while walking.
Under normal circumstances, she could use this ability while sitting cross-legged, standing still, or floating in mid-air. But today, none of these options were possible. She had to keep moving forward continuously, with both feet never leaving the ground…
Therefore, Su Che temporarily blocked her lower body’s sensory nerves, using his own vital energy to control her legs and keep her walking. In other words, Tian Yin’s legs became puppets in Su Che’s hands.
This way, it wouldn’t violate the game rules, nor would it distract Tian Yin.
Bang bang bang bang…

The two were under the protection of a barrier of immense wealth, continuously under attack from the sword-armed ape monster. Their path forward was winding, preventing them from moving in a straight line. Yet, thanks to the divine movement technique that allowed them to compress space in the later stages of the Yuan Ying phase, their speed was far greater than that of a galloping horse.

Tian Yin narrowed her eyes slightly, appearing like a weak woman who needed Su Che’s support to walk. In reality, her sonic power had already been unleashed. After just a dozen breaths, an invisible, soundless wave transformed into a thin thread and penetrated the ear of a scaled beast hundreds of feet away. This kind of wave was extremely stealthy—only the target could feel it, and it acted directly on the soul or Yuan Shen. Even those nearby would be unaware of it. Since ascending to the Yuan Ying phase, Tian Yin had become completely one with her Bell of Tian Yin; she no longer needed to take out the bronze bell when using her offensive powers.

The souls of these barbaric beasts were fragile—even a slight soul-based attack could drive them into frenzy. The scaled beast before them was no exception. Without pause, it launched its most powerful suicidal attack: self-destruction!

Boom!

The massive scaled beast exploded, creating a blast radius of over a hundred feet in diameter. The four cultivators within this range lost their footing. Hit by the shockwave, along with their protective talismans, they were flung into the air dozens of feet high. Under normal circumstances, such a shock would be insignificant and cause no harm. But today, it proved to be a deadly blow.

“Ah!”
“No!”

Despite feeling no pain, they screamed in agony, filled with despair and terror. They couldn’t understand how the scaled beast would explode on its own without reason. They hadn’t done anything to provoke it—just braving the attacks head-on—so how could they have angered it to such a degree?

The cruel rules of this game showed no mercy. They didn’t even get time to think before turning into scattered flesh and blood in the air.

The law that the Yuan Shen could not be destroyed and the self could not die also failed here. Their Yuan Shens were utterly shattered, turning into scattered energy particles in the air, seemingly absorbed or devoured by some force…

“Four at once!” Su Che cheered inwardly. “It’s still quite satisfying!”

After all, these dead individuals were at least at the Lian Xu phase. Under normal circumstances, eliminating such a powerful cultivator would be impossible for Su Che without reaching the Mi Xian realm. Yet now, he had taken out four in one go.

This is also because they had been on guard from the start and kept their distance from each other; otherwise, it wouldn’t be a problem for a single self-destructive explosion to send dozens of people flying.
“Good, keep going!”
Su Che gave Tian Yin’s waist a light pinch as encouragement. At the same time, the soft and smooth sensation through his palm was still extremely clear even through a mid-grade Dao instrument robe, causing Su Che’s heart to tremble. A feeling buried deep in his soul for many years was instantly stirred and awakened.
“Soulmates in dual cultivation…”
Such a term seemed to appear in his mind out of nowhere.
“Haha!” Inside the Immortal Prison, Lao He covered his mouth, holding back laughter and not daring to make a sound, but inwardly he exclaimed, “The master’s lust has finally been awakened—this is a good sign! I was worried that if this continued, he would turn into a monk who never indulged in lust or emotions…”
Tian Yin, on the other hand, had no time to consider these things at the moment. She needed to concentrate intensely to transform her sonic attack ability into an invisible thread and send it into the ears of those exotic beasts hundreds of feet away.
With her divine sense impaired, this required extremely high control skills.
A few breaths later, another beast went berserk due to Tian Yin’s long-range attack and self-destructed, once again successfully sending three cultivators flying—their fate was obvious.
Beasts were not very intelligent, belonging to a species eliminated by the course of history. Especially after suffering a soul attack, they lacked the intelligence to figure out who had severely damaged their souls. Once completely driven mad, they would launch suicidal attacks at anyone in front of them, without any logic.
Tian Yin was fully aware of all this, but those cultivators knew nothing about these savage beasts. They had no idea or certainty about what could trigger these beasts into launching self-destructive attacks.
In the short term, no one could guess that it was Su Che and Tian Yin, who were hundreds of feet away, doing this. After all, in such a critical situation, everyone was too busy saving themselves and in extreme danger to have the energy to scheme against others.
Boom! Boom! Boom…
On the grassland, deafening explosion sounds could be heard from time to time. Each time, three to five people would suffer the merciless punishment of the game rules and be completely annihilated.

Tianyin also had a strategy when choosing targets to attack. She had to carefully calculate the distance between them, ensuring that each beast’s self-destruction affected at least three cultivators before it was worth acting. Moreover, controlling distance and direction required skill and stealth, so as to avoid drawing suspicion onto herself.

Boom! Boom! Boom…

Amidst the continuous explosions, the cultivators could only walk steadily on foot. With tiny humans mixed among thousands of giant beasts, the situation was already extremely chaotic. Add to this the fact that everyone’s divine senses were impaired, making it nearly impossible to determine who was causing trouble or striking from behind using only sight.

No one had the energy to help or save others; they were all focused on withstanding the beasts’ attacks and rushing straight south. The forest in the distance grew clearer by the moment—it was the hope for everyone to escape the beasts’ harassment.

As everyone had seen earlier, the boundaries between different regions in this mysterious space were very distinct. None of the beasts scattered across the grasslands would venture beyond it into the barren mountains. It could be inferred that they likely couldn’t enter the forest either.

Although even these powerful cultivators could guess that there must be other dangers lurking in the forest, they decided to take it one step at a time. Surviving and getting rid of these beasts was already a victory in itself…

Boom! Boom! Boom…

After persevering for half an hour, Su Che helped Tianyin reach the edge of the forest. During this time, Su Che clearly remembered hearing sixty-nine self-destruction sounds—undoubtedly, most of them caused by Tianyin.

Lao He kept an even more accurate count and reported immediately, “Master, a total of 237 people have died from the beasts’ self-destructions. As of now, there are about 700 left.”

Lao He’s detection abilities hadn’t been sealed. However, Su Che was worried that his detection waves might be detected by that mysterious old man, so he ordered Lao He to be cautious and avoid spreading his detection waves too far.

Even so, having nothing to do in the Immortal Prison and feeling relaxed, Lao He’s ability to calculate and tally numbers was much sharper than Su Che’s.

“Great! Over 200 killed—so satisfying!”

Su Che cheered inwardly, feeling immensely relieved.

These guys had come all the way from the Spirit Realm just to capture him. There was no need to feel any pity for them. Every death was good news for him.

More importantly, besides Lao Hei, Su Che also had a secret he would never reveal to anyone: he would never forget the deep-seated blood feud he had with those people from the spirit world throughout his life!
Do not forget—the great disaster that struck his hometown, Cai Shi Town, was caused by them.
The murder of his wife and children, the death of his own parents, the misfortunes of his siblings and fellow villagers—all these blood debts had to be settled on their heads.
Especially those powerful beings at the Mahayana stage had long been on Su Che’s list of those to be killed.
Now, Su Che’s goal was simple: to quickly reach the Mahayana stage, capture them one by one, subject them to every kind of torture in the mortal world, and then send their souls to the netherworld of ghosts where they would never be freed…
Su Che kept these grievances firmly in mind. He originally thought that some of them might ascend to the immortal realm in the near future, so sooner or later, he would follow them there to continue capturing them.
But today, in this mysterious space, everyone had the same strength at the late Yuan Ying stage, which gave Su Che the chance to avenge himself earlier.
That’s why, when Tian Yin tried to use sound waves to ambush them, Su Che had already warned her not to target those at the Mahayana stage.
The surface reason was that those at the Mahayana stage were unfathomable, often possessing unexpected life-saving powers, and could easily detect Tian Yin’s ambush tactics.
The real reason was that Su Che didn’t want them to die so easily. How could he let them perish so effortlessly? They should at least go through the immortal prison first!
Didn’t they dream of seeing that black pagoda?
They would get that chance!