Chapter 802: Golden Road or Death Road?

Everyone glanced at one another, and Xu Lizhi sighed, "You're not to blame for this, Captain; we've also been neglecting our team training. After entering the inner court, we've been studying under different teachers and striving to better ourselves, so we haven't been training together anywhere near as frequently as we had in the past. It should indeed become a priority for us to improve in this area, especially now that we're all one-word battle armor masters."

Tang Wulin nodded, and said, "You're right. The teamwork that we still have was all developed four years ago. In fact, our synergy is probably even worse than back then because of how rusty we are. The main issue is that we're not familiar with one another's new skills, and that's greatly detrimental to our teamwork. We are Shrek’s Seven Monsters; we're a unified team, a single whole entity; our combined powers should be greater than the sum of our individual powers. Hence, we have to increase the frequency of our team training during this military training period."

Ye Xinglan nodded in response. "I agree."

Everyone also expressed their approval of this course of action.

Thus, Tang Wulin said, "Alright, let's set off then. We have to find a car as quickly as possible. Elder Cai stipulated a 15-day deadline for us, and it's not a long time. On top of that, we encountered that unforeseen incident yesterday, and that's delayed us even further."

Mu Chen had given Tang Wulin a lot of money, and it wasn't enough to buy a car, but it was definitely enough to rent cars. All they had to do was rent a car in this city, then return the car at the branch of the same company in their destination city.

Everyone knew how to drive, so that wasn't an issue, and a seven-seater car was perfect for them. They weren't exactly living the high life, but it was certainly far from uncomfortable in the car.

Xie Xie was responsible for driving while Tang Wulin read the map and gave directions, while everyone else sat in the back. 

Xu Xiaoyan and Yue Zhengyu were still appraising one another like enemies the day before, but they had since become completely inseparable. She hadn't slept well the night before, and the car was traveling quite smoothly, so she quickly fell asleep in Yue Zhengyu's arms.

"At our current speed, even if we drive for over 10 hours a day, it'll still take us four days to get to our destination. As expected, high-speed soul trains really are faster!" Tang Wulin sighed with furrowed brows as he looked down at the map.

"There's no use thinking about that; what if we have another accident? I think we can safely conclude that you and high-speed trains just aren't meant to be, Boss," Xie Xie chuckled.

The rest of the journey was relatively smooth. At the very least, they didn't encounter any evil Soul Masters.

Four days later, they arrived at a seaside city situated in the northeastern region of the continent, Northsea City. After traveling across the continent for so many days, the air temperature had dropped significantly. Even though changes in air temperature didn't affect their bodies much at their cultivation ranks, it was still rather cold to them.

"We're finally here." After arriving at Northsea City, they returned the car to the rental company first, and everyone's expressions were rather weary.

They'd been driving for over 10 hours every day, and even though their bodies could handle it, their minds were quite fatigued.

Tang Wulin said, "We can't afford to stop here. I can't shake the feeling that the rest of our journey is going to be very difficult. Let me see if I can find out some information about how we can go out to sea and travel to our destination."

According to Elder Cai's instructions, the venue for their military training was situated on a small island around 30 kilometers away from Northsea City. If they wanted to get to the small island from where they were, they definitely had to have boats.

"Taxis are part of the transportation industry; perhaps taxi drivers will know where we can rent boats from," Xie Xie suggested as he pointed at the nearby taxi they'd just emerged from.

Tang Wulin said, "That's a good idea."

Thus, Xie Xie went to try his luck.

Moments later, he returned with a dark expression on his face.

"You were right, Boss; it's not going to be easy to get to that island. Do you want to hear what the taxi driver said?" Xie Xie asked in a slightly speechless manner.

Tang Wulin asked, "What did he say?"

Xie Xie replied, "As soon as I told him where we wanted to go, he looked at me as if he were staring at a ghost and asked me if we wanted to die. On top of that, according to them, Northsea City doesn't even have a single dock because the region of the sea next to the city is rife with strong winds and massive waves, and there are large numbers of sea soul beasts there as well. In their words, it's the sea of death!"

"I knew it," Tang Wulin sighed in a speechless manner.

"Not even long-distance ferries can travel through these waters?" Yue Zhengyu asked.

Xie Xie replied, "Long-distance ferries? You're being way too optimistic here. On the northeastern coast, there are only docks large enough for long-distance ferries to stop at in Heavensea City and Eastsea City. Those cities are way too far away from here, and it would take an eternity for a ferry to travel from there to here. Also, how are we going to convince a ferry to travel through a region of the sea that's renowned for its sea soul beast infestation?"

Tang Wulin gave a resigned shrug. "Looks like this is the trial we have to face before we even begin our military training."

Yuanen Yehui suggested, "Let's go to the seaside first. We have to ascertain just how powerful those sea soul beasts are before we devise a plan."

"Let's go!" Tang Wulin waved a hand, and everyone got on a taxi heading straight toward the eastern coast of Northsea City.

The taxi was forced to stop around five kilometers away from the coast.

Everyone looked on at the hundred-meter-tall walls that were packed with all types of heavy soul artillery with dumbstruck expressions on their faces.

Even though they hadn't even seen the sea yet, they could tell from how heavily guarded these city walls were that the sea soul beasts on the other side definitely had to be extremely fearsome.

"Do any of you recognize the soul tools on the wall?" Tang Wulin murmured. He hadn't done much research into soul tools, and he only knew some basic information about them.

A wry smile appeared on Xie Xie's face. "I don't know much about soul tools, but have a look at the foot of the city wall. Those are most likely hyper soul battery arrays; I don't need to elaborate on what those things do, right?"

Indeed, in the direction that Xie Xie was pointing toward, there was a building at the foot of the city wall that had at least three extreme warning signs around it. From the shape of the building and the signs around it, it was easy to deduce what this building was.

Hyper soul battery arrays were an extremely complex type of super battery with soul arrays as their cores, and they could supply enormous amounts of energy. Generally speaking, they were only used for very powerful soul tools such as large soul barriers. These were the types of soul tools that were used in the military, and they were different from anything used in the academy. Furthermore, there were some ultra-powerful soul cannons that had to be powered using such batteries.

With these city walls in place, even making it out of the city would be extremely difficult, let alone traveling over the ocean.

"This is no Golden Road; this is a death road!" Xu Lizhi said with a wry smile.

After a brief stunned stupor, Tang Wulin quickly collected himself. "Let's go back for now."

As the captain, he certainly couldn't lead his friends into doing anything reckless. After returning to the city, Tang Wulin got a room in a small hotel, then spread open the map of Northsea City he'd just bought onto the table.

"Alright, this red area here should be the area covered by the city wall, and this is a continuous stretch of 50 kilometers along the coast. Some of the sections consist of giant rocks, but aside from that, the city wall stretches over this entire area, and all of the walls are heavily guarded. It's quite clear that they'd definitely be using the most advanced surveillance radars, so it would be next to impossible to sneak over the wall, and we certainly just can't just cross over it by force."

On the map, the entire region of the sea outside the coastline of the city was annotated with skull symbols, and it was quite obvious what those symbols represented. However, the map that Elder Cai had given them didn't have such annotations. There was only a small island, as well as the straight-line distance from the island to Northsea City.

The so-called Golden Road was the stretch of distance that had to be covered from Northsea City to the small island.

"If we can't go over it, then there's only one feasible method open to us; we have to go around it. We have to at least get to the coastline and examine it for ourselves. On top of that, we don't even have any coordinates; all we know is that there's a small island situated 30 kilometers from the coast of Northsea City."