Chapter 177 Sudden Change

"Master!…"

Swoosh!

"Master!…"

Swoosh!

"Master!…"

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Maiden 001 was like a black, solidified ray of smoke as she rushed aimlessly in all directions while shouting. However, since she couldn't expand her domain or her spiritual sense, she had no means of overwhelming the misty fog, and it seemed that this fog wasn't a viable medium to carry sound waves. In fact, she had this weird sensation that the sound waves were absorbed a few steps after leaving her body.

That was mainly because whenever she yelled out, only the fog within a few dozen steps would fluctuate ever-so-slightly, and that was it.

She felt very anxious.

Unable to fly either, she was simply rushing about in the mist, shouting her lungs out.

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip!

As she was running, she suddenly heard the sound of tapping water, immediately coming to a grinding stop. Then, she looked down to find herself stepping on white flower petals on the surface of a body of shallow water, but much like the petals, her feet wouldn't sink past the surface.

"Shallow water?"

Maiden 001 scrutinized the water carefully, she then bent over to pick up one of the petals. However, the moment this petal left the surface of the shallow water, it quickly began to sublimate from a solid to a gaseous state, skipping the liquid stage.

This sudden transformation caught the Maiden by surprise, but she quickly realized that some mist began to leak through the shallow water, quickly solidifying into another white petal that weighed down on the shallow water.

She was stunned.

This was similar to how she condensed her smoke into arrows, but anyone could tell that her arrows were a clump of smoke held together by a layer of dense spiritual strength reinforced by the properties of ether and her martial intent.

However, if she didn't see the transformation from solid to gaseous and vice versa in front of her eyes, she wouldn't have come to suspect that these flower petals were condensed from mist and fog.

Or rather, the fog in this region was originally white petals that drifted from the lake over countless years?

Her eyes glowed with astonishment, hurriedly rushing into the depths of this shallow water.

However, what both Leonardo and Maiden 001 overlooked was that if even they got lost in the fog, so would other people too. At the moment, this region of white, misty fog was swarming with rogue cultivators, be it in groups or individually.

The moment this curtain of fog was lifted, a curtain of carnage would inevitably follow…

Puff!

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip!

Puff!

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip!

Puff!

Maiden 001 was dashing across the shallow water's surface with a bow in hand, volley after volley of arrows in pairs or trios shot out from her bowstring.

Around her from all sides were solid white tentacles connected directly to the surface of the shallow water, but their durability wasn't as great as to block her arrows. Nonetheless, since these tentacles were directly connected to the water, they never dissipated entirely but were only subjected to enough force capable of hindering their movements…

Sweat poured down her forehead as her long black hair whipped about in the air, countless black arrows shooting omnidirectionally with unprecedented accuracy.

A tentacle shot from a tricky angle and snaked around her right leg, and thigh, and eventually swirled around her thin waist and bound tightly, blocking her from evading another tentacle that shot towards her other leg.

Without hesitation, she reverse gripped the bow and swung the bowstring across her leg, ripping the long skirt apart, along with the tentacle.

Blood splattered as a few inches deep wound cut into her flesh, but she quickly performed a backflip to evade being locked in place once more.

She suddenly heard an air-ripping sound and instinctively spun like a lotus on the water, her eyes growing focused as she withdrew her longbow, encased her feet in thin layers of black miasma smoke, and focused her attention on the vibrations in the air.

In an instant, she dodged over a dozen projectiles with one tearing apart the fabric on her right shoulder. However, she immediately trained her eyes across the path of this one projectile as though she intentionally allowed it to strike her.

She was shocked to find another woman across the lake.

She was tall, had a head of long silver hair, and crimson eyes. Sharp nails crowned her delicate fingers, but most conspicuous of all was her absurdly pale skin and a pair of pristine white canines not unlike a vampire's fangs.

Well, Maiden 001 was pretty sure they didn't only resemble a vampire's, but they should belong to one.

The tall woman wore a sleeveless short dress, transparent fabric flowed like a curtain of moonlight to barely conceal her milky thighs. On her arms, however, long gashes of blood trickled down from the elbows to her forearm, this blood quickly dissolving into mist upon contact with the humid air.

The red, bloody mist swirled around this woman like instrumental strings, whipping apart the white tentacles with absurd accuracy while intermittently blasting hails of condensed blood projectiles at Maiden 001.

Both women were using a smoke subcategory of martial intent. However, one of them relied on blood, and anyone can tell that the woman's cultivation heavily relied on increasing the density of her blood in volume. As for the other, she had to make a delicate balance between her energy and martial intent, using the former to fuel the latter.

Nonetheless, Maiden 001's offensive capabilities lay in her bow and arrows, obviously a disadvantage in mid-range battles.

Thus, upon sensing danger, she immediately gave up on using offense as defense, instead adopting a passive position the moment she encountered an interloper.

However, this encounter finally shook her heart as she realized what she had overlooked; she wasn't the only one with smoke subcategory martial intent in this world…

The other woman also arrived at a similar conclusion the moment she stepped into this lake of shallow water, but she didn't expect her sneak attack to fail miserably.

Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip!

Both women were bleeding, their blood blossoming like crimson roses on the shallow waters, but neither of them noticed anything wrong with the fact that the moment their blood touched the water's surface, each drop drifted about individually, resembling pure pearls.

In the haze of this smoke, as more blood poured into the water, it seemed as though the shallow water was examining each droplet.

However, the two didn't have time to focus on that as the screen of fog covering the lake suddenly ruptured from multiple directions as four people landed on the shallow waters, instantly freezing in caution.

As for why that happened, it was because everyone heard them, which was an irregular experience at this point in time…