Chapter 238: Lava Lake
Translator: AstralGhost Editor: Kurisu
Bei Feng stood on the cliff and retracted his six-meter-long wing. As he cast his gaze over, he could not help but feel a shiver run down his spine.
Not far away, there was a small mountain, about 500 meters tall. Compared to the other mountains around it, it was considered one of the smallest ones. But one just had to set their eyes on that insignificant little mountain and they would automatically throw the other mountains out of their minds.
The small mountain was surrounded by a ring of tall mountains, or from another perspective, it was protected in the middle by the other mountains. The entire scene formed an archaic picture which gave one a feeling of ancientness.
The mountain was completely black and bare, without a single stalk of green on it. From where Bei Feng stood, it looked like he was looking at a giant bear roaring at the heavens!
A shocking aura spread out with the small mountain as the center, suppressing everything in a 10 li radius!
A towering image of a giant bear so tall that it pierced through the clouds was revealed through Bei Feng's perception. The entire mountain sat right in the middle of the giant bear figure!
Any living beings that stepped into the area covered by the giant bear image would feel a crippling fear wrapping around their hearts, as if they were being eyed by their natural predator!
"Hou!"
Bei Feng's Bear Manifestation erupted by itself, roaring menacingly towards the sky. The powerful roar rebounded through the mountain valley, causing the trees to tremble and the rocks to shake!
Strangely, there was no strange phenomenon caused by the energy flow this time. Instead, he felt an intense thirst from the Bear Manifestation towards the small mountain!
Bei Feng flapped his wing and shot towards the black mountain.
When he landed back on ground level, the small mountain looked completely ordinary.
The only strange thing was that one would feel a strong sense of repulsion towards this place, making them want to turn back and leave.
Bei Feng suppressed this feeling and began to climb up the mountain.
The small black mountain looked like it had been formed from a single gigantic boulder. The ground and the rocks on it were extremely hard. Bei Feng placed his fingers under a piece of jutting rock and exerted a portion of his strength, but was unable to do anything to it at all!
'What a sturdy stone!' Bei Feng gasped internally. He'd used 30% of his strength, which was already a shocking amount of power! A crushing force of several tens of thousand jin was actually unable to do anything to this stone!
Then, he began to exert more strength slowly, as if trying to experiment with the sturdiness of the stone. Only after he used all his might did he finally managed to pry the stone out of the ground!
With a thought, the golden dagger appeared, and pierced towards a nearby boulder the size of a millstone.
"Dang!"
A light sound rang out and the boulder was split in two, being cleanly sliced apart from the center. Although the cut was smooth, Bei Feng could feel a resisting force when the dagger clashed into the boulder!
Some of the force was attributed to the speed of the dagger, but the result was still very surprising.
'If the dagger was a little slower just now, I might not have been able to slice the boulder apart!' Bei Feng thought with some shock in his heart. The strike he unleashed earlier was merely traveling at supersonic speed. If he'd struck with a speed five times the speed of sound, the boulder would not be able to block the sharpness of the dagger at all!
The mountain was not tall, and Bei Feng reached its peak in just a few minutes.
A crater fifty meters in radius and of unknown depth was revealed to Bei Feng. From where he stood, the crater seemed like the jaws of the giant bear. The jagged, protruding rocks were like the teeth, ready to snap shut over its prey at any moment!
With a move of his intent, Bei Feng's mental power gushed out of his body and enveloped a radius of ten meters around him. The golden dagger also appeared and swam around his body like a little fish.
The huge wing unfurled behind his back and Bei Feng jumped into the crater directly.
Because of the angle of the crater's mouth, light from the outside was able to shine directly down the crater. There was no need to worry about visibility at all.
Of course, there was no need to mention Bei Feng's abilities. As long as there was a shred of light present, he would be able to see perfectly!
Bei Feng's sleeves fluttered noisily and his hair flowed wildly as the wind blew against him.
It was unknown how deep the crater was. After free-falling for over a minute, the end could still not be seen!
"I won't fall to the center of the Earth at this rate, right?!"
Bei Feng swallowed nervously. Even if he jumped off Mt Everest, he should have reached the ground by now, right?
Fortunately, he did not really fall to the center of the Earth. Roughly ten more seconds passed before Bei Feng could see the bottom. He extended his wing and controlled his descent, finally landing safely at the bottom.
The temperature here was rather high, exceeding 45 degree Celsius!
Normal people would not be able to last long in such an environment. They would become dehydrated quickly and die. But to Bei Feng, such conditions were truly not able to affect him much.
The bottom of the crater was only about 100 meter wide, while a 20-meter-tall passageway could be seen on the other side of it.
After probing the area with his mental power, Bei Feng proceeded to step into the passageway fearlessly.
The passageway was completely pitch-black, and even Bei Feng had no ways of seeing anything. He directly relied on his mental power to outline the surroundings.
This could be considered one of the ways to utilize mental power. This amount of mental power expenditure was also negligible to Bei Feng. He could easily maintain the current method for a long period of time.
"Could this passageway be something that a giant bear dug?"
Bei Feng looked at the walls of the passageway which was covered in claw marks from unknown ages ago with some disbelief. Quickening his footsteps, he hurried further down the passageway.
Time flowed on and without him noticing, Bei Feng had already been walking through the passageway for an entire day. Based on his speed, he'd at least traveled a few hundred kilometers!
The deeper he walked, the higher the temperature grew. 'Is this a passageway leading to a lava pool? The temperature's already reached 50-60 degrees Celcius!'
Bei Feng furrowed his brows lightly. Although the conditions were becoming worse, he could feel that the energy which flowed to him was right before him!
He'd already spent so much time on this quest, and he was so close to finding out the source of that power. There was no reason to quit right now.
After a while, some light could be seen ahead as the passageway finally came to an end. This light was unlike the warm daylight, and was instead a blazing orange.
Bei Feng stepped through the passageway decisively. As expected, there was really a large lava pool here!
Waves of hot air washed over Bei Feng's body, bringing along a nasty sulfuric smell. Whenever a bubble burst apart, it would release a terrible smelling black mist.
The lava lake seemed boundless, with no shore in sight. Numerous stone pillars made of the same material as the rest of the mountain lined the sides of the lake, standing erect.
Bei Feng stretched out his wing mutely as he cast his gaze across the cavern. The entire scene looked like something right out of a dream, and had a fantasy feeling about it!
With the stone pillars as a guide, he flapped his wing and flew forward. Large waves of lava splashed upwards from time to time. However, the waves were quickly sealed by his aura.
After over ten minutes, a huge black pillar with a wide platform appeared in front of his eyes.
"Boom!"
As soon as he entered within the perimeter of the stone pillar, he felt a huge force slamming down on him on all directions, causing him to smack face first into the hard rocky ground.
'That was close! If I was flying above the lava when this force came down, I would have croaked right there and then!'
Bei Feng's heart was still jumping about wildly over the close encounter. With his current physique, he would be a goner if he fell into the lava!
After adjusting his condition, he flapped his wing again. But right as he left the ground, the huge force appeared again!
Bei Feng hurriedly kept the wing. Indeed, the powerful pressure completely disappeared when he did that.
'What's going on?' Bei Feng thought deeply as he stood on the platform. Why did he get pressured down as soon as he left the ground?
He tried jumping into the air several times, reaching seven, eight meters every time. However, there was no reaction from the strange force. But as long as he merely flapped his wing, he would be faced with the full force of the pressure!
"Flight is forbidden?!"
Bei Feng was truly impressed this time. How did they differentiate between jumping and flying?
Despite spending a long time thinking about it, he was still unable to understand the weird mystery. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked calmly towards the perimeters of the stone platform.
The platform was extremely wide, but as he rounded a portion of the pillar, his breath quickened as he stared dumbly at the scene behind it. Thereafter, a loud voice echoed about in the cavern. "There are so many f*king giant bears here?!"