Apocalypse Online For All Worlds

Chapter 32: The Beginning of the End

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Gu Qingshan ran swiftly through the forest. When he saw a huge piece of empty land, he then carefully went around it.

After he had run several hundred meters out, he came to another piece of empty land.

Gu Qingshan paused for a moment, then went around the empty land again.

After walking for a while, he pushed the dense branches in front of him aside, and there lay yet another piece of empty land.

He looked out and realized that there were random pieces of empty land everywhere.

Gu Qingshan exhaled, then clenched his teeth and leaped to a higher place to look.

He raised his military bow and shot an arrow toward the ground.

The arrow stabbed deeply into the surface of the ground, and only its feathers could be seen.

After a while, a human face the size of a football field appeared on the surface of the ground.

The human face spat the arrow out and stared at Gu Qingshan. It asked in a low and slow voice, “How… did you… know… I… was… here?”

Gu Qingshan looked at the other party up and down, then said, “The mud is too fresh.”

“Fresh… what does… that mean?” There was a confused expression on the human face.

This was a demon that moved along the ground—an Earth-traveling Demon.

It could naturally withstand some attacks from Elemental Arts Experts, and if it ran into a sword cultivator, it would just disappear into the ground.

Ground Escape was a powerful Magical Power, and very few were able to grasp this power.

Earth-traveling demons seemed to be able to make armies fall before them very easily, and they were once a great headache to human cultivators.

It had taken a very long time for the players to discover that it had a fatal flaw: it wasn’t very intelligent.

As long as someone said something that could pique the interest of an Earth-travelling Demon, the Earth-travelling Demon would think it was true.

So Gu Qingshan replied, “You should bring some mud along from where you came from; then, it would be the same shade of brown as your body.

He continued, “If you did that, then I wouldn’t have been able to discover you. In fact, nobody would be able to discover you.”

The human face on the ground said, “Nobody… would be able… to discover me? Rea…lly?”

“Rea…lly?”

Countless similar voices started speaking at the same time.

Gu Qingshan tried his best to stay calm as he stood on the tree branch he was on and looked out.

There were countless giant faces emerging from the surface of the ground. There was some excitement on their faces as they looked at Gu Qingshan at the same time.

There were so many human faces densely packed together, they seemed to cover the entire mountain.

This was an army of Earth-travelling Demons, a core strength of the demon army.

Faceless Giants were powerful but few in number. If the demons wanted to surround their enemy, they still had to send out an army of Earth-travelling Demons.

“Of course it’s true. Nobody would find you,” Gu Qingshan laughed loudly as he looked around him. “If you don’t believe me, you can bring the mud over and try, I’ll wait for you here.”

The human face looked excited and raring to go. It said, “All right, you… wait for me… here.”

With that, the human face sank into the ground and disappeared very quickly.

“I’m… going too.”

One giant human face after another giant human face disappeared from the surface of the ground and went far, far away.

These demons must have come from the huge demon base camp that was thousands of kilometers away. So based on their usual traveling speed, these Earth-traveling Demons would probably require quite a bit of time before they would come back here.

The moment the Earth-travelling Demons left, Gu Qingshan turned and immediately made a run for it.

The movement of such a large army of Earth-travelling Demons might shock or alarm the demon army, so this large army might be stopped halfway back to the main camp and ordered to come back here.

And if they really returned, then he was doomed.

Gu Qingshan was about to make himself scarce when he heard a voice call out from somewhere not too far from him.

“Young man, thanks for getting us out of this. How may I address you?”

Gu Qingshan immediately turned around to see an old man smiling at him.

Gu Qingshan placed a hand on his military bow and quickly replied, “My name is Gu Qingshan, and I’m a soldier from the Valiant Cavalry Battalion. Who might you be? Do you have a waist tag?”

The old man threw his waist tag over. Gu Qingshan caught it and held it as he unleashed his Spirit Power.

The waist tag immediately lit up, and flames shot out from it. The flames came together to become lines, and slowly formed a few words.

“Dingyuan General Gongsun Zhi”

Gu Qingshan’s heart sank with a thud.

This was the Dingyuan General of the human cultivators’ combined forces, the Supreme Elder of the Sacred Path Faction, Formation Grandmaster Gongsun Zhi!

Why was it him?

Gu Qingshan had already left the army camp, and he had gone way off from where Gongsun Zhi had been surrounded and killed in history. So why had he ended up running into Gongsun Zhi anyway?

Gu Qingshan tossed his own waist tag over so that the other party could inspect it as well.

Both parties slowly felt their hearts calm down.

Gu Qingshan couldn’t help but speak first, “So it is General Gongsun. Why are you here all by yourself?”

Gongsun Zhi sighed and pulled out a small formation disk. He pressed both hands on it and shouted loudly, “Six Combined Formation, open up!”

Suddenly, the scenery in front of Gu Qingshan’s eyes changed completely. Everything he’d seen earlier disappeared in an instant, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in front of a temple.

There was absolutely nothing surrounding the temple, no matter which direction he looked. He couldn’t see the end of this vast nothingness.

Gongsun Zhi had actually used a formation to hide this huge temple within this mountainous forest!

Gu Qingshan followed Gongsun Zhi into the temple, only to find someone seated on a sitting mound in the middle wearing gold armor and a white cape.

This person didn’t appear bulky, despite wearing armor. Instead, the armor showed how slim and exquisite her tall and beautiful figure was.

She was looking down and only raised her head slightly when Gongsun Zhi came in with Gu Qingshan. When she realized that Gu Qingshan wasn’t even at Foundation Building stage, she looked back down again.

When she’d raised her head earlier, Gu Qingshan noticed that she was wearing a silver mask that completely covered her face.

“My little friend, Qingshan, I’m so glad you managed to chase away the army of Earth-travelling Demons. Otherwise, we’d have been stuck here forever.”

“He? He chased away the army of Earth-travelling Demons?” A delightful-sounding female voice started speaking.

The woman in gold armor sounded shocked, but nobody could see her expression under the silver mask.

“That’s right,” replied Gongsun Zhi. “Earth-travelling Demons can activate the element of Earth and can control mud easily, which had a great impact on the formation I had created. But he’s managed to fool them into leaving.”

“Fooled them into leaving?”

The woman in gold armor was even more confused.

Gongsun Zhi recounted what had happened earlier to her.

The woman in gold armor finally looked straight at Gu Qingshan and asked, “How did you know the weakness of this sort of creature?”

Gu Qingshan had already thought of how to answer this question, so he calmly replied, “I am a soldier from the Vanguard Battalion and I have to fight demons every day. I enjoy taking note of these demons’ characteristics, so that’s how I knew about this.”

“Vanguard Battalion? That makes sense too,” the woman in gold armor muttered to herself. “But from what I know, the Vanguard Battalion has been overtaken by the demon army, and they’ve practically wiped out the entire troop. You might be the only survivor.”

Gu Qingshan made sure he put a sad face on when she said this.

But Gongsun Zhi’s eyes lit up at this. He asked, “Then, do you have an understanding of other demons?”

When the human army generals had fought with the demons for the first time, they’d ended up suffering major losses because they’d had no idea what the special characteristics of each demon were.

Many troops had been completely wiped out and hadn’t had the chance to send any information back, so nobody had even been able to even know how powerful some of these demons were.

If just one soldier from the Vanguard Battalion managed to survive and could point out the characteristics of various demons, this would be of great help to future battles.

“I know a bit,” replied Gu Qingshan confidently.

The two in front of him seemed to look very grim and Gu Qingshan wasn’t sure how they would deal with him, so he decided to prove that he could be valuable to them.

As expected, Gongzun Zhi and the woman in gold armor exchanged glances, then nodded their heads.