Chapter 237: Sudden Locust Plague [5K monthly ticket request]
And if the two of them join forces, they should be able to barely fight against a weaker middle-stage Jindan like Cangyue Bei.
Having said that, after the two women broke through, Ye Linyuan had greater confidence in dealing with the upcoming troubles.
In the following time, he worked on cultivating the spiritual field while improving his various skills in cultivation.
Time passed like this, and several years passed in the blink of an eye. Before he knew it, Ye Linyuan was already two hundred and forty-five years old.
By this year, Ye Linyuan could no longer wait. If those people had not made the arrangements as he expected, he would probably have to go to the deep sea to plan for the Soul of the Sky Whale in order to help Shui Hanqing break through.
But in the same year, another major event occurred in the Seven Domain Alliance.
A huge swarm of soul-eating locusts came from overseas, and the locust plague swept across the entire Seven Domain Alliance. It started from the southwestern archipelago, and the Star Mark Palace was the first to be hit and suffered a great misfortune.
There are countless evil locusts in this locust plague. Among the evil locusts that cover the sky and the sun, there are some that are at the foundation-building stage or even the false elixir stage.
The most important thing is that although these locusts are not strong, they are gifted with extraordinary talents. They can devour the spiritual energy in the formations and restrictions, and then enter the spiritual fields to devour the spiritual medicines.
It is said that in the entire sea area under the jurisdiction of the Xinghen Palace, all major families fell into bad luck almost overnight.
The spiritual fields and medicinal gardens that the major families and sects had operated for hundreds or thousands of years were almost all devoured overnight.
Even the spiritual medicine garden of the Xinghen Palace became a completely deserted island after seven days and seven nights.
There is really no way to do this, because the number of the demon locusts is really too large. Wherever the countless demon locusts pass, it is impossible to kill them all.
Even the Golden Core masters of the Star Mark Palace had no good way to deal with these evil locusts.
Although the Golden Core Master is very powerful, the Soul-Eating Locusts can devour spiritual energy and have a certain degree of immunity to spells and magical powers.
When hundreds of millions of soul-eating locusts gather together, even the power of the spells of the Golden Core Masters will be greatly reduced.
Only Ling Zhifu's exclusive magic, the Golden Needle Technique, can have a great restraining and lethal effect on the Soul-Eating Locusts.
However, the Seven Domain Alliance is located in the deep sea. Isolated by the vast deep sea, disasters such as insect plagues rarely occur, so most spiritual plant husbands seldom practice this spell.
After all, Ling Zhifu is not good at fighting. When the family and sect are facing a life-and-death crisis, even if he has mastered the golden needle technique, he may not be able to save his life.
In their opinion, instead of wasting time practicing the useless golden needle technique, it would be better to use their energy on the spiritual rain technique and the spirit nourishing technique.
But now, they are suddenly hit by a locust plague, and these major forces are in big trouble.
Those monks who were not good at the golden needle technique had no good way to deal with these evil locusts. Even if they killed a few of them, it would be a drop in the bucket when facing the locust swarm.
Fortunately, the Xuanyuan Sea is located in the northeast of the Seven Domain Alliance, more than 700,000 miles away from the Xinghen Palace in the southwest, so it did not immediately suffer a major disaster.
Even so, as soon as Ye Linyuan learned the news, he still crossed the vast ocean and came to the Xinghen Palace.
He traveled all the way across the vast ocean, and when he arrived at the Xinghen Palace, his brows couldn't help but frown slightly.
But where the huge Xinghen Palace is located, in the vast continent of nearly ten thousand miles, 20% of the territory has become bare and turned into a lifeless earthy yellow color.
"What a domineering locust."
Ye Linyuan frowned, revealing a bit of solemnity.
At the same time, a man in green flew out of the Star Hall, his face pale as he cupped his hands and said, "Fellow Daoist Xuanyuan, please come in and have a chat."
Ye Linyuan recognized this person's origin and realized that he was the Taoist Xingyu, the supreme elder of the Xinghen Palace. He bowed to him and followed him.
Stepping into the hall, Ye Linyuan found that the place was already crowded.
In addition to the Palace Master and the Grand Elder of the Xinghen Palace, the Green Bull Demon King and the Black Dragon Demon King also came from the demon clan.
Old Man Qingyan came from the Changqing Immortal Sect, Old Ancestor Tianhe came from the Sanyuan Alliance, Taoist Minghu came from the Canghai Sect, and Master Huangji Sword came from the Tianxing Sword Sect.
In addition, Taoist Jingnie, Luoxia Sect Master, and the Golden Core Masters from various major forces have also arrived here.
Obviously, all major forces were greatly shocked by the sudden appearance of the Soul-Eating Locusts and attached great importance to this meeting.
At this time, seeing Ye Linyuan arrive, the Green Bull Demon King immediately said: "Fellow Daoist Xuanyuan from the farthest place has also arrived. We are all here. Let's start the discussion."
Upon hearing this, everyone present looked solemn and looked at the Star Mark Palace Master.
The Star Mark Palace Master had a heavy expression on his face, and with a flick of his sleeve, more than a dozen corpses of demon locusts appeared. The cultivation base of these demon locusts were all at the foundation-building stage, and the strongest among them had even reached the great perfection of foundation-building.
Looking at these demon locusts, the Star Mark Palace Master said with extremely angry eyes: "These Soul Devouring Locusts are not very strong, and they don't have any attack methods or killing abilities. They can basically not pose any threat to the same level."
"But their innate spell Soul Devouring is very difficult to deal with. Once a large number of demon locusts gather together, they will devour the spiritual power in our spells, greatly reducing the power of our spells."
“Once tens of millions of locusts gather together, it will be very difficult for even a Jindan master like me to kill them.”
When everyone heard this, they couldn't help but frowned slightly.
The Soul-Eating Locust has no means of attack, and its body is not as strong and solid as that of the Iron-Eating Ant and the Gold-Eating Bee.
They are small in size and weak in body, and their stored mana is less than one percent of that of monks of the same level, so they pose basically no threat to monks, and they rarely attack mortals and monks.
However, these evil locusts particularly like to devour spiritual medicines and plants. Wherever they pass, whether it is spiritual medicine, spiritual trees or spiritual rice, all will be devoured.
This was unacceptable to all the powerful Jindan masters present.
After all, spiritual medicines and plants are their lifeblood. Once they are completely devoured, how can they practice in the future?
Thinking of this, everyone present showed a hint of murderous intent in their eyes.
The Green Bull Demon King's face darkened. The Green Bull Demon Territory was very close to the Xinghen Palace. Once the Soul-Devouring Locusts swallowed up this area of sea, they would definitely be the next to suffer.
So his face was extremely solemn, and he couldn't help but ask: "These evil locusts are extremely difficult to deal with. Do you have any way to deal with them?"
Everyone present was silent for a moment, and the Taoist Master Jingnie said, "Gather all the spirit plant husbands of the Seven Regions Alliance to strangle these spirit-eating locusts with the Geng Golden Needles?"
"I'm afraid it's not enough."
Elder Qingyan shook his head, then sighed and said, "In the Seven Domain Alliance, there are very few cultivators who practice Gengjin Needle, and there is no one who has cultivated the third-level Gengjin Needle."
"It's probably far from enough to rely on these foundation-building monks to kill all these soul-devouring locusts."
The Green Bull Demon King pondered for a moment, and then said, "Then should we issue a bounty order and summon all the cultivators of the Seven Domain Alliance to besiege these demon locusts together?"
"There are countless locusts, and they can reproduce continuously. If we can't kill them quickly, I'm afraid that even if we empty the bounty, it will be useless."
Old man Qingyan shook his head repeatedly, then sighed and said.
Upon hearing this, the Green Bull Demon King's expression changed again and again. He couldn't help but ask, "Is there no way?"
“I’ve heard of two methods.”
At this moment, the Desolate Sword Master, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly spoke.
When everyone present heard this, their eyes suddenly lit up. The Green Bull Demon King couldn't help but ask, "Your sect has a long history, so there must be a way to get rid of the locusts. Please tell us, fellow Taoist."
The Desolate Sword Master pondered for a moment, then said, "According to the ancient books of my Tianxing Sword Sect, there are two ways to deal with the Soul Devouring Locusts."
"The first method is to kill the demon king among them."
"Demon King?" The Star Mark Palace Master's eyes moved slightly.
"Yes." The Lord of Desolate Sword nodded, and then said: "Whenever there is a chaos of demons and locusts, there must be a demon king hiding in it."
"With such a large number of soul-devouring locusts, there must be at least one golden elixir-level demon king hiding among them."
"As long as we kill the Soul Devouring Demon King, these Soul Devouring Locusts will be leaderless without the Demon King's leadership."
"By then, they will scatter and lose their powerful soul-devouring ability when they gather together. It won't be too difficult for us to kill them."
Everyone present nodded when they heard this. The reason why the Soul Devouring Locusts were so difficult to deal with was because of their soul-devouring properties when they gathered together.
When hundreds of millions of Soul-Eating Locusts gather together, their Soul-Eating characteristics will be infinitely amplified, and even the Golden Core Masters will not be able to do anything to them.
But once these soul-eating locusts disperse, they will no longer be a concern.
An ordinary soul-eating locust is only one inch in size, has no attack power, and is very weak. A mortal can kill it with a hoe, let alone those monks.
After all, low-level Soul-Eating Locusts are too small, and the mana they store is less than one thousandth of that of cultivators of the same level. Even if they have soul-eating abilities, they cannot devour too much mana, and they can feed them to death.
Therefore, if the Soul-Eating Locusts cannot gather into groups, they will not pose any threat to them. Thinking of this, everyone immediately had the idea of killing the Soul-Eating Locusts.
However, they were not in a hurry to take action. The Taoist of Pure Nirvana could not help but look at the Sword Master of Desolate Silence and asked, "Sword Master, may I ask, what is the second method?"
The Desolate Sword Master was silent for a moment, and finally said, "The second way is to let him eat."
"Pick all the valuable spiritual herbs and put them in the storage bag, leaving the low-level and empty spiritual fields for them, so that those soul-eating locusts can eat their fill."
"Once they have eaten all the spiritual medicines in the entire sea area and their population has expanded to ten or a hundred times their original size, they will find that there are no more spiritual medicines to consume."
"At that time, hunger will make them devour each other. Once the demon locusts start devouring each other on a large scale, it will be impossible to stop them. In the end, only a very small number of high-level demon locusts will die."
"Without the large-scale locust swarm, we may be able to kill all of these evil locusts."
When everyone heard this, their faces turned pale.
Once they did this, regardless of whether they could eventually kill the remaining locusts, they would definitely suffer heavy losses.
After all, high-level spiritual medicines are difficult to transplant, and except for very few means of sealing them, the possibility of growing them alive after they are put into storage bags and then taken out will be greatly reduced.
Of course, if they mastered advanced golden needle techniques, they might still be able to protect their own dojo.
For example, Ye Linyuan, with his golden needle technique at the pseudo-supernatural power level and his cultivation at the golden elixir level, it should be more than enough for him to guard the hundred acres of spiritual fields on Xuanyuan Island.
So at this moment, Ye Linyuan just watched all this without changing his expression.
"It's better not to use this second method as much as possible."
Elder Qingyan gave a bitter smile, and then said, "Let's join forces and see if we can kill that demon locust."
"it is good."
All the Jindan masters present nodded and then left the hall one after another.
After leaving the hall, they flew all the way deep into the continent and soon arrived at a mountain range.
After arriving at the mountains, they found countless evil locusts eating the plants in the mountains. Wherever these evil locusts passed, countless plants were disappearing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"They eat even ordinary trees. These evil locusts are truly unscrupulous."
Taoist Jingnie's face turned slightly cold, and he immediately sacrificed his magic weapon, the Purple Flame Lamp. In an instant, a raging purple flame swept across, and countless flames instantly submerged the mountains and rivers within a radius of dozens of miles.
In an instant, countless locusts were burned to ashes.
"Sususususu!"
At this moment, countless demon locusts rose into the sky, hundreds of millions of them covered the sky, they gathered together and covered the sky for hundreds of miles.
Taoist Jingnie's expression changed slightly, and he immediately urged the purple flame to sweep away again.
But this time, when the flames rolled across the sky, they were absorbed by the sphere composed of countless locusts and were burned to ashes in an instant.
"Soul Devouring Locusts are good at devouring spiritual energy. Although your Purple Flame Sky Fire is not weak, it is far from enough to burn them to death."
Elder Qingyan spoke slowly, and then said solemnly: "The Soul Devouring Demon King must be in the insect swarm. Let's attack together and see if we can break the insect swarm and kill it."
"it is good--"
The Lord of the Desolate Sword was the first to speak, and then with a flick of his sleeve a sword energy pierced through the sky, and he was the first to charge into the vast sea of insects.
The Green Bull Demon King, the Star Mark Palace Master, and other major golden elixirs rose into the air one after another, and each of them charged into the insect infestation with unparalleled might.
Ye Linyuan also calmly charged into the insect swarm, but after the initial fight, his brows slightly frowned.
Because this swarm of soul-eating insects is too powerful. Under the devouring of such a huge swarm of insects, even the magical powers of the golden elixir masters present can only exert 10% or 20% of their power.
After most of the magical power has been absorbed, can they still deal with the Soul-Devouring Demon King after entering the formation?
You know, no matter how weak the Soul-Eating Locust is, if it can reach the Golden Core realm, it will probably be able to gradually make up for its own shortcomings.
After all, as a purely auxiliary type of spiritual insect, the water silkworm in the Golden Core Realm also has the combat power of a fake elixir. This soul-eating locust is fed with spiritual medicines, so its strength should be even stronger than that of the water silkworm.
Moreover, Ye Linyuan had been keeping an eye on Taoist Minghu, but he found that this person did not seem to have taken any action seriously. He only showed a small part of his strength and did not seem to be serious about exterminating the Soul-Eating Locusts.
"It's too much of a coincidence that the Soul Devouring Bug appeared after Taoist Minghu left for a while. Is there some kind of connection behind this?"
"Or is it that this locust plague is not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster?"
Thinking of this, Ye Linyuan couldn't help but slow down his pace, and a hint of coldness appeared in his eyes.
Just as Ye Linyuan was pondering, the battle in front became more and more intense. Ye Linyuan could not see clearly what had happened. He only knew that after a series of fierce battles, the Lord of the Desolate Sword and others in front of him all let out sounds of shock and anger.
Not long after, these Jindan masters returned injured one by one and fled out of the locust swarm.
Ye Linyuan flew out with him, and when he got away from the locust swarm and looked at everyone, he found that the Master of the Desolate Sword had a pale face, and the Green Bull Demon King had an extremely heavy look in his eyes.
Seeing this, Ye Linyuan couldn't help but ask: "Everyone, what is in the center of the locust swarm that made you retreat?"
"A Spirit Devouring Locust in the middle stage of the Golden Core." Elder Qingyan spoke with an extremely solemn expression, "That insect king is at the bottom of the middle stage of the Golden Core. Any one of us in the middle stage of the Golden Core can take it down."
"But at that time, there were a large number of soul-devouring locusts helping us. We could only use one tenth or one twelfth of our magical powers. Even if we fought them, we would not be able to gain an advantage."
Upon hearing this, Ye Linyuan couldn't help but frown slightly.
The offensive magical powers of Jindan cultivators will have their spiritual power devoured by the Soul-Eating Locusts, but their protective qi and magical weapons are condensed and do not disperse, making it difficult for low-level Soul-Eating Insects to devour their spiritual power by relying on their numbers.
Therefore, facing a swarm of locusts, they can only exert one-tenth or one-twentieth of the power of their offensive abilities, but that does not mean they can only exert 10% or 20% of their strength.
Even so, it still has a great impact on them.
After all, it is very difficult for them to kill a demon king in the middle stage of the Jindan in the insect swarm. If they keep fighting in it, they will be in danger of being killed when their magic power is exhausted.
Therefore, this battle must not continue.
Even though Ye Linyuan had mastered the pseudo-magical power Geng Jin Zhen, which had great power over the Soul-Devouring Insects, he did not dare to say that he was sure of killing the Soul-Devouring Demon King in the middle stage of the Golden Core.
"The Gengjin needle is extremely sharp, and is best at breaking through the surface with a single point. It is the best way to restrain the soul-devouring locusts. If it can be transformed into a minor great magical power, it may be able to decide the outcome of a surprise attack with one strike."
Ye Linyuan pondered in his heart, and couldn't help but think of the black gold vein: "Calculating the time, the black gold mine is about to take shape."
As his mind was tossing and turning, Ye Linyuan quickly suppressed all thoughts and looked at the people present.
But the Lord of the Desolate Sword glanced at everyone, and then said calmly: "Everyone, it seems that this Soul Devouring Demon King cannot be taken down. We can only deal with it according to the second method."
"You should go back quickly and pick the spiritual herbs early."
As soon as he finished speaking, the Lord of the Desolate Sword was the first to stand up and disappeared into the vast sky.
At the same time, Ye Linyuan also flew across the sky and headed deep into the void, and soon caught up with the Lord of the Desolate Sword.
Seeing him following, the Desolate Sword Master immediately asked, "Fellow Daoist Xuanyuan, are you sure?"
"If I can get that treasure, maybe I can give it a try."
Ye Linyuan spoke calmly, and then said with a serious look: "But I feel that the origin of this Soul Devouring Demon King is probably a little strange."
(End of this chapter)
