Little Shrubby's figure had almost melded with the land of the Desolate Blood Battlefield.
The land was red and so was Little Shrubby, making it hard to differentiate the two at the speed he was traveling. If one looked at it from a distance, they might even think that they had a mistake and rub their eyes.
Even blinking might make them miss the speeding figure of Little Shrubby.
"There it is!" just after five minutes, Lin Mu and Little Shrubby discovered the first landmark.
It was a hill that was just a hundred meters tall surrounded by tens of similar hills. The only difference was that this was the only hill that had sword marks on it. They were remnants of the past and now served a new purpose.
"These marks though… they weren't made mistakenly." Lin Mu narrowed his eyes.
Having developed Sword Intent, Lin Mu could tell this instinctively.
If they were simply made while attacking someone, the marks wouldn't be exactly as how they were. Lin Mu was sure they were made here not for attacking someone, but for some kind of a message.
"Take us close, Little Shrubby." Lin Mu spoke, wanting to check it properly.
~SHUA~
In just a single leap, they were now at the hill.
Lin Mu flew up and got close to the sword marks. There were several sword marks on the hill, with some intersecting and some independent. Their sizes varied too, some being as long as ten meters while a couple being only an inch long.
The small ones might be missed by the one observing, if they didn't have a good perception. After all, they could very well pass off as natural marks developed due to weathering of the hill due to the natural elements.
After counting them all, Lin Mu found that there were fifty six sword marks. But he wasn't satisfied by just that.
"What's the reason behind these?" Lin Mu placed his hand on them.
~HUMM~
And as soon as he did, he sensed his own Sword Intent stir. It seemingly resonated with the Sword Marks and caused the very air to shake.
"This…" Lin Mu could feel an illusion forming in front of him.
The illusion was of a swordsman who seemed to be greatly injured. One of his arms was missing and blood covered his entire body. An expression of absolute fury and hate was on his face while he swung his sword with the remaining hand.
~SHING~SHING~SHING~
In less than two seconds, he had swing the sword fifty six times, carving the marks in the hill.
At the same time, his lips moved as a few words were spoken.
The illusion disappeared after that but the memory was still fresh in Lin Mu's mind.
"The Curse of Desolation is our penance…" Lin Mu muttered the words that the swordsman had spoken.
They certainly had a dark intonation, especially with the illusion that Lin Mu had seen. He stayed still for about a minute before snapping out of that state.
"For a memory like that to stay intact in the sword intent… just how strong was the swordsman?" Lin Mu wondered.
He could vividly feel the emotions that the swordsman expressed when carving the sword marks. All of them were willfully sealed within the sword intent, as a message to all those that would chance upon them.
"Looks like that was a master swordsman. Someone fully focused on the Sword Dao for his memory to still be intact." Xukong said after watching it all.
"Mmhmm," Lin Mu nodded his head. "Still, the sword intent has faded away over the years. This should have been an open warning to everyone earlier." He added.
"Indeed. It should have alerted one just by looking at it, but now it has fallen to the point where it could only be triggered by your own sword intent." Xukong agreed. "Most cultivators might not even sense the peculiarities of the sword marks."
"Shouldn't someone have studied these, considering how long it has been and the fact that this is now used as a landmark?" Lin Mu wondered.
"They might have, but perhaps its importance is not as big to them." Xukong replied. "After all, if there is no use for this information, why would anyone think much about it? Its function as a landmark might be better in the current case." He added.
"Hopefully that is true…" Lin Mu still wondered about the words of the swordsman.
It gave him a bad feeling about the battlefield and only made him more wary.
"Do we know where to go now?" Little Shrubby asked, seeing that Lin Mu was still standing.
"Yes…" Lin Mu compared the directions on the map and pointed it to Little Shrubby.
~WHOOSH~
A few seconds later, they were already a blur and on their way to the next location.
Along the way, Lin Mu's immortal sense was fully extended, observing everything that was in its path. He didn't want to get ambushed or encounter and accident after all. Though that was unlikely to happen with Little Shrubby's speed and reaction time.
This also allowed Lin Mu to observe the various kinds of creatures that inhabited this place.
Most of these were small critters that were below the Immortal realm. But all of them were seemingly affected by the aura of this place and were quite ferocious. If not for that fact that Little Shrubby was too fast, they might have been chasing after them too.
Lin Mu found various creatures like scorpions, worms, beetles, and many more that were transformed by the bloody aura of the Battlefield.
'These might have been normal beasts at one point but now have morphed entirely into a new species…' Lin Mu guessed.
~GIGIGIGIGI~
And while they were running, they heard a strange cry. Lin Mu and Little Shrubby both sensed something and prepared for conflict.
"Dodge!" Lin Mu's immortal sense picked up an incoming attack.
~CRASH~
Merely a few moments later, the spot that they should have been in was struck with a flaming large boulder.
