Zhou Quan scrambled up from the ground and hid behind Yang An.

As Yang An controlled the White Feathers to fight off the Beng Birds, he saw what Zhou Quan did and frowned.

'This guy is a fucking idiot. I have no idea how he passed the old master's discipleship ceremony!'

He couldn't be bothered with Zhou Quan and focused his energy on dealing with the Beng Birds.

Fortunately, the Spinal True Feather was constantly being bathed in blood. Its power and hardness were rapidly increasing. Even its controllable range visibly lengthened from five meters, gradually extending to seven.

Not a single Beng Bird had managed to escape the White Feathers' impenetrable slaughter and break through. Yang An's confidence soared!

A full stick of incense later, the last Beng Bird was diced into mincemeat by dozens of White Feathers. White, yellow, and red bits splattered across the ground.

Yang An finally let out a long breath, pulling the White Feathers back.

Before him, the corpses of countless Beng Birds had piled into a small mountain of flesh. The thick, pungent stench of blood washed over him. Blood and scattered gore covered an area more than ten meters across.

The area had become a bloody slaughterhouse, a spectacular sight.

Zhou Quan, standing to the side, was completely silent, too shocked by the scene to speak.

But as Yang An held the Spinal True Feather, he subconsciously glanced at the veins and tendons connecting it to his own spine and couldn't help but frown.

He saw that the veins and tendons connected to the hilt of the Spinal True Feather were caked with large amounts of dust and dirt. They looked filthy.

He immediately realized the danger.

'We're inside the Broken Armor. With my powers completely nullified, my physical body is no different from a normal person's.'

'If I retract the Spinal True Feather, I'll be pulling all this filth back inside me.'

'Without my Undying Body, the moment I retract it, my body will probably react badly. I could get a bacterial infection immediately and develop all kinds of symptoms.'

'This means that if I stay in the Broken Armor for too long, I'll die.'

'I have to get out of here quickly and enter the Treasure Temple Domain to recover my strength!'

'Besides, this mountain of Beng Bird corpses has such a strong smell of blood... It's bound to attract other Beng Birds soon, or even more beasts and monsters.'

"We need to go, now!"

Taking advantage of the moment, Yang An immediately pulled Wen Yin around the pile of Beng Bird flesh and ran forward.

With a nervous expression, Zhou Quan immediately followed close behind, grabbing a broken steel rebar from the ground to use as a weapon.

Once you got lost in the Broken Armor, it was likely impossible to ever leave. So, Yang An kept his eyes fixed on the path ahead.

More and more ruined eaves and broken walls, toppled and half-buried in the yellow earth, flashed past them on either side.

This place seemed to have once been a large city. Yang An even saw half a traffic light poking out of the yellow earth in the distance, as well as the kind of road signs you'd see everywhere.

'What on earth happened here? Why did it end up like this? And why would it appear in another world, becoming a barrier between the four major domains?'

Yang An was filled with anxiety. Question after question flashed through his mind, but he had no clues whatsoever.

In a daze, he recalled his experience at Sansong Mountain. That had been more than two years ago. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Because Senior Sister Wen Yin had no sense of direction, she'd accidentally steered their Earth Worm to Sansong Mountain. As it happened, they ran right into Pan Yu, who was facing a tribulation during her Cultivation Level breakthrough.

To save her, Yang An had entered her dreamscape, which was also a modern world.

This world seemed to have some overlap with a modern one, but what he saw then was completely different from what he was seeing now.

He couldn't judge whether these things were real or fake.

From what he had seen and heard himself, the world Pan Yu had entered seemed to be fake, just an illusion produced by the Cultivation Technique she practiced.

But the Broken Armor had existed for ages, for so many years that its origins couldn't be traced. That, in contrast, seemed far more real.

'If it's real, then could this world, the one containing the Broken Armor, be the world I lived in before I transmigrated?'

'If so, why did the world of my past life end up in this state?'

The more he thought, the more muddled Yang An's mind became, like a tangled mess of thread that couldn't be cut or untangled, twisted into a tight knot.

BOOM!

A deafening sound suddenly erupted from the side of the road. A half-ruined building had finally given way and collapsed.

The ground shook, kicking up a great cloud of dust and sand. Debris from the collapse was sent flying, scattering everywhere.

But just then, Zhou Quan, who was following behind, suddenly let out a cry of alarm.

Yang An glanced back and was startled as well.

Since they were all just ordinary people now, they could only sprint with all their might, but they weren't very fast. They had run nonstop from where they'd entered, yet they hadn't even covered a full kilometer.

The flesh and blood of the Beng Birds he had just killed had somehow woven together, coalescing into the fledgling form of a bird several meters tall that was now chasing them.

It dragged a long trail of blood along the ground. The giant, bizarre bird was continuously absorbing flesh and blood, its form growing more solid and its speed increasing.

'What's going on?!'