Chương 132: A Profitable Transaction

Wei Lin stared dumbfounded into the thick mist after Ke Yin disappeared into it; the giant queen wasp and her elite guards flew after him and left him and Lin Mei all alone trapped inside the glowing dome of the Symphony Shield formation. Okay well, they weren't alone. There were still dozens of those lesser Voidneedle Wasps flying in circles around them.

Most of the bugs were at the third stage of Qi Condensation with a few fourth-stage ones mixed into the swarm, and usually facing a fourth-stage beast would be a life-threatening problem.

"He's insane," Wei Lin muttered with a heavy sigh while he watched another wave of the bugs test out the barrier. Their stingers hit the glowing surface at the same time causing bright ripples of light to spread out across the dome like water ripples.

"And out of his mind." Lin Mei was kneeling next to one of the formation's main anchor points and steadily feeding her qi into it.

"Focus, Wei Lin. We need to maintain this formation now." The defensive formation. Wei Lin hurried over to a different anchor point and slammed his hand down onto the glowing sigils. He could instantly feel a constant draining sensation pulling on him as the barrier actively converted their raw qi into solid protective energy. Since both of them were working together to power it, they could probably keep the thing running forever against enemies at this specific level.

Except doing that wasn't going to help Ke Yin out at all.

"We can't hide inside here," Wei Lin complained while watching another perfectly coordinated bug strike harmlessly splash against the barrier.

"He is out there fighting a stage-six beast by himself!"

"He's fighting it along with three stage-fives too," Lin Mei chimed in which did nothing to make Wei Lin feel any better about the situation.

"That's not helping, love." Suddenly an aggressive wasp slammed itself into the barrier in front of Wei Lin's face. Instead of bouncing off it like all the other ones did, the bug pressed its sharp stinger against the energy surface and actively tried to inject void energy into the formation's matrix. Wei Lin stared at the dark pulsing energy rapidly gathering around the tip of the wasp's stinger. It was pure void energy. Seeing it gave him an idea...

"Cover me for a second," he said, ripping his hand away from the glowing formation anchor.

"Wait what..." Lin Mei's eyes grew wide.

"What are you doing?" Instead of bothering to answer her question, Wei Lin carefully pushed his right arm through the energy barrier. The Symphony Shield parted around his arm like it was liquid while maintaining its structural integrity and allowing his controlled movement to pass. He silently thanked the heavens for Ke Yin's recent obsession with studying formations. The closest wasp instantly took advantage of the opening with its deadly stinger plunging toward Wei Lin's exposed hand.

Except that was what he was hoping it would do. Wei Lin quickly activated his merchant's cultivation method to create a unique transaction space around his hand. The moment the stinger made physical contact with his skin, he felt the familiar sensation of foreign spiritual energy being absorbed into his inner world. It was void energy. Real and genuine void energy. Inside his mind's eye, Wei Lin could see his inner world responding to the influx.

The giant spiritual marketplace that made up his core was already busy preparing a new market stall that was specially designed to handle this incredibly rare commodity. If he could manage to gather enough of it... The bug pulled itself back, confused by the lack of effect its attack had. Wei Lin wasn't sure if he could safely handle taking any more hits so he yanked his arm back inside the safety of the barrier before the bug could try going for a second strike.

"Are you insane?" Lin Mei yelled at him, dividing her attention between powering the formation and shooting him a death glare.

"What were you thinking doing that?"

"I was thinking," Wei Lin replied, proudly showing off his intact arm, "that void energy is rare and valuable. Do you have any idea how many spirit stones I would normally need to pay to get my hands on a tiny amount like this? These wasps are giving it away for free!" Lin Mei's face suggested she was actively reconsidering their relationship then and there.

"We are standing in the middle of a deadly battle, and you are seriously thinking about saving spirit stones?" Their little argument was rudely interrupted by yet another highly synchronized attack from the swarm. Except this time around Wei Lin ended up noticing something interesting – the wasps' coordination seemed slightly less perfect than it was before. There were noticeable delays happening between their strikes and small gaps showing up in their flying formation.

"Look there," he said, pointing over to where two wasps had awkwardly bumped into each other during their latest attack.

"Their hive-mind connection has a limited range limit. They are starting to lose their sync with their queen out there." Lin Mei's eyes narrowed while she studied how the swarm was moving.

"You're right. Their attack patterns are becoming sloppy now." She took a small pause and then added, "We might be able to use that against them." Wei Lin nodded, he was already seeing where she was going with this thought.

"The formation lets things pass through it from the inside like my arm did earlier, so the same rule should apply to our attacks?"

"There is only one way for us to find out." Lin Mei gathered a tiny amount of qi and compressed it down into one heavy drop of water. With careful precision, she flicked the drop toward the barrier. The water droplet flew through the energy field without resistance and expanded outward into a razor-sharp water needle that caught one of the wasps by surprise. The small projectile didn't do a lot of damage since these weren't normal insects at all, but it successfully proved their theory. Stolen novel; please report.

"Well then," Wei Lin said with a huge grin spreading across his face while he began aggressively gathering up energy for his own attack, "this just became more fun." He focused his mind on the void energy he successfully managed to absorb and used his unique cultivation method to start processing it. Aggressively converting foreign energy always came with a heavy cost since he would naturally lose a portion of raw power during the exchange process, but the versatility was worth it.

"Lin Mei," he called out, "can you create an opening inside their formation for me? Something to break up their defensive pattern?" She gave a sharp nod as she moved her hands around in a complex weaving pattern. Water essence gathered around her body and condensed down into dozens of floating liquid spheres.

"I'm ready whenever you are." Wei Lin shut his eyes and concentrated on the energy conversion. Void energy was tricky to handle because it naturally wanted to drain and consume things instead of being smoothly channeled. But everything had a set price, and everything could be traded. Deep inside his inner world, the marketplace shifted around and realigned itself. The new void energy stall connected itself with his main fire essence shop to create a highly unique exchange rate.

Power aggressively flowed through the spiritual pathways he had carefully constructed to transform it from one specific type of energy into a different one. When Wei Lin finally opened his eyes again, his right hand was wreathed inside intensely purple-tinged flames.

"Do it now!" he yelled out. Lin Mei's floating water spheres aggressively shot through the barrier in rapid succession to create a highly complex pattern of movement that forcefully made the wasps have to adjust their flying formation, which ended up causing quite a few of them to crash into each other since their heavily degraded hive-mind connection was unable to compensate for the sudden chaos. Wei Lin thrust his hand forward to send a concentrated blast of void-infused fire through the Symphony Shield.

The purple flames easily passed through the barrier without any resistance while maintaining their tight cohesion as they streaked aggressively toward the closest fourth-stage wasp. The giant insect desperately tried to dodge but its movements were sluggish without having the proper coordination coming from the hive-mind. The hot flames caught the bug squarely in the thorax, and for a brief second the wasp was surrounded by a bright corona of purple fire.

Then its hard carapace began to crack apart as the void qi actively fought against the hot fire qi to destroy the beast from the inside out. The wasp's wings seized up when its internal energy channels collapsed and it dropped down to the ground like a heavy stone. Wei Lin did a fist pump in the air.

"Ha! How is that for—""Incoming attack!" Lin Mei's warning cut his happy celebration short as three angry wasps launched a highly coordinated counter-attack at them. Wei Lin quickly slammed his hand back onto the formation anchor to actively reinforce the barrier as the sharp stingers struck the dome. The Symphony Shield successfully held up, but he could feel the heavy strain pushing on the formation matrix.

These specific wasps might be individually weaker, but they could still coordinate themselves enough to be highly dangerous.

"We need to figure out a better strategy," Lin Mei complained while her hands were already moving around to gather up more water essence.

"We can't keep dividing our attention between maintaining the formation and attacking them. If we make one slip they will break through." She was right about that of course. Wei Lin's unique cultivation method was perfect for converting their void energy into something a lot more lethal, but the actual process took a lot of time. And it was time they didn't have if they had to constantly keep reinforcing the barrier against attacks. Unless they did something else...

"What if we take turns doing it?" Wei Lin suggested.

"One person focuses on maintaining the formation while the other person attacks. We can switch every few minutes." Lin Mei thought about this idea while she absently deflected another incoming wasp strike using a sharp water needle.

"That could work out well. But we would need perfect timing on the switches, or they will exploit the gap."

"Leave the timing to me." Wei Lin flashed a grin.

"If there is one thing I know how to do, it is how to maximize efficiency." They quickly settled into a solid rhythm. Lin Mei would actively maintain the formation while Wei Lin gathered void energy and converted it into various elemental attacks. And then they would switch positions with Wei Lin holding the barrier up while Lin Mei launched highly precisely targeted water techniques through the dome.

It wasn't a perfect system since they were fighting defensively while picking off individual wasps whenever a good opportunity presented itself to them. But it was sustainable, and the far more important thing was that it was working. Wei Lin had just finished converting another big batch of void energy into fire qi when he suddenly noticed something odd happening. The wasps' attacks which had been growing steadily more erratic for a while abruptly stopped.

The huge swarm simply hung motionless in the air for several long seconds with their wings beating around in these highly confused patterns. And then, as if they were responding to some weird distant signal, they scattered away in all directions.

"What just happened?" Lin Mei asked out, watching the remaining wasps rapidly disappear into the thick mist. Wei Lin slowly lowered his hand down and let the purple flames dissipate away.

"It's Ke Yin," he said with certainty.

"He must have defeated the queen out there. Without having her controlling the hive-mind..."

"We should go try to find him," Lin Mei said immediately, she was already moving to deactivate her side of the formation dome.

"He could be hurt."

"Wait, hold on." Wei Lin grabbed onto her arm.

"What if some of those wasps circle back around here? Or worse, what if we end up running into something else out there? We are still inside the beast grounds."

"So, we are supposed to wait around here while our best friend could be bleeding out somewhere?"

"No, of course I'm not saying that, I'm saying we should—" A figure suddenly emerged out from the thick mist and Wei Lin instinctively gathered his energy to launch an attack, but then the light fell onto the newcomer to reveal a familiar face.

"Ke Yin!" Lin Mei cried out.

"Are you alright?" Their best friend looked... well he honestly looked like he had fought a stage-six spirit beast and all its elite guards. His outer sect robes were torn up in several different places, but Wei Lin suddenly noticed something odd - wherever the fabric had been shredded apart there seemed to be this weird layer of thin vine-like plants clinging to Ke Yin's physical body to cover up any skin that would have otherwise been exposed.

The plant coverage was a little bit strange, but it could be Ke Yin trying to be modest. What was important was that their friend was alive.

"I'm fine," Ke Yin said, casually stepping through the energy barrier.

"Just tired. How did it go here?" Wei Lin deactivated his own side of the formation to let the glowing protective dome fade away into nothing.

"Oh, you know it was the usual stuff. We fought off a giant swarm of deadly wasps, successfully collected some highly valuable void energy, and I probably traumatized Lin Mei..."

"He stuck his arm outside the barrier to let them sting him," Lin Mei reported to Ke Yin while shooting Wei Lin a dangerous look that clearly suggested this specific discussion was not over yet.

"Oh really?" Ke Yin raised an eyebrow up.

"How much void energy did you manage to collect?"

"I got enough of it to open a proper void energy stall," Wei Lin smiled proudly.

"Give me some time to work. I will soon be able to use it in battle!" As Wei Lin took a much closer look at Ke Yin, he noticed his best friend was leaning heavily against a tree trunk.

"Maybe we should head back to the sect now? We can take you to the medical pavilion to get checked out?"

"It's just a small scratch," Ke Yin assured them which Wei Lin didn't believe for a second. Anybody who would willingly challenge a stage-six beast had a skewed definition for what a small scratch meant. While they began making their way back toward the beast grounds' main entrance, Wei Lin found himself thinking about everything that had happened today. The highly coordinated defense they did, the void energy collection, and the synchronized attacks... it had worked out far better than he had ever expected it to.

"Hey," he said suddenly, which caused both Ke Yin and Lin Mei to look over at him.

"We make a good team, don't we?" Lin Mei smiled and slipped her soft hand into his.

"We do. Although maybe next time around, we could practice fighting with something a little less deadly?"

"Where is the fun in doing that?" Ke Yin asked, and Wei Lin couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Knowing how Ke Yin was, he probably wasn't.