The robes on Li Yan's body rustled loudly. For a moment, a strong wind rushed to his face, making it difficult for him to breathe.
"Then what do you want?"
Meng Zhiyuan stared at Li Yan, suppressing his anger as he spoke, one word at a time.
"This was a situation where you didn't trust me, and I wouldn't trust you either. So, there is no fairness to speak of.
"I will exit the passage now. After I meet up with my companions, I will immediately give you the pill. How about that?"
"Hehehe... Fellow Daoist Zhang is truly a good calculator. You are controlling the entire outcome. Do you really think I am so afraid of death?"
"Fellow Daoist Meng, I've said before that this is an unbalanced situation. After all, you have the numbers here, and I am alone. I cannot completely give up my trump card.
"I also want to live and have no desire to perish together with you.
"I have another method. We both leave this forbidden land, and I will immediately give you the antidote.
"Fellow Daoist Meng can swallow it and circulate your power to recuperate. In any case, at such a close distance, if there is a problem with the antidote, we won't be able to escape immediately, right?"
A light flickered uncertainly in Meng Zhiyuan's emerald eyes. He knew that his side's greatest advantage was in this tunnel.
Once they were out in the deep sea, the coordinated attacks of those two-winged Dark Spirit Demon Bats could no longer be used. The other party could just flash away and leave those children of his far behind.
So in the end, the fighting force would only be him and his few junior brothers.
Although he was already injured, the other side had also lost one person and had another seriously injured. If they fought, his side would definitely win in the end.
However, if the other side was determined to escape, and someone stayed behind to fight to the death and delay them for a few breaths, it would not be certain that they could kill all of them.
Both sides fell into a brief silence. Li Yan hovered at the entrance of the passage, holding the pill in his hand, silent.
After a full forty breaths, a look of helplessness appeared on Meng Zhiyuan's face, and he let out a long sigh.
"Alright, I'll go along with you one more time. However, if I don't get the pill later, or if the pill is fake, then today will be a battle to the death. There will be no more negotiations!"
With the situation reversing several times, Meng Zhiyuan felt that his threats were not very useful.
He felt extremely suppressed in his heart. He could have fought to the death and kept all eight cultivators in the tunnel today.
But when he thought of his master's dying wish, which was to send out a final voice transmission, he could only endure.
He had to bring these clansmen back to the clan. After suffering for so many years, he could not die just like that.
Therefore, today he had to swallow his pride and seek compromise again and again.
"Fellow Daoist Meng is straightforward!"
After hearing this, Li Yan glanced at the surrounding Dark Spirit Demon Bats, and then, without any further hesitation, he enveloped the pill in Spirit Power and stepped into the passage.
If he wanted to destroy the pill in his hand, it would only take a single thought. Li Yan believed that even if the other party had a backup plan, they would not be able to restrain him in an instant.
Moreover, he already knew that this was a so-called "forbidden land." As long as it was a restriction, he had hope of breaking it. He had already secretly communicated with the "Heaven-Stealing Kerchief."
If it came to the worst, he would fight to the death and see if he could forcibly open the passage and escape this place.
Following that, Meng Zhiyuan and the other four four-winged Dark Spirit Demon Bats also followed him out.
In just two or three breaths, Li Yan's vision blurred, and he appeared outside the cave entrance where the female cultivator surnamed Yang had first broken the restriction.
Apart from the hazy scenery nearby, the deep sea in the distance appeared even darker and more profound.
The moment Li Yan appeared, two Divine Senses swept towards him. Li Yan immediately identified them as Xing Ming and Feng Moru.
He said no more, turned around to face the mountain cave, and then with a gentle toss, a ball of Spirit Power wrapped around a pill hovered in the seawater. At the same time, he said in a clear voice.
"Fellow Daoist Meng, here is the antidote. You can try to detoxify!"
Before his voice had faded, Meng Zhiyuan, who had followed him out, appeared next to the pill.
In order not to arouse the other party's suspicion, Li Yan's body only slowly retreated towards Xing Ming and the others. His movements were very slow, and he did not fly away rapidly.
Li Yan had already received Xing Ming's transmission. He and Feng Moru had also set up some restriction formations nearby and were hiding behind them to support him.
In an instant, Meng Zhiyuan transformed into a thin, short, green-faced man. He reached out, pinched the pill in front of him, and swallowed it in one gulp.
At this point, it made no difference to him whether the antidote Li Yan produced was real or fake.
If it was real, he would live. If it was fake, he would die.
The deadly poison Li Yan had planted in Meng Zhiyuan's body was still one of the few poisons for which he had only three antidotes—"Branches of the Same Breath," one of the deadly poisons Li Yan was most familiar with.
Once the poison entered the body, it would spread through the blood to all the meridians, continuously devouring the Spiritual Energy in the blood while strengthening itself. It was an extremely difficult poison to deal with.
Li Yan felt that if he could settle down, he would definitely try to refine some antidotes for the Fragmented Poison and then begin closed-door cultivation.
In recent years, he had put too much energy into external things, but this was also due to circumstances beyond his control.
The group of four-winged Dark Spirit Demon Bats that had followed Meng Zhiyuan out had all flown out, surrounding Meng Zhiyuan in the middle, while staring viciously at Li Yan, who was slowly retreating into the darkness in the distance.
In just a breath's time, Meng Zhiyuan could already feel that the Spirit Power that was originally being devoured was rapidly recovering. He then closed his eyes again.
Just as Li Yan was about to approach the hiding place of Xing Ming and the other man, Meng Zhiyuan's eyes suddenly snapped open, and a mocking smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.
This smile fell on Li Yan's eyes, and he immediately felt that something was wrong.
But he was not a true immortal. In the time it took for his thoughts to race, he couldn't think of any mistakes he had made just now.
"Hehehe... do you think this is a place you can just come and go as you please! Old Second, activate!"
As Meng Zhiyuan's mocking laughter came, Li Yan suddenly felt a series of roars and surges from the surrounding seawater.
His eyes also saw a four-winged Dark Spirit Demon Bat hovering by Meng Zhiyuan's side. Its four wings beat rapidly as it uttered a series of obscure and difficult-to-understand incantations.
A curse came from the distance from Xing Ming and Feng Moru, and then two figures shot up into the sky.
And at this moment, the surrounding seawater rolled up into towering water pillars, one after another, dense and numerous, like a swirling space of chaotic winds.
In an instant, huge, fast-moving water pillars filled Li Yan's entire field of vision.
Even though he possessed the "Phoenix Soars to the Heavens" movement skill, in this overwhelming deep sea, where each water pillar seemed to prop up the heavens and support the earth, there was simply nowhere to escape in a short time.
Li Yan saw two black shadows in the distance shoot up into the sky, and in the next moment, they were swept into a heaven-piercing water pillar together.
At the same time, Li Yan's Divine Sense was instantly cut off. He himself was swept into a heaven-piercing water pillar while dodging. In his haste, he could only thicken the layers of the Spirit Power shield around his body.
In an instant, he was swept up by a force that seemed to roll up the heavens and the earth.
Although Li Yan was somewhat panicked in his heart, not knowing what tricks the other party had used, his face remained calm. Now was not the time to panic.
The giant waves on the water pillar crashed against the Spirit Power shield around his body. Apart from a squeezing force, there was nothing else unusual.
And this squeezing force might have some destructive power against Foundation Establishment cultivators, but for Golden Core cultivators, it was like a lake wave lapping against the shore.
This let Li Yan breathe a slight sigh of relief, but it also made him extra vigilant.
Such a situation was not a good sign. Since the other party had activated the restriction, how could it not be for the purpose of killing them?
"The water pillars don't have much damaging power!"
Li Yan quickly judged in his heart. At this time, his Divine Sense was trapped in this heaven-piercing water pillar, and he didn't know the situation around him.
Li Yan fiercely punched the water pillar. He felt as if his punch had hit empty air, without any resistance, not even touching the seawater.
Before he could react again, the surrounding water pillars suddenly disappeared. A bright light entered his eyes, and his body was falling rapidly from the sky...
At the mountain peak cave entrance where Li Yan had appeared before, the incantations from the mouth of the four-winged Dark Spirit Demon Bat had stopped, and its rapidly beating wings had returned to a slow fanning.
"Big Brother, it's done. They have all been teleported into the cave residence.
"It's a pity, though. If only those powerful cultivators back then could have set this art to move them back to the forbidden land. Not only could we have killed these three, but it would also have extended the operating time of the forbidden land's formation!
"At the same time, we could have eaten more cultivator flesh. That taste is truly unforgettable!"
Meng Zhiyuan looked at the pitch-black seabed in front of him, which had once again returned to a dead sea-like appearance. He sneered in his heart.
'That human cultivator really thought I was at his mercy. Isn't it just a matter of 'endurance'? Hehehe...'
Meng Zhiyuan had long guessed that those cultivators would not be so easy to deal with. He was just waiting for this final moment, playing along with them the whole time.
He did not turn his head, but just stared blankly at the seawater in front of him, seeming to mutter to himself.
"The reason those powerful cultivators made this thousand-li radius an area covered by the 'Shrinking the Land to an Inch' formation is, of course, related to the place we are guarding here.
"Those who could come here back then were at least at the Nascent Soul level. If an enemy Nascent Soul, or even a Spirit Transformation cultivator came, it would be normal for them to travel thousands or tens of thousands of li in a single breath.
"So, to deal with such people, of course, you directly shrink the place where they are standing and move it into the powerful cultivator's own cave residence.
"Firstly, there are even stronger formations there, making it better to borrow strength to fight the other party;
"Secondly, it ensures that the enemy directly faces the powerful cultivator. To deal with enemies of that level, if they were shrunk and teleported into the forbidden land we guard, the result would be heavy casualties for our clan.
"Even if Master and Martial Uncles were still alive, I imagine they might not necessarily be able to capture the invading enemy.
"Besides, we are just here to attend to the daily needs of the few powerful cultivators and do some simple gatekeeping and guarding."
Meng Zhiyuan paused.
"These foreign cultivators have discovered this place. We cannot let them escape no matter what.
"Once this place is exposed, we will face stronger and stronger enemies. In our current state, we cannot face so many powerful enemies.
"So, these cultivators must be left here. This time, we used the 'Shrinking the Land to an Inch' restriction, and the maintenance power of the formation here was consumed by at least a hundred years.
"Although we killed three Golden Core cultivators just now, their Golden Cores and Essence Blood cannot make up for this consumption.
"Our time is running out. If no one from the clan comes to relieve us, perhaps... perhaps in about forty years, we will all die here!
"Forty years, it can be considered a hope. We cannot let any more outsiders know of this place's existence. If a Nascent Soul or even stronger cultivator comes, do we still have a way to force them into the final tunnels..."
"Big Brother, the restriction power of the two sub-cave residences themselves is also getting weaker and weaker.
"Otherwise, this group of little crawlers, let alone breaking the restriction to enter, would have been killed in an instant and cleaned up if they even took half a step near the cave residence gate."
A crisp female voice came from the side. It was the one Meng Zhiyuan called his Fourth Sister. But if Li Yan and the others were here, they would have been utterly confused.
The breaking of the restriction she mentioned was clearly referring to the actions of Jiang Baibi and the others before.
But in her words, she said "two sub-cave residences," not the three they had seen before!