As Su Li reached the ground, she looked around. Thousands of qualified practitioners were waiting at the entrance of the Secret Realm. Most of them came in a three- or five-men group, and they were whispering in the group.
Glancing at Fan Zisang, Yue Lin and her followers, who were not far away from herself, Su Li calmed down and kept on waiting. She was at the most peripheral of the platform. The closer a man was to the gate of the Secret Realm, the higher his status as a practitioner would be.
At that time, a slightly rough voice came into her ears.
“Look! The young man closest to the gate of the Secret Realm is Beixiao Liang!”
Hearing the words, everyone around her looked in the direction, and then came the louder discussion.
“It is him, the inherited disciple of Yuxu Sect, who has the greatest potential to become the holy boy!”
“Yes, his bone age is only six hundred years, so, he can certainly enter the Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits!”
“It is said that he can survive from an old ancestor of Jindan Realm with his cultivation in the peak of Zhuji Realm. Those of the same generation are no match for him.”
“I am afraid that only Chen Xianghan from Zihan Sect can fight against him.”
“It is a pity that Chen Xianghan has been practiced over a millennium and can’t enter the Secret Realm. In this sense, he is not so good as Beixiao Liang.”
The noise of the discussion was getting louder and spread to Beixiao Liang quickly.
“Senior Fellow Apprentice, they are talking about you!”
The other inherited disciples were watching Beixiao Liang admirably. Some of them might be older than Beixiao Liang, but only the power would be respected in the cultivation circle. Beixiao Liang was as powerful as a genius so that all the inherited disciples of Yuxu Sect recognized him as their senior fellow apprentice.
Beixiao Liang watched the entrance of the Secret Realm without any expression on his face. It seemed like the discussion around did not affect him.
“The Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits will open soon. Don’t be irritated and echo what others say.”
As he said, all the disciples from different mounts of Yuxu Sect agreed with respect and calmed down.
When Su Li saw this scene, a tenderness flashed over her eyes. Like Beixiao Liang, she once was respected and admired by all the disciples of Yuxu Sect, either.
“Beixiao Liang? Is he a disciple of my master…”
Su Li was pondering. The time in the Reincarnation Mirror included, she should have been dead for over twelve hundred years. Beixiao Liang was just over six hundred years old, and the other disciples were not over eight hundred years old. So, she knew none of them.
“Okay, for now. I can’t go back to Yuxu Sect in a short time, so there is no use to think of it.”
She withdrew her gaze and calmed down.
At the same time, Beixiao Liang frowned and turned to the direction where Su Li was, but he found nothing.
“Senior Fellow Apprentice, what’s going on?”
Someone noticed Beixiao Liang’s difference and couldn’t help but ask.
Beixiao Liang shook his head and returned to his usual look. However, the doubt remained in his mind.
“Who was looking at me just now?”
The competition in a prominent sect was always severe and cruel. He had encountered countless crises and could survive from them due to his inborn instinct. Now the feeling appeared again, and he could not ignore it.
“Is there anyone among them that I should pay attention to?”
Beixiao Liang was silent and expected something. He had thought the trip to the Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits this time would be as dull as the last time. It now appeared that he might be significantly rewarded.
At the same time, Yue Lin, who was also waiting somewhere in the outskirts, took back the carrier rune in her hand and could barely hide the joy in her eyes. She turned to Su Li and sneered.
“Finally connected. Bitch, wait and see. The Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits would be your burial ground!”
The time went by. A single day was nothing for those practitioners. Between 1 AM and 3 AM landed the last spiritual boat. So, the five thousand qualified practitioners of Jiuzhou Region all arrived.
As the last practitioner came through the tactical matrix and reached to the ground, something happened at the entrance of the Secret Realm. The outer light circle began to rotate slowly. After a while, it changed into an invisible phantom.
The calm ripples turned into a vortex as it spun, sending out a slight suction!
“The Secret Realm is opening!”
Before someone who had ever been here finished his words, Beixiao Liang had moved and disappeared. Following him, the other disciples didn’t hesitate and entered the realm. The practitioners on the platforms reduced rapidly. Soon came the turn of those in the peripheral area.
“Let’s go!”
Yue Lin glimpsed at Su Li and then stepped into the realm with the other three from Huajian Sect. Seeing that Su Li didn’t move, Fan Zisang had to go a step earlier. As he stepped into the vortex and was about to vanish, Su Li moved!
She popped out a transparent mark onto the back of Fan Zisang’s neck. Then Fan Zisang disappeared in the vortex completely.
Su Li was slightly relieved after feeling a weak position from the mark. She made it, for the fluctuation of the vortex entirely covered the feeling caused by the tracing mark.
Seeing there was no one beside her, she didn’t hesitate and went into the vortex.
After temporary darkness —
Su Li opened her eyes and found herself in the middle of a wasteland. There was no one in her sight.
“Jitu Tableland, why was I transported to this place?”
Su Li frowned and quickly figured out the directions. Jitu Tableland was the most barren land in the Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits, and there was no serendipity. It was a long way to the convergent area of the spiritual powers she planned to go this time.
The Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits would be open for two months. If she could get there, it would take her about seven days to gather enough nimbus to reach the twelfth hurdle of Lianqi Realm, so she had enough time for the way.
After three days, just as Su Li was about to leave Jitu Tableland, she suddenly felt the tracing mark.
“Fan Zisang is not far from me. To avoid extra trouble, I’d better solve the Poisonous Spirit Devouring Insect on him at first.”
Thinking of this, she adjusted her direction and went on.
Meanwhile, Fan Zisang was leaning on a giant tree in a dark forest. And there was a puddle of blood on the ground. He swiped the blood on his mouth and stared at the three men seriously, “Are you sincerely believing Yue Lin’s bullshit and going to kill me, one of your fellows?”
The leading tall and thin young man snorted, “Fan Zisang, spare your unnecessary mystery! You are just a servant of the Mount Head, not even an inherited disciple. How dare you say we are fellows?”
“Bingo!”
Another inherited disciple from Qinghua Mount stepped forward, sneering, “Senior Sister Apprentice Yue Lin told me that you’re just a lowly servant. And it’s an unforgivable crime to withhold training resources from your junior sister apprentices just because the Mount Head is petting you! Even if you escape today, we’ll report to our master to punish you severely, after we get out!”
Fan Zisang was silent, for these three were already completely enchanted by Yue Lin. Whatever he said, they wouldn’t listen to him. So… why should he care about the old feelings?
Swish!
Suddenly, his flying sword was drawn from the sheathed and floated in front of him, the sword’s cold light flickering and distantly pointing at the three.
The three of Huajian Sect immediately became angry, “How dare you take the initiative to use the sword against us? You are looking for death!”
Fan Zisang looked icy cold, and his face had no mercy to a sect mate, and just as the four swords were about to collide, suddenly —
Boom!
A trembling and terrifying spiritual pressure descended without warning, and a fierce human face suddenly appeared at the root of the giant tree, against which Fan Zisang was leaning. The hanging branches turned into swords in the blink of an eye, and pierced through the three men’s chests, leaving a washbasin-sized blood hole.
“Help… please!”
The leading young man was full of fear. And he could only say two words before the light in his eyes quickly dimmed, and he fell to the ground lifelessly. The other two could not even leave any last words.
Ding! Dang!
Their swords fell on the ground and collided with each other with two crunching sounds, which sounded terrifying in the quiet forest.
“What happened?!”
Fan Zisang’s pupils shrank, for he leaned back against the giant tree and didn’t see the human face or what had penetrated the three men’s bodies.
“Here is no good place to stay, so I must leave first.”
After regaining his nerve, Fan Zisang even had no time to loot the treasures on the three bodies and drove his flying sword to get out of the place hurriedly.
Shortly after his leaving, the face on the giant tree reappeared. Instead of the fierceness before, an indescribable calmness was shown on it now.
“Since it is your blood that awakened me, I’ll let you pass this time. These three corpses will help me recover somehow, and my root will continue to expand…”
A murmur sounded from the nothingness. The ground, where the corpses laid, immediately emitted an odd sound like boiling something and then turned into a small piece of green swamp. After the bodies sank into the ground, the ground changed back in the blink of an eye, leaving no trace of dead bodies.
Several hours later, Fan Zisang came out from the dense forest and looked at the empty and boundless green plains. He was suddenly relieved, while his eyes were still full of fear.
Although he had no idea why that dark existence didn’t hurt him, that scene just before was life-threatening and very dangerous for him.
“Where am I? It’s a pity that Huajian Sect just possesses a small part of the map of the Secret Realm, and this place is apparently not included in the map.”
With a glance at the dense forest behind him, Fan Zisang took a breath and hesitated for a moment to sit in meditation, trying to recover himself. But after only a few moments, he suddenly woke up, and his face changed.
The speed of recovering his vital energy slowed.
Hesitating for a moment, Fan Zisang stretched out his right hand and found that his entire palm had turned dark black and he could faintly see something wriggling in his hand.
But as soon as he came to the thought of forcing the object out of him, the thing turned to silence rapidly, and he could not sense it in any way.
“Kiddo, don’t try to recover your vital energy. The fight with your three fellow disciples had awakened the Poisonous Spirit Devouring Insect in your body. The vital energy you refined into your body has been devoured about 30 percent by the Poisonous Spirit Devouring Insect, and if you go on like this, it will speed up your death.”
Fan Zisang fell silent. He had been chased by those three and couldn’t care about leaving a way out. He survived, though. But… with less than 10% of vital energy in his body, how could he continue his trip in the Secret Realm of Shattered Spirits without any recovery?
Waiting for death?
Fan Zisang suddenly laughed and transmitted a sound, “Senior, although my cultivation is low, I don’t want to wait for death. So, let me be capricious for once!”
In the jade toke, the elder sighed and was about to say something, suddenly —