Into the Secret Realm

While Ye Mei was busy searching for the Spirit Gathering Array, Gu Ding and his group had already stepped into the entrance to the secret realm.

This secret realm was formed from a huge beast corpse. The beast corpse had not rotted into bones. Only half of its head was exposed on the ground, and it was already hundreds of meters high. The rest of its body was completely buried by sand.

The entrance was a mouth that appeared to be petrified. If the Sea Emperor hadn't pointed it out, Gu Ding, even standing beneath this giant mouth, would have thought it was just an ordinary cave.

Gu Ding and his companions followed the cave entrance down. If the giant beast were still alive, Gu Ding actions would be equivalent to descending its esophagus.

The esophagus was extremely deep, like a huge tunnel. Out of curiosity, Gu Ding and the others reached out and touched the ground beneath their feet. There was no fleshy texture; instead, it felt like hard stone, smooth and cold.

The group walked along the tunnel-like esophagus for more than two hours before finally entering the abdominal cavity.

Looking around, this space, which should have been the stomach, was surprisingly vast and boundless.

"This is a Melting Beast kept by the Hunting Martial Beast. Melting Beast are a very special kind of life form, possessing extremely strong defense and an independent stomach. Their stomachs can digest most items with energy fluctuations. Anything they swallow will be completely melted into a kind of Honey Milk, which is then secreted from their nasal cavity. This Honey Milk contains extremely pure energy and is the Hunting Martial Beast' favorite food."

After hearing the Sea Emperor's explanation, Gu Ding and the others finally looked at the ground beneath their feet.

The ground here is completely different from the one in my esophagus; it is milky white.

"Could the milky-white stones beneath our feet be...?"

"That's right, it's petrified Honey Milk." The Sea Emperor knew what Gu Ding was going to say and gave the answer first.

"They're already petrified, what use are they?" Liliath asked skeptically.

"Of course it's useful. Its stomach is an independent space where energy hardly dissipates. Although the form of these Honey Milk has changed, with a little processing, the effect is still the same. I will teach Gu Ding how to process them later. What you need to do now is to cut these petrified Honey Milk and put them into your Storage Space."

"However, since many life forms have died in this space, some vengeful spirits are also hidden here. Elsa, you need to be careful and not leave Gu Ding and the others' sight."

Elsa frowned upon hearing this. Ever since entering this ruin, she had been constantly restrained, and the feeling of not being able to use her strength was very frustrating. However, she also knew that now was not the time to throw a tantrum. Gripping her giant axe with both hands, she began to dig less than twenty meters away from Gu Ding.

Gu Ding and the others picked up their respective tools and began digging.

The clanging sound of metal striking the ground reverberated far and wide, quickly waking some vengeful spirits that had been dormant in the distance. Having identified the source of the sound, they surged frantically towards Gu Ding and his companions.

"Be careful. Those vengeful spirits have been awakened by your noise and are rapidly approaching," the Sea Emperor warned everyone.

Gu Ding and the others also slowed down their digging speed slightly, diverting half of their attention to be on guard.

Before long, a piercing scream, accompanied by a heavy echo, reached Gu Ding and his companions. Soon, they finally saw the legendary vengeful spirit.

The so-called vengeful spirits are all black, misty creatures floating in the air. They come in various shapes and sizes; some walk upright, some crawl on all fours, and some even have multiple legs or wings... The only thing they have in common is that they all seem to wear strange masks on their faces. If you look closely, you can actually find that although their masks are somewhat similar, there are still quite a few subtle differences.

"Are these guys vengeful spirits?"

This was the first time Gu Ding and the others had seen this life form, and they were all curious, but they did not show the slightest fear.

Just as Gu Ding and the others were sizing up those creatures, a reptilian vengeful spirit suddenly moved, its target clearly set on Elsa soul strength was the weakest. Clearly, they possessed a means of judging the strength of their opponents' souls.

Gu Ding raised his hand and shot a Finger Force strike towards the vengeful spirit. However, unexpectedly, the finger Finger Force passed right through the vengeful spirit's body without causing it any harm.

"It's no use. We need to use soul-type attacks," the Sea Emperor reminded him. "Or Purple Lightning Divine Fire. Thunderfire has the effect of dispelling resentment and will also be effective against vengeful spirits."

Upon hearing the Sea Emperor's reminder, purple flames erupted from Gu Ding's hand, sweeping directly towards the vengeful spirit. The vengeful spirit immediately let out a shrill scream, a sound that was extremely piercing.

Moments later, the mask of the vengeful spirit that attacked Elsa disintegrated, turning into black mist and disappearing.

The remaining vengeful spirits seemed to have been provoked by the shouts, changing their previous wait-and-see attitude and rushing frantically towards Gu Ding and the others.

Gu Ding blocked Elsa's path, and the Purple Lightning Divine Fire erupted from his palm, forming a giant fire python that intercepted all attacks heading towards Elsa.

After replenishing her soul with the Soul Potion and traveling for several hours, Liliath's soul power had recovered to about 70-80%. The Purgatory Fire, dominated by her soul power, surged out like a black torrent, spreading outwards.

Dokter covered the surface of the throwing knives with a layer of soul power, and hundreds of throwing knives surged out, spraying streaks of Silver Radiance in the vast space.

Hundreds of vengeful spirits screamed in agony, dozens even fled, while the rest were all annihilated by Gu Ding and his group, turning into nothingness.

Liliath glanced at the fleeing vengeful spirits and gave chase. She had just sensed that her Purgatory Fire was actually devouring these spirits and nourishing her own soul. This meant that the ten-minute battle hadn't drained her soul power at all; in fact, it had completely restored her previous energy.

As Liliath chased after him, Gu Ding was about to stop her, but the Sea Emperor called out to him.

"Let her go. There's no danger there; on the contrary, there's a great opportunity."

Liliath chased after them and discovered that the twenty-odd vengeful spirits, after fleeing to the top of a statue, stopped running. Instead, they circled around and let out threatening roars at Liliath.

Liliath glanced at the statue, which resembled some kind of beast. Although she was somewhat curious as to why there was a statue in this space, she didn't dwell on it. The black purgatory surged forth, engulfing all twenty-odd vengeful spirits.

In just a moment, all the vengeful spirits were absorbed by Purgatory, and Liliath felt that her soul seemed to have become slightly stronger. Only then did her gaze fall on the statue.

"What you see before you is the Spirit Soul Crystal of this Melting Beast. The spirit of a beast is the same as the soul of a human. This Melting Beast placed its spirit here, probably to devour the souls of the dead and make its spirit stronger. But it is estimated that when its consciousness died, its spirit was still in this space. So the spirit, without consciousness, was trapped in this space and, over time, turned into a crystal."

"You can put it away for now, and after you advance to godhood, you can slowly melt it down using Purgatory. This Melting Beast level is already almost comparable to a true god, and this Spirit Soul Crystal will be of great benefit to you, but with your current soul strength, you cannot absorb it."

"This Spirit Soul Crystal can only be used by one person. But besides this, the crystal from the brain of this Melting Beast has a very good nourishing effect on everyone's soul. After we collect all the Honey Milk, we'll go to the brain."

Liliath nodded, stored the Spirit Soul Crystal in her Storage Space, and then headed towards the location where Gu Ding and the others had been. Back at the original digging site, Liliath smiled and said, "Besides killing those vengeful spirits, we also just obtained the Spirit Soul Crystal of this Melting Beast. It's quite a haul."

"It's definitely a good thing. Logically speaking, after so much time, this guy's spirit should have dissipated long ago. It's probably because of this isolated, enclosed space that his spirit has survived." Gu Ding felt that this was an unexpected gain.

"Now that nothing is interfering, we'll go all out with the excavation. This area is so large, we don't know how long it will take to finish." Elsa looked around and figured it would probably take at least twenty or thirty days to finish mining the Honey Milk.

"Gu Ding, I remember you put a few of the multi-functional robots that Robert gave you before?" Sea Emperor suddenly remembered this, but Gu Ding had put the items in the Storage Space that Robert had set up, so Sea Emperor couldn't see them.

Gu Ding slapped his forehead. "Yes, there is. How could I forget about this? It was originally prepared to prevent digging or similar work, but this isn't soil, so I forgot about it for a moment. However, judging from the hardness of these Honey Milk blocks, they're not much different from ordinary soil, so they should be usable."

As Gu Ding spoke, he took out five multi-functional mini robots and set them to dig.

After testing the ground's hardness, the five arm-sized robots quickly began digging.

In just a few seconds, hundreds of tons of Honey Milk were extracted, hundreds of times faster than Gu Ding and his team.

Gu Ding and the others simply followed behind the robot, storing the Honey Milk in their Storage Space.

More than three hours passed, and when Scarlet and Miko appeared at the entrance of the stomach sac, Gu Ding and his team had already begun the cleanup work. The ground level inside the stomach sac was nearly a hundred meters lower than before.

Seeing Scarlet and the others return, Gu Ding and the others waved to the two of them, and the two immediately jumped down.

"Looks like Ye Mei fell for it?" Gu Ding grinned and asked the two of them. (To be continued...)