Human City
With a single punch, Gu Ding shattered the head of a giant ape-like beast. From his palm, black Devouring Flame surged forth, covering the beast's corpse.
The giant ape's corpse visibly withered away, transforming entirely into pure flesh and blood energy that returned to Gu Ding's body. In just a few seconds, even the withered corpse of the over twenty-meter-long giant ape vanished. Gu Ding extinguished his flames and continued his rapid advance.
After three days of hunting and killing thousands of beasts, Gu Ding finally stepped out of the dense forest and saw the location of the human city.
In these three days, Gu Ding only used his soul attack twice: once when he encountered a giant ape demon beast at the True God level of the Third Sequence, and once when he encountered a black giant python of the Fourth Sequence.
The two true god-level demonic beasts thought they had stumbled upon a delicious meal, but they never expected that their souls would be instantly obliterated by Gu Ding. Faced with demonic beasts of this strength, Gu Ding was far too slow to escape, and even if he tried to fight them, he would be unable to even scratch their skin. He could only use a soul attack to kill them, and then put the two enormous corpses into his Storage Space.
With the current strength of Gu Ding's divine fire, he can at most refine the corpses of demonic beasts at the Nine-and-a-Half Star Half-Step True God. The corpses of true gods cannot be refined and can only be stored away.
The blood and energy of the thousands of demonic beasts devoured by Gu Ding's Devouring Flame were all absorbed by him, elevating his physical body to the level of One-Star Half-Step True God. However, Gu Ding's physical body seemed to have reached a bottleneck, showing no signs of further improvement, so Gu Ding turned to cultivating the Myriad Manifestations Emperor Body.
The cultivation of the Myriad Manifestations Emperor Body requires a massive amount of blood and energy. Even the blood and energy of several thousand demonic beasts only increased the power of the Golem Realm from 7000 times to 7300 times, with no change whatsoever in the Physical Body Realm. However, Gu Ding was still satisfied with this result. A three-hundred-fold increase in three days—at this rate, he would soon be able to enter the third realm of the Myriad Manifestations Emperor Body. He would be staying in this world for a full year, so there was no need to rush.
This human city had walls only five meters high, completely different from the magnificent sight Gu Ding had imagined.
"The city wall is so low, it can't provide any defensive effect, can it?" Gu Ding couldn't help but mutter.
"In this world, there are far more demonic beasts than humans. True gods are over a hundred meters tall. Building such walls would be too costly in terms of manpower and resources. Moreover, no one knows how to form defensive formations. The walls would be destroyed with a single blow. Therefore, building low walls like these is sufficient to defend against weaker beasts. Besides, people hunt demonic beasts near the city every day, so the walls are essentially just for show."
The Sea Emperor's explanation was simple and clear: a city, without defensive formations or Dao patterns, is essentially useless without walls. Whether constructed of brick and earth or metal, anything can be easily destroyed under overwhelming force. Only with the addition of formations or Dao patterns can it achieve a true defensive effect.
As Gu Ding approached the city gate, he attracted the attention of many people, who were hunters who hunted monsters outside the city.
Gu Ding attracted attention because of his physique. In this world, everyone directly cultivates their physical body, resulting in a significantly larger stature compared to the humans in Gu Ding's Universe Sea. Gu Ding's height of 1.8 meters is average in the Universe Sea, but here he's considered short. The average adult male in this world is over 2.5 meters tall, with many even exceeding 3 meters, a similar build to Bigge.
Not only was Gu Ding short, but he was also incredibly thin. Even in the Universe Sea, his build was considered on the thinner side. In this world, in the eyes of the native inhabitants, he was practically a symbol of malnutrition. There were even many children of similar height to Gu Ding whose arms were thicker than Gu Ding thighs.
"If you don't eat properly, you'll definitely become as skinny as this older brother in the future." A middle-aged woman who was about three meters tall walked out of the city and said to the child on her left after seeing Gu Ding.
Gu Ding naturally heard this as well. He was speechless, but he finally understood why these people were looking at him with such strange eyes.
After confirming that the looks weren't malicious, Gu Ding headed towards the city gate. Just as he was about to enter, two large, muscular hands blocked his path. The two guards were the ones who had intervened.
"You must be from the countryside. Don't you know the rules? You have to pay an entrance fee to enter the city!" said a burly Big Beard guard on the left.
"Entrance fee?" Gu Ding was taken aback, and immediately connected with the Sea Emperor. "The currency here shouldn't be Originium, right?"
"Of course not! The currency here is called Blood Bead, a special mineral containing a small amount of blood energy, and it's also a specialty of this world. You can exchange the corpses of beasts in your Storage Space for Blood Bead. The corpses of Low-rank God can be exchanged for 100 to 500 Blood Bead, those of Mid-rank God for 1,000 to 5,000, those of High-rank God for ten times that of Mid-rank God, and those of Peak-rank God for ten times that of High-rank God, and so on," the Sea Emperor explained.
Gu Ding actually had quite a few extra beast corpses in his Storage Space, all of them below the level of Peak-rank God, and they wouldn't be of much help to his cultivation of the Myriad Manifestations Emperor Body. He originally planned to collect them and sell them for money after entering the city.
"How much is the entrance fee?" Upon hearing what the Sea Emperor said, Gu Ding looked up at the guard.
"100 Blood Bead." The Big Beard guard held up one finger.
"I don't have any money on me, can I use a beast corpse instead?" Gu Ding asked with a grin.
"We can use animal carcasses instead!" the Big Beard guard nodded.
No sooner had he finished speaking than a Low-rank God deity's beast corpse appeared before Gu Ding. "Is this alright?"
The Big Beard immediately spotted the thumb-sized hole in the head of the beast corpse. His pupils contracted sharply, and he thought to himself, "Such skillful technique!"
He circled the beast's corpse once, secretly glancing at Gu Ding, before nodding, "Alright, go in!"
Gu Ding grinned and strode into the city.
Seeing Gu Ding leave, the Big Beard squatted down, turned the General Beast's carcass over, and examined it carefully. After a long while, he clicked his tongue in amazement, "I didn't expect that seemingly malnourished kid to be such a master. This beast's carcass only has this one fatal wound; there isn't a single other injury. This means that kid killed the beast with a single finger strike, without any unnecessary attacks. And that finger strike was precisely in the center of its forehead—steady, accurate, and ruthless, not a single mistake..." (To be continued~^~)