The soil felt exceedingly fine, carrying a faint chill. The aura reaching him through his fingertips made his heart tremble—this was soil brimming with astonishingly dense energy, its quality more than a hundred times greater than that of ordinary spirit fields outside.
Li Bufan's pupils contracted slightly. He recognized this soil—Spirit Marrow Black Soil.
He had once seen this kind of soil in the Hundred Herbs Garden inside the Small Cauldron. It was rare spirit soil that the Small Cauldron had nurtured through an unknown expenditure of time and Vital Energy, of such exceptional quality that it could grow sixth-grade spirit herbs.
Yet here in the Ten Thousand Insects Secret Realm, the Spirit Marrow Black Soil before him covered a radius of several hundred zhang, spread beneath his feet like a vast black carpet.
His Spiritual Sense probed underground, seeking to uncover the reason this Spirit Marrow Black Soil had formed.
Very soon, he discovered its secret—beneath that black soil lived an extraordinarily tiny species of insect.
The insects were translucent grayish-white from head to tail, no larger than grains of rice. They fed on soil, swallowing it into their bodies, where it underwent some peculiar transformation before being expelled.
And after passing through their bodies, the concentration of Vital Energy in the soil had increased by severalfold or more.
It was these seemingly insignificant little insects, tirelessly swallowing and expelling soil day after day, that had gradually nurtured such a vast expanse of Spirit Marrow Black Soil within this secret realm.
A thought suddenly flashed through Li Bufan's mind.
If he moved these insects into the Hundred Herbs Garden inside the Small Cauldron and let them reproduce and live within its existing Spirit Marrow Black Soil, ceaselessly consuming, expelling, and nourishing it day and night, would the already superb