Ambush Behind (Seeking Follow-up Reads)

In the blink of an eye, Zhang Dong had spent thirty years in the Illusory Light Sea, exploring over a hundred thousand islands of various sizes, and the World Rings he picked up totaled more than ten billion Hunyuan Units.

But that wasn't the main point.

Over those thirty years, he had encountered six assassination attempts, a frequency so high it struck him as utterly baffling.

"This Illusory Light Sea—according to the records, it never said the ambush rate would be this high," Zhang Dong wondered. Had he stumbled into some bandit den? Or was the Primordial Universe just this savage?

An outsider might think he'd transmigrated into the wrong world—landing in the Cangyuan Map Universe, where the outer regions were crawling with Black Demon Hall members, and he'd get jumped no matter where he went.

Every time, it was three to five alien Kings from various clan alliances. The moment they spotted him, they'd go berserk, first casting Space Seal, then charging madly in his direction.

In the end, Zhang Dong would slap them all dead with a single palm strike, and their World Rings would fall into his hands.

It was normal to encounter ambushes in a Cosmic Secret Realm, but a frequency this high was anything but normal.

When something is abnormal, there must be a trick to it.

His Inner World Projection unfolded once more, and Zhang Dong locked onto a Demon Race King three million kilometers away. He planned to capture an alien, enslave it, and pry into what exactly was happening in the Illusory Light Sea.

Maybe the Hong Alliance intelligence database had the answer, but he hadn't joined the Hong Alliance yet. Directly querying records wouldn't cover these events—intelligence and data were two different things.

Intelligence emphasized real-time updates, while data was a general overview of the secret realm.

To join the Hong Alliance, one had to be a certified King-Level combatant. When Zhang Dong broke through from Domain Lord to Realm Lord, his comprehension had only reached the sixteenth level of the Heavenly Bridge.

The Realm Lord stage was the fastest period for comprehending laws. Normally, one would undergo constant life-and-death tempering, leveling up step by step until reaching the eighteenth or even twentieth level before attaining King-Level Combat Power.

Dark Lord and Dark Marquis Lord had originally planned to wait until Zhang Dong had King-Level combat power before letting him join the Hong Alliance under another identity.

Boom!

Three million kilometers away, that Demon Race King had been searching an island, but it was horrified to discover that it was frozen in place, completely unable to move.

Even trying to burn its Immortal Divine Power or self-destruct was impossible.

The entire area within a hundred million kilometers was utterly locked down.

The White Sand City Lord, a Triple-Realm Heavenly God, could freeze everything within a hundred million kilometers with a single glance. Zhang Dong's method was similar, just on a smaller scale.

"Th-this, what's going on?!" That Demon Race King was a King-Level Limit combatant, daring enough to roam the Cosmic Secret Realm alone, but now it couldn't even see its opponent and was frozen in place.

A King-Level Limit—even against a true King-Level Invincible or even a Cosmic Venerable at the elementary stage, in theory, it should at least see the attack coming.

How could it be frozen without seeing anything at all? Even the boundless surroundings—the mist had stopped flowing, the sea seemed solidified, utterly frozen!

To pull off something like this, the gap in strength had to be unimaginable.

Whoosh!

A figure wreathed in emerald light descended. The Demon Race King stared in terror, wanting to speak but unable to utter a single word.

Zhang Dong gave it a cold glance, then blew out a breath that formed a storm, annihilating its Immortal Divine Body.

Afterward, the Immortal Divine Body regenerated, but its aura was greatly weakened. Only then did Zhang Dong employ soul enslavement techniques, his soul power forming a spike that slowly pierced forward.

"No!!!" The Demon Race King roared in despair, its eyes splitting at the corners, but it had no way to resist. It was easily enslaved.

To be safe, Zhang Dong had deliberately annihilated part of its divine body before using soul techniques to enslave it. After all, he wasn't a soul master.

Annihilating part of the divine body before enslaving was the most reliable method.

A moment later, the Demon Race King opened its eyes, bowed respectfully, and said, "Master, I am named Boluo King, a member of the Demon Race's royal clan."

Boluo King stood six meters tall, but it was hideously ugly, somewhat resembling a cross between a mule and an alien.

By Zhang Dong's aesthetic standards, it was still much better than a centipede.

"Boluo King, King-Level Limit?" Zhang Dong didn't have high demands for the strength of his enslaved target. He only chose this method to gather intelligence: "I've been roaming the Illusory Light Sea. Why have I been ambushed so frequently over these years?"

If it was just because he was traveling alone and getting robbed, the frequency shouldn't be this high.

"Master, you don't know?"

Boluo King asked in confusion: "Thirty-three years ago, a native stronghold was discovered. A Cosmic Venerable from the Zerg Alliance personally hunted them down. The leader of that native team held him off with his life, while the remaining clansmen fled into the sea with their treasures. But they were all killed in the end, and the treasures were swept into the turbulent currents."

Counting the time, that was exactly three years before Zhang Dong arrived at the Illusory Light Sea.

Zhang Dong suddenly understood.

The entire Illusory Light Sea wasn't static; it was constantly flowing. The positions of those islands changed frequently too. Any living being could stumble upon the natives' hidden legacy.

With the treasures lost in the sea's turbulent currents, finding them would require a great Universe Master to step in, control time and space, and fish a needle out of the ocean.

The Cosmic Venerables didn't have that kind of patience. Those who came to the Illusory Light Sea were all after heavy treasures. They usually stayed in dangerous areas, cultivating while waiting for that moment.

Secret realms also had heavy treasures, and with luck, one might even encounter an ultimate treasure emerging. But most appeared in extremely dangerous zones.

"No wonder they all came to rob me the moment they saw me," Zhang Dong thought. They probably saw a lone traveler and wanted to check if he'd gotten his hands on the hidden legacy—rob first, ask later.

The value of those native hidden legacies should be in the hundreds of billions, even trillions of Hunyuan Units. The lion's share would definitely have been taken by that Cosmic Venerable.

For most King-level Immortals, this was an astronomical fortune—one they couldn't accumulate in endless eons.

Boluo King asked, "Master, do you want to search for this hidden legacy? With Master's abilities, finding it would be no trouble at all."

In his heart, he identified Zhang Dong as a Special Lifeform Immortal.

Those Special Lifeform Immortals had massive divine bodies and high gene multipliers. At the King level, they could even possess hundreds of millions of times the power of a Realm Lord, naturally allowing them to handle him like a Cosmic Venerable would.

Zhang Dong shook his head.

Too troublesome. This sea was so vast that unless he had some extremely powerful detection method, it would simply be a waste of time.

"Not urgent." Zhang Dong instructed, "Just help me gather some valuable items on the various islands. If you come across any treasure, contact me immediately."

He was now planning to head to the most dangerous area for a look, to test his luck and see if he could encounter some great treasure emerging.

Feimo Venom was far too expensive—one kilogram cost a full three hundred billion Hunyuan Units. How much wealth did a normal pinnacle King even have?

All the fortune he had gained over the years from killing tribulations barely met the requirements of the Virtual Universe Company; he couldn't even afford a single kilogram of Feimo Venom.