The Bountiful Secret Realm, the Boundless Ancient City!

The moment Shi Xiao stepped into the light curtain, a dense, almost liquefied Spiritual Qi rushed towards him.

The sky above the secret realm was grayish-white, devoid of sun and moon, yet a faint glow permeated the space, illuminating the entire area as if it were dusk.

Beneath my feet lies a verdant ancient forest, the trees towering high, their canopies blocking out the sun, with occasional glimmers of light among the branches and leaves.

The Spiritual Qi was so dense that it turned into mist, resembling a fairyland.

Shi Xiao was merely standing there, yet the Purple Firmament Lightning Dao Aura around him was automatically circulating, greedily absorbing the abundant Spiritual Qi from all around.

He glanced around and, finding no danger, then spread his Divine Sense, taking in the entire area within hundreds of miles.

The secret realm wasn't large, probably only a dozen or so miles in circumference.

However, the place was filled with Spirit Plant, the quality of which made him secretly gasp.

Fourth-tier spiritual items were surprisingly commonplace.

Purple-Gold Lightning Lotus, Mystic Iron Azure Vine, Shattered Star Grass, Nine-Pattern Spirit Ganoderma...

He couldn't even name some of the Spirit Plant, but he would never mistake the grade of their spiritual essence; they were all at least mid-grade of the fourth rank.

Several more spiritual spirit medicine, exuding fifth-order aura, took root in the Spirit Vein nodes deep within the dense forest, surrounded by a thin layer of Daoist aura barrier.

Shi Xiao didn't rush to touch the fifth-tier spirit medicine. Instead, he collected all the fourth-tier Spirit Plant he encountered along the way into the secret realm.

He moved with lightning speed, his palm flashing with lightning arcs, and the Spirit Plant, roots and all, was sucked into his sleeve without any hesitation.

We traveled and collected as we went.

Occasionally, a few Foundation Establishment demonic creatures would dart out from the dense forest. They were not large in size, and most of them were spirit snakes or antlered deer. When they saw Shi Xiao, they would either tuck their tails between their legs and run away, or rush up to their deaths.

Shi Xiao didn't bother to look any further; with a flick of lightning, he was reduced to charcoal.

The deeper you go, the higher the cultivation level of the demons.

Golden Core level demons began to appear, including the Horned Python, the Red-Eyed Ape, and the Iron-Backed Black Tortoise. They were enormous and each occupied a spiritual land.

Although these demons possessed some brute strength, they were insignificant in front of Shi Xiao; once the Purple Firmament Lightning Dao Aura was released, the Golden Core demons were forced to tremble on the ground by the thunder's power, unable to even muster the thought of resistance.

Shi Xiao took a few of the beasts with decent bloodlines into his secret realm, and killed the rest with a single palm strike, not even bothering to look at them.

Or perhaps they could dig out its Golden Core, eat it as a snack, and refine it.

In half a day, he had swept through most of the outer perimeter of the secret realm.

The harvest was plentiful, including more than thirty fourth-tier Spirit Plant, seven pieces of fourth-tier spiritual ore, the Demon Core of more than a dozen Golden Core Demon Beast, and more than a dozen kinds of rare spiritual items that he had never seen before.

Among them was a type of silvery-white fungus that exuded an extremely gentle aura of Life Dao. Although Shi Xiao did not recognize it, he intuitively judged that its grade was not low, so he collected it as well.

Bringing these things back to Lightning Plain would be enough to expand the treasure trove of the Lightning Bear Line; who knows, these treasures might even lead to the birth of a few more Nascent Soul Nascent Soul in his lineage.

Shi Xiao didn't let go of those few fifth-grade spirit medicine either.

Although the barrier still contained remnants of the Spirit Transformation stage, it had weakened to the extreme over the years. He used Purple Firmament Lightning to bombard and wear it down, and after several days, the barrier shattered into streams of light and dissipated.

With the fifth-grade spirit medicine in hand, Shi Xiao's lips curled into a smile, and he was in an excellent mood.

After clearing the outer perimeter of the secret realm, he turned his gaze to the core of the secret realm.

At its heart lies a city.

With his Divine Sense, he could clearly see that at the end of the dense forest stood a city of considerable size. The city walls were dark gray and several hundred feet high, covered with densely packed runes.

The runes had long since faded, but the lingering aura of the Space Dao within them was still clearly discernible.

The city has no gates.

The city walls were completely sealed off, except for one section where the runes were arranged differently from the others, forming an arched outline, like a sealed door.

Shi Xiao landed in front of the "door" and reached out to press it.

A lightning arc poured into his palm, and the runes suddenly lit up.

The dark gray walls rippled like water, and the arched outline split open to reveal a deep passage.

At the end of the passage, there was a grayish-white light.

Without hesitation, Shi Xiao stepped inside.

The passage was short, only a dozen steps to the end, and then the view suddenly opened up. The moment Shi Xiao stepped out of the passage, his foot landed on a bluestone slab.

He looked up.

The interior of the city is much larger than it appears from the outside.

The bluestone street stretches straight ahead, flanked by rows of buildings, including pavilions, palaces, stone towers, and long corridors, one after another, at varying heights, seemingly without end.

The building is entirely dark gray, made of the same material as the city walls, and its surface is also covered with Space Dao runes; most of the runes are dead, but a few still shimmer faintly.

There was no one there.

The entire city was eerily quiet; there was no wind, no sound, and even the flow of Spiritual Qi seemed to have frozen.

Shi Xiao's footsteps echoed on the bluestone slabs, clear and jarring in the empty street, rather eerie.

Shi Xiao frowned and released his Divine Sense.

The next moment, his expression changed slightly.

When Divine Sense reached out, it was bounced back; not because it was blocked by some kind of restriction, but because space itself was distorted within the city.

His Divine Sense extended a hundred feet, but the location he perceived was completely different from reality; when he extended it to the left, the feedback came from the right.

Leaning forward, I perceived only the scene behind me.

The entire space was in disarray.

Shi Xiao withdrew his Divine Sense, and a flash of purple light appeared in his vertical pupils.

He turned to look at the passage he had come from. Fortunately, the passage was still there, meaning he still had a way out; having a way out made things easier.

What I fear most is being trapped and dying here.

This place is so strange; it must be a test left behind by Spirit Transformation. If this little oddity scares him away, then he can forget about getting any inheritance.

Shi Xiao walked along the bluestone street at a moderate pace, his body radiating a faint aura of Purple Firmament Lightning, like a thin layer of armor covering his skin.

After walking for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, a stone bridge appeared at the end of the street.

There was no water beneath the bridge, only a grayish-white void, bottomless; while on the other side of the bridge was another complex of buildings, exactly the same as this side, with the same pavilions, the same palaces, and the same runes.

Shi Xiao walked across the stone bridge, his brows slightly furrowed; but as soon as he stepped onto the other side, he paused.

The stone bridge behind me is gone.

The stone bridge that had been perfectly fine spanning the void was now nothing but a gray-white abyss; Shi Xiao glanced back and his expression darkened.

With their escape route cut off, this is not a good sign.

Shi Xiao didn't panic. He turned around and continued walking forward. After walking several hundred more steps, he came to another street and a row of buildings.

However, the layout of these buildings is exactly the same as that of the previous area: the same pavilion locations, the same orientation of the stone towers, and the same arrangement of runes.

Is it a formation?

Shi Xiao muttered to himself, then dismissed the idea.

This place should not be a formation, because formations have patterns to follow and key points to break; the space of this city itself is distorted, and there is no fixed orientation.

Up, down, left, right, east, west, north, and south—none of these terms matter here.

He looked up at the sky, and the gray-white sky had changed at some point; the buildings in the city were no longer just distributed on the ground, but were now suspended upside down in the air above, on both sides, and even behind him.

The buildings surrounded him from all sides, like a mirror image.

Shi Xiao stood still, surrounded by buildings on all sides. Above him was an upside-down street, and below, the dome of a palace stretched out beneath his feet.

The entire city has been transformed into a closed spatial labyrinth.

"That's interesting."

Shi Xiao's lips curled slightly; far from being anxious, he was instead intrigued. He chose a direction and started walking.

After walking for about half an hour, he stopped.

There was a very shallow lightning mark on the bluestone slab underfoot.

That was a mark he had unintentionally left when he passed by, and he had somehow circled back to the same spot without even noticing.

Purple light surged in Shi Xiao's eyes.

The city's space is constantly changing; with each step he takes, the surrounding buildings silently shift and recombine.

The seemingly straight streets actually bend and loop without you realizing it, leading you back to the starting point, or perhaps they have some kind of spatial teleportation ability, constantly moving you back to the starting point.

Forcing our way in won't work, and brute force probably won't work either.

This is a method at the level of the Space Dao. Space itself is a maze, without a key point or a flaw. Or rather, the flaw is hidden in the laws of space.

Shi Xiao closed his eyes and suppressed the Purple Firmament Lightning Dao Aura to its extreme.

He no longer used his Divine Sense to perceive location, but instead listened intently.

The city was quiet, but not entirely silent; a very faint, almost imperceptible hum came from a certain direction.

The buzzing sound was not the sound of the wind, nor the tremor of the building, but rather a resonance emanating from space itself somewhere.

The place where the spirit of the Space Dao is most concentrated.

Shi Xiao opened his eyes, followed the buzzing sound, and took a step forward.

Instead of walking along the street, he stepped directly onto the outer wall of a building beside him; his soles were on the vertical wall, no longer confined to a single plane.

In this city, there is no distinction between up, down, left, and right; the walls are the ground, and the four directions are the roads.

He scurried along the wall, climbed over an upside-down stone tower, and passed through two archways.

The buzzing sound came from near and far, as if it were intentionally guiding or testing.

Shi Xiao was not led astray. He stopped every ten steps and marked his path with lightning arcs. If the direction the buzzing led him to coincide with the mark, it meant that the path was a dead end.

After trying this seven or eight times, he gradually figured out the trick.

The spaces within the city are not entirely randomly changing.

Instead, it "breathes" at an extremely slow frequency.

Every so often, the buildings would be reassembled; during the intervals between reassemblies, a stable passage would briefly appear in the space.

That humming sound was the resonance of the Space Dao's energy when the passage appeared.

Shi Xiao got the rhythm right.

He crouched down on the eaves of a palace, and when the buzzing started again, he shot out like lightning.

He unleashed the full power of the Purple Firmament Lightning Dao Rhyme, transforming into a streak of purple-gold light as he hurtled forward along the fleeting passage.

The passageway behind him continued to collapse, and buildings pressed in from all sides.

Shi Xiao gritted his teeth and accelerated, the lightning arc blasting the walls it collided with into rubble, which was then swallowed up by the distorted space before it even hit the ground.

Hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, tens of thousands of feet --

The next instant, a door appeared in front of them.

The dark gray stone gate was hundreds of feet tall, with a huge rune carved on its surface.

Shi Xiao before; they were the same ones he had seen on the arched outline when he entered the city, only this one was a hundred times larger and more complex than the one at the entrance.

The runes were slowly rotating, emanating an extremely rich aura of the Space Dao.

The passageway collapsed completely behind us.

Shi Xiao landed in front of the stone gate, panting heavily, his back drenched in cold sweat; the Purple Firmament Lightning Dao aura around him was suppressed by the cosmic Space Dao aura, making it appear extremely unstable.

When he looked up at the hundred-foot-tall stone gate, the swirling runes reflected in his eyes flickered with light and shadow.

A breath could be seen seeping out from under the door.

The aura was cold, vast, and unfathomable, like a colossal beast slumbering in an abyss, breathing slowly.

"This is... the core area?"