Chapter 1370: River or Inland Sea?
Catching up with the group of cultivators from the Demon Mountain City over the next few minutes, Chu Yang soon began what would end up becoming a journey lasting for several days through the desert. Doing his best to avoid being detected during the few times that the group in front of him was attacked by the large sandworms lurking beneath the surface of the desert.
Luckily or maybe because he was on his own, he was never targeted by any of the sandworms and was pretty much left on his own. Making the entire journey through the desert a rather monotone and boring experience, as he had nothing to do outside of trying to figure out what kind of power was suppressing his domain.
In the end, he did manage to find some clues by the time that a grassland emerged in the distance and the group ahead of him rushed forward to leave the desert as fast as possible.
Through the clues, he guessed that the entire desert should have formed some kind of natural formation that suppressed the strength of those who wandered inside of it and prevented them from flying more than a few seconds even if they had reached the Domain Lord Realm.
All of this allowed the sandworms living inside the desert to have a perfect living environment without any challengers capable of defeating them. After all, without being able to fly properly or use one’s domain, there was no way someone in the Domain Lord Realm could even harm those massive sandworms. Even someone in the Soul Ascension Realm had a difficult time, something he had seen when the Soul Ascension Realm cultivator in charge of the group ahead of him tried taking on one of the weaker sandworms only a little over seventy meters wide.
The battle had been a treat to watch from afar, but was rather discouraging, as it was essentially just the Soul Ascension Realm cultivator punching sand without being able to do anything to the sandworm as it slowly disappeared into the endless sea of sand.
Shaking his head as he thought about this, Chu Yang decided not to think about these sandworms any longer, as he would soon be out of the desert and would most likely never encounter them again after he left the secret realm. Unless there was another desert with sandworms waiting on the other side of the grassland.
Whoosh~!
Managing to avoid encounter any sandworms at the last stretch out of the desert, Chu Yang hid himself in the tall grass before resuming could in a way be called stalking of the cultivator group ahead of him. Not feeling too worried about his current situation, as it was clear that these people seemed to know what they were doing as they continued moving deeper into the secret realm with a clear path in mind.
…
“Finally! Out of that worm infested desert!”
“Haa… You don’t say. Unfortunately, Old Jin didn’t manage to make it through, he got swallowed just when we saw the grassland.”
“Well, at least this grassland is far safer compared to that death trap, the strongest demon beast encountered during our last time visiting this place was only around the Earlier Stages of the Nascent Soul Realm.”
“Indeed, I’m not worried about this grassland, but instead that dreadful canyon on the other side of this grassland…”
“True, though I really doubt that place can be called a canyon. After all, what kind of canyon is over a thousand kilometers wide? It’s more like a small inland sea flowing through at that point…”
“I agree, but the ruins we found at that place called it a canyon. So, I guess it should be one, or at least was one in the past. Don’t know if the size of it became larger since the time that so-called canyon was named as a canyon…”
“I don’t care what it’s called, I just hope we can get through it safely. After all, last time we tried to make it through, we only managed to make it halfway through before the city lord spotted the gateway on the other side.
At that point we were forced to turn back, having already lost more than two dozen Nascent Soul Realm cultivators and two Domain Lord Realm cultivators to those creatures inside the river.”
“””….”””
As the group of Nascent Soul Realm cultivators chatted with each other about their upcoming crossing of what could essentially be considered an inland sea, all of them became quiet after the mention of the creatures living inside this more than a thousand-kilometer-wide river.
Even the Domain Lord Realm cultivators who had remained relatively calm so far could not help shivering a bit at the mention of those creatures, as they had personally been there to witness as two powerful Domain Lords no weaker than themselves had been dragged into the dark waters. Never returning to the surface again.
In the end, it had been because a creature in the Soul Ascension Realm emerged from the water that they were forced to escape the way they had come back then.
Not just that, but they also clearly remembered that they could feel several equally powerful creatures lurking beneath the surface staring at them during the entire process. Leaving some of these Domain Lord Realm cultivators far more terrified than the Nascent Soul Realm cultivators who hadn’t been able to sense those powerful creatures back then.
All things considered, they understood how dangerous it would be for them to cross that river, but they simply had no choice, as this was the only path they had managed to successfully explore and also the only one where they were certain they could find a gate out of this secret realm.
If they tried exploring a new path, they might end up dying long before they can even find another gateway out of the secret realm… And that is of course only if there is another gateway out of the secret realm in the first place!
