Chapter 2845

Xuan Du gently swayed the long halberd in his hand, and immediately an invisible ripple spread in all directions.

This ripple, upon contacting solid matter—especially the shore and the lakebed—would reflect back, and Xuan Du would capture it.

Thereafter, the exact conditions of this entire lake—such as its area, shape, the depth and topography of the lakebed, and even what creatures lived in the water and the basic composition of the lake water—were all clear to Xuan Du in his mind.

But this time, something went wrong: he actually felt no echo, and could not obtain positioning!

Could it be that the lake they were in had no end?

Or perhaps the ripple he sent out was absorbed by some substance?

He had never encountered this situation before. After all, in reality, bodies of water always have boundaries, unless it is the vast ocean. Although this was a dream, the Goddess of Phantom Music had told him that dreams also have basic laws to follow.

Unless...

His heart gave a sudden jolt.

Unless this was not a dream.

Upon careful thought, what kind of dream could accommodate physical objects?

He turned his body and sent a mental message to the Goddess of Phantom Music: "Can you hide the true body of the Hidden God from reality into the dream?"

"This..." The Goddess of Phantom Music stared blankly at the colossal object stretching tens of li before her eyes, "This won't do."

Like nightmares, she could only bring into the dream things inherently possessing illusory properties, such as the golden dew lotus and its dew, or certain magical artifacts capable of shuttling between the real and the illusory.

But to directly move such a vast seaweed forest into the dream? Impossible, utterly impossible.

If the Goddess of Phantom Music could do it, then why did the Lingxu crowd toil so hard in reality to build Lingyun Island and Liuli Sea, and still risk exposure?

Therefore, this place is fundamentally not a dream.

Xuan Du stared at the Goddess of Phantom Music, grinding his teeth:

This arrogant demon king has brought them all into the enemy's trap!

But in fact, this was also what the Goddess of Phantom Music had secretly worried about earlier, but she was neither certain nor dared to speak, and now Xuan Du had pierced it with a single word, leaving her also in a state of frantic anxiety.

Seeing her not deny it, the other demons could not help but say: "Could this place be the enemy's secret realm?"

Doesn't Jiuyou also excel at setting up secret realms? Moreover, there are originally many secret realms on this Mother Earth Plain; it would not be strange for them to have mistakenly entered one.

"If it is a secret realm, then like a dream, it must have an exit." The Goddess of Phantom Music fixed her gaze on He Lingchuan and said, "The simplest method is to kill the master of the secret realm."

But they also felt some puzzlement in their hearts: even if Jiuyou had lured them all into this secret realm, why specifically this one? Why specifically let them see the body of the Hidden God?

After all, the Hidden God's body is the primary material used by the Lingxu crowd to create the divine descent form; if it were retaken by the demons, it would be a catastrophe for all of humanity.

Unless He Lingchuan is quite confident this time, they cannot get out.

This strange, boundless red sea, with the Hidden God's body drifting within it...

Xuan Du appeared rough and bold on the outside, but his thoughts were meticulous, and he was very familiar with the Hidden God's body; at a glance he saw that these long, giant seaweeds had undergone significant changes since the Liuli Sea era.

Those leaves—how to put it? —actually bore some human embryonic forms.

Who did this?

Even the Lingxu Holy Sovereign, who possesses the divine nature of life, could not command the Hidden God's body to undergo such evolution.

What kind of power could enable the unconscious Hidden God's body to undergo such a massive transformation overall?

Xuan Du thought this, yet his hand was not idle at all; he raised his trident and unleashed a water dragon wave toward He Lingchuan, then immediately followed up, unwilling to waste a single moment.

This strange red sea made even him, as the Sea Emperor, feel uncomfortable staying; he wanted to leave as quickly as possible.

Originally, when he used this divine ability in water, he could instantly summon three huge water dragons to attack enemies from all angles. If he wished, he could even conjure hundreds or thousands of aquatic beings.

But in this red sea, strange things happened.

No matter how he waved the trident in his hand, no water dragon appeared. Here, waving his halberd was no different from an ordinary person swimming in the sea—there was hardly any difference in effect.

This could only mean one thing: the water before him simply would not obey his command.

If he had previously harbored two parts of doubt, now he could basically be certain: this place must be Jiuyou's secret realm. As for how they fell from the dream into the secret realm, Xuan Du does not know, and the Goddess of Phantom Music also cannot explain it.

But it doesn't matter. Compared to land creatures, the Sea Emperor Xuan Du, in water, possesses speed, posture, attack angles, and strength that can easily overwhelm the opponent.

Even the most agile human, in water, cannot compare to a swimming fish. The Sea Emperor Xuan Du's sprint speed in water far exceeds that of a torpedo—at least five times that of He Lingchuan.

At this speed, he could catch up to He Lingchuan within at most ten breaths.

But just then, from the depths of the red sea beneath the demons, dozens of giant tentacles suddenly stretched out without reason, indiscriminately sweeping toward everyone.

The demons were startled and instinctively dodged, but these tentacles seemed to have eyes—wherever they went, the tentacles followed.

Upon closer inspection, what appeared to be tentacles were in fact a series of giant chains, each thicker than a water bucket; once set in motion, they emitted a clanking metallic resonance.

Yet on the surface, they showed no sign of being metal, for the surfaces of these chains were all covered with strange dark-red creatures. Sometimes they resembled insects, sometimes smoke, and sometimes they would transform into countless faces of painful, ferocious humans. More importantly, the Sea Emperor Xuan Du actually felt some familiarity with these things.

The demons could not allow these things to approach, and each employed divine techniques to resist. For a moment, this tranquil deep sea blazed with five-colored light, as various divine powers exploded.

But in the demons' assault, these chains suffered not the slightest damage. At most, the surface red creatures were scattered, but within a few breaths, new creatures would replenish and re-cover the entire chain tightly.

Then one god failed to dodge in time and was caught by the chain—

Not only are humans slow to move in water, but demons are no exception either.

This chain, like a giant python, instantly coiled tightly around him. The red creatures on the chain swarmed upward, drilling into his seven orifices. No matter how this demon struggled and roared, it was like a mayfly trying to shake a tree—he could not move the chain in the slightest.

The demon beside him, intending to swim over to rescue him, suddenly felt this chain jerk downward, dragging its captured prey back to the deep seabed, vanishing in an instant.

Only the captured demon's howling echoed back and forth in everyone's ears.

The other demons were greatly alarmed, but had no recourse, for they too had each been assigned a chain. After seeing their companion's fate, they all responded with extraordinary caution, fearing they would follow in his footsteps.