Chapter 175

Before dawn, the bonfire in the ruins of the medicinal garden had already gone out.

The air was filled with a damp, earthy smell, mixed with a faint stench of decay.

"Is everything ready?" Wang Shan's voice rang out especially clear in the morning stillness.

Li Hu patted the storage pouch at his chest and replied in a deep voice: "Master, all set."

Zhang Mei carefully checked Wang Zhitao's condition, then tidied Wang Zhize's somewhat disheveled collar.

Leaving the shelter of the Seal's light barrier, the omnipresent sense of oppression instantly intensified severalfold. Here the trees were no longer plain green but glowed with an eerie, almost-living dark purple; their bark was covered with vein-like patterns. The ground underfoot was so soft it seemed unreal, and stepping on it even caused a faint wriggle.

"This damned place gets creepier the deeper we go." Li Hu gripped his sword hilt, his whole body tensing as he warily scanned the surroundings.

Zhang Mei said nothing, merely following silently behind Wang Shan's side, her fingertips gripping several poised flying needles.

Wang Shan ignored them, focusing all his mind ahead. The summons from the secret realm's depths had grown so strong it felt like a drum beating at his ears. At the same time, the lethal threat loomed like a shadow, like an axe hanging over his head, ready to fall at any moment.

He cradled the sleeping Wang Zhitao in his arms, while Wang Zhize tightly clung to his sleeve, his other small hand gripping the Black Jade Slip fiercely.

The deeper they went, the more Wang Shan sensed that the Black Jade Slip, his grandson's bloodline, and the secret realm's core were resonating, their synergy amplifying exponentially.

After walking about half an hour, the vista ahead suddenly opened up, revealing a clearing.

But this clearing caused the three of them to halt simultaneously.

Above the clearing floated a dozen or so vague humanoid silhouettes. They looked like they were forged from thick smoke and light, their forms constantly shifting between substance and illusion, lacking facial features, with only a blob of light flickering where their heads should be.

"What the hell is that?" Li Hu let out a low growl from his throat.

Before his words faded, those humanoid silhouettes silently "looked" over.

The next moment, they glided over like ghosts, moving at astonishing speed.

"Careful!" Zhang Mei snapped, flicking her fingertips; several glints of cold light shot straight at the foremost silhouette.

However, a strange occurrence took place.

The flying needles passed through the silhouette's body without hindrance, embedding in a distant tree trunk, as if they had struck only a mass of air.

"Are physical attacks ineffective?" Zhang Mei thought.

Li Hu had already surged forward, his spirit‑infused longsword whistling as he brought it down in a fierce slash.

With a muffled "pfft," like a blade sinking into a pile of cotton, the longsword likewise pierced the thing's body but caused no real damage. Instead, the silhouette extended a phantom arm, resting it on Li Hu's blade.

A chilling, chaotic force instantly traveled up the blade.

"Mmm!" Li Hu grunted, feeling half his body go numb, nearly losing his grip on the sword.

Wang Shan frowned, the situation proving tougher than expected.

【Alert! High‑density energy aggregate detected! Species: Void‑Derived Beast. Traits: energy form, immune to most physical attacks, capable of directly eroding Spiritual Power and soul!】

The system's alert tone exploded in his mind.

"Get back!" Wang Shan bellowed.

He handed Wang Zhitao to Zhang Mei beside him, then stepped forward, forcibly drawing a thread of the beastly power suppressed within him by the Clear Heart Pill.

He used no technique, simply throwing a plain punch. His fist was wrapped in a layer of highly unstable Spiritual Power tinged with blood‑red and black qi.

Boom!

Where the punch's wind passed, the air twisted. The foremost Void‑Derived Beast was swept by the blast, its whole body flickering violently several times, emitting a silent shriek as its form grew somewhat faint.

It worked!

Wang Shan instantly judged that dealing with these things required not ordinary Spiritual Power but a more essential, chaotic force to shatter their energy structure.

But just as he prepared to press the attack, a sudden change occurred.

The entire Ten Thousand Beasts Origin shuddered violently without warning.

It was not an earthquake, but a tremor of space itself.

The surrounding eerie trees swayed wildly, the ground beneath undulated like waves, and the distant sky was ripped open by black gashes that were instantly filled with chaotic spatial turbulence.

Li Hu and Zhang Mei lost their footing and fell to the ground. Wang Zhize turned deathly pale with fright, clinging desperately to Wang Shan's leg.

An indescribably terrifying will, like an ancient god that had slept for hundreds of millions of years, opened its eyes at this moment.

That will held no anger, no killing intent—only a pure, absolute resolve to expel every "foreign thing" from within itself.

【Highest‑Level Alert! Highest‑Level Alert!】

【Detected: the core will of the Ten Thousand Beasts Origin has awakened! Form: a fusion of Earth Vein, beast source, and spatial law! Threat level exceeds assessment limits!】

【Alert! The host has been marked as the "Primary Eradication Target"!】

Wang Shan felt his soul gripped as if by an invisible giant hand, about to be crushed outright. His Foundation Establishment cultivation was insignificant before this will, like an ant.

His inner beastly power ran completely out of control, slamming wildly against his meridians, as if answering the will's summons to turn him too into a mindless savage beast.

The Void‑Derived Beasts that had just been facing off against Wang Shan now, as if having received orders, instantly turned feral, their numbers mysteriously multiplying severalfold, surrounding them completely.

But they did not attack right away.

Because their "master" had descended.

At the clearing's exact center, space rippled like a water surface, then slowly pulled apart to both sides.

Nothing tangible emerged.

There, only a pure, continually distorting light existed. Within that light seemed to lie the birth and death of the whole world, evolving the myriad demon beasts' coming into being and passing away.

It, is this secret realm.

It is the Ten Thousand Beasts Origin itself!

Wang Shan instantly understood. This is not at all some guardian beast, nor is it some trump card left behind by the Beast Taming Sect. This is, after the Beast Taming Sect's downfall, this transformed secret realm, over the long ages, having self-evolved into a 'god'! A plane will that regards all outsiders as viruses!

"Heh, this is getting troublesome..." Wang Shan squeezed out a sentence from his throat, but the corner of his mouth pulled out an ugly smile.

Compared to this thing, Wan Tianxiong that old dog is practically just a younger brother.

That clump of twisted light gave off a silent roar.

It was not a sound, but a direct impact on the soul level.

Roar—!

In an instant, from all directions, from deep in the forest, came beast roars like mountain cries and sea tsunamis.

The ground trembled, trees collapsed. Countless pairs of scarlet eyes lit up in the darkness; innumerable mutant demon beasts of various forms surged like a breaking flood from all directions, sealing off this small clearing completely.

There were the iron-skinned barbarian oxen seen before, the lightning-fast shadow magic wolves, and even monstrous birds with three heads circling in the sky.

Their eyes held not a trace of reason, only the most primal, pure desire for destruction.

Yet their actions were not a disorganized mob.

Under the will of the 'Lord of Ten Thousand Beasts,' these savage demon beasts formed a terrifying legion with clear advance and retreat.

The outermost layer of the encirclement consisted of thick‑skinned, flesh‑heavy defensive beasts; the middle layer held beasts skilled in long‑range attack and ambush; the innermost layer was those strange voidspawn beasts.

A perfect, deadly encirclement.

Li Hu and Zhang Mei had turned ashen; under this heaven‑shattering, earth‑crushing might, they could barely muster the thought to resist. This was no longer a battle, but a natural disaster.

Wang Shan stared fixedly at the light of that core.

He could feel that the vast majority of that will's pressure was locked onto him.

It seemed to take the greatest interest in this 'outsider' who cultivated the Ten Thousand Beasts Reversal technique and could resonate with the secret realm's core.

A cold, emotionless mental surge shot straight into Wang Shan's mind.

That surge contained only one message:

【Kneel, or be annihilated.】