The spatial rift opened wide, and compact and narrow sun rays flashed in his eyes, blinding him for a moment. Placing his hands on his eyes, he entered the rift.
With a step ahead, his heart was throbbing, and he thought of survival and treasures he would get; thoughts covered his brain.
The space rift began to dwindle behind him without his knowledge and closed with a thud; his heart again thumped.
Closed? He couldn't process anything, and the greenish light faded! Instead appeared a vast green landscape, like plains or prairies.
He saw ominous green-yellow trees, each several metres away from the previous one. The trees were twisted and overgrew; grass made the surroundings more predatory.
"Is this the secret realm?" He calmed himself; wasn't it his own decision?
Previously vanished Yellow Qi again appeared; the old master took a step on his shoulder. The wolf-type fox creature ran away before Luo could notice anything.
"This fox is full of myriad mysteries," he said. "Old master, can you tell me about secret realms?" he asked the old master.
"Talking about secret realms, there are two types of secret realms. One is formed by connecting to a limited-time-appearing space crack that leads to a land of treasures and perils. While others are created by Human Emperors either to pass down his inheritance to his next generation. Although the second one is next to impossible to get access to for you, natural secret realms have unknown and accessible opportunities for cultivators to gain benefits."
He listened to his teaching and comprehended the two types of secret realms, natural and artificial, in that sense.
"So natural secret realms are rare, and we have no idea how they form to connect to this world. And artificial secret realms... then how can they be formed if we don't know how naturals are formed?"
"I have no idea. Maybe someone else knows." He twitched his eyelid; he never thought of such an eye-catching possibility.
"What kind of wise wizard are you?"
"I am… truly wise; widen the knowledge and gain benefits."
The Yellow Qi dissipated into thin air.
Luo sighed and walked towards a big tree. More than a thousand times bigger than any common local tree.
"Maybe there is treasure!" he said. His voice grew louder.
In the pathway, he saw many neutral creatures, sheep, friendly Qilins, etc. They were secret beasts of the secret realm. In a perfect environment for breeding and nurturing, they promised a healthy source of food.
But their face looked sad with sorrow or fear. Qilins were rather average; a 1-metre-long one was the smallest here.
Luo finally touched the large tree. The tree pulsed a bright white light, and suddenly a boom resounded.
Boooom!
An extremely terrifying energy-covered beast emerged. Its wings spanned ten metres. It flew high towards the sky. Its fangs are extremely sharp and big.
The impact caused fear among nearby neutral creatures; the qilins ran away trampling sheep under their feet.
"Isn't this nest protector a great beast?" Said Old Master appearing on his shoulder. He was lightly stroking his beard. He had a calm expression, like the beast was a potato in front of him.
The beast roared; the bone-chilling scream rang in his ear, oozing blood was gathered near his feet.
The roar was enough to kill some early-stage body refining cultivators. The beast flew away with folding and expanding his wings.
While the Luo stood terrified, "What was that? It inflicted fear in every corner of my flesh? How can I even endure it?" His words were a grave utterance.
The old master replied, "These beasts are known for their skills to protect their nests, most of them being flyers. They have evolved into an embodiment of protection and fear."
Luo adjusted his stance and cleaned the blood from his robes; the tree was still there with a giant hollow space within it.
The great hollow was dark and dim; light didn't pass from the passage as if blocked by a mysterious energy array.
The fear of nest nest, in his mind, flashed and vanished for some moments before returning.
Luo extended his arm only to find that he couldn't trespass the territory; the hollow space was blocked by a transparent sheet of array.
Only array practitioners could break the array, or extreme strength could help.
"This array is constituted from the energy of a Core Palace realm cultivator; the only way is to find the array stele for you."
"And what is an array stela?" he asked the old master.
"When a particular pattern forms a complete array, the energy distribution core is called array stele. Simply put, put energybin energy stele, and it will manage the energy distribution based on its configurations, and that's what novice array practitioners do."
"Isn't that too simple? To start, where can I find the array stele?" he said in hope of getting an answer.
"I am not an array master; I just never knew one or two things about it. I never learnt about array style's investigation in my entire life," he replied.
Luo's hope diminished, "Ah, so it's only me."
He began to observe an array, and after an hour of investigation, he had nothing in his hands. He was seeing a particular pattern, a phoenix's tail and dragon's head.
"Are they making this nonsense to confuse us?" He touched the area but couldn't breach it.
"You better not say this before a Reiki practitioner," the old master said.
The nest on the big tree was shaking from the thin air blowing.
There was no trace of the beast returning.
He thought, Can't this old man use his power to destroy the array?'
Suddenly, footstep's sound resounded. Luo blinked and partially hid behind the root outside the soil; he could see two men standing near the faraway tree.
They slowly deleted the distance between the big tree and them.
"Wasn't that bug sitting there tonight?" The one with a sword said his hair was dark brown, with a line of veins on his head he was frowning.
The other had a sharp fan in his hand. He stood calm.
"That bug, you mean the beast, hmm, he must have been gone on his hunt." Sword Guy's frown immediately replaced a lip curl.
He opened his mouth. "Senior Brother Chu Cu, last time we failed, but today we surely will breach this formation!"
Chu Cu waved his fan and opened it flat; a round energy circulated to its sharp tips, and in some seconds, it shot bursts towards the array formation.
The transparent array tainted and cracked into small pieces, vanishing in the thin sheet of air.
"Ahaha! Finally we broke it; now no one can stop us from entering the secret realm! Master will be proud." Junior brother Han Shu exclaimed in excitement!
Both entered the large hollow and disappeared from the viewfield of Luo.
Luo watched them going; he also waited for a minute and thought that now he didn't even move his finger to get into the treasure house as they said it to be. Free items are awaiting him.
Luo jumped from behind and entered the dark, hollow cave. The insides of the hollow were dim and getting thinner and thinner.
He moved forward without any guard; the cave path was squeezing tighter and tighter until he stepped into a large cave room-type rest area with lots of sources of light around it.
Fireflies flying and illuminating the room.
"Such a thing in the place," he said.
The next path divided into eleven large entrances to different places.
"Hey, old man, can you tell me where to go?" he asked the old man.
Oldman appeared with his yellow transparent Qi body.
"The odd sense of the place and scent clearly describes the obscurity of this place; often the places with less grass are the genuine entrances to treasure rooms." He swirled his beard made out of a transparent sheet of yellow Qi.
Luo's eyes scanned the entrances; the leftmost was muddy, while the rightmost had a clean pathway.
Others were grassy, muddy, and clean.
So it was impossible to deduce which clean side was correct.
All four sides were clean; there was only a single dark path.
Even fireflies didn't dare enter the pathways.
Left with three choices?
He entered one of the three ways, calculating something on his fingers, and walked again; the walls squeezed with distance closing.
...
My humble readers, more chaps will be released as soon as this is released.