“Good!”

Shi Chuan Kong nodded, then sat down cross-legged on the spot. After wiping the beast core clean, he took a deep breath, swallowed it into his stomach, and closed his eyes.

After a while, he opened his eyes and said with a slight frown:

“Brother Li, you must have swallowed this beast core like this, right? Why do I feel like there's nothing much happening here?”

“The beast core you had just now was much worse than the previous two. It seems that the more ferocious these alien beasts are, and the more other beasts they devour, the larger the beast core formed in their bodies will be. And the longer they live, the more concentrated the Star Power contained in the beast core will be, which may be of greater help to opening the Xuan Apertures.” Han Li pondered slightly and analyzed.

“I think that's the logic as well. But looking at the state of this island, it seems like that long-tailed giant lizard and the black centipede should be the two strongest alien beasts on this island.” Shi Chuan Kong turned around and glanced at the plains and ridges behind him, and said.

“It doesn't matter, we need to hurry on our way now. There will be plenty of opportunities in the future, we can try again then.” Han Li nodded and said.

“Good! If any powerful alien beast doesn't know what's good for it on the way, then don't blame me for being impolite.” Shi Chuan Kong rubbed his hands and said with a grin.

After chatting for a while, the two of them stopped trying and went to rest.

The next morning.

On the edge of the island, Han Li rode on the floating bird, starting to accelerate from a hundred steps away, rushing towards the black mist area.

“Bang,” “Bang,” “Bang”

With each step the floating bird took, a burst of sound would erupt beneath its feet, stirring up a cloud of dust.

Its figure ran faster and faster, its strides grew larger and larger, until it rushed to the edge of the island. It suddenly leaped into the air, soaring into the sky above the black mist area, its two huge wings spreading open with a "flap".

At the same time, a pressure far greater than before filled the entire surrounding space, and the astonishing trend was increasing.

Only to see air masses constantly spewing out from the air vents under the floating bird's feet, and its wings were constantly flapping, its figure struggling to fly forward.

Traveling through the air in this area was already difficult, and with Han Li on its back, the floating bird's figure was obviously much lower than when it flew over last night, almost skimming forward along the black mist.

Han Li pressed his body close to its back, trying to hide himself under the floating bird's wings as much as possible, his eyes fixed on the front, his muscles tensed, fearing that something might happen.

Fortunately, the distance between the two islands was shorter than they had estimated last night, and the floating bird had obviously made countless round trips and was already familiar with it. It quickly carried Han Li to the other island on the opposite shore and landed.

As soon as he landed on the island, Han Li rolled off the floating bird's back, and his figure sank slightly downward. He only felt that the spatial pressure pressing down on him was becoming even stronger.

He lightly exhaled a breath and adjusted for a moment before raising his hand and patting the floating bird beside him, ordering it to fly back to the other side to bring Shi Chuan Kong and Xie Dao Ren over separately.

After landing on the island, both of them noticed the changes in the island's spatial pressure, and couldn't help but frown.

“This island is much larger than the previous one, and the spatial pressure on the island seems to have increased a lot.” Shi Chuan Kong said.

“Indeed. Judging from this situation, the alien beasts on this island are probably even more ferocious. We need to be more cautious on our journey ahead.” Han Li gently stroked the floating bird's head with one hand, and said in a solemn tone.

“This time, thanks to this little guy. Let's first find out where the previous batch of floating birds flew from, and then capture two more. Riding on them will allow us to move faster, and we can find the prisoner remnants sooner, so we can inquire about Fellow Daoist Zi Ling's whereabouts.” Shi Chuan Kong glanced at the floating bird lying beside Han Li, and suggested.

“I've already used my divine sense to investigate. There's a canyon several dozen miles away, where those floating birds were last night. Without further ado, let's set off immediately.” Han Li nodded and said.

About half a day later, the three of them each rode a floating bird and rushed out of the canyon, heading towards the center of the island while being chased by hundreds of floating birds.

……

Time flies, more than two months have passed.

In a rugged mountainous area with undulating terrain, three floating birds gathered together, pecking at the ground non-stop.

Not far away, beneath a giant rock, two sharp-toothed giant elephants, each about a hundred zhang tall and covered in bluish-gray scales, lay in the gaps between the rocks, blood dripping from their mouths, already dead.

In the center of their heads, there was a bowl-sized blood hole, and the beast cores inside had been hollowed out.

Above the giant rock, Han Li and Shi Chuan Kong sat back to back, a few steps apart, with Xuan Apertures lit up on both of them, and a layer of light enveloped their bodies.

Xie Dao Ren stood expressionlessly to the side, gazing into the distance, wondering what he was thinking.

Before long, Han Li and the other who were sitting with their eyes closed, opened their eyes one after another, turned around and smiled at each other.

“After this period of experimentation, it's basically confirmed that the crystal cores in these scaled beasts can indeed increase the Star Power in the body, which is helpful for cultivating the physical body, but it's not enough to stimulate the opening of the Xuan Apertures.” Han Li breathed a long sigh of relief and said.

“Indeed. But even so, the benefits of swallowing so many beast cores these days are still very obvious. Our tolerance for the spatial pressure of this world has obviously increased a lot. I didn't expect that coming to the Scale Accumulation Void Realm with Brother Li would bring such an opportunity. If we can constantly hunt and devour beast cores here, it's much faster than cultivating hard outside.” Shi Chuan Kong said with a smile.

“As long as we swallow more beast cores, our physique will become stronger, and we'll be able to cope with it more calmly when we land on larger landmasses later.” Han Li nodded and said.

“Fellow Daoist Li, that group of scaled giant scorpions is catching up again. At that speed, they'll be able to catch up here in just thirty breaths.” At this moment, Xie Dao Ren suddenly reminded.

“Those pesky things that won't go away, if it weren't for the fact that there are too many of them and the beast cores are worthless, we would have wiped them out long ago.” Shi Chuan Kong spat lightly, feeling a little disgusted.

“Don't worry about them, we'll be reaching the next piece of land soon, and they won't be able to catch up. Alright, let's set off.” Han Li smiled and said.

With that, the three of them remounted the three floating birds and raced through the mountains.

……

One morning several months later.

On the edge of a reddish-brown Gobi wasteland, a black alien beast that looked like a jackal but had no fur and was covered in scales was tearing at the rotting flesh of a giant lizard that had been dead for many days.

It suddenly perked up its ears and looked up alertly, gazing towards the misty aura outside the edge of the wilderness.

In the mist, a huge shadow was seen passing through the layers of mist, heading towards this side.

Seeing this, the jackal scaled beast quickly retreated nearly a hundred zhang, then turned its head and looked over here.

“Moo…”

Accompanied by a low and heavy roar, a cyan-black giant turtle, tens of zhang tall, floated out of the black mist and slowly landed on the Gobi shore.

The giant turtle's head resembled a cyan bull, and the patterns on its shell were peculiar, with a layer of very special luster, reflecting specks of cyan-green light in the morning sun.

On the giant turtle's back stood three men. The one in the lead was wearing a cyan robe and had ordinary features. Beside him was a man in purple clothes, with snow-white hair and extraordinary handsome features, far surpassing the former.

Behind the two of them, there was a man dressed as a Taoist priest, who indifferently scanned the surroundings. He met the eyes of the jackal scaled beast, and the latter's eyes shrank slightly. It completely abandoned the rotting corpse and ran away.

The three people on the turtle's back were none other than Han Li, Shi Chuan Kong, and Xie Dao Ren.

After months of long journey, they finally left the scope of the Gray Scale Island Group and landed on this Brown Valley Continent.

During this period, although they tried to avoid places where powerful auras emanated from, they still encountered no less than a hundred small-scale scaled beast attacks, and more than a dozen attacks from various large scaled alien beasts. However, most of them were able to avoid them by relying on the floating birds' outstanding raiding ability.

But there were also some that could not be avoided, so they could only face them head-on.

Among them, there were two battles that were quite arduous. Once, after a fierce battle, they killed two giant alien beasts resembling armadillos and harvested two beast cores the size of baby fists.

The other time was a heavy loss. All three floating birds were swallowed by a scaled earth dragon that suddenly sprang out from the ground and was a hundred zhang long.

That beast was not only extremely powerful in physique, but also fierce and cunning in nature. As soon as it saw that the situation was not good, it immediately burrowed into the ground, making it very difficult to deal with.

Han Li and the others also confronted it for almost half a month, moving out of its territory before they escaped the danger.

After that, the three of them walked for more than a month before they encountered the alien beast beneath them, which Han Li named "Sky Trampling Turtle".

There was something special about this beast's shell, which, like the floating bird, could partially resist the heavy pressure of this world. Even in the black mist-filled area, it could float in the air like a sea turtle in the Immortal World.

It was precisely because of this turtle's special ability to float in the void that Han Li and the others were able to pass through the black mist void, which was nearly a thousand zhang between the last island and this continent, and reach here.

At this moment, the three people sitting on the turtle's back were all silent, not because they had nothing to say, but because they were all silently enduring the pressure on this continent, which had increased by more than ten times.

Under such heavy pressure, Han Li felt a little short of breath, his internal organs seemed to be squeezed into a ball, and there was a constant faint buzzing sound in his ears.

Patches of scales had already appeared on Shi Chuan Kong's body, revealing a part of his demon race true form to resist this pressure.

In comparison, Xie Dao Ren, who was a puppet, although also suffering from heavy pressure, was more comfortable in terms of sensation than the two of them.

Han Li's divine sense was released to explore the surroundings. On this continent, his divine sense power was suppressed even more severely. Now, even exploring the movements within a range of seventy or eighty miles was quite difficult.

Along the way, he had not encountered any exiled prisoner remnants, nor had he found any traces left by Zi Ling, which made him feel uneasy.

After all, this secret realm was much larger than he had expected, and the environment here was extremely harsh. His cultivation was almost useless in this place. Only a strong physical body could compete with the various alien beasts lurking everywhere.

Zi Ling had been thrown into this place for so many years, he didn't know how she was now?

While Han Li was pondering, his mind suddenly moved, and the Sky Trampling Turtle under his control consciously stopped.