Chapter 1 Bai Canglang

At that moment, Bai Canglang, seeing the battle was over in the distance, grabbed his weapons and sprinted from the hilltop.

He arrived just in time to hear Garuda, kneeling with hands raised in a standard American Federation surrender posture, honestly explaining the events surrounding the black abyss.

It had happened roughly seven years ago, during a summer when Garuda was about eight or nine years old.

At that time, Garuda had just, with the help of the Pure Azure Glazed Pearl, advanced from the ‘newborn body’ to the ‘youth body’ of the Golden-Winged Great Peng, the most important sign of which was the ‘Azure Glazed Heart,’ granting it complete freedom of movement.

The Golden-Winged Great Peng was a divine bird, a natural demon god. It was enlightened from birth, awakened when it could breathe and see, and entered the extraordinary realm directly when it could move freely. In its youth, it could roam the world unhindered, with almost no natural enemies except for other powerful adult divine beasts.

But in the Kunlun Secret Realm, where spiritual energy was cut off, where could other adult divine beasts be found? Garuda at that time was already the strongest in the secret realm, and bored out of its mind, it didn't know what to do—so it, whose wisdom was still muddled, followed its instincts to fight the spiritual beasts in the secret realm.

Of course, no spiritual beast could defeat it, and it naturally became the beast king of the secret realm… And under the crowd of spiritual beasts, it finally distinguished the difference between itself and other lives, unlocked a little of the wisdom in its inheritance, and knew where it was located.

Then, Garuda began exploring the palaces in the Kunlun Secret Realm, passing the time with the various books and inheritances within.

And one day, it explored a strange palace located at the foot of the five central mountains of Kunlun.

This palace looked almost as dilapidated as all the other palaces in the Kunlun Secret Realm, but with Garuda's divine bird eyes, it could see that this palace was the newest of all the palaces it had seen—in fact, in a sense, it was among the last palaces built by the ancient immortals and gods before they left Kunlun.

Not only that, but the palace itself seemed to have a strange power that seemed to make intelligent beings instinctively reject entering it.

Sensing the strangeness of the palace, Garuda became interested and prepared to enter it to see what was going on.

"This kid is a bit slow…" Bai Canglang quietly said to Su Zhou, who was listening intently, "If it were me, I wouldn't even go into such a strange place, let alone explore it."

"Hmm… Right." Su Zhou, who would definitely go in for the reason of ‘You don't want me to go in? Then I'm going to go in!’, vaguely agreed with Bai Canglang, and then continued to listen to Garuda's story.

Garuda naturally knew that the stranger a place was, the more dangerous it would be, but at that time its mind was not yet sound, and it had no concept of death—even if it encountered a formation blocking its way, it would treat it as a puzzle game, cracking it all the way and forcing its way in, finally reaching the deepest part of the palace.

Before a huge tiger-claw seal.

"The seal of the Great Heavenly Venerate of the West Mother?!"

After hearing Garuda's detailed description of the seal's style and aura, Bai Canglang gasped, "What on earth is that thing that could be personally sealed by Her old self?"

The Great Heavenly Venerate of the West Mother was at the highest peak of strength among the immortal gods at that time, and could even be said to be the Heavenly Emperor-level figure of the Northwest lineage. The fact that a leader of a major force had to personally take action was enough to explain the problem.

"I don't know either."

Garuda shook its head, it really didn't know what was behind the black abyss, and it also didn't know that it was this guy who had just blown its head off. The golden-haired girl just continued to honestly describe: "It's just a deep, shapeless, black abyss of unknown depth, and I don't know where it leads—and there are voices coming from the other side, directly into my heart."

Garuda's communication with the black abyss was actually very simple. The other side told it that it was one of the most powerful divine birds, a symbol of power, and at the same time, they also belittled humans and immortals.

"They said that humans are fierce, cruel, ruthless, and terrifying, a savage, greedy monster that eats everything."

Garuda cautiously repeated the original words of the black abyss, then looked at Su Zhou's reaction in fear—but the Evil-Devouring Demon Lord Su Zhou and Bai Canglang, who remotely sniped and blew up the little girl's head, were both indifferent, obviously feeling that this had nothing to do with them. They were so honest, brave, honorable, and loyal, it was all slander from the black abyss.

Of course, this didn't affect the honest, brave, honorable, and loyal Professor Su Zhou. While Garuda was saying these words, he moved to lift the corpse of a flying beast that had been roasted by the aftershocks of the battle, and ate it deliciously in front of her.

Eating a flying beast in front of a flying demon is a very normal and harmless behavior. Su Zhou did it this way, and everyone else said they believed it.

Of course, Bai Canglang and Garuda both felt that this was probably Su Zhou's deliberate method to intimidate Garuda, but in fact, Su Zhou had never thought of these things. He was just a bit hungry after a fight, so he casually picked the most fragrant demon corpse and calmly ate the barbecue.

—Wuwuwu, the black abyss didn't lie to me, humans are really fierce, cruel, ruthless, and terrifying!

In short, in this harmonious scene, Garuda used a girlish voice that tried hard to suppress its trembling and sobbing to tell everything related to the black abyss, just like pouring beans out of a bamboo tube.

The requirements of the black abyss were actually very simple, that was to tell Garuda that it was actually their compatriot, and that they wanted Garuda to open the seal for them, so that Garuda could return to the Beast God Realm, return to its home.

To this end, they even threw out many seemingly very tempting conditions.

Hearing this, Su Zhou suddenly thought of those demon beasts that were crushed by the aftermath when he was fighting Garuda before—it sounded a bit like Garuda's description?

So he swallowed the barbecue in his mouth, interrupted the other party's words, and said seriously: "Could it be that you have already opened that otherworld passage?"

"No."

Garuda immediately shook its head like a wave at Su Zhou's question, and said with pride: "I'm not that stupid, believing whatever others say—even a fool can see that those guys in the Beast God Realm are just interested in my bloodline and the Kunlun Secret Realm."

"They thought I was newly born and easy to deceive, but the memories in my bloodline inheritance have been specially strengthened in this regard, allowing me to easily see through their falsehoods!"

Having said this, Garuda stopped talking, having answered almost all kinds of questions, including its origins. Instead, it closed its eyes and waited for Su Zhou to announce its fate.

And Su Zhou did not hesitate at all—of course, not to set up a barbecue grill, but to get up directly. He said to Bai Canglang on the side: "Let's go, we'll go to the central mountain range and ask this Golden-Winged Bird to transfer her authority."

"Also, let's take a look at the seal to prevent the black abyss from really running out."

These two things were indeed the most important things to do right now, and Bai Canglang had no objections to this—although he was the one who blew Garuda's head off just now, it would be a good thing for the pseudopath if they could capture a divine bird alive.

And Garuda, who had escaped the fate of becoming a member of the barbecue grill, naturally wouldn't be stupid enough to refuse, and immediately led the way.

Walking on the road leading to the center of the Kunlun Secret Realm, by summarizing Garuda's description, Su Zhou had a guess about the essence of the black abyss—it was probably a space-time channel leading to another world.

In the past, the immortals and gods who sensed the coming of the spiritual energy cut-off wanted to go to other worlds with spiritual energy, but even They could not be lucky enough to find a suitable target world in their first attempt.

And the existence behind the black abyss, calling itself the Beast God Realm, was probably the world channel that the immortals and gods accidentally connected to, but never closed afterwards.

At the same time.

Far away, Flat Top Mountain.

Tang Yuan, who had gathered most of the remaining exploration team members, was counting the number of people, his pale face revealing difficulty: "The people haven't all arrived yet? The team from Qinqin Academy, Professor Su's team hasn't appeared… Were they attacked, or are they too far away?"

Both guesses were not strange, and even the fact that they were late simply because they discovered relics worth paying attention to was not impossible.

Just like the team led by the Xuan family's Elder Xuanlu, they were teleported to the foot of a mountain made of a demon god's corpse, and accidentally discovered the various inheritances stored within.

Most of the mountains in this Kunlun Secret Realm are made of demon god corpses.

However, not all of the corpses are demon god remains that were starved to death like the Pacific seabed Dragon King remains before the spiritual energy cut-off.

On the contrary—Kunlun Mountain itself is like an elephant graveyard, a burial place self-selected by many powerful demon gods before approaching death.

"Ancient pseudopaths are extremely dangerous, requiring the manipulation of one's own bloodline roots, genes, and even cellular structure. A single mistake can lead to death and the dissipation of the Dao."

Thinking of the price paid by the ancient immortals and gods in order to explore the path of cultivation, even Tang Yuan sighed with emotion: "Even demon gods who are close to immortality can easily 'go into demonic possession' if they are not careful, and this is probably the root cause of the legend that the demon race is not suitable for cultivation and is prone to demonic possession in myths and legends."

Ancient pseudopaths were indeed extremely dangerous, so in order to ensure that their inheritance would not be lost, every demon god would specifically set up a small inheritance hall next to their corpse before choosing to sit in Kunlun Mountain, containing its bloodline and inheritance, and pointing out in it to what extent it had cultivated before leading to its death, so as not to lead future generations down the same old path.

These mountains formed by corpses not only mean many pseudopath demon god inheritances… they are also extremely clear memorial monuments for the progress of human cultivation history. From them, one can clearly observe how ancient pseudopaths progressed and were inherited.

The Xuan family's elder was originally a Black Tortoise bloodline, but their inheritance only inherited the water control lineage and lost the demon subduing power, so they needed to cultivate other Dao techniques to ensure that they were not just a large water resource transporter. Flat Top Mountain was formed by a Black Tortoise demon god's tortoise shell, and the old man who found the hope of supplementing his own inheritance was so excited that he almost fainted on the spot—and was he the only one excited? Looking around the hundreds of mountains of Kunlun, many people were moved, expecting that their incomplete bloodlines and inheritances could be supplemented.

"Professor Xuan, are we setting off now to catch up with Professor Su and Vice Professor Bai, or are we continuing to wait for the Qinqin Academy First Team?"

Tang Yuan stepped forward and politely asked the smiling old man, and Professor Xuan was in a very good mood and said directly: "Wait another ten minutes. If we still don't see a signal response, then we will leave a guiding strip and go to find Professor Su and the others."

They naturally also felt the spiritual energy fluctuations of Su Zhou forcibly breaking through a series of formations before, and it seemed that he was fighting someone, and even many teams encountered attacks from evil beasts—of course, they were all repelled.

Not only that, but through the built-in communication devices in the exploration team, they also received the news that Professor Su had overcome all enemies without any danger.

In this way, there were no noteworthy demons or evil beasts in the Kunlun Secret Realm. Even if Shao Qiming and the others could not meet up for a while, there would be no danger.

However, just as the main force of the exploration team was gathering and preparing to go to the center of the Kunlun Secret Realm to meet up with Su Zhou and the others.

Suddenly, all those who possessed demon god bloodline inheritance felt an unspeakable, extremely strange attraction.

This feeling was like something far away was calling to them… calling to the blood in their bodies.

Not far away, the Qinqin Academy team, carrying huge evil beast bird corpses and marching rapidly, also felt something.

Li Hanshan, who was carrying the bird corpse with Guan Wanjing and chewing on delicious barbecue, suddenly felt something. He frowned slightly, his double pupils of divine eyes looked towards the center of the Kunlun Secret Realm, and his expression gradually became solemn.

"Five Colors…"

He spoke, his voice a bit slurred because his mouth was full of meat, but everyone in the entire team turned their heads to look at Li Hanshan, scaring him to instinctively swallow the meat into his stomach, and then he said seriously: "I sensed an aura…"

"Over there, there is the aura of the Five-Colored Divine Light…"