Chapter 7: The Heart of the World

After walking for a while, the group became noticeably more relaxed. They no longer moved with the cautiousness they’d shown at the start, and before long, they began chatting openly as they strode along.

The man in white, sword hanging at his side, remarked as they walked, “The spiritual energy in this secret realm is quite dense this time, but we’ve been inside for ages and haven’t seen a single demon beast. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

The woman in green beside him laughed. “Come on! Our Azure Mountain Sect isn’t some minor sect, is it? Senior Brother Bai, you’re the chief disciple of Elder Qingxu, hardly someone lacking in experience. Why are you always so jumpy? Last time in the Iron Ridge Mountain secret realm, there wasn’t a living thing to be found either. It’s perfectly normal for this place to be devoid of demon beasts! At least it’s better than Iron Ridge, where there wasn’t even a bug to be seen—just utter desolation. Now that I think of it, it’s a little creepy.”

The youngest among them, and the only one at the Core Formation stage, cut in, “Enough. This secret realm just appeared. There’s no telling what we might run into, so let’s stay alert. No point in arguing. Linglan, mind the formation and don’t get careless.”

The girl in green pouted and replied reluctantly, “Fine, I get it, Senior Brother Du! I’ll be careful.”

The woman in red, who had been silent all along, simply trailed behind the group like a shadow, seemingly invisible, and nobody paid her any attention.

As they moved forward, the four of them seemed utterly oblivious to the thousand-year-old spiritual herbs growing right at their feet. One had to wonder what they were even doing here.

Linglan, the green-robed girl, seemed to be quite the pampered one. After a short while, she couldn’t help but speak up again. “Senior Brother Du, what exactly are we supposed to be looking for here? If you tell us, we’ll have a goal. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and find it for you!”

Senior Brother Du, though clearly impatient, explained, “It’s my first time here too. This should be an undiscovered secret realm—I stumbled upon it by chance and happened to call you over because you were nearby. I’ve already sent word to the sect, and the next group should arrive soon. Since no one has ever set foot here, as the first team inside, it’s our job to scout for the others and see if this place is suitable for disciples’ trials. Of course, if you find anything valuable, you can keep it for yourselves.”

The woman in red’s eyes finally lit up at the mention that they could keep whatever they found.

The man in white beamed. “If everything we find is ours to keep, we might just strike it rich. This place looks desolate as can be—doesn’t seem like there are any ancient cultivator ruins—but the spiritual energy is good, and there must be plenty of herbs. If we’re lucky enough to find a few thousand-year-old spiritual plants, that’ll cover all our cultivation resources until we reach the Core Formation stage.”

Linglan snorted. “Brother Li, are you still half asleep? We’ve walked so far and haven’t seen even a hundred-year-old herb, yet you’re dreaming of thousand-year-old ones. Hanging around you is bad luck. How about we split into two teams and make a wager—whoever finds the most valuable items wins?”

The man in white retorted, “You just want to be alone with Senior Brother Du. No need to put me down. Fine, let’s split up. I don’t believe your luck will be better than mine.”

Seeing the two still bickering, Senior Brother Du frowned and snapped, “Enough! Do you know where we are? This place has never been explored, and you dare to raise your voices like this? Should I call you reckless or just ignorant? If you don’t want to die, keep your mouths shut!”

Linglan and the man in white fell silent immediately. Du wasn’t one to interfere normally, but when he gave orders, anyone who disobeyed usually ended up in serious trouble.

The woman in red looked at the three with a scornful curl of her lips but said nothing. Clearly, this group wasn’t harmonious; friction always led to more interesting developments.

At first, Qin Chengming went to great lengths to conceal his presence, but after a few tests, he found that an invisibility talisman and a floating spell were more than enough to follow the group from a hundred meters behind without being detected. He shook his head in amusement. His cultivation was currently suppressed, limiting his abilities, yet among these people—even with a Core Formation stage cultivator present—their vigilance was appallingly poor. In his home, the Eighth Realm, anyone tailed this long without noticing would not last a single summer.

After being reprimanded, the four fell silent. Qin Chengming followed for nearly another hour before he heard Linglan whisper to the man in white, “Brother Li, don’t you think this place is strange? We’ve come all this way and haven’t seen a single spiritual herb!”

Qin Chengming, who was in the middle of digging up a thousand-year-old herb behind them, paused. No spiritual herbs? The place was teeming with them! In just a couple of hours, he’d already collected nearly twenty thousand-year-old herbs, and the hundred-year-old ones were beyond counting. If not for the peculiar suppression here that prevented these spiritual plants from gaining sentience, the place would be crawling with spirit creatures by now.

The man in white whispered back, “I’ve been saying this place is strange. With such dense spiritual energy, there should be demon beasts. If there were no ordinary animals, I’d suspect nothing could survive here. But we’ve seen rabbits, pheasants, snakes, insects, mice, ants—everything except demon beasts. That’s what’s bothering me!”

Linglan edged closer to him, “The more you talk, the more uneasy I feel. What if this secret realm can erase spiritual intelligence? Otherwise, how could there not be a single demon beast? Even if they couldn’t cultivate, in such rich spiritual energy, a few extra years should be enough to awaken intelligence and become demon beasts. But there are none. That must mean this space suppresses or eliminates spiritual intelligence. The only difference between regular beasts and demon beasts is intelligence, after all.”

Following behind, Qin Chengming nodded in silent agreement. The girl was right. The line between beast and demon beast was the presence of spiritual intelligence. He too found it odd—this place was a fragment left after the collapse of the Eighth Realm. In the past, there’d been many demon beasts and plant monsters here. Even when the Eighth Realm’s order fell apart, he’d often seen beasts fleeing in panic. Yet now, the place was a dead zone.

Qin Chengming released his spiritual sense, skirting around the four ahead to sweep over the secret realm. As a Nascent Soul cultivator, his spiritual sense was formidable—and his main cultivation technique focused on strengthening the soul. Even among late-stage Nascent Soul cultivators, few could match his spiritual strength.

This secret realm wasn’t large—smaller, in fact, than the private dimension his cousin Qin Bochong had crafted with Voidstone. But its shape was peculiar: a sharply angled outline of a seven-star formation. It looked, as his mother once described, like a turtle—four legs splayed out, head and tail extended, with a sword stuck through it. In his own words, it was an oval with seven protruding points.

What surprised him most was that as his spiritual sense swept through, the entire space seemed to respond to him. Such a reaction meant the space had recognized a master!

Qin Chengming scratched his head. He hadn’t done anything—so how could this space have acknowledged him? Besides, this was a fragment from the collapse of a great world, not an artifact crafted through refinement. If something like this could be claimed, wouldn’t the entire Eighth Realm be up for grabs?

Wait—a legend said that if one could find the World’s Heart, they could claim an entire world. But no one knew what the World’s Heart looked like, or even what it was. Had he stumbled upon it by accident…?

Qin Chengming shook his head with a wry smile. Impossible. Luck had never favored him; that he’d survived the apocalypse at all must have used up every scrap of fortune he’d ever had.

The four ahead, still oblivious to the spiritual plants growing beneath their feet, grew increasingly cautious, even the talkative Linglan falling silent.

Seeing that they had no more useful information to share, Qin Chengming grew bored. He decided to test whether he could truly control this space. Waiting until the group was some distance away, he sat cross-legged and used his spiritual sense to probe for the connection.

Once he entered meditation, time slipped away. By the time he grasped and fully refined that elusive thread, another group had entered the secret realm. Not wanting them to disrupt what was now wholly his, Qin Chengming expelled them all from the space before quietly hiding himself to watch.

“What happened? Didn’t we just go in? Why were we thrown out?” a young man at the Qi Refining stage exclaimed.

A Foundation Establishment cultivator replied, “It’s not just you. Our Foundation Establishment group got thrown out too, and I just saw Senior Brother Du—he’s Core Formation, and even he was ejected.”

A timid young woman whispered, “Keep your voices down or Senior Brother Du will hear.”

“It’s not like we’re saying anything bad about him,” the Qi Refining cultivator muttered, though he couldn’t help lowering his voice.

The Foundation Establishment youth said, “It was my fault for mentioning his name. Look around—are all the familiar faces out here too? I just checked with my ‘Truth-Seeking Eye,’ and the crack we entered through is gone.”