Zhang Huanyun gazed at Cao Dezhi, a subtle heaviness settling in his heart.
Cao Dezhi's refusal to disclose what he had discovered only deepened Zhang Huanyun's confusion.
But since Zhang Huanyun hadn't heard any concrete details, he was merely puzzled, not despairing.
"It seems the Abyssal Sage King is even stronger than we previously thought. Even across two planes, he can still severely injure you. Logically speaking, even someone at the quasi-deity level shouldn't be able to withstand him, right?"
Zhang Huanyun wasn't foolish; he had pieced together some information.
Cao Dezhi sighed, closed his eyes, and nodded.
"So what? Even if that's true, he absolutely couldn't launch such an attack casually. Otherwise, why has he waited six thousand years without making a move?" Zhang Huanyun sneered, undeterred by the possibility that the Abyssal Sage King might have even greater strength.
Even immense power came with costs, especially when crossing planes.
This time, despite the Abyss Tide reaching level four intensity, it ended so abruptly—it must have been due to the cost of the Abyssal Sage King's intervention.
Cao Dezhi took a deep breath and didn't dwell on the topic.
It was fine for Zhang Huanyun to speculate; at least he wouldn't fall into despair.
And it wasn't exactly despair—more like self-doubt.
At this moment, Cao Dezhi's mind was a tangled mess.
If what he saw was true, then what was the point of this six-thousand-year war?
The Blood God Legion carried out their post-battle cleanup operations in an orderly manner.
The Abyss creatures suffered heavy casualties, but their core imprints returned to the Abyss. Even if their physical forms were destroyed, their imprints could quickly transform into new Abyss creatures, replenishing the Abyss army.
However, the fallen soldiers of the Blood God Legion could never return to life.
The bodies of their fallen comrades were retrieved, pieced together, and mourned.
Such scenes had repeated for six thousand years.
After the battle ended, the entire Endless Mountain Range fell silent.
The adrenaline of the great battle faded, leaving behind endless sorrow.
That night, silence reigned.
When the long night ended and the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon, a piercing alarm blared throughout the legion.
"What's going on?"
"What happened?"
These were the questions on every soldier's mind.
Despite their confusion, they quickly assembled. Due to the heavy losses, the formation today was noticeably thinner.
Zhang Huanyun rushed out from the command center, his Limit Douluo-level soul power rippling, causing the surrounding void to subtly fluctuate. His four-word Battle Armor was ready to fuse at any moment.
His gaze swept over the soldiers below before turning toward the Abyssal Passage.
Xu Yuan, awakened from his cultivation, quickly arrived at the scene.
Yesterday, his displayed strength earned attention, and after the battle, he was swiftly assigned to the Blood God Camp's reserve force. In such major battles, he was considered a flexible support unit, allowed to move freely.
He arrived on the scene and instinctively turned his gaze toward the Abyssal Passage.
Through fluctuations in his spiritual power and his connection to the primitive dream space, he immediately sensed an anomaly in the primitive dream space. He could already roughly deduce that this alarm might be related to the changes in the primitive dream space.
Cao Dezhi appeared among the formations of the many Blood Gods and reservists of the Blood God Camp.
"Xu Yuan."
Xu Yuan followed Cao Dezhi to an open area.
Cao Dezhi's expression was grave as he asked Xu Yuan, "Is your illusionary space completely independent?"
Xu Yuan didn't conceal anything. At this moment, he himself didn't know what kind of anomaly had occurred in the primitive dream space.
"When I obtained this soul skill, there was an illusionary space closely linked to my spiritual sea. However, the illusionary space used by our legion to convert Abyss energy was constructed separately by me. It has no connection to me whatsoever. Even if I leave, the illusionary space will continue to exist. Moreover, this space wasn't constructed using any soul power; I used spiritual power to channel stellar energy to build it."
Creating this primitive dream space had taken a long time. Xu Yuan had used his own dream space, leveraging the characteristics of the spatial passage to contact the external cosmic space. Then, with pure spiritual power, he channeled raw stellar energy from outside, using his dream space as a bridge to bring in vast amounts of raw stellar energy. After spending a month, he finally constructed it.
It couldn't be said that Xu Yuan had created a permanently existing small illusory space.
But as long as the Blood God Legion continued to use the new type of soul-guided weapons, the primitive dream space could sustain itself with just a tiny portion of the Abyss energy it borrowed for power. Even temporarily without Abyss energy, it wouldn't collapse immediately.
In this sense, the primitive dream space was indeed an independently existing system.
After hearing Xu Yuan's explanation, Cao Dezhi's expression also became grave.
"Senior Brother, what exactly happened yesterday?" Xu Yuan asked.
He guessed that during the collision of the fundamental laws of the two planes, the primitive dream space, combined with the influence of the Seven Forbidden Techniques, might have sensed some special information.
But he himself had never used it, so he didn't know the specifics.
Cao Dezhi stared at Xu Yuan, contemplating whether to explain the situation to him.
Seeing this, Xu Yuan was speechless.
You're not sharing this information?
Old man, that's not fair!
"Senior Brother, did you sense something special yesterday? Yesterday's Abyss Tide was completely different from the records. It wasn't nearly as fierce as before. Did you do something, Senior Brother?"
Cao Dezhi's expression kept changing.
He looked at Xu Yuan, unsure if Xu Yuan already knew what he had seen.
Soon, he felt relieved.
He had been too cautious.
Xu Yuan had just arrived here; how could he have arranged for him to see this?
He definitely didn't know the situation inside.
Moreover, if he had known that this opportunity would allow him to sense something different, he wouldn't have missed it, right?
Various thoughts flashed through Cao Dezhi's mind, and he dismissed the suspicion that Xu Yuan had deliberately let him feel this change.
However, this illusionary space was ultimately created by Xu Yuan. While he might not have foreseen it beforehand, it was possible for him to detect it during and after the outbreak.
"At that time, the laws of the two planes should have collided. Your illusionary space, though illusory, was close to reality. Combined with the influence of my Seven Forbidden Techniques, it became interconnected with the Abyssal Passage, so it suffered a significant impact. I also used this opportunity to sense some aspects of the laws."
Cao Dezhi briefly described the situation at that time.
Seeing Xu Yuan still staring intently at him, he had no choice but to reveal some more information.
"This time, following the laws, I sensed some aspects of the Abyss."
"It's similar to what we've learned before. The Abyss has one hundred and eight layers, and the strength of each layer's emperor is about what we expected. Only the first layer, the master of the Abyss, is stronger than we anticipated."
A trace of wariness flashed in Cao Dezhi's eyes.
Every time he recalled that powerful fluctuation, he couldn't help but feel a chill.
Of course, he wasn't entirely hopeless. He knew that thing also had its concerns and didn't dare to recklessly extend too much power into Douluo Star.
"The strength of the Abyssal Sage King is beyond your imagination," Cao Dezhi sighed.
"No, Senior Brother, I'm very clear about the Abyssal Sage King's power. That's precisely why I came to the Blood God Legion to study methods to devour Abyss energy," Xu Yuan said.
"No, you don't understand."
"No, I understand very clearly. The Abyssal Sage King occupies an extremely high realm in the universe. From what I know, he's at least at the God King level."
Cao Dezhi: ???
"What God King level?"
"In the most universal classification of divine realms in the universe, newly ascended gods are defined as god-level. With further cultivation, they advance to True God level, then Super God level, and finally God King level."
Xu Yuan looked at Cao Dezhi, explaining common knowledge of the universe.
Cao Dezhi's expression changed repeatedly.
"How do you know all this? And how are you sure the Abyssal Sage King is at the God King level?"
"Senior Brother, as the head of Tang Sect's Soul Hall, you should know that before the Star Luo Douluo era, Tang Sect had a small world called Dragon Valley."
Cao Dezhi slowly nodded, but soon realized the details Xu Yuan mentioned.
"Yes, we had a Dragon Valley small world. When you say 'before,' did something happen to the Dragon Valley small world?"
"The dragon graveyard within the Dragon Valley small world was targeted, and its core was taken away. The entire small world became unstable and slipped out of Tang Sect's control. It was during that time that I received the acknowledgment of the residual souls of nine former dragon kings from the Dragon God era within Dragon Valley."
Gods, Dragon God era, dragon kings, residual souls.
Each of these keywords caused numerous thoughts to surge in Cao Dezhi's mind.
So, Dragon Valley's origins were this astonishing?
The key point was that there were still residual souls in that small world capable of maintaining rationality?
Was this the power of gods?
Or had Xu Yuan used some method to collect these residual souls and restore their ability to communicate to a certain extent?
"The nine dragon kings' spirits informed me about the classification of divine realms in the universe. As for the Abyss, it didn't exist in the universe back then, so they didn't know about the Abyssal Sage King. However, as the master of the Abyss, the Abyss itself is an energy plane, and its size isn't smaller than Douluo Planet. Based on this, they judged that the master of the Abyss is at least at the God King level."
Cao Dezhi took a deep breath.
So, it was a realm deduced through various conditions.
But there was no doubt that the judgment of the nine dragon kings, who had a clear understanding of the divine realm, wouldn't have a large margin of error.
"So, a normal soul master breaking through to level one hundred should only be at the ordinary god level. Advancing to level one hundred ten would count as True God level?"
Xu Yuan nodded.
"So continuing on, God King level would correspond to level one hundred thirty!"
Ninety-nine levels versus over one hundred thirty levels.
The gap between them was far more exaggerated than fifty-nine levels facing ninety levels.
Fifty-nine levels.
Cao Dezhi couldn't help but glance at Xu Yuan.
Although Xu Yuan was now nearing seventy levels, given his methods, at fifty-nine levels, he might not have lacked the ability to handle a ninety-one-level Title Douluo.
After all, there was still a gap between ninety-one and ninety-four levels, and an even larger gap between ninety-four and ninety-five levels for Super Douluo.
Xu Yuan now possessed Super Douluo-level strength. At fifty-nine levels, even if he didn't reach ninety-one levels, it wouldn't be far off. At least, he could hold his own against a ninety-one-level opponent.
But ninety-nine levels versus over one hundred thirty levels...
Starting from ninety-five levels, each level represented a qualitative change. What about breaking through to godhood?
Perhaps after reaching level one hundred, aside from whole ten-level milestones, normal soul power increases would only be quantitative changes. But the unit of these quantitative changes might surpass any qualitative leap for soul masters below the divine realm.
For example, in cultivating spiritual power, a Spirit Domain-level soul master, without encountering bottlenecks, could grow their spiritual power by several points daily. However, for a Spirit Origin-level soul master, achieving the same growth would take months or even years of effort.
In short, there was absolutely no chance of victory for ninety-nine levels against over one hundred thirty levels.
At least, one had to break through that boundary.
Stuck at this level, even Cao Dezhi, who had a certain confidence in forcibly breaking through, could feel that once he smoothly crossed that boundary and had the opportunity to continue cultivating, he still had significant room for growth.
However, the reality was that soul masters couldn't break through level one hundred.
"One hundred thirty levels, so you understood the Abyss's terror from the start, yet you still came here to research methods to devour Abyss energy?"
Cao Dezhi wanted to uncover Xu Yuan's purpose.
"No, you knew the Abyss's strength, so your purpose in coming here was to borrow the Abyss's power to accumulate stellar energy for yourself?"
Xu Yuan shook his head.
"My initial goal was certainly to devour Abyss energy. I just personally thought it wasn't secure enough, so I adopted a compromise and developed the new type of soul-guided weapons."
He had indeed come here initially to try devouring Abyss energy.
However, plans often change.
Now, he only needed to verify that the Great Devouring Heaven and Earth Technique was usable and then find a way to increase his soul power. Since the verification was complete and there was a safer path to convert stellar energy, he naturally chose this new route.
As the two exchanged words, another strong energy fluctuation erupted from the distant Abyssal Passage.
Xu Yuan's expression changed.
During that long period, he had been trying to communicate with the primitive dream space using his spiritual power.
But he couldn't establish any connection, as if it had gone offline.
Yet, he could still genuinely sense the existence of the primitive dream space.
Until this moment, when another energy fluctuation erupted from the Abyssal Passage side, he finally contacted the primitive dream space.
This energy fluctuation carried a familiar aura.
"Reality and illusion..."
Xu Yuan took a deep breath, stopped talking to Cao Dezhi, and fixed his gaze on the direction of the Abyssal Passage.
A glimmer of light flashed at his brow, and Yao Yao emerged as a point of light, then materialized.
Yao Yao glanced at Xu Yuan, her big eyes fixed intently on the Abyssal Passage.
Simultaneously, the aura emanating from Yao Yao fluctuated up and down.
"What is this..."
Xu Yuan communicated with the primitive dream space using his spiritual power and found it completely different.
At this moment, he wasn't sensing the situation inside the passage through the primitive dream space as a medium. Instead, it was as if the primitive dream space had descended and directly integrated into this spatial passage.
"An anomaly caused by the change in laws?"
Xu Yuan immediately thought of this.
He looked at Cao Dezhi.
So, what he saw yesterday must have been very profound.
At this moment, he also understood what Cao Dezhi meant when he said he sensed some aspects of the laws.
"I'll go check the situation." Cao Dezhi transformed into a streak of red light and disappeared.
Zhang Huanyun hesitated mid-air for a moment before swiftly flying toward the Abyssal Passage.
At this time, the two of them checking the initial situation was the most efficient approach.
About two hours later, Zhang Huanyun returned to the Blood God Legion, dismissed the assembly of all soldiers, and issued instructions methodically to explore the latest form of the Abyssal Passage.
Xu Yuan was approached by Long Yuxue.
"Xu Yuan, we might need your help."
"Can you tell me the specific situation?" Xu Yuan was curious about the current state of the Abyssal Passage.
Long Yuxue gave a bitter smile and recounted everything she knew to Xu Yuan.
Her father, Long Tianwu, the vice-commander, had access to firsthand information.
"The suppression of soul power in the Abyssal Passage is gone, but it has become even more bizarre. When the commander gave us orders in the logistics department, he emphasized multiple times that our primary task is to verify various environmental changes."
"The commander and Blood One have confirmed that both soul power and spiritual power can now be used within the Abyssal Passage. Ordinary soul masters should no longer be suppressed either. Additionally, the passage's energy is highly unstable and cannot be absorbed to recover soul power."
"Furthermore, regarding spatial power, the entire spatial passage is chaotic, akin to a spatial turbulence, yet it retains the physical form of a passage. This is why the commander said the current Abyssal Passage is somewhat strange. Our logistics department's mission is to explore the changes in the spatial environment within the passage and determine more precise conditions."
Listening to Long Yuxue's description, Xu Yuan also felt that things had exceeded expectations.
The primitive dream space was inherently illusory. Xu Yuan hadn't even replicated the realism of his own dream space; it fundamentally lacked overly realistic aspects.
However, the primitive dream space was responsible for converting a multitude of energies in reality, and it seemed to have been affected.
Especially with the raw stellar energy, which undoubtedly had an unknown impact on the primitive dream space.
The Abyss Tide and the changes in laws had finally triggered this anomaly in the primitive dream space.
It directly altered the entire environment of the Abyssal Passage.
Spatial power chaos.
Spatial chaos confined within a single passage—this was something Xu Yuan had never heard of.
"Also, the commander said this anomaly hasn't ended yet. For now, we can only proceed cautiously, prioritizing safety."
"Then why did you come to me?" Xu Yuan asked, looking at Long Yuxue with curiosity.
Long Yuxue revealed an awkward expression.
"The commander said to prioritize safety, but he's actually worried about losses. The concept of safety is also relative to strength. With your power, we can explore deeper. Also, I know you've set up something called the primitive dream space over there. This anomaly should be related to your space, right? With you, we can explore useful information faster."
Xu Yuan stared at Long Yuxue.
Long Yuxue gave an awkward smile and said, "This is also a large-scale mission. Based on the intelligence gathered during exploration, merit points will be awarded. I think this is an opportunity. With you, we can earn more merit points."
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