“Ahhh! Main body, I’ve been stuck in this Nameless Secret Realm for two hundred days, I’m completely numb!! I want to eat meat and drink wine so badly, I want to visit the pleasure houses and listen to music, I just want to live it up for once!!”
“Tsk tsk tsk~ Stop complaining. Look at you, a man and a woman cooped up together in a room for over two hundred days—why does this situation feel so much like a mod drama?”
“Get lost! Brother Wu isn’t that kind of person.”
“I know, I know, that guy with the surname Wu is the very picture of a gentleman. You’re as pure as ice and spotless as jade, satisfied?”
“Screw off, I’m a real man! A graceful, dashing, handsome young lord, a nobleman.”
“Who isn’t? Yet didn’t I still get ruined by that wretched prodigy? Even dragged Blood Princess into the mess—just talking about it makes me angry! How did I end up raising that little monster Li Dao, a true demon who even dared to betray his master!”
“You! I curse you to be stuffed full of creamy white steamed buns by that monster!!”
Fuming, Bai Changsheng hung up the transmission, dressed in crude clothes sewn from animal hides. He stepped out of the small wooden cabin and looked up at the sun.
In this Secret Realm, the spiritual energy was exceptionally thin. On top of that, the spatial turbulence had damaged their dantian and meridians. Both had run out of pills, and their internal injuries were only temporarily suppressed—they couldn’t muster even a shred of magical power.
Fortunately, the two had already achieved the rank of True Lord and passed the Lightning Tribulation, so their bodies were incredibly strong. Relying on brute strength alone, they were invincible in this Secret Realm, standing at the very top of the food chain.
They’d been trapped in the Nameless Secret Realm for two hundred and thirty days. It took them a month to properly refurbish the small wooden cabin—thanks to the ancestors, thanks to mortise and tenon joints, and thanks to the “me” who loved reading extracurricular books back in junior high.
“So, what do you think? Look at what we’ve accomplished in a month—doesn’t it feel like a huge achievement?”
Bai Changsheng tiptoed and hooked an arm around Wu Ji’s shoulder, not caring in the slightest about the difference between man and woman. She gazed at the clean and tidy little cabin before them, now adorned with wolf pelts, bear hides, and deer antlers.
Wu Ji was momentarily dazed, staring at the girl gesturing for him to snap out of it, and at the small wooden cabin behind her. Unconsciously, he nodded.
“It’s beautiful…”
With things settled, Bai Changsheng sought out fun every day to keep herself from growing too bored and slipping into a spiral of mental exhaustion. She frequently contacted Su Bai to complain about the dull and tedious life in the Secret Realm, grumbled about how slow [Sun Extinguishing]’s rescue was, and teased Wu Ji for being no fun at all.
“Wu Bro, how about we go skip stones together? What, you don’t know how? No problem, I’ll teach you.”
“Wu Bro, we found another beehive. Let’s go take it together.”
“Wu Bro…”
“Wu…”
The girl’s chattering never annoyed Wu Ji. He simply listened and smiled, always the model of brotherly respect and sisterly deference.
Until thunder suddenly boomed across the sky.
Neither of them were startled by the thunder. They both looked up toward the source of the sound in the distance.
They could see the barrier at the edge of the Secret Realm shudder violently—the thunder had come from there.
Then, the sky above the Secret Realm abruptly split open, revealing a massive rift. They saw a figure standing at the edge of the rift.
Wu Ji’s expression grew complicated, but before he could speak, the girl beside him threw down her roast meat and looked up at that figure, waving her arm high, weeping with joy.
“Fellow Daoist Gu, you finally came!!”
[Sun Extinguishing] Headquarters.
Having finally seen the light of day again, Bai Changsheng was nearly in tears. Just think—Bai Changsheng, renowned all her life as a “handsome young lord,” had been stuck in the Nameless Secret Realm for a whole year, practically turning into a primitive human.
But there were quite a few gains this time, too. Not only had they thoroughly destroyed that colossal [Heavenly Emperor Spirit Locking Array] in the Northern Plains, but by a stroke of luck, they’d also found a massive amount of the priceless Lingyuan Thunder Celestial Divine Gold in the Nameless Secret Realm. For [Sun Extinguishing], this divine metal held extraordinary significance and would be a tremendous help.
After a simple wash, Bai Changsheng donned her signature white robes once more, her long hair flowing down to her waist. She followed Gu Wanqing to a mysterious spot under the sea, arriving at the hidden ace of [Sun Extinguishing].
As for the [Sun Extinguishing] headquarters, Bai Changsheng had already heard: it wasn’t anywhere within the Five Domains or Two Heavens, but was built within an [Immortal Mansion].
That’s right, it was in the bronze cauldron that belonged to True Lord Hongyuan, which formed a world of its own—the [Immortal Mansion].
Yet the ace of Sun Extinguishing wasn’t forged inside the Immortal Mansion, but in a secret region of the Eastern Sea.
The deeper they went, the warmer the seawater grew.
As they approached the seabed, the water temperature neared boiling.
Inside a massive submarine volcanic crater, molten magma surged like a raging flood dragon, sending billowing white steam skyward.
The magma and seawater blended together; the former, cooled rapidly, solidified into black rock, slowly spreading outward in all directions.
Invisibly, countless bright and shadowy tendrils of spirit formations extended in all directions, enveloping the entire volcano and much more within their bounds.
Countless formation arrays were being tirelessly maintained and operated by all manner of cultivators working overtime.
Treasures that would be rare to see even once in a hundred years outside were tossed in like they were worthless, poured into the array to empower the object at its core.
Deep within the volcano’s root, a forest of thick, mysterious bronze pillars propped up the sea’s surface above and pierced down to the mountain’s foundation, endlessly driving into the depths of the earth veins, connecting with the underground spiritual meridians, thus building a ceaseless energy supply chain for this grand formation.
[Tianyan Dragon Crystal], [Blood Ghost Crimson Iron], [Windless Copper]—all manner of refined ores, some boasting supreme hardness, some resisting spiritual energies, some impervious to wind, some incredibly tough—all were gathered here.
Bai Changsheng also saw many cultivators using special methods to throw the newly mined [Lingyuan Thunder Celestial Divine Gold] into the formation’s core.
The crimson magma, like boiling blood, surged and tumbled, reeking strongly of rust and sulfur. Under the formation’s ingenious control, all the metals were devoured by the magma, slowly melting into searing liquid, and then flowed into the heart of the volcano.
“This time, the Lingyuan Thunder Celestial Divine Gold vein found by Fellow Daoist Bai and Brother Wu is of immense importance to us. With this batch, the forging process of the Nascent Soul Puppet will be sped up by at least a hundred years,” Gu Wanqing said.
No sooner had her words fallen than—BOOM! BOOM!!
A black, cracked, sky-piercing giant hand emerged from the volcano’s mouth, appearing before everyone’s eyes.
A dazzling, profound, dark-red glow flowed slowly through the cracks in the giant hand, like mysterious spirit runes.
With a sudden grasp, the giant hand sucked up the streams of molten metal like raging rivers, absorbing them all, not a drop left behind.
Bai Changsheng looked up at the sky-shrouding giant hand, stunned, unable to imagine how terrifying the puppet’s full form must be.
She swallowed, her lips trembling, “What… what is it called?”
“It doesn’t have an official name yet. Whether we call it Sun Extinguishing, Heavenly Sun, Great Yang, or Mysterious Sun, it doesn’t matter. It was born to end the reign of terror the Azure Sun Demon Lord holds over the Five Domains and Two Heavens.”
“Then how do you plan to control this Nascent Soul Puppet?”
“With this.”
Gu Wanqing sighed softly, slowly extending her hand, where several bluish-black beads lay quietly in her palm.
Bai Changsheng reached out and took them. In an instant, images flashed before her eyes, her vision turning hazy and indistinct.
“Kill! Stop that demon!!”
“Mister Bai, Mister Bai, where are you?”
“Help! Can anyone save me!!”