The lightning pierced through the colorful petals, directly hitting a Blue Serpent that had appeared behind Hua Jian.
The serpent convulsed violently and collapsed to the ground.
“Trying to sneak attack me, huh? Let me sever your—oh, you’re targeting me, but no legs!” Hua Jian reformed her body, ready to make the attacker feel the pain of a broken leg, only to realize the attacker was a snake.
Snakes had no legs.
That was definitely a targeted attack!
She looked meaningfully at A Meng, convinced it was her doing.
A Meng wore an innocent expression. Honestly, it wasn’t her fault this time—the snake had been lurking nearby with no connection to her.
The jungle was fraught with danger; who didn’t know that?
Fortunately, unlike the earlier Giant Spider, this Blue Serpent was weak in combat. After a few jolts from Linglong’s lightning, it fell flat.
Linglong cautiously stepped forward and severed the serpent’s head.
After decapitation, the serpent vanished like the first Giant Rock Golem—like a phantom before their eyes.
“Again with this?” Linglong sheathed her Ling Sword and murmured.
Hua Jian just scoffed, cursing the Secret Realm as utterly unreasonable.
Win no reward, lose punishment—how could there be such a realm that ruined everyone?
Why did everyone enter the Secret Realm? Wasn’t it to get food or to eat others?
Yet this realm had nothing to collect along the way. Even if you killed the monsters, you couldn’t gather materials.
As for humans… that was a good question. So far, Hua Jian had only seen A Meng, and she might not even be human.
Even if they met others, remember the Secret Realm’s special rules—people didn’t carry storage bags to steal.
She couldn’t just eat someone’s imagined big cake, right?
“Isn’t that a bit too pragmatic?” A Meng asked from the side.
“Who enters a Secret Realm without pragmatism? It can’t be for real exploration spirit. Those people might exist, but definitely not me.” Hua Jian shrugged and pointed at Linglong. “She has the spirit of adventure.”
Linglong didn’t come for treasure; she came to prove herself. As for what counted as passing, who knew?
Venerable Fenghua had joked that bringing treasure out was a myth—a challenge for Linglong, not a strict rule.
Hua Jian was just tagging along with Linglong. Whether they got treasure or not didn’t affect her.
But that didn’t stop her from cursing this disgusting Secret Realm. At least give some reward to take out. Who would come here to die again?
“I’m not.” Linglong returned to Hua Jian’s side, shaking her head.
“I just want to uncover what secrets lie within.”
The Little Dragon Girl’s thoughts were pure. She came to train, and as long as the goal was met, no material gains didn’t matter.
So when monsters dropped nothing, she remained calm.
After hearing this, A Meng respectfully cupped her hands and said, “Consistent inside and out—sister, you’re a good person!”
It was normal for someone like that to keep their true self in a Secret Realm, unlike the other one—obviously so vicious, yet somehow still maintained a human guise.
A Meng’s compliment made Linglong a little embarrassed. She could tell A Meng meant it sincerely, not sarcastically.
“So that makes me the bad guy?” Hua Jian sat back down, rubbing her aching feet.
A Meng said nothing but her eyes answered for her.
“Look at you—how could you be a good person?”
“By the way… I’ve been curious about something.”
Seeing A Meng’s silence, Hua Jian brought up another topic.
“What’s that?” Linglong thought Hua Jian had made some important discovery.
But Hua Jian’s question was oddly peculiar no matter how you looked at it.
She lifted her skirt with both hands, slowly revealing what was beneath. As she did, she explained, “I’ve been wondering from the start—what’s going on under this skirt?”
Hua Jian’s current appearance was somewhat scandalous. The skirt looked long but offered little coverage.
The loose hem revealed her calves and bare feet, attracting the gaze of many perverts.
As she lifted the skirt further, Linglong and A Meng saw her upper calves and thighs.
Her legs weren’t bare; colorful patterns that existed from the start traced up along her clothes, forming strange designs.
When she lifted the skirt completely, what appeared in Linglong’s view wasn’t a sensitive sight but…
“See? This part isn’t rendered.”
Hua Jian said this to Linglong, whose face was already as red as if about to burst.
Compared to other delicate parts of her body, this area was crudely made, as if the modeler never expected anyone to lift the skirt and take a look.
“And I can’t lift the skirt any higher. The Secret Realm is stopping me.” Hua Jian dropped the colorful skirt back down, covering her legs again.
“This…” Linglong took a deep breath and thought it best not to dwell on why Hua Jian noticed such things.
As Hua Jian said, this was strange. She needed to consider what caused it.
“I’ll go check if I’m the same.” Blushing, Linglong walked toward a nearby grove.
With Linglong gone, A Meng looked at Hua Jian strangely. “You’re shameless.”
“There’s nothing there. Why shouldn’t I let her see?” Hua Jian didn’t understand what was shameless about it. If those areas had been modeled, she’d be a bit shy and guard her modesty.
But since nothing was there, what problem was there with showing Linglong?
“No wonder this really feels like a dream.” Hua Jian whispered.
“Because there’s nothing, it’s a dream?” A Meng twitched at the corner of her mouth.
Would normal people determine whether they were dreaming like this?
“Something like that. After all, everything in dreams is blurry; what can’t be seen simply doesn’t exist. My appearance is my existence; what’s inside doesn’t matter.”
While saying this, Hua Jian conjured a small knife in her mind and, before Linglong returned, stabbed it hard into her arm.
“Ugh… the pain is real enough.” Gasping, Hua Jian pulled the knife out. No blood flowed from the wound, and through it, she could see her insides.
No flesh, only a swirling mass of colorful aura.
“Why tell me this?” A Meng’s expression grew even stranger after witnessing Hua Jian’s bold self-harm act.
“No reason. Just wanted you to know.” Hua Jian stared darkly at A Meng. “Keep pretending, let’s see how long you can keep it up.”
A Meng kept her innocent look but cursed silently. Why did this bad woman always suspect her? What was wrong with her?
A little girl trapped in a dangerous forest waiting to be saved was normal, wasn’t it?
Were her experiences not real enough? Even the pure Little Dragon Girl believed her. Why wouldn’t this bad woman?
“Look, Linglong has already gone to verify my guess, so you should let me verify it too.”
A Meng immediately lifted her bound hands, indicating she couldn’t verify Hua Jian’s theory herself.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Hua Jian was flexible with boundaries and didn’t mind helping A Meng verify.
“What do you mean?”
“Sit still. I’m just going to check; I won’t hurt you.” Hua Jian gave a dark smile and approached A Meng, towering above her.
A Meng swallowed hard. By her knowledge, she should strongly resist, but a problem arose: her knowledge never said whether she needed to resist when one girl made such a request of another.
Her knowledge only covered responses to the opposite sex, not same-sex situations.
And Hua Jian’s reason sounded so righteous; she had no other grounds to refuse.
While she hesitated, Hua Jian swiftly straddled her and, in the blink of an eye, lifted her skirt forcefully.
At that moment, Linglong returned from the other side and saw Hua Jian pressing down on A Meng and pulling up her skirt.
It was a classic white-studying scene, but Hua Jian wasn’t a white scholar and felt confident.
After examining the unimpressive color patches, she dropped the skirt and said to Linglong, “Looks like I’m not the only one like this.”
“Indeed… but Hua Jian, isn’t this a bit improper?”
“She’s shy. I’m bad at talking her down, so I have to be blunt and rough.”
“Bad at talking?” Linglong thought this was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.
She figured Hua Jian just wanted to bully A Meng a bit. Linglong sighed softly and tapped Hua Jian’s head as a warning.
“So, we can confirm this definitely isn’t a real space, right?” Hua Jian sat back down and pointed at the two of them.
Linglong nodded firmly. A Meng still looked dazed from the earlier experience.
Hua Jian hadn’t expected A Meng, the potential mastermind, to provide any useful clues—let her daydream, just don’t cause trouble.
“Why is this happening? I suspect it’s the effect of that treasure inside the Secret Realm. It’s what pulled us into this massive dream. We’re not truly inside the Secret Realm but inside a dream created by the treasure.”
That explained why the Secret Realm was so strange, with no treasures to collect and no rewards from monsters.
Because this wasn’t the real Secret Realm!
“To enter the true Secret Realm, we need to leave this illusory space and return to the real world.”
“And that probably requires us to get something from the Heaven and Earth Phenomenon.”
Linglong nodded vigorously, agreeing completely.
A Meng, just regaining composure, was stunned. How could they be sure the key was at the Heaven and Earth Phenomenon? Who told them?
She didn’t even know such a setting existed, so how did they?
“Wait! I have a question!” She raised her hands.
“Go ahead.” Hua Jian gestured for her to speak.
“How do you know the key to solving this is at the Heaven and Earth Phenomenon? Isn’t this all your wild guess?”
Hearing this, Hua Jian nodded without hesitation.
“Exactly. The strangest part of a Secret Realm always hides the key to solving its mysteries, isn’t that common sense?”
“That’s common sense?!”
“Yes, common sense.”
A Meng and Hua Jian stared at each other for almost a minute until A Meng backed down, overwhelmed by Hua Jian’s straightforward gaze. Maybe it really was common sense?
But that place had nothing to help them leave because once inside, escape from this hallucinatory dream was impossible.
Everything they did would be in vain; no matter how hard they tried, the outcome was failure.
Unless…
“By the way, what about the Chai Clan and the people hunting them? This Secret Realm is the destination marked by their Treasure Map Fragment. Surely they’re not trapped here too?”
Those who had the Treasure Map should be different from those who didn’t. According to the most classic plots, those with the map should get preferential treatment.
For example, extra buffs; when the treasure inside runs amok, summon the ancestor to defeat it directly.
But now, strangely, neither the Chai Clan nor their pursuers were seen. Could it be they never entered the Secret Realm?
Hua Jian brought this up in front of A Meng, partly to test her.
Unexpectedly, A Meng was stunned hearing the words “Treasure Map.”
“Treasure Map? What treasure map?!”
“Exactly the Treasure Map. Otherwise, how do you think this Secret Realm was opened? It was…” Hua Jian recounted everything she knew, without embellishment.
She didn’t know Bai Su also had a Treasure Map, so in her story, only the Chai Clan’s Treasure Map triggered the Secret Realm.
But other details were mostly accurate.
“How could there be such a thing as a Treasure Map? Impossible…” A Meng held her head and muttered, realizing her behavior might cause suspicion.
Because a more dangerous problem had emerged.
That strange Treasure Map was definitely problematic!
She had thought the sudden opening of the Secret Realm was a matter of time, but it had been forcibly triggered by external forces… now the situation was completely different!