The entire secret realm was witnessing a bizarre and terrifying scene.
Just a few hours after the secret realm opened, countless shadows of those who died in these lands since time untold crawled out of the grounds. At first, no one thought too much of it, shrugging it off as some strange technique or zombies but the number of shadows only increased.
The endless army of immortal shadows was practically overrunning the entire place, gathering everything of value and killing anyone in their way. Many died trying to fend them off until the remaining smart ones learned that they would survive if they let go of their pride and ran away from the shadows.
The shadows were only interested in the natural treasures but they didn't leave the storage rings of those who tried to fight with them for resources alone either. A few fortunate and cowardly individuals found safety in caves and other places underground. Underground was the only place where these shadows weren't overrunning.
I was just sitting back and relaxing on my ever-increasing pile of treasures. After a few days, my shadows had completely terraformed the entire surface of the secret realm into regular forests and mountains. Anything with even a tiny bit of value was uprooted and added to the pile, of course, that didn't mean that they had any use for me.
The gains on the surface were just barely acceptable, the true treasures were underground. I had been keeping a close eye on Lin Fan and anyone else who went underground, making sure that they didn't get something important before me. Everyone but me was destined to leave the secret realm with nothing more than a few strands of ordinary grass.
The underground here was riddled with caves, tombs, labyrinths, and mines, each having something valuable inside. While I did question who was building all these tombs here, I was more occupied with watching Lin Fan who was doing some tests to prove himself worthy to enter the tomb of some ancient being.
He was currently trying to withstand a fragment of the Sword Intent of the guy he was about to desecrate by plundering his grave, not that he would have wanted it any other way. The room was about a hundred meters long, a light jump for someone with his cultivation, but due to the pressure, he was barely at the twenty-meter mark and he was already bleeding from all holes.
The moment I entered the room, the Sword Intent washed over me without effect… except for turning my sect robes into a million pieces.
What the hell?! Why isn't this happening to Lin Fan, are they distributing different qualities of robes? I need to look into this once I return, this was unacceptable.
After changing into a new set of clothes, I walked past Lin Fan unnoticed. This time my clothes remained intact, I was using a similar technique to Ten to cover my body in NE but it was far more advanced, containing traces of Zetsu and other things.
This was only possible thanks to my recent increase in control, if I used too little NE, nothing would happen, if I used just a bit too much NE, I would turn into a freak version of a Black Hole, erasing anything, air, light, gravity, time, and space. It was a very thin edge I was walking on, so thin that the entire world was at risk if I slipped up. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
I didn't bother to try to push open the door to the tomb as it was the final task, something about will and pain I think, I just phased through space and emerged in the opposite room. Man, I love this new technique, sure I was able to do that before but after consuming the Essence of IOE, it was no longer easy to phase through just space, I would sometimes end up in completely different layers of reality, I was just relearning everything. Reality was more than just time-space, it had layers, strings, and frequencies I didn't want to deal with right now.
The room was almost empty except for the big jade coffin and the purple sword floating above it. Since the sword didn't seem to attack, I just opened the coffin, only to not find a corpse or treasure, just a piece of paper.
Don't tell me I wasted all my time for just a sword, this letter better give me a good explanation or I will resurrect its owner and kill him with this damn sword.