Standing in the air above the first island, which was closest to the mainland of the secret realm, Tania took the time manipulation artifact and let it hover beside her. With her order the artifact once again began its search for its last user. The golden sand in the bowl started to spin like a typhoon in the sea. Due to the restrictions of the secret realm, the sand couldn't flow like a stream, so Tania allowed it to spill out of the bowl while still spinning and the sand automatically started spreading to the whole island in the same manner.
As the golden sand spread, it utilized its property of stretching and shrinking to the fullest. the small particles of the sand got spread on the whole island and covered it completely as if they were laying a blanket on it. The sand started glowing in a way that only Tania could see it with her soul sense. It was like small golden glowing fireflies had scattered throughout the whole island, invisible to all others. Once the sand had covered every corner of the island and the entire island was enveloped in this golden glow, Tania instructed the artifact to remain still for a moment. There were many ways to use the artifact, but she chose this method to lessen her time in searching and capture the landscape.
With satisfaction, she admired the beautiful scenery she had made and took out an image-storing spiritual stone from her dimensional ring left by the mother to capture the scene of the island, eager to show it off to Anna later and tease her that she did some amazing things like this, alone in her adventure. Once she completed her task, the sand began to spin again, this time folding and collecting back into the bowl. After every particle of the sand returned to the bowl Tania looked inside to check the results. If the last user was on this island, the collected sand would glow blue as it had sensed the entire area. If not, it would remain the same.
The result disappointed Tania as she saw that the sand had not changed color. However, she didn't dwell on it and moved on to the next island. Unfortunately, her luck did not improve; to her even more disappointment there was no user of the artifact on any of the five islands. Tania squinted at the islands, deep in thought. She didn't expect that she will not find the user on any of this five islands.
"Could the user be of a different species than humans? If so, I'll have to search every non-human species in this secret realm. Ugh, what a pain... But I remember that the mother was a full human, so her close blood relative should be human as well. Is there anywhere besides the islands where humans might be living? But I've searched everywhere except deep inside this sea."
Resigning, Once again, Tania used her soul sense to scan all the islands in the sea. However, other than the five islands, the remaining islands were habitats of monsters and mindless beast. Apart from the natural array protecting the five islands, there was nothing else. Tania even considered the possibility that humans might be underwater in the sea with these countless aquatic beasts, but she found nothing like barriers or protective arrays deep inside the sea like the ones on the islands.
Wait, the natural array! A light bulb lit up in her mind. Tania flashed directly to where the core of the natural array was. The location of the core was at the center, equidistant from the five main nodes, thus the islands. It was deep beneath the sea even more that Tania had initially expected, there were also the gradian spiritual creatures and water elementals in the Loose immortal and Mahayana realm there protecting it but Tania ignored them all, as they couldn't even sense her presence, and approached the core directly.
What she saw next surprised her; her pupils dilated in shock. The core was spherical, massive, and full of the light attribute spiritual energy, resembling a small sun. It emitted so much energy that it was radiating so much energy that even after bypassing the spirit creatures and water elementals, anyone without an immortal body would melt directly unable to approach it. The energy itself had formed an outer cover for the core, disguising it as a simple natural array core and isolating everything, including the seawater outside. Beneath it, the earth around the core was cracked in every direction, with veins of spiritual energy spreading from the core into these cracks, converting into various types of attributes of spiritual energy and disseminating throughout the entire realm. The earth's crust had transformed into precious spiritual minerals, and many light attribute spiritual herbs thrived here due to the energy radiating from the core.
This core was not just any natural array core; it was the very heart of the secret realm, and its disguise had fooled even Tania. However, this was just another good and somewhat extraordinary thing for her. What truly astonished her was that upon entering this isolated area created by the core, the time manipulation artifact began to agitate, with the sand trying to flow into the core. And the place where it was trying to flow there was a large spatial crack on the core's surface, it looked like it was formed by a slash from a immortal level sword. Weapons lower than this would melt before they can even reach this core.
The user of the artifact must be beyond this spatial crack, and that place must be a dimensional space parallel to the core; otherwise, there would be no reason to create this crack. Tania pondered, fingers on her chin and head tilted slightly. "This secret realm is really getting fascinating, now there is even a secret dimensional space inside this secret realm, and mortal humans who can't even approach this core are creating cracks in it and traveling through them."
Storing the artifact back, Tania approached the core to enter the spatial crack. She had no interest in the core itself. The raging energy collided fiercely with her, attempting to tear her apart, while the high temperature around it was trying to melt her down. At the same time, light attribute of the core was providing the healing elements. If any mortal came here, first he would have been burned then cut into pieces, but the powerful healing energy would have healed him instantly. Then he would have burned again all the while he is still alive. This process of burning or cutting burning and healing would have continued until his body was unable to be heal anymore.
But, this energy could not even scratch her blue dress, woven from her feathers with the primordial energy, let alone harm her. She reached the spatial crack without any trouble and directly stepped inside. As she had predicted the interior of the spatial crack resembled the dimensional ring Tania had worn before meeting Anna. The place she emerged was a great forest, but this time there were no man eating trees. The amount of spiritual energy here was even greater than the outside secret realm.
The artifact emerged from her ring on its own, having been permitted to do so, and the golden sand began to glow with a blinding blue light, waiting for her command to flow out and lead her to its last user. Tania looked at the impatient artifact with squinted eyes and without order the artifact lowered its glow directly. She then spread her soul sense to perceive any living humans in this dimensional space. It wasn't very large, roughly the size of half the Apple continent.
The vast forest was spread at the boundaries of this dimensional space, and it was inhabited solely by some special types of spiritual beasts, alongside towering mountains and beautiful waterfalls teeming with spiritual energy. However, there were no signs of any intelligent species among them. As her soul sense reached the center of this dimensional space, she finally found them—
There were humans and two of them a man and a women, residing in a bamboo house made of spiritual bamboo, situated right at the heart of this dimensional space.
But, their condition was not what she had expected....