41: Chapter 41 The Secret Realm Closes

"Sigh, I didn't expect the final day of the Hanging Secret Realm to arrive so quickly. It would be great if I could stay for a little longer."

Li Tianhao stopped in the wasteland, looking at the gradually dimming sunset glow on the horizon, and muttered in deep regret.

As soon as his voice fell, the ground beneath his feet suddenly shook violently, and a continuous roar rolled in from the distance, causing the entire plain to tremble unceasingly.

"What is going on?" Li Tianhao's heart tightened, and he raised his eyes to look into the distance with a blank expression.

In just an instant, his face turned instantly pale, and extreme terror swept through his entire body.

At the end of his sight, the boundless Undead Army spread across the heaven and earth. Bones were chilling and eerie qi soared to the sky. The source of the ground shaking was precisely this vast and boundless torrent of bones.

Li Tianhao was scared numb all over, his legs nearly turning to jelly and causing him to collapse. All of his familiars combined barely exceeded ten thousand, but the Undead Army before him definitely numbered no less than two hundred thousand. Mere numbers alone could crush his troops into powder alive.

What made him even more desperate was that a huge black dragon was hovering above the undead legion, its heavy dragon might deterring all directions.

"Damn it! Where did so many undead pop up from? How could the dragon race associate with the undead?" Cold sweat streamed down Li Tianhao's back, and he was filled with panic. His retreat routes were completely blocked, and it was already too late to make a detour and dodge.

"Forget it, I can only exit the secret realm early."

Even with ten thousand reluctances, Li Tianhao knew in his heart that if he insisted on staying, he wouldn't even have the chance to crush the trial token to escape.

Just as he raised his hand, preparing to crush the token, his gaze suddenly locked onto the back of the black dragon, where several tall figures stood quietly on the dragon's body.

The moment he saw those figures clearly, turbulent waves surged in Li Tianhao's mind, and he was completely stunned.

"There are actually people on the back of the giant dragon? Could this Undead Army and that black dragon all be that person's familiars?"

As soon as the thought popped up, he immediately shook his head to cast it away, feeling it was utterly absurd. How could anyone in this world cultivate an undead disaster of such scale?

But the next moment, the black dragon flapped its wings and dove, its massive dragon body slowly approaching his direction.

The monstrous dragon might rushed towards him, firmly trapping his entire body's blood qi. Li Tianhao's expression changed drastically, and he tried his best to crush the trial token in his hand, but his limbs were heavy and stiff, unable to move even a fraction of an inch.

"It's over, curiosity really kills oneself."

Despair surged into his heart, and Li Tianhao closed his eyes, thinking he was bound to be swallowed by the undead torrent.

Who would have thought that the anticipated slaughter did not arrive? The giant dragon and the boundless undead completely ignored the trembling him on the side, mighty and grandly passing by his side, heading straight for the depths of the distant mountains.

Until the Undead Army walked far away completely and the terrifying pressure weighing on him slowly dissipated, Li Tianhao took big, heavy breaths, still shaken.

"Phew... They actually didn't attack me?" He was filled with confusion and didn't dare to stay long. "This place is not suitable for a long stay. I must get as far away from this group of monsters as possible."

Finishing his words, Li Tianhao turned around and fled wildly in the opposite direction of the Undead Army's march without looking back.

High above on the back of the black dragon, Su Ming had no idea that he had almost scared a tester into psychological trauma just now. At this moment, his gaze was firmly locked on the giant nest deep in the mountains ahead.

Inside the nest, giant ant-type monsters were densely distributed. Every single one was as tall as an adult human, their hard outer armor gleaming with a dark brown cold light, their ant mouths and fangs looking grim, and eerie qi intertwining with acid poison aura to permeate the air.

"As expected of a top-tier monster nest, the number of ant monsters inside is at least two hundred thousand, and each of them has a cultivation of Transcendence Tier 3 or above. For a nest of this scale, the vast majority of proud prodigies in the secret realm are incapable of conquering it alone."

Su Ming sighed like this on his lips, but in his heart, he had not the slightest bit of fear. To him, this nest was merely a resource treasure trove within easy reach.

He stood suspended in the void, slowly closing his eyes. His divine sense spread across the entire heaven and earth, remotely coordinating the undead troops scattered and exploring in all directions.

The two hundred thousand undead that Li Tianhao bumped into just now were merely a small fraction of Su Ming's army.

Command after command was transmitted in all directions along the nether eerie qi. Countless undead and Flying Hunter Falcons gathered towards the ant nest endlessly. In just a short moment, the undead forces that Su Ming could mobilize were already approaching one million.

Such large-scale movement instantly attracted the attention of the remaining testers everywhere in the secret realm.

But when everyone caught a distant glimpse of the terrifying torrent composed of one million undead, none of them failed to turn pale and give birth to the intention of retreating.

Those who still had a chance to escape immediately turned their directions and avoided them from afar; testers who failed to evacuate in time and whose routes were cut off by the undead torrent hesitated not to crush their trial tokens, actively exiting the Hanging Secret Realm.

Outside the secret realm, a group of deities looked at the testers being teleported out one after another, all of them filled with confusion.

There were clearly still a full three hours left until the Hanging Secret Realm completely closed, yet a large batch of proud prodigies exited early, which was truly abnormal.

A deity with slightly white beard and hair saw his clan member Pei Qian appear in a disheveled state, frowned tightly, stepped forward and asked: "Pei Qian, your ranking in the secret realm is eighty-eight, and your foundation is not bad. Why were you eliminated and kicked out early?"

Pei Qian's face was bitter as he sighed repeatedly: "Third Uncle, don't bring it up. I bumped into an Undead Army of at least three hundred thousand halfway through. I was utterly powerless to contend against them and could only actively exit to save my life."

As soon as these words came out, a dozen or so testers around who had also left early chimed in response.

"I also ran into a massive amount of undead!"

"So you all ran into them too?"

The dozen people looked at each other in dismay, their hearts full of shock. No one expected that everyone had actually been forced out of the secret realm by the exact same Undead Army.

"In past openings of the Hanging Secret Realm, such a massive undead population has never appeared. Could an unknown mutation have occurred inside the secret realm?"

The deities watching from the side of the secret realm whispered in discussion, and deep doubts also arose in their hearts.

It was not that they hadn't guessed that the undead belonged to a certain tester's familiars, but this thought was overthrown in an instant.

Nether deities taking the troop-flooding route were known for their massive sea of ghosts, but it required years and months of accumulation and development.

For this batch of testers entering the secret realm, their divine domain awakenings were all less than a year, making it utterly impossible to cultivate an Undead Army on a scale of hundreds of thousands.

Thinking over and over, everyone could only attribute all the strange phenomena to the environmental changes of the Hanging Secret Realm itself.

Time flew rapidly, three hours passed in the blink of an eye, and the time limit for the secret realm to close arrived as scheduled.

At this moment deep in the secret realm, Su Ming had just completely cleared out the giant ant monster nest. All the monsters were slaughtered, and their remains and resources were all gathered up.

"What a pity, with the current carrying capacity of my Jiuyou Divine Domain, I simply cannot support this million-strong Undead Army."

Su Ming looked down from above at the boundless undead torrent below, his eyes filled with regret.

The secret realm space had already begun to emit a faint repulsive spiritual light, urging all testers to leave the field. Su Ming pondered slightly and immediately made a choice:

He would only keep one hundred thousand elite undead, each of whom possessed the strength of Transcendence Tier 4 or above.

As for the remaining nearly nine hundred thousand ordinary undead, he did not destroy them directly. Instead, he extracted the remaining nether eerie qi in their bodies to turn them back into remains on the spot, and then packed them all up to transport back to the Jiuyou Divine Domain, uniformly storing and keeping the shattered bones.

As for the fifty thousand Flying Hunter Falcons, he would definitely not give them up. He gathered them all and stored them in the Divine Domain's Mechanical Spark Workshop for continuous maintenance and supply.

Looking around, all kinds of resources, machinery, and undead in the Jiuyou Divine Domain were arranged fully and densely. Su Ming looked at the abundant and wealthy divine domain, and a full sense of satisfaction rose in his heart.

Just the moment he finished counting all his harvests, his vision suddenly turned completely white.