“The spiritual energy in the Thousand Mountain Valley is decreasing?”

“Not only is it decreasing, it finally disappeared!”

“This phenomenon…”

The experts inside the meeting room frowned as they exchanged looks with each other.

Heaven and earth were probably giving birth to a divine treasure!

Whatever that treasure was, for it to suck up all the spiritual energy in the Thousand Mountain Valley, it was something that made their hearts yearn for it.

“I know what all of you are thinking. If you still want to keep your life, I have one piece of advice for you”—the handsome middle-aged man said—“forget about it.”

“Right, there was that creature that sect master was talking about.”

The handsome middle-aged man nodded.

“That creature is too dangerous. I don’t know what its intentions are but I believe it is in the Thousand Mountain Valley precisely for that treasure.”

“Sect Master said that creature might be above the Sacred King Realm, right? What if it’s just a really strong creature in Sacred King Realm? Not everyone in the Sacred King Realm has the same strength after all. Some are stronger, some are weaker. There are also some abnormally strong Sacred King Realm experts like the Jin Empire’s current emperor and the Spirit God Sect’s sect master. Even you, sect master, belong to that category. I just find it too unlikely for there to be someone above the Sacred King Realm or even an immortal in this world. That is the rule that has been set into this world and it has never been broken for the past 10 000 to 40 000 years,” someone with an extremely important position in the Law God Sect said.

He said in the past 10 000 to 40 000 years because that was the timeline where the gods in the World of Terra disappeared. During those times, gods and immortals were roaming around the World of Terra freely. It wasn’t known how and why they disappeared. It was just that one day, they all suddenly vanished as if they had never been there. If it wasn’t for the relics and the sects that they had left behind, no one would have known that gods were roaming in their world in the past.

“Just because it hasn’t been broken in the past 10 000 years or even if it is in the past 100 000 years doesn’t mean it cannot be broken now. This thing is a special case after all. It’s a treasure birthed by nature itself,” another one with equal status to the one before retorted his statement.

The handsome middle-aged man let out a sigh as he explained himself, “As I said before, it might be an immortal. Even if the chances of it being true are astronomically small, it is still something we cannot ignore. If it is indeed an immortal, it can rule this world with its own will with no one being able to defy it. That is something that must definitely not happen.”

It would be much better if they prepared themselves thinking that the creature was an immortal, and then they’d later find out that it wasn’t an immortal than be unprepared, thinking of that creature as a being in the Sacred King Realm, and then they’d later find out it was indeed an immortal.

In short, it was much better to prepare than suffer from their unpreparedness.

“Sect Master, you said before that you have a strong reason to believe that the creature’s realm is above the Sacred King… why did sect master say that? Do you have any proof?”

The handsome middle-aged man pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “After receiving that letter from the Stone God Sect’s Sect Master, I sent three of our experts in the Sacred King Realm to the Thousand Mountain Valley to confirm their statement. I initially thought the same thing as you. I thought it was merely a strong creature in the Sacred King Realm so there should be no problem if three Sacred Kings were to act against it. However strong it was, I doubted it would be able to handle three Sacred Kings on its own.” He let out a sigh once again as he finished his words, “The result: we lost three of our Sacred Kings…”

“Wha?! So the reason why my grandfather disappeared?!” one of the experts inside the room angrily stood up from his seat and released his aura as he glared at the sect master.

“I thought it was strange why I wasn’t able to see my three dao friends in the sect… they actually lost their lives in the Thousand Mountain Valley!”

The handsome middle-aged man was ashamed of his failure.

“I am very regretful for what happened. It was because I underestimated the situation in the Thousand Mountain Valley that they had lost their lives.”

There weren’t a lot of Sacred Kings in the world. A single Sacred King losing their life would already be a tremendous blow to any sect. What was more was that the Law God Sect lost three! They might be the biggest sect in the world but even they couldn’t treat Sacred Kings as disposable experts.

“Regretful?! You killed them!” an expert roared out. One of the three sacred kings that died was his grandfather. It would be strange if he wasn’t angry.

“Stop,” the thin old man said, making that expert shut up.

"..."

“Alright,” he said as he sat back down on his seat. He was discontented but he didn’t dare make any trouble for the old man.

“Continue. Did the three Sacred Kings discover anything?” the old man asked the current sect master.

The handsome middle-aged man began, “We were using a long-range telepathic supreme art during the whole time they were in the Thousand Mountain Valley. They told me that they discovered a lot of dried-up corpses of the lesser beasts. Some of them were in the Sacred King Realm. There was the Goliath Mountain King, then fifty kilometers away from the Goliath Mountain King was another deceased lesser beast in the Sacred King Realm, the King Eating Mantis. There was also the Nine-Headed Serpent, the Earth Worm King, Scorpion king, etc. All of them died in the same way. It is safe to assume that these creatures were killed by a single creature including the numerous lesser beasts all over the place.”

That made many of them think.

It was strange that so many lesser beasts in the Sacred King Realm were killed by the same creature. Could it be that it really was an immortal?

“Upon discovering all those corpses, the three Sacred Kings were about to retreat since they didn’t want to encounter the creature that was responsible for all of those. It was then that it happened. That creature showed up. They described it as a tree-like creature with numerous branches. One of that creature’s branches just lightly grazed their body and it already took so much of their vitality. One of the Sacred Kings had even been sucked dry in seconds of contact with the branch and died. After that, I lost connection with all of them.”

When he finished, he looked all of them in the eye.

“Now, could you really say that is the work of a creature in the Sacred King Realm?”

All of them went silent. Upon hearing all of that, they came to one conclusion.

That creature’s realm was most likely above the Sacred King Realm.