Inside the underground cave, Lin Lei lay down to rest for a while. Only after feeling his strength return did he stand back up.
Being toyed with by over a hundred dragons had been the most dangerous experience of Lin Lei's entire life. Every single second could have been his last. Surviving it made him exhale with deep relief, but it also ignited a fierce yearning within him: the desire for true power.
In front of those dragons, he was nothing but a plaything, utterly powerless to fight back.
"Boss, we can't go back up. We have to go deeper — there's a wide passage over here," Bei Bei transmitted through their soul link, leaping onto Lin Lei's shoulder at the same time.
To his side and slightly ahead, a winding yet very broad passage stretched out. It was over ten meters wide and nearly ten meters high. The underground corridor curved and twisted, heading east toward the unknown. After a moment's silence, Lin Lei pressed forward with Bei Bei into the depths of the dark passage, resolved and without hesitation.
The deeper they went, the darker it grew. After walking for a while, the corridor plunged into pitch blackness. Lin Lei could barely make out the path and had to feel his way along the walls, advancing with extreme caution.
"Boss, where exactly are we? And why was there a small mountain sitting on top of that passage?" Bei Bei asked.
Lin Lei shook his head.
"Above us are over a hundred dragons. Going up would be suicide. We can only go down." He had no ability to dig an escape tunnel through the densely packed rock down here. He could only follow this passage toward who knew where.
Both Bei Bei and Lin Lei stayed on high alert, wary that some magical beast might suddenly appear.
"There's light ahead." In the darkness, Lin Lei caught a faint glow and moved toward it quickly. Gradually, he spotted the exit of the underground passage, from beyond which a dim red light emanated.
Suddenly —
"Ha ha! Sadias, weren't you all high and mighty? What you did to me three hundred years ago — today I'll pay you back double!" A deep, powerful voice rolled in from beyond the opening, resonant as thunder.
Lin Lei started. "Someone's here!"
"But humans are at least easier to deal with than magical beasts. And I don't have another way out. Still, this person sure is loud." Lin Lei pressed against the passage wall and crept forward slowly. When he was about twenty meters from the mouth of the cave, the opening — over ten meters wide — gave him a clear view of what lay beyond.
At the end of the passage was an enormous underground cavern.
The cavern stretched several li across and rose dozens of meters high, but Lin Lei froze on the spot —
From his vantage point, he could clearly see a massive black bear hovering in midair. It stood over ten meters tall, its fur as stiff and sharp as steel needles. Streaks of purple wound across its body, giving it an eerie, otherworldly look.
And this enormous floating bear was speaking in human language.
"This… this…" Lin Lei held his breath.
A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through his mind.
"A Saint Realm magical beast!" He understood in an instant.
Once a magical beast reached the Saint Realm, it could fly freely and speak in the human tongue. These were hallmarks of a Saint Realm beast. They were terrifyingly powerful — most human experts at the Saint Realm couldn't hope to match one. Only the very top-tier Saint Realm powerhouses had enough strength to slay a Saint Realm magical beast.
A Saint Realm beast could freely shrink its size. A Saint Realm dragon over a hundred meters long could become a small snake.
Of course, a Saint Realm magical beast could not take human form.
A beast capable of transforming into a human likely possessed godlike power.
"A Saint Realm magical beast — I'm actually looking at a Saint Realm magical beast!" Lin Lei barely dared to breathe. He crept forward and peered carefully into the cavern. "A Purple-Stripe Black Bear. Purple-Stripe Black Bears are normally ninth-rank beasts — creatures of the Darkness System."
The books said that the Purple-Stripe Black Bear was a ninth-rank beast, referring to what a normal adult of the species could be expected to reach.
After all, within the Purple-Stripe Black Bear lineage, there were certainly powerful individuals who had cultivated to the Saint Realm.
"This Saint Realm Purple-Stripe Black Bear is missing an eye." Lin Lei suddenly noticed the horrific wound where the bear's left eye should have been — it was clearly a one-eyed creature.
"Sadias! All these years I've been thinking about nothing but revenge. Ha ha… What good does it do you to hoard this place? Sure, the elemental density here is nearly a hundred times higher than outside, but you were still a step behind — I reached the Saint Realm first! Ha ha…"
The Saint Realm Purple-Stripe Black Bear was clearly exulting.
"Where is this 'Sadias' the Saint Realm Purple-Stripe Black Bear is talking about?" Lin Lei quietly backed away and moved along the opposite wall. Through the opening, he caught sight of another magical beast, and the moment he saw it, his heart lurched.
This beast was ten meters long and nearly three meters tall.
Its entire body was clad in dark, gleaming scales, arranged with meticulous precision and order. Each individual scale was no larger than a palm, but packed so densely together they created a bizarre, unsettling pattern that made one's scalp tingle.
Along its spine ran a row of sharp, thirty-centimeter-long spikes, extending from the base of its tail all the way to the tip of its forehead.
Most terrifying were its eyes — The pupils burned with a dark, metallic gold, and that frigid gaze sent chills through the entire body.
"A Spiny Iron-Armored Dragon — the most fearsome of all ninth-rank dragon species!" Lin Lei's mind screamed, as information he had read in books about Spiny Iron-Armored Dragons surfaced in his memory.