The surroundings were pitch black, and within that darkness, something seemed to be lurking quietly.
This had to be Jiang Chuhe's Sea of Consciousness!
Yang Kai's mind stirred, and he immediately made his guess.
However, his current situation was quite peculiar. Although his divine sense had been grafted onto Qin Yu's body, allowing her to use the secret technique to infiltrate Jiang Chuhe's Sea of Consciousness and have a look, all the initiative was not in Yang Kai's hands.
He could only passively follow Qin Yu's pace of exploration, letting her will take the lead as they ventured deeper while he observed.
The sensation was quite unique, leaving Yang Kai slightly uncomfortable, though curiosity largely outweighed that feeling.
Streaks of mystic light shot forth from Qin Yu's spiritual body, dispelling the surrounding darkness and revealing churning seawater below.
The seawater was an ink-black color, resembling a bottomless black hole that inspired dread at a glance.
Suddenly, unfamiliar scenes flashed through Yang Kai's mind.
He examined them carefully and found that they were none other than the life experiences of Jiang Chuhe. The images were fragmented and disjointed, yet from them one could glean a rough outline of Jiang Chuhe's growth and development.
It was clear that Qin Yu had already begun the Soul Searching technique on Jiang Chuhe.
The information revealed in these images was of little use, so neither Yang Kai nor Qin Yu paid it much attention.
After what felt like a long while, another bizarre image suddenly appeared before Yang Kai's eyes.
It was an extraordinarily profound formation pattern. Within the formation, pitch-black lines writhed ceaselessly like demonic runes, their pathways interwoven in staggering complexity. The formation pattern was carved into a stone wall, and as the lines crawled, one could faintly hear a maddened growl seemingly emanating from behind the wall.
That growl entered Yang Kai's ears and shook him to his core, immediately unsettling his mind.
At the same time, the image imprinted in his mind began to scatter, on the verge of collapsing.
Yang Kai was startled. He realized that Qin Yu had been hit by the backlash and was struggling to hold on, so he quickly rallied his own willpower. Using the grafted divine sense as a bridge, he reached out to rouse Qin Yu's consciousness.
The scattering image stabilized once more.
But the scene he had just witnessed had vanished, replaced by an entirely different tableau.
It was a scene of cataclysmic battle.
A colossal figure shrouded in roiling black demonic energy, standing over thirty zhang tall with a terrifying physique, stood proudly between heaven and earth, letting out earth-shaking roars.
The roars reverberated across the land. The clouds in the sky dissipated on contact, vanishing without a trace.
Amidst the churning demonic energy, the true form of the colossal being was intermittently visible.
Its appearance was hideous and grotesque. A single enormous eyeball occupied half of its face, and that giant eye was pitch-black as well, deep and fathomless, like a bottomless pit. From within that massive eye, beams of dark, eerie light shot outward, carrying what seemed like the power to obliterate heaven and earth, spraying into the void and tearing space itself apart.
The instant Yang Kai's consciousness made contact with that black, solitary eye, he felt an excruciating pain explode inside his head. His Sea of Consciousness churned violently, threatening to collapse entirely.
Terrified, he quickly averted his gaze.
"A Black Pupil Giant Demon!"
The words surfaced inexplicably in his mind, laced with intense panic and dread.
These feelings did not belong to Yang Kai himself. They were Qin Yu's emotions. The ability to identify this particular type of giant demon was entirely Qin Yu's doing — but since their divine senses were merged as one at this moment, her thoughts were transmitted clearly to Yang Kai, allowing him to share in the truth she had uncovered.
Right now, circling the towering Black Pupil Giant Demon, stood numerous figures. Every single one of them radiated extraordinarily powerful blood essence fluctuations and terrifying auras of strength.
These warriors were all Emperor Realm cultivators.
A rough count revealed at least a hundred of them.
The auras emanating from over a dozen of these powerhouses were even more terrifying than Xiao Yuyang, the Silver Star Envoy from the Star God Palace, whom Yang Kai had seen before!
It was said that Xiao Yuyang had already reached the second stage of the Emperor Realm. That meant these dozen or so warriors, who appeared far stronger than him, had to be third-stage Emperor Realm cultivators!
Every one of them carried themselves with the bearing of a grandmaster, impossible to underestimate.
Yet here and now, these hundred-plus Emperor Realm cultivators swarmed around the massive Black Pupil Giant Demon like mosquitoes. Secret techniques and Emperor Artifacts blazed with dazzling light as they hammered into the demon.
Thunderous roars erupted from the Black Pupil Giant Demon, shaking heaven and earth.
Beyond the hundred-odd Emperor Realm cultivators, more than twenty enormous warships hovered around the Black Pupil Giant Demon as well!
Each warship was at least a dozen zhang in length, and blinding pillars of white light shot from their hulls, bombarding the giant demon.
Heaven and earth changed color. The sun and moon lost their light.