The things inside the bumps were naturally Myriad Demon Pills — Yang Kai was absolutely certain of that.
What surprised him, however, was that the cave walls ahead were covered with these growths bearing Myriad Demon Pills, packed so densely that a rough count put the number at several dozen at the very least.
How were there so many?
The Myriad Demon Cave on the Cloud Shadow side had looked similar, but the quantity was clearly much smaller — the bumps had been spaced apart, never growing in such a dense cluster like this.
Before Yang Kai could figure it out, Gui Xu, who had been perched on his shoulder the whole time, had already surged forward in excitement. It pounced on the cave wall, swept its massive tongue across the surface, and half the bumps vanished in an instant. A gulp echoed through the cavern as a large lump obviously bulged in its throat before rolling down into its stomach.
Its tongue swept across once more, and the remaining bumps disappeared too…
Yang Kai's face turned dark. He had been hoping to gather more Myriad Demon Pills here for the Dharma Body, to help it advance to Half-Saint as quickly as possible and become his most powerful asset. Instead, Gui Xu had gobbled them all up as a delicacy.
Gui Xu loved devouring demons, and since the Myriad Demon Pills were generated from the condensed essence of Demonic Energy, they naturally appealed to it as well.
Several dozen Myriad Demon Pills, gone just like that — Yang Kai's heart ached unbearably. He immediately reached out and grabbed the wretched beast, ignoring its howls of protest, and tossed it straight into the Small Mysterious Heaven. Finally, some peace and quiet.
He turned to look at the bare cave wall, his face twitching violently. All he could hope was that this Myriad Demon Cave would have more pills deeper inside, rather than having produced all of them in this outer section alone.
Focusing his mind, he pressed further in. Before he had gone far, Yang Kai's face broke into a wide grin once again.
Sure enough, there were more Myriad Demon Pills here — just as before, they grew in dense clusters, another few dozen or so.
Having gathered Myriad Demon Pills before, Yang Kai reached out and touched one of the bumps. Instantly, it unfurled like a blossoming flower, layer by layer, and a round, plump Myriad Demon Pill tumbled out. His quick hand snatched it up.
He was about to casually toss it into his spatial ring when something caught his attention. He held the pill between his fingers and examined it more closely. A moment later, his thick eyebrows rose slightly as delight spread across his face.
He realized that the Myriad Demon Pills here were larger than any he had collected before, and their quality appeared to be better as well.
Unable to determine the reason, Yang Kai decided not to dig into it. The better the Myriad Demon Pills, the more beneficial they would be for the Dharma Body.
As he ventured deeper, Yang Kai harvested with great enthusiasm. The conditions inside the Myriad Demon Cave far exceeded his imagination — clusters of Myriad Demon Pills could be found roughly every thirty meters, ranging from twenty or thirty pills in one spot to forty or fifty in another. The quantity from the Cloud Shadow side couldn't compare at all.
It took a full forty-five minutes before Yang Kai finally reached the innermost depths of the Myriad Demon Cave. This was the end — there was no path beyond. Every Myriad Demon Pill along the way had been collected.
When he finally pulled out his spatial ring and counted, the total haul came to over fourteen hundred Myriad Demon Pills! If he included the ones Gui Xu had eaten at the start, the cave had produced roughly fifteen hundred in total.
That number startled Yang Kai. Though he had anticipated something from the beginning, such a vast quantity of Myriad Demon Pills still left him stunned.
Under normal circumstances, the Blood Flame Continent had been gone for roughly a thousand years. Even if Myriad Demon Pills could only be generated once every hundred years, a millennium would yield only ten batches — a few dozen pills per batch, totalling a few hundred at most, far short of fifteen hundred.
But Yang Kai knew these pills had not been produced under normal conditions. The Blood Flame Continent had undergone an anomaly, and this Myriad Demon Cave had suddenly erupted with tremendous force, devouring all life on the entire continent before bearing this fruit.
Of course, if all the Demonic Essence from every demon on Blood Flame were converted into Myriad Demon Pills, the true total would be far beyond fifteen hundred — one hundred and fifty thousand or even a million and a half would barely be an estimate. But this continent was already a withered portion of the Demon Realms' territory. The Myriad Demon Cave itself probably couldn't function properly under such circumstances. Producing fifteen hundred high-quality pills was already fortunate — asking for more would be plain greed.
When Yang Kai emerged from the Myriad Demon Cave, the Dharma Body was still nowhere to be seen. There was no need to look for it, either. The two shared a subtle connection, and once the Dharma Body realized he wasn't at the cave, it would come find him.
As for the continent beneath his feet…
Yang Kai pondered for a long while before finally making up his mind. He raised his hand and summoned the Mysterious Boundary Bead. With the activation of his seals, the bead erupted with a massive cloud of mist that coalesced into a titanic entity blotting out the sky and earth. It resembled an enormous fat fish — but with only the outline of a fish, no facial features whatsoever. What it did possess was a gaping, blood-red maw large enough to swallow the heavens, and it was enough to send a chill down one's spine.
The massive maw opened wide, aimed at the continent below, and clamped down. With a deafening crack, a huge chunk of the continent simply vanished.
The Mysterious Boundary Bead had undergone a transformation when Yang Kai had returned to the Star Fields years ago, allowing it to assume this colossal form and devour entire planets. In the Great Desolation Star Fields, three Cultivation Stars had been swallowed by it, making the space within the bead incomprehensibly vast. To this day, the living beings from those three stars continued to thrive inside the Small Mysterious Heaven.
Since the Blood Flame Continent was now devoid of life and had fragmented into scattered remnants, it was perfectly suited for the Mysterious Boundary Bead to consume.
The residual Laws of Heaven and Earth from the Demon Realms still lingered here, and they would be enormously beneficial for completing the internal space of the Mysterious Boundary Bead. Since Blood Flame could never return to the Demon Realms' territory, it would be a waste to let such a vast resource go to waste.