It was like everyone going to an inn to eat. Others could only eat as much as their stomachs could hold, but he could eat and take some with him.
That gave him an edge of his own.
By the time Yang Kai flashed out from beneath the swamp again, he had already used a spell to transfer that cultivation blessed land brimming with water-type spiritual energy into the Small Universe.
He turned to glance at the chunks of flesh left behind by the dead fifth-grade demon beast and silently congratulated himself on his luck. This thing had actually been no pushover—if it had been weaker, it couldn't have killed two Emperors so easily. If Yang Kai had truly had to fight it head-on, he could have taken it down, but it would have cost him some effort.
By exploiting the spatial rift in this area, he had slain the beast in an instant, saving himself quite a bit of time.
By his estimate, the strength displayed by a fifth-grade demon beast was roughly equivalent to a half-step Open Heaven cultivator. Of course, because the demon beasts inside the Blood Demon Cave Heaven had single-attribute inner cores, they were easy to counter.
Take this toad demon beast, for example. Its inner core was water-attribute, so it could be countered by fire. That was precisely why Yang Kai had channeled the Golden Crow True Fire from his Dao Seal earlier.
Even if it was easy to counter, it was still a half-step Open Heaven. An ordinary Emperor Realm cultivator would have been in deep trouble upon encountering one.
If a fifth-grade demon beast was this strong, then what about a sixth-grade? Wouldn't that be equivalent to a lower-grade Open Heaven?
That actually aligned with what he already knew. After all, he had previously fought a lower-grade Open Heaven with a sixth-grade Mysterious Magnetic Divine Light, and its power had been immense—even multiple lower-grade Open Heaven cultivators had struggled to withstand it.
What about the seventh-grade above that? Wouldn't that be equivalent to a mid-grade?
Yang Kai's heart sank. He had previously been thinking about finding a seventh-grade demon beast to kill and harvest its inner core, but looking at it now, if he actually ran into a seventh-grade, he might have to flee for his life.
There was no point dwelling on it, though. While seventh-grade demon beasts did exist here, they weren't something you could just stumble upon casually. If the encounter did happen, he would just have to adapt to the situation.
He took out the spatial rings belonging to the two dead cultivators and examined their contents. One was even poorer than the other—just a few hundred Open Heaven Pills between them, along with a bunch of miscellaneous junk that Yang Kai couldn't care less about.
It seemed they hadn't been here for very long either. Before they could even make a fortune off dead men's belongings, their ambitions had died with them.
What a tragedy...
Yang Kai had no intention of mourning them. Once you entered the Blood Demon Cave Heaven, you had to be mentally prepared to be killed by someone else. Just as he was about to put the two spatial rings away, his expression suddenly shifted. He reached into one of the rings and pulled out a piece of beast hide.
The beast hide was clearly ancient, bearing the weight of ages. It was covered densely with all manner of haphazard patterns, many of which had become blurred and illegible after countless years of wear.
At first, Yang Kai couldn't make sense of what was recorded on the hide. But after a moment, as if suddenly remembering something, he hurriedly retrieved the jade slip the proprietress had given him. He split his spiritual consciousness in two—one half immersed in the jade slip to examine it, the other half focused on the patterns on the beast hide.
After a short while, surprise appeared on Yang Kai's face. "A map?"
What was recorded on the beast hide was, remarkably, a fragmentary map—and it depicted a specific region within the Blood Demon Cave Heaven.
Because part of the beast-hide map overlapped with the map recorded in the jade slip, Yang Kai was able to recognize it. Of course, that didn't mean the beast-hide map contained more information. On the contrary, the map in the jade slip provided more comprehensive coverage, since it had been auctioned off by the Danxia Auction House—the product of countless warriors' explorations over the ages.
It was just that the two maps shared some overlapping areas, and the beast-hide map had a few additional locations not recorded in the jade slip's version.
Gripping the beast-hide map, Yang Kai fell into deep thought.
The Danxia Auction House had once auctioned off a hundred maps of the Blood Demon Cave Heaven. Though none of them were complete, they could already provide warriors with excellent guidance on what lay ahead.
Yang Kai wasn't naive enough to think the Danxia Auction House would be so generous as to share such sensitive information with the world. After all, a relatively complete map could bring gains so enormous they were almost unimaginable.
Behind the Danxia Auction House lay the Danxia Grotto-heaven, which surely had portions of the map that hadn't been made public. That was their greatest trump card.
What they released publicly was likely all territory they had already explored—areas with little remaining value.
And aside from the Danxia Auction House, over the years, every major grotto-heaven and blessed land, as well as the second-tier powers, undoubtedly had their own maps. Which map was more comprehensive, which was more valuable—such things were truly hard to say.
Yang Kai could even confirm that the map in his own possession wasn't entirely sourced from the Danxia Auction House's auction. The proprietress had definitely added parts of her own, since she had visited the Blood Demon Cave Heaven before.
As for where the two men who had just died originally came from, Yang Kai had no idea. The beast-hide map might have been something one of them had stumbled upon by chance—otherwise it wouldn't carry such an ancient aura of age.
One particular location on the beast-hide map had been circled, immediately drawing attention.
Generally speaking, places marked with such emphasis had to be hiding something valuable.
Yang Kai felt a itch of curiosity. He compared the two maps and discovered that reaching the circled location would require several more days of travel, passing through the overlapping regions of both maps.