Chapter 549: Journey to Myriad Ghosts Grotto

"Of course not. Those people are merely the infected victims. To understand what’s really happening, we need to find the source of the infection first and investigate it ourselves."

"It seems we’ll have to make a trip to the Myriad Ghosts Grotto!" A glimmer passed through Tushan Shanhe’s silver eyes as he spoke meaningfully. "And we won’t be the only ones going. I suspect Young Master Xuanji will head there as well."

"That’s right! Isn’t that exactly why he came here?"

Fu Young nodded, answering in a way that only he and Tushan Shanhe understood. Then, for some reason, he suddenly added, "Still, news travels incredibly fast in the Mystic Jade Realm. We only arrived today, yet news of what happened in the desert had already reached the city by this afternoon. That’s some impressive information network."

"Heh... That’s just how spirit realms work. Minor matters spread a thousand miles, while major events become known to everyone. You’ll get used to it."

Tushan Shanhe chuckled lightly. After finishing his explanation, he patted Fu Young on the shoulder and turned to leave.

Fu Young looked so frustrated that Xiao Shou thought the veins on his forehead might practically burst.

Unable to resist, Xiao Shou blinked his foxlike eyes mischievously and patted his beloved disciple on the shoulder as well.

"If you want to know how the spirit realm’s intelligence network works, you can just ask directly! There’s no need to keep hinting at it. Ordinary people can’t understand what you’re getting at."

After all, even Xiao Shou himself failed to understand nine times out of ten.

"Master! You’re picking on me too!" Fu Young complained, moving closer to Xiao Shou.

That evening, the three of them received a warm welcome from Murong Shuang, the City Lord of Brightcrest City. He had even arranged a grand banquet in their honor.

Of course, they weren’t the only guests invited. Ximen Xuanji, Fifth Young Lady Murong, and several influential figures from Brightcrest City were also in attendance, making the banquet a lively affair.

During the feast, Murong Shuang told the other guests about how Tushan Shanhe had brought a damaged Heaven Origin Realm into the Mystic Jade Realm. He even openly mentioned how Tushan Shanhe had defeated Ying Xuanyan, the rogue immortal from the Celestial Artifice Palace, without concealing any details.

The other guests were astonished. One after another, they gathered around Tushan Shanhe, eager to curry favor with him.

Watching this scene, Xiao Shou finally understood what the book Heavenly Orb meant when it described how cultivators in the spirit realms revered and pursued the strong.

Simply because Tushan Shanhe had demonstrated his strength, the cultivators of this realm didn’t hesitate to overlook his status as an outsider, Ying Xuanyan’s standing as a rogue immortal, or the fact that he was backed by the top tier Celestial Artifice Palace. They simply flocked around Great Granduncle Shanhe and tried to win his favor.

Honestly, if Ying Xuanyan saw this scene, would he be so furious that he would cough up blood?

In any case, the banquet that evening was extremely lively. They also spotted the dark skinned man surnamed Mo, the thin, pale scholar in white robes surnamed Qin, and the fat man with a face full of flesh whom everyone called Brother Ye. The three of them were seated with another man who wore blue scholar’s robes. His face was extremely pale, and his cultivation was unstable.

The three men addressed him as Brother Wen. From their conversation, Xiao Shou and the others gathered that he was probably the person who had been infected.

Aside from his unstable cultivation, however, the man showed no other unusual symptoms. It seemed that Ximen Xuanji had already cured him.

Since the condition could be cured, Xiao Shou reasoned that World Eaters in their juvenile stage, immediately after hatching from their eggs, probably weren’t very powerful. They might be strange, but they shouldn’t be too dangerous yet.

With that thought in mind, Xiao Shou became less reluctant to visit the Myriad Ghosts Grotto the following day.

The next morning, the three of them bid farewell to the City Lord of Brightcrest City and left the City Lord’s residence.

Once they were outside, Tushan Shanhe carried Xiao Shou and Fu Young up into the clouds. He flew slowly in a certain direction while explaining the information about the Myriad Ghosts Grotto that he had somehow obtained.

As he listened, Xiao Shou gradually gained a better understanding of this public secret realm.

It turned out that the Myriad Ghosts Grotto was similar to the Golden Crane Secret Realm in the Heaven Origin Realm. Both were public secret realms that cultivators could enter for training as long as they paid the required entrance and exit fees.

However, the Myriad Ghosts Grotto was far larger than the Golden Crane Secret Realm. In fact, it was even larger than the entire Heaven Origin Realm.

The secret realm had first appeared and opened to the public more than ten thousand years ago. It was located north of Brightcrest City, over fifty thousand miles away, and was one of the city’s major assets.

As soon as the Myriad Ghosts Grotto Secret Realm first appeared, it was filled with the wails of ghosts and the howls of demons. Countless Ghost Kings, Ghost Generals, Ghost Soldiers, and other undead creatures poured out and spread into the surrounding areas, causing widespread chaos.

Eventually, the rogue immortals of the Murong Kingdom joined forces to seal the realm, leaving behind only one entrance that allowed living beings to enter and exit. Only then could cultivators explore the secret realm. Over time, they compiled detailed information about the place and began selling it alongside the required entrance fees.

According to the information recorded in the jade slips, the Myriad Ghosts Grotto was a rare Minor Thousand World with an extremely yin nature. No one knew what had happened before this small world was destroyed, but the residual souls and fragmented spirits within it had been filled with such overwhelming resentment that, under the extremely yin environment, they transformed into ghosts.