Now is the perfect time to get started.

Not far away, Yun Canghai, the Pavilion Master of the Myriad Laws Pavilion, furrowed his brows tightly. The spiritual power that could be mobilized in this place was restricted to the Purple Mansion Realm at most.

He looked up at the sky above the secret realm. A faint purple halo of restrictive formations shrouded the area like a canopy, clearly a natural rule inherent to the secret realm.

"A secret realm restriction—no matter how high your prior cultivation base was, you can only exert the strength of the Purple Mansion Realm at most."

As these words spread, the surrounding cultivators instantly erupted into an uproar.

The Cave Heaven Realm and Celestial Realm experts from the various sects all revealed expressions of shock, evidently caught off guard by this sudden suppression.

They attempted to circulate their spiritual power, but the spiritual energy around them suddenly stagnated, as if tightly bound by invisible shackles.

Mo Luo, the Sect Master of the Demon Heaven Sect, was even more furious. Demonic qi surged madly around his body, yet he still could not break through the shackles of the Purple Mansion Realm. In the end, he could only viciously kick a nearby rock, smashing it to pieces to vent the anger in his heart.

"Hahaha! Fantastic!"

An excited shout suddenly rang out, breaking the heavy atmosphere.

The speaker was a middle-aged Purple Mansion Realm cultivator. Originally, he had zero presence in the crowd due to his lowly cultivation.

Now, seeing that even Celestial Realm experts were suppressed to the same level as himself, he immediately straightened his back, swinging the formation-breaking awl in his hand with vigorous momentum.

"Now those high and mighty sect experts have the same cultivation as me. We finally have the qualifications to fight for the treasures of the secret realm!"

These words were like a stone tossed into a lake, instantly stirring up a thousand ripples. Many Purple Mansion Realm cultivators chimed in in agreement, and the originally oppressive atmosphere immediately became restless.

They had been suppressed by high-level cultivators for years. Now that they finally had a chance to compete, a blazing light ignited in their eyes, and their gazes toward the depths of the secret realm were filled with anticipation.

Shi Wanshan took it in stride. Although the spiritual power of the Purple Mansion Realm was not as profound as his usual state, it was still enough to cope.

On the edge of the crowd, Xiao Ruobai and Fang Hanyu exchanged a glance, both seeing the astonishment in each other's eyes.

Xiao Ruobai quietly condensed a wisp of battle aura at his fingertips, and golden spiritual power exploded in his meridians like surging thunder, without feeling the slightest bit of suppression.

His heart stirred, and he deliberately raised his aura, climbing all the way from the early stage of the Purple Mansion Realm to the middle stage of the Cave Heaven Realm. The spiritual power around his body was astonishingly stable, not even causing the slightest ripple in his robes.

He abruptly turned his head to look at Fang Hanyu, sending a telepathic transmission, "Junior Brother, did you notice?"

Fang Hanyu had already been testing it in secret. Hearing this, he immediately nodded, his eyes full of shock.

"This secret realm's rules are completely useless against us!"

He paused for a moment, suddenly clenching his fists. "Could it be because of the 'Cannot See Through Me' cultivation technique that Master taught us? Did it deceive the restrictions of this secret realm?"

Xiao Ruobai slowly released the hand resting on his Dragon Soul Halberd, his thumb rubbing against the patterns on the halberd's shaft. A sharp edge entered his telepathic voice.

"The techniques Master gives have always been extraordinary. Nine times out of ten, that's the case."

He raised his eyes and swept a glance at the distant Great Yan Dynasty's group, a cold arc forming at the corner of his mouth. "Now, this is going to be fun."

At this time, several Cave Heaven Realm elders of the Great Yan Dynasty were surrounding their prince. They had clearly also discovered the suppression of their cultivation, and their expressions were quite unsightly.

Before the shock of the cultivation suppression could completely dissipate, the cultivators from the various sects could no longer suppress their thirst for fortune. They set off toward the depths of the secret realm one after another, their actions fully displaying their respective sects' true colors.

The Burning Heaven Palace's group was the most impatient. Lie Tianxiong clenched his fists with an ashen face. The undissipated flame spiritual energy around him occasionally sparked, landing on the spiritual mist on the ground and burning it with a sizzling sound.

"Speed up, all of you! We head to that spiritual herb slope first!"

He barked a low command and took the lead, charging toward a distant slope that shimmered with spiritual light. The disciples behind him followed closely, their flame spiritual power condensing into faint rings of fire around them, serving both as an aid for travel and a form of deterrence.

The most eye-catching was undoubtedly the Demon Heaven Sect's group.

Mo Luo walked at the very front. The skulls on his skull bracelet swayed gently with his steps, the flickering ghostly green flames in their eye sockets dimming and brightening.

Black demonic qi condensed into a faint mist beneath his feet. Wherever he passed, even the spiritual mist on the ground seemed to be forced back by an invisible chill, instinctively rolling away to the sides and revealing the bare, dark brown soil.

When they reached a moss-covered rock, more than a dozen stalks of golden-glowing Qi Condensation Fungi were growing in the crevices.

Two rogue cultivators were crouching there. Just as their fingertips touched the leaves of the spiritual grass, they caught a glimpse of the black robes of the Demon Heaven Sect crowd from the corner of their eyes. Terrified, they frantically tried to stuff the newly picked Qi Condensation Fungi into their storage bags, not even caring to brush off the dirt on their knees.

Mo Luo did not stop walking. He only cast a sidelong glance at them, and a sinister, cold smile suddenly appeared at the corner of his mouth.

In the next second, the demonic qi at his fingertips suddenly surged. No longer acting as entangling chains, it transformed into two sharp black qi blades that sliced through the air with a swoosh, precisely piercing through the backs of the two rogue cultivators' hearts.

The rogue cultivators' bodies suddenly stiffened, their hands pausing mid-air as they tried to stuff their storage bags. Blood seeped out along the trajectory of the qi blades, quickly dyeing the coarse cloth of their shirts red.

They wanted to turn their heads, but they did not even have the strength to twist their necks. They could only let out a few weak, rattling gasps, their eyes fixed dead on the Qi Condensation Fungi scattered on the ground, their pupils filled with unwillingness and fear.

"Since when did this place become something you ants could touch?"

Mo Luo's tone remained flat, as if he had merely crushed two ants underfoot.

He stepped past the twitching bodies of the rogue cultivators, his skull bracelet swaying gently. With a casual wave of his hand, two streams of demonic qi swept past the rogue cultivators' waists, hooking their storage bags over to him.

As he tossed them to the disciples behind him, he conveniently used his demonic qi to shred the rogue cultivators' corpses to pieces. Blackish-red flesh and blood mixed with the spiritual mist and scattered into the air, leaving not a single trace behind.

He continued forward without looking back. The Demon Heaven Sect disciples behind him smiled as they caught the storage bags. When their eyes swept over the residual bloodstains on the ground, there was not the slightest ripple of emotion, as if the slaughter just now was merely a trivial matter.

Not far away, several rogue cultivators hiding behind the spiritual mist covered their mouths in terror upon seeing this scene, not even daring to breathe loudly. It wasn't until the Demon Heaven Sect's group had completely walked away that they trembled and scrambled away, lacking even the courage to approach that rock.

The rogue cultivators grouped up in twos and threes, not daring to approach the routes taken by the major sects. They could only search for scattered spiritual herbs on the periphery, occasionally arguing over a century-old spiritual herb, but never daring to actually come to blows.

After all, in front of the major sects, their petty squabbles were truly not worth mentioning.

Gripping his Dragon Soul Halberd, Xiao Ruobai, along with Fang Hanyu, used the cover of the spiritual mist to keep a close eye on the Great Yan Dynasty's group ahead.

The prince was protected in the middle by the Cave Heaven Realm elders. From time to time, he bent down to poke at the spiritual herbs by the roadside. Seeing that they were all low-grade, he frowned and waved his hand, urging the elders to head toward places with denser spiritual energy, wanting to preemptively find better treasures.

Although the elders complied, their footsteps did not falter, and they maintained a defensive formation at all times.

They arrived at the entrance of a narrow valley. The rock walls on both sides were steep, and the spiritual mist was thicker here than anywhere else.

Xiao Ruobai's eyes lit up, and he quietly nodded to Fang Hanyu—this place was easy to defend and hard to attack, making it the perfect time to make a move.