Published: February 11, 2025
“Then you speak.” After a moment of silence, Ye Zhongming agreed.
“You must first prove to me that you possess the Key of the Secret Realm.” The person showed no signs of backing down, as if this were a seller's market.
In Ye Zhongming's mind, it indeed felt like a seller's market.
He was convinced that this person had some mysterious background, perhaps representing the secrets of the apocalypse to some extent. No matter how high the price, Ye Zhongming would consider it.
He took out the unopened Key of the Secret Realm and waved it in front of this person.
Ye Zhongming clearly saw the indescribable surprise in the person's eyes.
He was puzzled as to why a Key of the Secret Realm could evoke such an expression.
Indeed, the Key of the Secret Realm symbolized an unknown space, a piece of 'fertile land' that could be filled with countless magic crystals, materials, minerals, and rare treasures.
The Blue Secret Realm was exactly like this; it had become extremely unstable and could collapse entirely in the next few years. However, Ye Zhongming and Cloud Summit still waged wars against ninth-level beings to seize control of it, all for those countless benefits.
Strictly speaking, the brightwater realm could not compare to a Secret Realm.
But one should not always look at problems from a single perspective.
Given Cloud Summit's current situation, controlling one Secret Realm was feasible, but controlling a second one was truly overwhelming.
In order to slay the ninth-level Holy Father, no one knew what preparations Ye Zhongming and Cloud Summit had made. Within the Royal City of posthumous children, in Ye Zhongming's space, and in the pockets of all Cloud Summit's warriors, there were hidden tricks and trump cards. In fact, everyone had given up on evolving to focus on doing anything that could benefit the upcoming battle in the future.
For this, Ye Zhongming and Cloud Summit had sacrificed a lot.
This was a gamble; if they won, the Blue Secret Realm would become the backyard of Cloud Summit Villa. All previous efforts would yield a thousandfold return, and Cloud Summit would enter a rapid development trajectory.
If they lost, Cloud Summit could only retreat from the Blue Secret Realm in disgrace and would be forever cut off from it. All their preparations would go to waste, just like an investment that would result in total losses. They would also be burdened with the heavy weight of hundreds of thousands of posthumous children, which could drag Cloud Summit to its doom if not handled carefully.
In such circumstances, to open another door to the unknown world and face unknown powerful beings and monsters?
Even if Ye Zhongming had confidence, he would not take such a huge risk.
If today's events had not occurred, he would have kept the Key, just as he had hidden it in his space since the start of the apocalypse.
He would only open it when Cloud Summit had sufficient capability, beginning a new adventure then.
But now, an opportunity lay before him, and Ye Zhongming felt he should not let it slip away, even if it meant parting with the Key of the Secret Realm.
Though the information was limited to the brightwater realm, who knew what the future might hold? Rather than saying that Ye Zhongming was trading the Key for benefits in the brightwater realm, it was more accurate to say it was an intimate contact with the secrets of the apocalypse.
This could also be viewed as an investment, one that might bring countless benefits to Cloud Summit in the future.
The person calmly articulated his other demands, which resonated in Ye Zhongming's heart like turbulent waves.
Overall, this person's new requests could be summarized as two categories: people and items.
People referred to evolvers, various levels of evolvers, requiring those with complete professions, bloodlines, skills, and equipment. Both living beings and corpses were acceptable.
Items referred to other levels of mutated life, including mutated plants and monsters, with a wide range of types. Each level required hundreds of species and thousands of total quantities.