Thinking of this, the yellow-robed elder gently raised one hand. At some point, a gray, infant-fist-sized pearl had appeared in it.
If Li Yan were here, he would recognize it at a glance. This object was identical to the Guluo Nine-Tailed Turtle eyeball he had once seen in Xuanqing Temple.
Holding the pearl, the elder tilted his head slightly and once again swept his gaze over the two women behind him. It was these two women who had obtained the thing they had been searching for for so long.
The two women were standing quietly behind, waiting for the yellow-robed elder's instructions. They did not expect to sense the elder's gaze suddenly turn to them.
Their hearts tightened. They were terrified of the yellow-robed elder. The seals on their bodies had been personally placed by this person back then, forcing them to submit to his orders, and they also had to serve him under the covers at any time.
One of the two women wore a fiery red long dress, her figure so explosive that it made one want to possess her.
The full dress appeared extremely tight, her curves rising and falling like mountain ranges. Her jet-black hair was coiled into a bun on top of her head, and her powdered face was beautiful enough to topple cities.
The other was a middle-aged beauty with a seductive figure, draped in a green gauze. The green gauze long dress was semi-transparent.
Her flawless, snow-white skin was faintly visible, and her full hips swayed, occasionally revealing large patches of white, enough to make one's blood boil. The two women were none other than the sect master of the Red Chan Sect, "Fairy Red Candle," and the green-gowned beauty, Zhong Mengyin.
At this time, the cultivation realms of the two women had greatly increased. In just one year, "Fairy Red Candle" had already reached the late-stage Golden Core, while Zhong Mengyin had reached the mid-stage Golden Core. This speed was simply unbelievable.
Seeing the yellow-robed elder's gaze turn to them again, the two women's delicate bodies trembled simultaneously. This person was their nightmare.
Not only had the yellow-robed elder changed their lives, but his body was also terrifyingly strong. Thinking of how every time they served him, even with the physique of Golden Core cultivators, they would be unable to walk for days after the ordeal, they were even more terrified of the elder.
Fortunately, the yellow-robed elder was just feeling emotional at the moment, remembering the cause of the matter, and so he only glanced at the two women without any other thoughts.
The other two male Golden Core cultivators, one old and one young, did not even dare to breathe. How could they not know that these two women were seductresses and their relationship with the "Venerable One"? They were absolutely not for them to have any indecent thoughts about.
They quickly collected themselves, showing an expression of complete obedience.
The yellow-robed elder only swept his gaze over them without lingering. With a gloomy face, he waved his large sleeve, and several streaks of black light shot out from it, disappearing in a flash as they struck the surroundings.
He formed a hand seal with one hand, and immediately the light in the sky above the entire island began to twist and deform, emitting a soft buzzing sound.
After only two breaths, the entire island returned to normal, as if nothing had happened. The ground was still overgrown with weeds, and the trees swayed gently in the wind. The island was completely empty of figures, with only the sound of the sea breeze rustling through the grass and trees.
Inside the grand formation, the yellow-robed elder was already sitting cross-legged in the air, holding the gray pearl in one hand, facing the small puddle, his eyes closed in concentration.
The four people behind the yellow-robed elder, without waiting for his command, had already flown off in four different directions. After reaching the four corners of the island, they also sat down cross-legged, closing their eyes. Their divine sense had already been quietly released outside the formation.
The yellow-robed elder paid no attention to this. He still sent out his powerful divine sense, personally observing a radius of several thousand li before his heart eased slightly. Then, he gently tossed the gray pearl in his hand, and it quietly floated in front of him.
The yellow-robed elder formed a set of strange and complicated hand seals, which were obscure and difficult to understand. Streaks of spiritual light shot out from his fingertips, all striking the gray pearl.
After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the gray pearl, which had been unresponsive, suddenly showed a change. The small golden bead in its center, like a long-slumbering eye, suddenly opened.
The moment the small golden sphere opened, a dazzling golden light erupted from the gray pearl, instantly filling the entire world.
The sudden appearance of the golden light startled even the yellow-robed elder, who had been mentally prepared. He just didn't show it on the surface.
He secretly rejoiced that he had made preparations in advance and set up the grand formation. Don't be fooled by how relaxed he looked when setting up the formation; in fact, he had prepared for this formation for nearly four hundred years.
Besides having a supreme illusionary effect, this formation also allowed divine sense to pass through in only one direction. Unless a cultivator's level was higher than the yellow-robed elder's, whose divine sense could then forcibly break through, even a cultivator approaching the island would only see nothing unusual with their divine sense.
This formation had cost the yellow-robed elder more than half of his fortune. What was especially rare was that this formation could control the leakage of demonic qi.
Just to achieve this goal, the yellow-robed elder had spent more than three hundred years just looking for materials to refine the formation. He had exhausted the wealth accumulated over the years from the eleven strongholds under his control, and in the end, he had only barely gathered the materials to refine the formation.
But even after all that, he still couldn't achieve the perfect refining effect. In the end, due to time constraints, he had no choice but to forcibly refine this grand formation for use.
The sudden change in the gray pearl startled the four Golden Core cultivators who had just reached the corners of the island and were observing the outside. They all turned around and stood up at the same time.
The yellow-robed elder let out a dissatisfied cold "hmph," and a cold gaze fell upon them. Only then did the four of them sit down again resentfully, but they were quite dissatisfied with the yellow-robed elder's domineering attitude.
With such a big commotion, he should have at least let them know. With their nerves so tense, a strong reaction was naturally inevitable. But how could they have known that even the yellow-robed elder himself didn't know this would happen? In the grand formation, when the golden light appeared, everything around remained as before, with nothing unusual.
The yellow-robed elder's eyes were fixed on the puddle in front of him, his heart also extremely nervous.
"This time, there will be no mistake. The place must be correct!"
He recited in his heart. For this result, they had not hesitated to expose a large number of known Demon Lords, Demonic Soldiers, and the sects of various sizes under their control.
The price they paid was enormous, with heavy casualties. Nearly ten thousand years of accumulated power and painstaking management had ultimately yielded only two gray pearls.
Unfortunately, one of them had been secretly thrown into the Devil's Cliff Crevice two months ago. To cover for this, they had not hesitated to expose a Demonic General and several Demon Lords.
Unfortunately, the final result almost made them vomit blood. They didn't know if that gray pearl was damaged or if the power it contained was insufficient, but it only managed to expand the Devil's Cliff Crevice a little and failed to break it through.
In the end, only one Demon Lord escaped with serious injuries from this affair. They lost another of the already rare Demonic Generals hidden on the Desolate Moon Continent, which almost damaged their foundation.
Otherwise, if they had several gray pearls in hand and activated them in multiple locations at the same time, the chances of success would surely have been several times greater.
This gray pearl was a heaven-defying heavy treasure that the Demon Realm had spent a fortune to refine, using the power of the entire Demon Clan, in order to invade other dimensions. There were only four in total, and they could break through the dimensional barriers between two realms.
In the end, to break through the spatial barrier with the Desolate Moon Continent, they had consumed three of them, finally opening a weak spatial passage, which was the Devil's Cliff Crevice.
However, before they could retrieve the treasure, it was discovered by human Spirit Transformation cultivators, who resealed the Devil's Cliff Crevice. These three gray pearls, named "Realm-Breaking Pearls," disappeared into the mortal realm after breaking through the dimensional barrier.
The important mission of these demons left in the mortal realm was to find the "Realm-Breaking Pearls" and shatter the dimensional barrier. But each time a "Realm-Breaking Pearl" was used, the power within it needed tens of thousands of years to slowly recharge, so the aura it emitted was also extremely faint, until now.
Time passed bit by bit. The yellow-robed elder, who had always been as cold as ice, actually began to break out in a dense layer of sweat on his forehead.
Under his constant gaze, the puddle remained unresponsive, no different from before. What made the yellow-robed elder even more anxious was that the golden, pupil-like object in the center of the gray pearl was slowly closing.
As the golden pupil closed, the golden light within the entire grand formation was also dissipating bit by bit.
The yellow-robed elder knew that even though he had mastered the activation manual for the "Realm-Breaking Pearl," after it was activated once, if there was no result, the consumed spiritual power would be completely depleted.
And the huge source of spiritual power within it could not be quickly replenished by external objects. It could only slowly recover on its own, which would take at least a million years even at the fastest rate.
Breaking the barrier between two realms was in itself a fantasy. So how could it be done so easily? Otherwise, how could they have been struggling so hard, waiting until the "Realm-Breaking Pearl" responded before they could detect the location of the dimensional passage?
Just as the yellow-robed elder's face was getting uglier and uglier, and the golden light in the grand formation had almost completely disappeared, when the yellow-robed elder's heart was about to sink to the bottom of the valley, suddenly, the "Realm-Breaking Pearl" that had been quietly floating in front of him began to spin rapidly. Then, before the yellow-robed elder, with all his heaven-defying cultivation, could react, the "Realm-Breaking Pearl" suddenly flew up and shot towards the few-inch-long tip of the reef exposed in the puddle.
The yellow-robed elder's heart trembled, but he forcibly stopped his body, which had just started to stand up. He could not interfere with the "Realm-Breaking Pearl." No matter what happened, he had to remain calm.
Otherwise, with the power contained within the "Realm-Breaking Pearl," once activated, he would die on contact.
Even this entire area of a million li might turn into nothingness in an instant due to one of his actions, forming an independent space where no one could survive.
All he could do now was to trigger the "Realm-Breaking Pearl," let it activate, and then observe the changes.
At this time, the yellow-robed elder only felt his mouth go dry. The "Realm-Breaking Pearl" had responded. Of course, he was ecstatic, but at the same time, he was also worried for his own life.
If something went wrong, all life within this million-li radius would be at a life-and-death moment. If the "Realm-Breaking Pearl" did not react normally, then in the next moment, he would not even have a chance to escape, and his soul would be instantly scattered.
The "Realm-Breaking Pearl" hit the tip of the reef without making a sound, which was very strange. Under the yellow-robed elder's nervous gaze, the reef began to slowly emit wisps of black smoke.
But this black smoke was almost invisible. Even with the yellow-robed elder's high cultivation and at such a close distance, under full concentration, he had to confirm it repeatedly before he was certain.
"It is, it really is! This is truly demonic qi, truly pure demonic qi!"