Another point that shocked Li Yan the most was that this Undead Nether Phoenix clearly only had eyes for its own race. For any other living being that obtained this item, there was only an unquestionable command.
It was as if handing this item over to the Undead Nether Phoenix clan was a matter of course, and there was not the slightest hint of gratitude in the sentiment.
"Senior, Senior!" Li Yan was naturally unwilling to accept this. He knew that even if the other party was just a remnant soul, it could still snuff out his current self with a single breath.
But how could Li Yan let this go so easily? He had to at least gain some benefits. However, after he called out twice, there was no answer, as if that desolate voice couldn't be bothered to pay him any more attention.
As his thoughts raced, Li Yan spoke again, "Senior, this junior is but a minor cultivator and has never even heard of the Undead Nether Phoenix clan, let alone know their current location.
"Besides, where is the Essence Blood that Senior spoke of? This... how is this junior supposed to deliver it to them..."
As he finished speaking, a look of fear mixed with difficulty appropriately appeared on Li Yan's face.
At the same time, Li Yan cautiously looked around, afraid that a single unconscious move might anger the other party.
'Where could the Essence Blood be hidden?' he wondered. He thought that by speaking this way, he might naturally learn where the Essence Blood was hidden. At the very least, he might get an answer to the whereabouts of the Undead Nether Phoenix clan, and then he could decide his next course of action based on the situation.
However, after Li Yan finished asking and looked around for a long while, the surroundings remained silent. The person showed no intention of paying him any further mind.
Simultaneously, Li Yan observed his surroundings and found that no other situation had arisen, let alone a drop of Essence Blood floating out.
From beginning to end, after that single voice sounded, everything returned to dead silence. Li Yan observed for a while longer, then asked several more times, but was met with the same deathly stillness.
Finally, Li Yan had no choice but to withdraw his Divine Sense from the space within the Silver Page.
Inside the cave, Li Yan gazed at the three Silver Pages floating in a triangle in the air before him. His eyes narrowed as he rapidly contemplated what had just happened, thinking over every word the other party had said.
He was now mainly considering two points. First, where was the Essence Blood? Second, should he really keep these three Silver Pages?
Right now, this thing was like a cauldron of boiling oil, and he was walking along its rim. One misstep, and he would fall in, perhaps without even a single bone remaining.
A remnant soul of an "Undead Nether Phoenix"—this was definitely not something a minor Foundation Establishment cultivator like him could resist.
If he had been ignorant of the situation before, he could have just thrown the three Silver Pages away. But now, even if he wanted to, he wouldn't dare. He already knew a fraction of the pages' secret; how could the other party possibly let him go?
After a long time, Li Yan still hadn't come up with a plan. Suddenly, a fierce glint flashed in his eyes as he thought to himself.
'I've already opened one Silver Page anyway. Perhaps the other two hold different secrets. I've already seen one, so what difference does it make to see two more? In any case, I can't throw them away now.'
Thus, Li Yan no longer hesitated. With a point of his finger, another Silver Page floated before his forehead.
A ruthless determination rose in Li Yan's heart. Following the same method as before, he once again condensed his entire Divine Sense into a black spike and attacked the restriction on the surface of this Silver Page.
The result held no further surprises for Li Yan. A wisp of his Divine Sense eventually entered the second Silver Page, which was identical to the previous one—a vast, silver world.
Li Yan stayed inside for a long time, carefully probing every corner with his Divine Sense. As expected, he found nothing. This did not surprise him, so he waited patiently in this space for someone or some voice to appear.
But what surprised Li Yan was that in the second Silver Page, this wisp of his Divine Sense waited for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, and even called out several times, yet nothing happened.
This puzzled Li Yan. For a moment, he couldn't understand what was going on. He thought that this Silver Page might be different from the first, but he couldn't identify the crucial point.
Next, he used the same method to enter the third Silver Page. It was the same expanse of silver, with nothing inside. This time, he waited for the duration of an entire incense stick, and still, there was no activity.
Finally, when Li Yan withdrew his Divine Sense, he stared blankly at the three floating Silver Pages before him and slowly fell into deep thought. A long time passed before Li Yan, who had been sitting cross-legged, suddenly moved.
At this moment, his eyes were as sharp as lightning. He suddenly raised his hand again and, once more, drew the first Silver Page before him. Then, his Divine Sense probed inside again. Since the restrictions on all three Silver Pages had already been broken by him, he could now easily re-enter their internal spaces.
A short while later, Li Yan's physical body in the cave suddenly raised its right hand. Beams of Spirit Power light erupted from his fingertips and struck the Silver Page once again.
After the five streams of Spirit Power were shot, and after a short pause, the wisp of Divine Sense Li Yan had left inside the Silver Page withdrew. By now, a flicker of understanding had appeared in Li Yan's eyes. After a brief pause, he once again sent out Spirit Power to strike the Silver Page...
A quarter of an hour later, Li Yan repeated the same actions on the other two Silver Pages. By the time he finished attacking the third Silver Page and withdrew his Divine Sense again, Li Yan's eyes were flashing with brilliant light, a faint smile on his face as he murmured to himself.
"So that's how it is. It really gave me a scare. It turns out that when that Undead Nether Phoenix left behind these ten Silver Pages, it was already at the final moments before its death.
"Even with its magical power, it was unable to leave behind a remnant soul imprint, let alone split off more remnant souls to leave a backup in each of the ten Silver Pages. This shows that its situation at the time was extremely dire.
"In the end, it could only hurriedly and barely leave behind ten Divine Sense imprints in the ten Silver Pages. And each of these Divine Sense imprints, without the aid of a fully prepared Immortal Art, can be said to be like a non-sentient voice recording, or perhaps it has fallen into a deep slumber.
"Only when this Divine Sense senses fluctuations of Spirit Power or runes will it be stimulated and awakened after a period of time. And each time it appears, the power of the imprint diminishes, until one day it will finally disappear."
If this Undead Nether Phoenix had possessed a cultivation base as world-spanning as Dong Fuyi's, then even a single wisp of its Divine Sense could retain the ability to attack even after several hundred thousand years.
But how could such a coincidence happen in this world, that Li Yan would encounter another Dong Fuyi?
However, at Li Yan's current realm, he believed that even if this Undead Nether Phoenix's cultivation had once been immensely powerful, its Divine Sense would have been mostly depleted over such a long passage of time.
He could deduce from the fact that the Undead Nether Phoenix no longer appeared in the Mortal Realm that these Silver Pages had been preserved for at least ten thousand years. Even with Dong Fuyi's heaven-defying abilities, his Divine Sense had quickly dissipated after just forcing out some of the poison from the Qi Condensation stage Strategist Ji.
It turned out that after Li Yan had helplessly broken the restrictions on all three Silver Pages and entered to investigate, he found that no voice or person appeared in the latter two.
After much deliberation, Li Yan suddenly recalled the entire process of opening the first Silver Page and compared it with the subsequent ones, slowly forming a more complete concept.
He quickly thought of the time he first embarked on the path of immortality, when he encountered Dong Fuyi in his Sea of Consciousness by the mountain valley pool. The situation was remarkably similar to what he had encountered in the Silver Page today.
If that was the case, then what was likely in the Silver Page was not a remnant soul, but a strand of Divine Sense. And this Divine Sense, due to the immense passage of time, had long since fallen into a deep slumber and had even begun to lose its intelligence, only able to instinctively repeat the will left behind before its death.
With this line of thought, Li Yan proceeded to follow the same procedure. He once again entered the first Silver Page. As he expected, no matter how he called out, the space inside remained empty and silent, with no one answering him.
He then began to shoot streams of Spirit Power into the Silver Page. Back then, Dong Fuyi had to self-detonate that stray wisp of Divine Sense to awaken his sleeping main Divine Sense. This meant that an unconscious or sleeping Divine Sense needed to be stimulated to be awakened.
Sure enough, after Li Yan had been channeling Spirit Power into the Silver Page for a while, the Divine Sense he left inside once again heard that desolate and indifferent voice, speaking the exact same words as before.
Similarly, as soon as it finished speaking, it fell silent again.
Then, after a pause, Li Yan's physical body outside once again channeled Spirit Power. Soon after, the indifferent voice and the identical words reappeared in the silver space.
Being prepared this time, Li Yan's Divine Sense observed carefully. He finally noticed that there was a very subtle difference between this voice and the previous one. If Li Yan hadn't been paying deliberate attention, it would have been impossible to discern any difference at all.
The strength of the second voice had diminished slightly, a reduction that was almost imperceptible. At the same time, Li Yan definitely sensed the fluctuation of Divine Sense without any soul power, which confirmed his thoughts.
This indicated that every time this Divine Sense appeared, it was consuming itself.
With his meticulous nature, although Li Yan had basically confirmed his suspicions, he still tested the remaining two Silver Pages. The voices that had not appeared before in the two pages now emerged under his Spirit Power attacks, and the content of their words was exactly the same.
"It's just an unconscious Divine Sense recording. In that case, I absolutely cannot return this item to the Undead Nether Phoenix clan," Li Yan finally made his decision.
Essence Blood was a bodily essence that only cultivators could refine. Besides the Golden Core or Nascent Soul within the body, it was the most precious thing, the crystallization of all the essence in a physical body.
Essence Blood played a crucial role in the strength of the physical body and the quality of one's bloodline. The robustness of a person's physical body and the purity of their bloodline were ultimately determined by their Essence Blood.
Ordinarily, if a cultivator obtained a drop of a powerful cultivator's Essence Blood, it would be cherished more than a high-grade magical treasure. It was something worth risking one's life to keep.
A magical treasure, after all, was an external object, while one's physical body was one's own. In the journey of cultivation from weak to strong, the physical body endured all hardships, fought through countless battles, faced heavenly tribulations, and so on. All of this required a powerful physical body.
Refining a drop of a powerful cultivator's Essence Blood could practically reshape one's physical body and bloodline grade, and even change one's own spiritual root aptitude, allowing a Miscellaneous Spirit Root to leap to a Profound Spirit Root, Earth Spirit Root, or even a higher grade. This was something that no currently known medicinal pill could achieve.
It could be said that a single drop of powerful Essence Blood could create a powerful cultivator.