After Yunxi finished off the female evil cultivator, the white mist around her thinned, and a green orb of light drifted to a stop in front of her.
Yunxi tightened her grip on the Seven Stars Soul-Shattering Staff and watched the light warily, ready to smash it at any moment.
Sensing Yunxi's vigilance, the green orb hovered a meter away and spoke: "I am the realm spirit of the Misty Snow Domain. Can we discuss the fusion of the secret realm now?"
Yunxi glanced at the orb and smiled. "Didn't our talk fall apart just now? I thought you would kick me out of the secret realm. Why show up with your true body and act like you are willing to compromise? That only makes me more uneasy."
The green orb swayed. "As if I wanted this. My avatar has already recognized you as its master."
Hearing the impatience in its tone, Yunxi's eyes flicked. She patted the Seven Stars Soul-Shattering Staff. "You mean this Wind Spirit Pearl?"
"Yes."
The answer came with obvious reluctance.
Yunxi's interest grew. She planted the staff heavily on the ground and smiled. "Then lay it out for me. If I am going to contract with you, I should at least know where you came from."
The green orb bobbed up and down for a while before replying: "The Misty Snow Domain was born in the Polar Extreme Wind Zone. In the beginning, I was a Wind Spirit Pearl gestated within the gale-force winds. After tens of thousands of years, I developed intelligence.
Once I had a mind of my own, I no longer wished to be trapped there, so I left the wind belt and drifted about. The Northern region was barren then, without so many human cultivators. By instinct I swallowed some territory, and after another long span of tens of thousands of years, I formed a realm.
Cultivators discovered me and tried to refine me for themselves. Unwilling to be erased, I hid again in the Polar Extreme Wind Zone.
At first, there were still cultivators who could enter the wind belt to seek me. As time passed, fewer and fewer could do so. In the end, none had the ability to reach the center of the Polar Extreme Wind Zone.
Only then did I realize the overall strength of human cultivators had declined sharply. I no longer needed to remain at the center, so I decided to open the secret realm once every one hundred and fifty years to let cultivators come in for resources.
To avoid being targeted again, the entrance appears at random locations each time. Wherever I fly, there I open the entrance. Whether a cultivator can find it depends entirely on luck."
Yunxi immediately seized on a few key points.
First, the true body of the Misty Snow Domain is a Wind Spirit Pearl. After well over a hundred thousand years of gestation, it became the current secret realm. Because a Wind Spirit Pearl can move anywhere, it earned the name "Misty Snow Domain."
Second, during the domain's evolution, the overall strength of cultivators in the Weiyu Realm has steadily declined. That implies the Weiyu Realm once had great experts, perhaps comparable to those in the Spirit Realm.
To step freely into the very center of the Polar Extreme Wind Zone, a cultivator would need to be at least Out-of-Body, perhaps even Void Refinement. And anyone strong enough to covet and refine the secret realm itself, forcing the realm spirit to hide, would likely be Unity or even Mahayana.
This indirectly confirmed Yunxi's previous suspicion: the Weiyu Realm has been deliberately suppressed, falling from a height perhaps equal to the Spirit Realm to its present state.
Yunxi rubbed the Wind Spirit Pearl embedded in the staff and asked, "Then how did you draw the attention of evil cultivators?"
The green orb sounded helpless but answered truthfully: "I found the Weiyu Realm dull. I wanted to cross the realm barrier and see the Spirit Realm. The moment I crossed over, the evil cultivators discovered me. They wanted to contract me. I had no wish to be erased, so I used avatars to distract them and fled back to the wind belt in the Weiyu Realm."
Yunxi narrowed her eyes. "So the evil cultivators from five hundred years ago came because of you."
She stated it as fact.
The green orb quivered. "Yes, but not entirely. Even before that, evil cultivators were already stirring up trouble in the Weiyu Realm. I was only a small part of the cause."
A spark flashed through Yunxi's mind. Her tone cooled. "Be honest. You learned something, decided to leave the Weiyu Realm, and had the bad luck to run into evil cultivators. Otherwise you would not have crossed the barrier to the upper realm after clashing with them here.
That year happened to be when the Misty Snow Domain opened. To avoid the evil cultivators coming from the lower realm, you set the entrance inside the Polar Extreme Wind Zone, and almost no cultivators could enter."
The orb shook even harder. It had not expected the woman before it to be so keen, assembling most of the truth from a few stray comments.
Yunxi's patience wore thin. "Realm spirit, I told you. If you want to survive by using my space, you will pay a price. Free spirit stones do not drop from the sky. If your answer today does not satisfy me, I will not allow you to fuse with my portable space. As I said, to end future troubles, I will punch a hole through this secret realm. You can test me."
The green orb stamped verbally, aggrieved. "Hey! Why are you so hasty? I never said I would not tell you. I was thinking how best to explain, and you start scaring me."
"Enough. Less nonsense. Give me the answer."
Yunxi slammed the staff against the ground again to show her impatience.
"The Weiyu Realm sealed a portion of an Evil God's body."
Yunxi sucked in a sharp breath. At last she understood why the Weiyu Realm had been suppressed so severely.
Even without outside suppression, the Weiyu Realm would naturally decline. Sealing even a fragment of an Evil God's body would consume immense power. Where would that power come from? Only from the realm itself.
No wonder the highest cultivation here now stops at late-stage Divine Transformation. This realm can no longer nurture cultivators stronger than that.
Yunxi ground her teeth and pressed on. "Where is the Evil God's body sealed?"
"The Ancient Battlefield."
Yunxi resisted the urge to roll her eyes and kept her voice even. "And where is the Ancient Battlefield?"
"I truly do not know. Too much time has passed. The cultivators who sealed the Evil God's body were formidable. Back then I was only a small Wind Spirit Pearl and did not dare approach. After the seal was set, the Ancient Battlefield sank beneath the earth. Ages have shifted since then, and no one knows where it has drifted."
Yunxi thought for a moment. "By your account, the evil cultivators entered the Weiyu Realm to find the Evil God's body, break the seal, and revive it."
"Most likely."
"Cultivators of the Weiyu Realm may not even know the Evil God's body is sealed here. How will the evil cultivators find it?"
"You forgot the evil artifact, Long Ya."