"What… is this?"
Chu Hao sat at the bottom of the Endless Abyss, staring at the Secret Realm World that had swallowed both the Endless Abyss and the figure-eight-shaped world.
Within this world, yellow sand stretched everywhere, like a pure, barren desert.
An ordinary person might think they had been pulled into a desert world.
But Chu Hao perceived differently.
He could sense that this desert was fundamentally different from any normal desert.
In ordinary deserts, life and water may be scarce, but they exist.
This "Desert World" before him, however, was pure desolation—utterly devoid of anything nourishing.
Across this enormous world, Chu Hao could find no trace of nutrients.
The grains of sand were pure, worthless "dust."
Even the maternal world of the Hayes race contained more nourishment than this.
It was as if something had devoured everything within this world.
Yet Chu Hao's confusion went beyond just this.
First, he sensed that the plane crystal walls of the Endless Abyss had not been damaged at all.
In other words, the Endless Abyss itself had been entirely "swallowed" by this enormous world!
This exceeded Chu Hao's comprehension.
In his memory, no world, no being, could accomplish such a feat.
After all, plane crystal walls were not trivial—they marked the separation of a maturing world from the rest of existence.
And their rules were among the most important and hardest to break.
Yet now, the crystal walls of the Endless Abyss had completely failed.
Second, Chu Hao looked up and realized he was not alone in this fate.
Inside this massive world were countless Secret Realms of varying sizes.
Among them, Chu Hao spotted over a dozen Divine Realms!
This meant other gods, like himself, had been pulled into this world.
Moreover, the number of worlds being dragged into this Desert World was rapidly increasing!
In other words, this world was expanding outward from the deepest reaches of Secret Realms at a terrifying speed.
---
"What's happening?"
Chu Hao manifested his form from the Endless Abyss and stepped into the Desert World.
At the same time, the owners of the dozen Divine Realms—various gods—also sensed the anomaly and manifested themselves.
"Hey, do you know what's happening?"
One god asked Chu Hao.
Though the distance between them was vast, distance mattered little to a god.
With sufficient divine fire, communication was seamless.
"I'm not sure…"
Chu Hao responded cautiously, unsure if any of these gods might be behind this.
Though unlikely, the possibility existed.
Another god, confident in his strength, spoke to the others:
"Hey, little ones, I was conquering a rare Secret Realm deep inside the depths when suddenly I ended up here! Are you experiencing the same?"
This was a mid-tier god, confident enough to face lesser gods without fear.
The only thing he feared was the unknown.
Hearing this, Chu Hao recalled something.
Before entering the deepest parts of the Secret Realm, Pang Ze's words had echoed in his mind:
"The depths of the Secret Realm… the awakening monster… cycles… the monster…"
Chu Hao had an inkling but lacked enough clues to fully understand the situation.
He looked at the ever-growing number of Secret Realms around him and felt a deep, ominous premonition.
In fact, he was not the only one with this sense.
All the gods—and all powerful beings in the Secret Realms, including the world the Endless Abyss was invading—felt it.
From the depths of this world, comparable in size to a multiverse, countless whispers of hunger echoed through all space.
Then came the tide.
A gray tide.
From the depths of this world, countless gray waves surged toward Chu Hao and the others.
Within these gray waves, Chu Hao noticed one black "star" after another.
"Damn it, what are these things?"
One god screamed upon seeing the gray "tide."
Chu Hao, more composed, recognized something similar from before.
The last time he encountered anything like these waves was during the assessment at Tianding University.
These gray waves were of the same nature as the beams used by powerful testing worlds to connect to the Endless Abyss.
And within these waves were entirely composed of other races.
However…
The scale was incomparable.
One was the size of a finger; the other, an oceanic tide.
In an instant, these gray waves reached the first Secret Realm before Chu Hao.
"Crack! Crack!"
Unlike other world interactions, Chu Hao widened his eyes in disbelief.
With chewing-like sounds, the entire Secret Realm—from its plane crystal wall to its core—was instantly dissolved by these gray waves!
All nutrients, all valuable substances, were swept away.
To onlookers, the Secret Realm became a mere wisp of… dust on the desert floor.
After devouring the entire Secret Realm, Chu Hao sensed the waves expanding even further.
Now he understood why this massive world was littered with wastelands.
Within this colossal, multiverse-sized world, there was a creature consuming countless Secret Realms as food.
No, to be precise, there were multiple creatures.
Chu Hao focused his divine sight and discerned their nature.
The entire tide was composed of bizarre "Zerg" creatures.
Their numbers were infinite.
And astonishingly, despite their vast numbers, there existed only a single will among them.
And that will expressed only one thing…
Endless hunger.
The gray tide continued surging toward the Endless Abyss.
Within the Endless Abyss, all abyssal creatures stirred restlessly.
Tendrils of black mist spread outward from the depths…