It now appears to be on a beach, seemingly unremarkable, but several miles away, thunder rumbles from the sea.
The sky is filled with churning white clouds, but not a single lightning bolt can be seen. More astonishingly, bizarre light and shadows appear within the clouds. These lights and shadows sometimes become illusory, sometimes very real.
One can vaguely see the phantoms of several large mountains floating in the sky, making it impossible to tell if they are real mountains or just illusory light and shadows. From a distance, they resemble a mirage.
The Flowing Cloud Sea is inherently unique, with the entire sea floating in the air. So, a few mountain peaks floating in the sky are not unusual here.
Zhang Ling gazed for a while and noticed that there seemed to be ancient buildings such as pavilions and palaces on those illusory mountains, like some ancient ruins.
But after watching for a while, he found that the mirage-like light and shadows did not disappear but remained suspended in the sky. However, these illusions were not static but moving slowly.
Magically, as the phantoms moved, some strange black cracks appeared around that patch of sky.
These cracks varied in size; the small ones looked like thin, hair-like lines of light, while the large cracks, twisted and crooked, resembled bizarre black eyes suspended in the air.
These cracks also changed constantly, some disappearing, some emerging. From time to time, strange thunder and wind howls echoed from that direction, creating quite a spectacle.
Is it a mirage-like illusion, or some kind of ancient restriction?
Zhang Ling couldn't be sure for a moment. Suddenly, his face flushed red, and he coughed a few times, even coughing up some blood. He quickly sat down cross-legged, calmed his breath, and his complexion improved a lot.
Although he had escaped from the Xuan Turtle's body, his injuries were severe. The pills he had taken before only temporarily suppressed the injuries. At this time, he could only exert less than half of his peak strength.
After meditating for a while, Zhang Ling stood up again. He turned his head and saw a huge monster behind him.
Behind him was a hundred-zhang-high, hundred-zhang-wide black object, which was the Yuan Ying-level giant turtle. If you looked at it from a distance, it would be hard to tell that it was a giant turtle.
This beast's body was enormous, like a black mountain, with most of its body wrapped in a layer of dark blue ice mist. However, it lay motionless on the beach, as if it were already dead.
But Zhang Ling knew that this giant turtle was not dead, at least its physical body had not completely lost its vitality, and it seemed to have just fallen into a dormant state.
He walked directly towards the Xuan Turtle, and soon he saw the beast's turtle head. At this moment, the giant turtle's eyes were wide open, but with a dull expression, without any spirituality.
If it were an ordinary demon beast or desolate beast, it would die directly if it lost its demon spirit.
But this giant turtle really cannot be measured by ordinary desolate beasts.
The strength it had previously demonstrated was absolutely comparable to a demon beast at the Transformation stage. Losing its demon core and demon spirit, it presented a state of being soulless, but its physical body did not die.
Even so, standing next to this beast, one could still feel the powerful spiritual pressure emanating from its body.
Zhang Ling couldn't help but marvel in his heart, wondering if this was a special case, or if Yuan Ying-level demon beasts all had this characteristic.
He circled the giant turtle once and stopped next to one of the beast's front claws. This beast's body was enormous, and its limbs and turtle claws were also extremely large.
The turtle claw in front of him was covered with black-purple scales, the smallest of which were half a zhang in size, emitting a dark black light.
The diameter of this turtle claw was more than twenty zhang wide. This was still when the beast was in a prone state. If it stood up, its entire body would probably be nearly two hundred zhang high.
And there was a several-zhang-long crack on this turtle claw, like a blood hole, slowly flowing with some viscous black-purple blood.
This blood hole was the opening he had just broken; he came out from this wound.
At this moment, countless fleshy tendrils were entangled on both sides of the blood hole, slowly wriggling, and it was obvious that it would heal in a short time.
A Xuan beast that had lost its demon spirit could still repair its injuries in a short time. It was likely that the injuries he had caused inside this beast had now recovered by seventy to eighty percent.
He had previously guessed that this Xuan Turtle had regenerative power, and now it seemed he was right. If he didn't destroy it from the inside, Zhang Ling knew he had no chance of winning against this powerful desolate beast.
However, now he was confident that he could directly kill this beast. As long as he smashed the Xuan Turtle's head, even if it had limb regeneration, it would definitely not be able to restore its head.
But after thinking about it, he still didn't do it immediately.
After all, this giant turtle was no longer a threat. How to deal with it still needed further consideration.
Zhang Ling looked around at the surrounding environment. The most urgent task was to figure out where he had been brought by this Xuan Turtle. He had to explore this place first.
According to his estimation, he was probably still within the Azure Spirit Sea. This might be the Xuan Turtle's nest, which seemed to be on the beach of an island.
Apart from the constantly changing mountain phantoms in the sky, there was nothing else different here. This place was filled with heavy turbid air, but at the same time, one could feel strong spiritual energy.
Zhang Ling immediately released his divine sense and probed in all directions. After a while, he found that this place seemed to be not small, and he couldn't explore it all at once.
It seemed that he would have to waste some time.
Thinking in his heart, he lightly patted his storage bag, and a flash of fire appeared, and the Twin-Tailed Cat appeared at his feet.
Meow~ Meow~
The Twin-Tailed Cat instantly bristled as soon as it came out, meowing and screaming at him. Flames appeared on its body, and it instantly transformed into the size of a tiger.
The spirit beast's appearance stunned Zhang Ling for a moment. Instantly, he thought of something, smiled, and touched the Twin-Tailed Cat's head, comforting the spirit beast.
But the Twin-Tailed Cat was still bristling, half-crouching on the ground, staring at the huge Xuan Turtle behind him as if facing a great enemy.
In some ways, demon beasts are better at sensing danger than human cultivators. The Twin-Tailed Cat had obviously sensed the powerful aura on the Xuan Turtle, which was why it had this appearance.
After comforting the Twin-Tailed Cat for a while, the beast seemed to realize that the Xuan Turtle was not moving, and soon relaxed a little, but kept meowing at him.
Zhang Ling shook his head helplessly and ignored the spirit beast. Now that he was in an unfamiliar environment and his strength was greatly damaged, releasing the spirit beast was also for safety considerations.
With the Twin-Tailed Cat's strength, it should be no problem to deal with one or two high-level desolate beasts. Having such a helper would also be safer.
Then he took off another spirit beast bag. With a buzzing sound, he released three or four thousand Earth Spirit Bees.
These Earth Spirit Bees also sensed the Xuan Turtle's aura, but did not react much.
Zhang Ling's mind moved, and his divine sense directed the spirit bees to scatter in all directions, quickly exploring the vicinity.
