Looking at the strange insect slowly crawling in his hand, Zhang Ling suddenly conjured five or six jade slips in his other hand, and sent a few strands of his divine sense into them to examine them.
After a moment, his eyes lit up, and he muttered to himself.
"It seems to be a Void Worm. If it's really this kind of spirit worm, then I've found a treasure."
Zhang Ling checked the collected jade slips that recorded various spirit worms, and two of them contained information about spirit worms similar to this strange insect.
In addition to the strange insect being able to trigger spatial fluctuations, a very obvious characteristic, Zhang Ling was seventy to eighty percent sure that this strange insect was a Void Worm.
The Void Worm is an extremely special kind of wild, exotic insect. Although its attack power isn't strong, it possesses the bizarre ability to temporarily tear space, and it excels at concealment and escape.
According to the records on the jade slips, the Void Worm also has a special spiritual light. After reaching a certain level of strength, this spiritual light can even temporarily open up a temporary area in space, allowing people to hide inside.
Although it seems that the temporarily torn space is extremely unstable and doesn't exist for very long, and is also subject to some other restrictions.
This ability is undoubtedly extremely special.
Zhang Ling couldn't help but reveal a look of joy. He immediately raised his hand, and the strange insect floated out of his palm and flew into the air.
With a thought, the strange mist on the insect's body became flickering, and then a strange pale white halo lit up, centered on the insect.
The diameter of the halo was only two feet, and it disappeared in a flash, seemingly without any power. But the two-foot space inside and outside the halo rippled like the surface of water.
The strange insect chirped softly, its body coiled, and gradually it became virtual, disappearing into the ripples.
Zhang Ling's eyes were fixed on this scene, and at the same time, the Echoing Void Bell on his waist also rang, proving that spatial fluctuations had appeared.
After the strange insect disappeared, the space instantly stabilized, and the sound of the Echoing Void Bell stopped abruptly.
The area in front of him was empty, without a trace of change, as if the previous situation didn't exist.
Zhang Ling repeatedly scanned the area in front of him with his divine sense, but still couldn't find the aura of the strange insect.
In fact, under his command, the strange insect was still floating in the air, its position unchanged. It was right in front of him, but it was invisible to the naked eye and divine sense.
If it weren't for the Soul Control Restriction, he could still sense a faint aura right in front of him. Other methods would probably be difficult to detect, that such a strange insect was hidden in front of him.
Zhang Ling's mind flickered, and he communicated with the strange insect. A layer of water-like ripples appeared again in the empty area in front of him, and the strange insect emerged silently.
In this way, he had the strange insect use its spatial ability several times.
It wasn't until after using it four or five times that the Void Worm chirped in dissatisfaction.
Zhang Ling smiled and stopped.
He naturally didn't want to play with this insect, but just wanted to see how long this spatial ability of the Void Worm could last.
Plus, the Void Worm had just devoured more than a dozen Earth Spirit Bees with this ability. It wasn't a problem to use it six or seven times in a short period of time.
It's just that the duration of each use wouldn't be too long.
Once the Void Worm entered the temporary space, it could stay for at most a cup of tea's time.
If the time was longer, the Void Worm seemed unable to stabilize the space and could only appear.
Moreover, the distance the Void Worm moved after entering the temporary space wouldn't be too long, and there seemed to be some kind of restriction.
These were all flaws, but this Void Worm had just hatched not long ago, and Zhang Ling was quite shocked that it could do this.
One could imagine that once this insect was cultivated to a certain level, taking oneself into the temporary space, the concealment would be unmatched.
Using this method to escape enemy tracking or suddenly launch a sneak attack would definitely be a great weapon.
Zhang Ling began to consider the tactics of driving the Void Worm. However, it was only a larva now, and the halo it emitted was only two feet in size at most, and it was unstable.
To allow the Void Worm to hide itself, the halo had to be at least half a zhang in size.
He didn't know how long it would take to cultivate it. Despite this, the joy in Zhang Ling's heart didn't diminish at all. He immediately decided to do his best to cultivate this Void Worm next.
A spirit worm with spatial abilities like this would definitely play a big role in future cultivation.
Spirit worms and spirit beasts with spatial abilities are extremely rare. The value of a Void Worm, even if it's just a larva, is absolutely immeasurable.
Thinking of this, Zhang Ling raised his hand and took out a dozen middle-grade spirit stones, arranging a special spirit formation on the ground. He placed the Void Worm in it.
He activated a magic incantation in his hand, sending magic formulas into the spirit formation, and a spiritual light covered the Void Worm. The Void Worm immediately cried out in unease.
Zhang Ling quickly comforted it, and then spat out two balls of essence blood, chanting words and sending out blood-colored runes, all of which merged into the Void Worm's body.
He also planted several restrictions on the insect. After all, he didn't know that a Void Worm would hatch, and the Soul Control Restriction placed on the insect egg was only a simple restriction.
To control this kind of spirit worm, a simple restriction alone wouldn't be enough. Naturally, several more layers of restrictions were needed.
Afterwards, Zhang Ling busied himself in the insect room. He opened up a separate insect room specifically for the Void Worm.
In the following days, he stayed in the insect room studying the Void Worm, learning about some of its characteristics.
However, Zhang Ling had no experience in how to cultivate the Void Worm, so he could only feed it various exotic flowers and herbs, like cultivating the Earth Spirit Bees and Spirit Devouring Insects.
But the effect wasn't obvious. Of course, the Void Worm would also devour blood food, but it seemed to be just for appetite.
Although Zhang Ling had collected some cultivation classics on spirit worms, there were originally not many cultivators who understood this kind of spatial spirit worm. Naturally, there wouldn't be any special cultivation experience.
On the one hand, he could only explore it himself.
Of course, Zhang Ling also thought of Bird Spirit. This Blue Sparrow senior was a cultivator from the Spirit World and must know something about this strange insect.
But he and this person were only in a cooperative relationship, and Zhang Ling didn't want the secrets on his body to be known by this old monster.
It was also for this reason that he didn't let the Blue Sparrow stay by his side, but kept it with the Black Turtle.
He usually had the Black Turtle monitor the Blue Sparrow when he cultivated his skills and cultivated spiritual medicine, preventing it from detecting the situation on his side.
However, in the past year or so, he hadn't found anything wrong with this guy.
The Blue Sparrow often hid in the Soul Nourishing Wood to recuperate, rarely moving outside. It seemed to often fall into a deep sleep, recovering its vitality.
After settling the spirit worm, Zhang Ling naturally didn't put down his cultivation. After all, no matter whether it was cultivating spirit worms or other methods, nothing was as important as his own cultivation.
During this time, the Blue Sparrow also passed on a secret technique called the Spirit Purification Heart Technique to the Black Turtle, which was used to resolve the hidden dangers of inheriting the Black Tortoise bloodline.
This was a kind of divine soul secret technique. Zhang Ling had carefully studied it and found nothing wrong with it, so he let the Black Turtle cultivate it.
According to the Blue Sparrow, the Spirit Purification Heart Technique was a kind of meditation method widely circulated in the Spirit World. Frequent cultivation could reduce the interference of inner demons.
Zhang Ling himself had also tried to cultivate it several times, and each time he felt peaceful and eliminated a lot of distracting thoughts. It was indeed an auxiliary secret method.
As for the Blue Sparrow's promise to help him obtain a physical body, it couldn't be done in a short period of time. At least he had to reach the late Nascent Soul stage.
Zhang Ling was naturally happy with this. In this way, he safely cultivated on the ring-shaped island for more than three years.
He had originally planned to cultivate for a while longer, but a change occurred on the island one day three years later, which caused him to end his cultivation ahead of schedule.
On this day, Zhang Ling stood in the sky above the ring-shaped island with a solemn expression, looking down at the huge sea eye in the center of the island. His divine sense penetrated the endless water, carefully checking something inside.
The Blue Sparrow, transformed into a palm-sized sparrow, flew beside him, also looking at the sea eye.
At this sea eye, the water roared and rumbled. It looked the same as it did several years ago, but it had become as black as ink. A layer of black mist floated across the entire sea surface, spreading over half the island. It also seemed to be spreading outwards.
This strange situation had occurred two days ago, and the source of the black mist was this sea eye.
