Over the course of this day and night, Li Hai had explored almost half of this underground 'world'.
The total distance traveled exceeded a million li.
It was truly arduous, but as for being tired, he wasn't particularly so, just rather bored.
However, it was precisely because of this somewhat boring monster-hunting journey that Li Hai gained a rather vague understanding of the overall size of this colossal underground space.
According to his rough estimate, this underground space, located ten thousand meters beneath the Red Soil Forest, should be shaped like a pointed cone.
The location Li Hai had arrived at from the surface was near the tip of the cone.
At its narrowest point, which is the sharpest part of this conical space, the distance between the left and right ends was approximately three thousand li.
Then, from this cone tip, moving forward to the end of this conical 'world', which is the base of the cone, it was approximately one hundred and twenty thousand li away.
This was already close to the diameter of the entire Xia Alliance Martial World.
Therefore, in a sense, this vast underground space actually traversed the entire Martial World's strata.
It was unknown how this excessively large underground world was formed in the first place.
At the same time, after exploring most of the underground space, Li Hai, true to his expectations, found a total of three nine-headed Linked-Neck People.
As a result, he once again obtained three Strongman Fragments.
Concurrently, Li Hai also developed a hypothesis regarding the origin of the various strange creatures in this underground space.
He boldly speculated that the ancestors of these monsters were very likely the failed bio-weapon subjects who had been exiled to the underground world by the Mystic Gu Workshop on the surface over the past thousand years.
Those tragic pre-combatants who, due to the Fusion of bare-level Gu, unfortunately underwent terrifying deformities, were likely influenced by their own incomplete reproductive instincts after being exiled to this underground space.
This led to random interbreeding, ultimately giving birth to bizarre species like the Viscera Monsters, Hand-Foot Birds, and Linked-Neck People.
Therefore, in a sense, these ugly, grotesque, and unsightly deformed species should all be considered human subspecies.
Fortunately, besides the Linked-Neck People, Li Hai also discovered another type of anomalous life among the many human subspecies in this underground world that could 'produce' Grandmaster-level individuals.
He named this life form 'Mournful Knights'.
This was because the overall appearance of this species was a building-sized, bloated, and twisted human-headed horse-bodied figure.
At the same time, the human face expressed sorrow, and a semi-transparent sac hung from its lower abdomen.
This sac was filled with a pale red liquid, within which tens to hundreds of swollen brains with cruel human faces slowly tumbled.
Perhaps due to the presence of these human-faced brains, the Mournful Knights naturally possessed the ability to unleash psychokinetic fields.
It was through this power that they became a dominant species in the underground world, holding absolute power over other strange creatures, able to do whatever they pleased.
However, after encountering Li Hai, these Mournful Knights met with great misfortune.
Their seemingly powerful yet monotonous psychokinesis was utterly incapable of stopping Li Hai's slaughter.
However, Li Hai was not a madman driven by bloodlust, so he only killed the hundred-headed individuals of this species whose strength was roughly equivalent to that of a Grandmaster.
As for the others who unfortunately died, they were merely caught in the crossfire.
And it was precisely through the enthusiastic sacrifice of these hundred-headed Mournful Knights that he obtained three more Strongman Fragments, increasing his total number of fragments to a full thirty-six.
“So,”
Hovering between 'heaven and earth', Li Hai looked into the distance and muttered in a deep voice, “It’s time to get down to business, Feng Lianhu, Ma Yihan, Shi Qingsheng—I’m coming for you.”
Since the fragments in this underground space had been exhausted, it was time for him to find the eight Workshop Masters and extract information from them.
As for their location, Li Hai had already roughly deduced it through his day and night of travel.
It should be in a corner of the wide conical base area of this conical underground space.
In a vast but dim gray area, a long, azure crystal, like an enlarged diamond, stood tall.
Inside the crystal, a severely incomplete but still massive humanoid corpse was suspended.
At the same time, the surface of this remnant corpse was covered everywhere with dense, golden-red armor, regular and magnificent like Dragon scales.
Even on the forehead of this remnant corpse's skull, which resembled a special effects Kamen Rider, several broken, curved Dragon horns stood erect.
And on the vast, empty ground outside the gigantic crystal where this remnant corpse resided, thousands of child corpses were neatly arranged.
All these child corpses had their throats slit, and from the wounds on their necks, deep green, vine-like tubes were inserted, continuously drawing blood with gurgling sounds.
Finally, those tens of thousands of blood-sucking vines were all inserted and connected to the soft, pinkish-white organic base beneath the giant crystal.
At the outermost edge of this blood sacrifice site, eight tall, burly half-human, half-insect figures stood erect.
That's right, these eight insect-men were the eight Workshop Masters of the Mystic Gu Workshop.
“Reporting to Workshop Master Feng,”
A Gu Master, also half-human and half-insect, respectfully reported to Feng Lianhu, “The blood sacrifice ritual has been completed. We can proceed with the forty-seventh Immortal Seed extraction procedure.”
“Mm.” Feng Lianhu nodded coldly. “I know. You may go.”
“Yes!” The Gu Master bowed with cupped hands, then bowed to the other seven Workshop Masters one by one before turning and flying away to other areas.
“Lianhu.”
Ma Yihan, who stood silently beside Feng Lianhu, said indifferently, “After this batch of fist slaves, there should be no more sacrifices, right?”
“Not a single one left, all completely consumed.”
Feng Lianhu replied with equal indifference, “Each Immortal Seed extraction consumes over ten thousand slaves. It’s only normal for the consumption to be fast with such continuous, non-stop blood sacrifices.”
“Sigh~” Shi Qingsheng on the other side sighed, “But we have already performed forty-six extractions during this period, and each time has failed.
This is the last time. If it doesn't succeed again, we'll have to wait for the organization to transport several more batches of slaves before we can start over.”
“Then just wait,” Feng Lianhu said indifferently, “What are you worrying about?”
Shi Qingsheng shook his head and said, “I just feel something is off. According to past records, the Immortal Skeletons discovered by the Sect over the past thousand years usually succeeded after about ten or eight extractions, but this time it has failed so many times. I feel… it seems a bit abnormal.”