Zhang Ling pondered for a while, feeling truly trapped in this place. Unwilling to give up, he examined every inch of the space again, but still found nothing.
The space was surrounded by strange clouds, isolating the area into an independent realm.
He attacked the flowing clouds, but the attacks vanished inside without hitting anything, only encountering immense pressure that extinguished them in an instant.
Yet, he sensed no strong spiritual energy fluctuations within the thin clouds, which was odd.
Typically, arrays and restrictions rely on spiritual energy; the stronger they are, the more intense the spiritual energy fluctuations. However, the flowing clouds trapping this place didn't follow this rule.
Standing on the shore, Zhang Ling gazed at the celestial phenomena and the small sea before him. The only places he hadn't explored were the sky and the seabed.
He retrieved two Swiftwind Talismans from his storage bag, applied them to his body for double protection, and plunged into the sea, intending to explore the seabed first.
The sea was relatively calm. As he descended, Zhang Ling noticed very few wild beasts, only some low-level fish-beasts, and no high-level ones.
He guessed this might be due to the presence of the Xuan Tortoise, as this might be its habitat. Such powerful beasts have strong territorial instincts.
Soon, Zhang Ling estimated he had descended ten thousand feet, but still couldn't see the seabed.
Suddenly, his expression shifted, and he quickly accelerated his descent. After another few hundred feet, he spotted a water漩涡.
Whirlpools are common in the sea, formed by underwater currents, and usually aren't strange. But this one was different; it wasn't formed by underwater currents.
A bizarre black light flickered at the center of the漩涡, rapidly devouring the surrounding seawater. Upon approaching, he felt a powerful suction pulling him in.
Zhang Ling's body glowed with yellow light, stabilizing his form. He noticed the black light was only about ten feet long and as thick as an arm, wider in the middle and slender at the ends, like a narrow rift appearing in the sea. When he sent his divine sense towards it, it was instantly devoured.
Zhang Ling's face darkened, but he immediately thought of the mountain peak phenomenon in the clouds above, which also had this black light around it.
He originally thought it was just some kind of restriction or illusion, but now, observing it up close, he realized the black light had such a strong devouring effect.
For a moment, Zhang Ling couldn't figure out if it was a restriction or some special phenomenon.
He circled the black light a few times, finding that besides the devouring effect, it floated calmly in the water, motionless. No matter what angle he viewed it from, it remained ten feet long without any change.
Unable to figure out what it was, Zhang Ling stopped paying attention to it and continued descending.
Soon, he sensed another powerful attraction coming from a different direction. Swimming a hundred feet towards it, he saw another black light suspended in the water.
This black light was much longer than the previous one, about seventy or eighty feet long, and emitted an extremely strong attraction, drawing all the nearby seawater into it, like a sea eye.
He continued downwards, and at regular intervals, he encountered these strange black lights.
The size of the black lights varied greatly. The smallest one Zhang Ling saw was only half a foot long, while the largest was over twenty feet long. This length also meant a significant width, large enough for a person to pass through.
Given the black light's powerful devouring ability, he didn't get too close, lest he be pulled in.
After half an hour, he finally reached the seabed.
Zhang Ling was even more surprised. The seabed was completely flat, without a single rock, as if it had been meticulously manicured. He released his divine sense to scan the seabed, trying to figure out what was going on, but as soon as his divine sense touched the seabed, it was instantly devoured.
The feeling was so familiar that he couldn't help but be stunned, and quickly stopped his descent, now only twenty feet from the seabed.
After sensing that the seabed had no suction, Zhang Ling felt somewhat relieved.
Then he began to explore horizontally, circling in all directions, and encountered the same strange flowing clouds blocking his path. The seabed's area was the same as he had detected above, only a hundred miles wide.
Zhang Ling stopped in the water, frowning as he stared at the flat seabed.
The seabed had no rocks or plants, like a void. If he had to compare it to something, it was like a black mirror.
After thinking deeply, he had a guess in his mind. This strange seabed might be a black light covering the entire seabed. It just didn't emit any suction like the black lights he had found earlier, so he couldn't be sure.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that he could see bubbles rising from the seabed, as if water was flowing in from underneath.
Could this black bottom be hollow, leading to another place?
Seeing this, Zhang Ling had such a thought. After considering it, he patted his storage bag, and a flash of white light revealed a white-scaled serpent several feet long.
The white snake swam in the water, making cracking sounds.
Upon closer inspection, the giant snake's body was pieced together from white scales and wasn't a real living being. It was a second-order puppet he had refined.
