On the way back to the dojo, Ye Yun was preoccupied. He couldn't quite ascertain the origin of this phantom, but one thing was certain: its owner was immensely powerful, beyond any level Ye Yun knew.
What puzzled Ye Yun the most was that the phantom had specifically conveyed a message about the Heavenly Dao when Ye Yun was returning.
"Why should all our powers be capped below 99%? Shouldn't 100% be perfection and thus stronger?"
Indeed, the only information the phantom had revealed to Ye Yun was to keep his power manifestation below 99%. It offered no explanation.
Despite his doubts, due to his talent, Ye Yun's power manifestation, once it reached 100%, would triple the feedback into his real world, resetting his in-game stats as if they were new.
As for the Dragon Palace members, Ye Yun had always instructed them not to manifest 100% of their power, hoping they would follow his path of triple feedback.
However, the phantom's words made Ye Yun feel there was a deeper meaning to all this.
"Boss, how was it?" Seeing Ye Yun return, Wang Chen and a few others hurried over. Others might not know, but when the phantom appeared, he clearly sensed a divine consciousness gathering in Ye Yun's airspace.
"It's fine, let's keep moving! Old Wang, I'm trapped in Tianxing City in the Divine Realm and it'll take a few days to get out. Be careful when you're in the Divine Realm; there are some powerful beings there."
After speaking, Ye Yun returned to his manor alone and took out the jade pendant the phantom had given him to examine.
The jade pendant looked like a newly unearthed artifact, covered in dust. It was smooth all over, but its quality didn't seem very good. Visible to the naked eye were over a dozen black impurities, and on its back, there was a barely discernible crack with a crookedly written character for 'Da'.
"How can something worth barely a hundred thousand yuan command the human race of the Ten Directions Cosmic Realm? It looks like a charlatan's trick," Ye Yun frowned, staring at the unappealing jade pendant with no clue. Most importantly, he didn't know how to use it!
Infusing it with true qi proved useless. Dripping blood on it was also ineffective.
Could something given by such a powerful being be ordinary?
With lingering doubt, Ye Yun re-entered the Heavenly Dao. He was still trapped in the game and had no time to delve into the secrets of this jade pendant.
In the game, bathed in the light of the divine stones, Ye Yun actually found the Black Ant. He first cast a few healing spells on himself, topping up his health, before looking around for the Black Ant.
"Little Black?" The Black Ant's health was twice his own, so it shouldn't have died so quickly, right?
A cave wasn't that large; there was no reason for such a big creature to disappear. But his map was pitch black, showing nothing. However, it confirmed that the Black Ant hadn't perished.
"Little Black, get out here. If you don't, I'm resummoning you!"
Ye Yun could only shout. Resummoning the Black Demon Emperor, who was enjoying himself in the Demon Realm, would be a catastrophe. Ye Yun couldn't bear to do that.
"Master, I'm here!" Just as Ye Yun was wondering, a black figure popped out from the ground.
"Why did you pop out of the ground? Where were you?" The Black Ant was covered in mud, looking utterly disheveled.
"Master, I found a way to escape?" The Black Ant shook off the dirt, proudly seeking his master's reward.
"You found a way out? What way?" Ye Yun's heart leaped at the news. He didn't want to be like Sun Wukong, suppressed for five hundred years.
"Digging a tunnel. This ground is over ten times harder than before, but at my speed, ten kilometers per hour is still no problem." The Black Ant pointed to the tunnel he had just dug beneath him.
"You mean I have to crawl through a tunnel?"
Wouldn't that be too degrading? He was the man with the strongest talent in the Ten Directions Cosmic Realm. How would he manage afterward if this got out?
Ye Yun looked at the entrance, less than a meter in diameter, and swallowed. Due to the game's mechanics, the tunnel the Black Ant had just dug was automatically regenerating.
"Are you sure we won't be buried alive?"
"Master, rest assured. I'm a professional at digging tunnels. I've tried a few times. For every ten meters I dig, it only recovers one meter. If it weren't for the special nature of this mountain, I could dig a hundred or a hundred kilometers in minutes." The Black Ant patted his chest to guarantee it, but Ye Yun found the creature to be oddly excited.
"Let's give it a try then?" At worst, he could teleport back upon death, losing some experience points.
After defeating over a hundred million divine race members, Ye Yun had reached level 63. Although death wouldn't cause him to level down, his experience points per level were a hundred times that of others. The experience lost from a single death, even just from the current level, would take him quite some time to make up.
Soon, Ye Yun, holding a few divine stones as illumination, followed the Black Ant into the pitch-black tunnel.
"Uh, Little Black, after we get out, please don't tell anyone about this, it's too embarrassing..."
"Okay, Master, I've already forgotten."
...
Forgotten? Ye Yun looked at the diligently digging Black Ant ahead and, for the first time, felt that this Little Black comrade could indeed possess high intelligence.
Thus, the Black Ant led the way, and Ye Yun crawled behind him.
"Damn this game's developers! Which god designed this? At this rate, how long will I have to crawl?" Five hours later, the Black Ant was still digging diligently, but Ye Yun behind him was about to break down.
At the time, Ye Yun had considered the Black Ant's digging speed of two kilometers per hour, but he had forgotten that this mountain pressing down on him was a hundred kilometers wide! At the Black Ant's pace, he would have to crawl continuously for two days and two nights!
This was unbearable!
With this calculation, Ye Yun instantly lost the motivation to continue crawling. He lay back, looking at the cave ceiling within arm's reach, then glanced at the Black Ant dozens of meters away before blinking behind him.
This was much easier...