Battle Through the Heavens: The Alchemist Starting from the Ye Family

In this life, Cao Ying entered the Pill Tower a year earlier than in the original story, so her seclusion also started a year earlier. It's just unknown whether she can stay in that secret realm for another five years...

Although Xuan Kongzi didn't say it explicitly, Ye Chen could tell that the longer one stayed in that secret realm, the greater the benefits!

Chapter 183 Soul Domain

The next day, Ye Chen and Cao Ying gathered early outside Xuan Kongzi's president's room to wait.

"Hey, what do you think this secret realm is like?" Cao Ying, still a little girl with curiosity, couldn't help but secretly ask Ye Chen beside her.

Glancing at her, Ye Chen noticed that this woman had stopped calling him "Senior Brother" after she stopped causing trouble, so he said calmly, "First, I'm not called 'Hey,' my name is Chu... no, it's Ye Chen; second, I don't know what that secret realm looks like..."

Cao Ying was clearly taken aback by Ye Chen's answer. After a moment of stunned silence, she pouted and said somewhat resentfully, "Aren't you even a little bit curious?"

"You'll see it with your own eyes soon anyway, what's there to be curious about?"

Cao Ying: "..."

That concludes the discussion...

After about half an hour of quiet waiting by the two, the door to Xuan Kongzi's room opened, and a figure slowly walked out.

"teacher!"

"Master Uncle Xuan Kong!"

The two quickly bowed...

"Hehe, you must be getting impatient, right?" Xuan Kongzi said with his usual gentle smile.

Upon hearing Xuan Kongzi's question, Cao Ying quickly replied, "No, Uncle-Master. Senior Brother Ye Chen and I were just discussing what that secret realm is like..."

Ye Chen glanced at the guy speechlessly, thinking to himself: Who's discussing this with you?

"Hehe, you don't need to be curious. You'll know when we get there." Xuan Kongzi didn't say much and led the two away.

Ye Chen and Cao Ying naturally followed quickly.

What the two didn't expect was that they weren't heading out of the tower, but rather towards an even higher level...

This was somewhat unexpected for both of them.

As the three giants of the Pill Tower, and the most prestigious people in the Pill Tower on the surface, Xuan Kongzi and the other two were not at the very top of the tower, but they were close to the top.

However, even Ye Chen and his companion were not qualified to go up to the higher positions alone, so they had no idea what wonders lay ahead. Now, following behind Xuan Kongzi, they were filled with immense curiosity...

"This is……"

Upon reaching the very top of the giant tower, Ye Chen and his companion were greeted by what appeared to be a massive altar-like structure.

Ye Chen glanced around and noticed that the altar was engraved with many mysterious runes, much like the patterns on the outside of an ancient scroll he had once seen with his teacher, Xuan Kongzi…

"Could this altar have been passed down from ancient times?" Ye Chen wondered to himself.

Xuan Kongzi didn't explain anything to the two of them. He led them directly to the center of the altar and said in a deep voice, "Stand firm!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he unleashed a burst of energy from both hands, which merged into two points on the altar. Then, Ye Chen suddenly sensed that the entire area was trembling violently...

An ancient and boundless aura slowly emanated from the void. Under this ancient aura, both Ye Chen and Cao Ying, who were facing it, couldn't help but feel a deep sense of awe.

"Is this the gate to the secret realm?" Cao Ying asked unconsciously, but no one answered her.

This was the first time Ye Chen had experienced such a profound shock, even more so than when he first encountered the mysterious rabbit.

"What exactly is this place..." Ye Chen kept asking himself.

Even though Ye Chen had thoroughly read the original novel in his previous life, it was still just words. Moreover, this was a real world, filled with many things not mentioned in the original work but which truly existed in this world…

"Don't resist..."

… Xuan Kongzi’s voice rang out.

Then Ye Chen and his companion felt themselves enveloped by a gentle soul force...

An invisible spatial force descended from the sky, directly enveloping the three people. In an instant, the three people on the altar disappeared.

Everything returned to calm, the sky returned to its original state, and everything was as if nothing had happened.

……

……

This was a rather spacious small space, surrounded by silver spatial barriers that kept the dark void outside.

Ye Chen looked around carefully and found that this should be a small space forcibly torn open in the void by the Dan Tower experts. Although it was amazing that they could do this, it should not be considered a secret realm.

Perhaps sensing his disciple's thoughts, Xuan Kongzi chuckled and said, "Alright, stop looking. We haven't even reached that secret realm yet..."

Ye Chen: “…”

Cao Ying: "..."

Well, it seems they both misunderstood. They both wondered if there was something magical about this space they hadn't discovered, but it turned out to be just a misunderstanding…

“Let’s go, the entrance to the secret realm is in the center of this small space…” Xuan Kongzi said, and took the lead in flying forward.

Ye Chen and Cao Ying followed closely behind.

After flying for less than five minutes, Ye Chen saw a small lake a hundred meters ahead of them...

Well, calling it a lake is probably an exaggeration; it would be more accurate to call it a pond, because the pond is only about fifty or sixty meters in circumference, which is not very big.

What intrigued Ye Chen was that the water in the pool was not ordinary water, but a heavy, silvery liquid like mercury.

Beside the pool sat an unfamiliar old man in a white robe. If Ye Chen and Cao Ying hadn't seen him with their own eyes, they would have thought he was a lifeless stone...

Xuan Kongzi ignored what the two children were thinking and went directly to the old man, cupping his fists in greeting and saying, "Greetings, Third Elder!"

Upon hearing this address, Ye Chen's heart skipped a beat.

If someone can command such respect from their teacher, especially since they are the "Third Elder," then the other person's identity is already quite obvious.

Of the ten elders of the Lesser Pill Tower's Grand Elder Council, the three giants occupy three positions, but their rankings are relatively low. The one before us should be the third-ranked elder…

Ye Chen thought that if he remembered correctly, then Elder Lin, the Great Elder of the Little Pill Tower, should be a two-star Dou Sheng. In addition, there was a high-level half-saint and two mid-level half-saints in the original work. Although the identities of the latter three half-saints were unclear, this Third Elder was at least a mid-level half-saint powerhouse...

"To actually have a half-saint level expert in charge of guarding it, this secret realm is indeed extraordinary..."

As Ye Chen was thinking about all this, the old man opposite him opened his eyes, looked at Xuan Kongzi, and then glanced at Ye Chen and the other man behind him.

"Xuan Kongzi, are these two the ones selected to enter the Soul Domain this time?"

When the other person looked at him, Ye Chen suddenly felt as if their very soul had been seen through...

At this moment, he even doubted whether the other party could see the star chart hidden deep within his consciousness!

However, seeing that the other party only glanced at it casually before looking away, Ye Chen breathed a long sigh of relief.

It seems that my cheat system is still stronger; even a semi-saint level expert cannot see through it.

Moreover, from the old man's words, Ye Chen heard the name of this secret realm for the first time.

"Is that place called 'Soul Domain'...?"

Chapter 184 The Truth Behind the So-Called Seclusion

On the mirror-like surface of the lake, Ye Chen stepped to the very center.

Behind him, Cao Ying looked around curiously, occasionally tiptoeing to lightly step on the "water surface" that resembled solid ground.

"Alright, sit down..."

A soft voice sounded in their ears, which immediately made Cao Ying behave. Then, imitating Ye Chen, she sat cross-legged in the center of the "lake" and faced Ye Chen.

"Hold your breath, concentrate!"

The sound came again, but this time it seemed to possess some kind of magic, making Ye Chen feel as if his entire soul was completely released in an instant, and then he slowly sank down...

Slowly, Ye Chen felt himself sinking beneath the surface of the water, the icy cold sensation engulfing him completely...

"call……!"

With a rapid, labored breathing, Ye Chen felt as if he had been drowning for a moment.

But when he opened his eyes again, what he saw was a strange place shrouded in gray mist...

Upon witnessing all this, Ye Chen's first thought was one of utter silence!

Yes, deathly silence!

Although strange lights occasionally flickered in the distance in his field of vision, only to disappear in an instant, this only served to highlight the deathly silence of the world.

"Is this the Soul Domain?" Ye Chen frowned in thought.

Suddenly, he quickly looked around but did not find Cao Ying, who should have entered with him.

"Is the teleportation into this world random...?"

Ye Chen did not blindly begin exploring his surroundings, but instead carefully familiarized himself with everything in this world.

After carefully sensing the surroundings, Ye Chen discovered that there was absolutely no spiritual energy in the area...

Yes, not a single trace of the energy of heaven and earth can be sensed; it's as if this place is a completely forbidden zone!

However, Ye Chen's perception of soul power became much clearer. He could even easily mobilize his vast soul power with every move he made, a situation he had never experienced in the outside world...

"No wonder this place is called the Soul Realm..."

Ye Chen looked at his hands, pondering to himself.

He even wondered if he had truly entered this world, or if only his soul had arrived here...

The latter is probably more likely.

It's no wonder that Ye Chen couldn't even tell whether his body was real or fake; the place was just too eerie, giving him a very unreal feeling.

This sense of unreality doesn't just come from the world, it even comes from within himself...

After staying in place for a long time and figuring out his current situation, Ye Chen began to explore more deeply.

Having gone less than a hundred meters in, Ye Chen had to stop.

Opposite him, a denser cloud of gray mist, even more intense than the surrounding gray fog, blocked his path. Although the mist appeared harmless, Ye Chen's intuition told him it was something more...

With a slightly serious expression, Ye Chen raised his hand and then clenched it tightly.

Accompanied by Ye Chen's right hand clenching

Below, a surge of violent soul power erupted from his arm, while the gray mist rapidly condensed and then suddenly burst forth...

In the blink of an eye, the fog there completely dissipated, and a phantom-like figure appeared faintly in Ye Chen's field of vision.

"This is... a soul?"

Ye Chen was stunned as he stared at the illusory figure.

What appeared before Ye Chen was indeed very similar to the soul entities that had appeared by chance on the Dou Qi Continent. However, most of the latter were left behind by human powerhouses after their deaths, while what appeared before Ye Chen was a strange being that was half human and half beast...

Moreover, this thing looks extremely out of place, as if it was stitched together by a perverted person!

This thing seemed to lack any intelligence; after realizing that the gray mist around it had dissipated, it let out a silent shriek...

Although there was no sound, the voice containing anger and fear appeared strangely deep in Ye Chen's soul.

This caught Ye Chen completely off guard, as if someone had suddenly struck a gong in his ear, making his head buzz.

Just then, that strange soul force suddenly rushed over, and something that looked like hands or claws stabbed directly at Ye Chen's chest...

Ye Chen's soul power was clearly far superior to that of the soul body, so the previous influence was only fleeting.

Seeing that the other party had launched the first attack, he did not panic, but instead struck back with the same palm.

As mentioned before, this world has no energy, and Ye Chen cannot sense any battle qi within his body. Therefore, all battles here require the direct consumption of soul power.

Although this palm strike did not use any soul skills, it still dealt a devastating blow to the strange soul entity. After being hit, the illusory figure suddenly twisted and then exploded with a "poof".

A streak of light, about the size of a thumb, swiftly swept towards Ye Chen and was finally caught by him.

"This is……"

Looking at the thumb-sized transparent crystal in his palm, Ye Chen fell into deep thought.

He could sense extremely pure soul power emanating from this crystal…

Just as he was pondering the true nature of that thing and what use this soul crystal was, the crystal in the center of his palm suddenly transformed into a stream of energy and merged into his palm.