Chapter 161: The Secret Realm Ends! Acquiring the Blood of the Human Emperor!

When Nicole mentioned the number 1024, Yi Shen always had a very familiar feeling.

He did not doubt that Nicole was deceiving him.

This was because, although this woman looked immensely powerful, she was somewhat overly frank when speaking and communicating.

Yi Shen could sense that someone of her caliber would neither lie nor deign to lie, which made communication extremely convenient.

In short, Nicole's intentions revolved around one main premise.

She was a powerhouse from the ancient era who had slumbered through time to resist the digitization process, and she had already found a method to do so.

The vampires were a disguise manufactured by them, considered an auxiliary product of the Twilight Protocol. Originally, only a few major races participated in the initial Twilight Protocol, while some races that had benefited from digitization even opposed it.

It was not until true racial extinction loomed that some new races joined the supplementary protocol, transforming the vampire race into a normalized tool for heritage transmission.

Nicole even stated bluntly that the agreement she had signed was to help the vampires kill Yi Shen in exchange for the vampires resurrecting her and storing her body for the next cycle.

Upon her awakening, the vampires would provide a certain degree of energetic shelter to evade detection by the digitization system.

However, Nicole now found that the purity of the unknown energy source within Yi Shen's body far exceeded the shelter provided by the vampires.

Therefore, she had abandoned her contract with the vampire faction and hoped to cooperate with Yi Shen instead.

As one of the initiators of the first-generation Twilight Protocol, she was not bound by as many restrictions as other races; theoretically speaking, she was even one of the principal ancestral stocks of the vampires, rendering the contract with them null and void.

The vampires probably assumed she was merely an ordinary Exalted One, completely unaware of her true identity as an ancient elf.

"I can help you find information regarding digitization, but I want the vampires to stop attacking humans, and I wish to learn true magic."

During his conversation with Nicole, Yi Shen had heard her mention elven magic and the true method of mastering the elements several times.

Although Yi Shen had learned some methods of utilizing energy by imitating Nicole during the combat earlier, having such an ancient elf teach him personally would, he believed, accelerate his breakthroughs in the realm of magic.

"I can teach you magic, but everyone's understanding of magic is somewhat different."

"As for the vampires, too many factors are entangled within them, so I cannot make any promises to you." Nicole's response was completely sincere.

She told Yi Shen that the vampires did not serve her alone.

There were even other races that, despite joining the supplementary protocol of the Twilight Protocol, had supported digitization from beginning to end.

Those individuals believed their initial failure was simply due to their levels and attributes being insufficiently high, rather than a loss of civilization's intrinsic power.

Regarding the matter of the Emperor's Tomb, Nicole gave Yi Shen a rough explanation of the general situation. The Heaven, Earth, and Human realms had actually evolved from various ancient races since long ago, with the Emperor lineage belonging to the power of the fourth era following the Epoch of Light.

The energy fluctuations of the current Emperor's Tomb were quite substantial, but in reality, whether it was the modern Emperor's Blood or the group of exotic beasts outside, they were all born within a specific digitization process rather than being true primitive exotic beasts; they were essentially digitized "replications."

Nicole warned Yi Shen to remain vigilant.

When such special secret realms appeared, they were generally caused by the changes in the digitization matrix triggered by a specific item or energy.

Therefore, the core of the Emperor's Tomb did not actually lie within the Emperor's Blood; rather, something much deeper was hidden within the secret realm—something that digitization could not decompose.

This entity would gradually be integrated into the digitization process as explorers progressed through their exploration of the secret realm, which was equivalent to a form of self-repair by the world. Nicole estimated that the core area of this secret realm should be the Emperor's Hall itself, except that it had now been divided and stored as nine separate energy sources.

Communication was communication.

While exchanging information with Nicole, Yi Shen did not halt his own actions. Although Nicole appeared sincere, Yi Shen still maintained a certain degree of wariness toward her.

Fortunately, with the assistance of this ancient elf, acquiring the subsequent portions of Emperor's Blood became much easier for Yi Shen. The difficulty of the subsequent grand halls was not particularly high, and with Nicole's help, Yi Shen could easily resolve certain special information processing tasks.

[Ding! All nine portions of the Emperor's Blood have been successfully retrieved. This secret realm has concluded.]

[Announcing the Emperor's Tomb Score Leaderboard]

[First Place: Explorer ID: Hidden, Codename: Dark Mage, Total Score: 1399821, Emperor's Blood Acquired: 9 portions]

[Second Place: Explorer ID: Hidden, Codename: Ranger 0927, Total Score: 4928, Emperor's Blood Acquired: 0 portions]

[Third Place: Explorer ID: Hidden, Codename: Fire Phoenix - Zhu Kaiyang, Total Score: 3382, Emperor's Blood Acquired: 0 portions]

[Fourth Place: ...]

Upon obtaining the nine portions of Emperor's Blood, Nicole handed all of them over to Yi Shen as agreed, while she herself utilized Yi Shen's energy to forge a special energy field, effectively disguising her aura to match his.

However, outwardly she looked no different from before, and even in her usage of magic, she remained largely indistinguishable from her previous state.

Yi Shen did not even know what she had borrowed from him, but all in all, the time and difficulty required for him to acquire the Emperor's Blood had been drastically reduced.

On the system panel, following Yi Shen's acquisition of the nine portions of Emperor's Blood, a score leaderboard appeared, announcing the conclusion of the secret realm.

The conclusion of this secret realm was even shorter than the one at the Jingmen Safe Zone, taking at most four or five hours from start to finish. A vast multitude of explorers were still slaying monsters outside the Emperor's Hall when they abruptly received the notification that the secret realm had ended.

The monsters on the ancient battlefield gradually dissipated, and cracks began to appear in the sky. The secret realm seemed to show signs of collapsing, and a peculiar pattern and aura emerged in the firmament.

These fissures persisted for over ten minutes before the secret realm slowly dissolved, and even the structures near the Emperor's Hall gradually faded into the void.

The ground beneath all the explorers transformed into rolling hills and plains. Beyond the fractured sky, the silhouettes of exotic beasts began to appear. From an external perspective, the Emperor's Tomb on the outside was also steadily disintegrating!

As the core of the secret realm, the Emperor's Hall was the slowest to dissipate.

Nonetheless, everyone was already able to clearly see the scene inside.

Because the final scene everyone had witnessed earlier was that woman entering the Emperor's Hall and engaging in a fierce battle with the Dark Mage, many explorers were anxious to know whether the Dark Mage had won or if that strange woman had emerged victorious.