After fully submerging himself under the water, Sheyan's narrowed eyes immediately caught sight of a dark shadow that was rapidly moving deeper into the sea.

"What's the dark shadow doing here?" While thinking that, Sheyan quickly realised that he could not catch up to the shadow. When he looked around, he saw that the bottom of the algae island was made up of large lumps of flocs. The closer to the water surface, the more dense the flocs were. Just now, the dark shadow seemed to have come out from deep below the algae island.

Sheyan could not catch up to the dark shadow, but he could investigate the situation below the island. But when he swam down, the light green flocculent strands instantly moved towards him and bound him like the tentacles of a jellyfis.h.!.+ The parts of his body that were bound felt like they were electrified, and scorch marks appeared on them! The strands then turned scorched yellow and withered. They could not bear the damage output either.

These strands were extremely poisonous and extremely tough! Fortunately, they were totally useless against Sheyan. 'Stairway of the Sun' completely resisted the poison, and the tough strands were not tough enough to resist Sheyan's formidable strength. However, even after spending a long time inspecting the bottom of the island, Sheyan did not find anything of note.

Sheyan was not feeling frustrated despite his continuous failures. On the contrary, he felt like he was vaguely on the trail of an important clue. Why did he not find anything noteworthy? The reason was simple. That's right, it was because the dark shadow had taken the noteworthy thing away! The reason he could not find any clue was because the clue had been taken away!

Upon realising the reason, Sheyan immediately swam to the other islands. Even before he became a contestant, he already had no problem holding his breath underwater for four to five minutes, say nothing of the current him who had a few hundred points of Physique and t.i.tle bonuses. He would not drown even if he was held underwater for two or three hours.

At the third island he explored, he finally discovered the hidden secret. It turned out that the root system of all the plants on each island was connected together. Because the plants only needed to grow leaves to feed the mayflies and did not need to blossom or bear fruit, the extra life energy generated through photosynthesis would be condensed in the centre of the root system. After the condensed life force grew large enough, the mysterious shadow would appear from the deep sea to harvest it.

Now that he knew the reason, Sheyan was getting really curious about the condensed Pearl of Life, but he dared not make any rash moves. He was currently like a Rogue in Cla.s.sic World of Warcraft that was squatting in stealth near a treasure chest, while Ragnaros the Firelord was standing guard next to the chest! The moment Sheyan moved would be the moment he died!

Noah Realm E was currently on high alert. Sheyan would almost certainly be caught as soon as he touched the Pearl of Life. Therefore, he could only fight back his curiosity and wait patiently for the Pearl of Life to mature.

Because he had chosen a Pearl of Life that was already close to maturity, the sensory threads he extended deep down into the sea soon detected a dark shadow coming to collect the fruit.

The shadow turned out to be a toad that looked like a fish, or you could also say it was a fish that looked like a toad. Its entire body was light black in colour. It had no scales, but Sheyan could tell with a glance that its streamlined body must be very slippery nonetheless.

The creature had a big mouth like a toad. By keeping the Pearl of Life in its mouth, it could prevent the Pearl from getting lost or being damaged while it was being transported. The creature's pair of muscular legs and thick tail provided it with plenty of propulsion force to navigate through the water at a high speed.

Sheyan only hesitated for a moment and he already lost sight of the dark shadow. Fortunately, his sensory threads could still detect the creature. If it were any other contestant, they would certainly choose not to give chase due to a human's natural fear of the deep sea, but Sheyan had been making a living in the ocean since he was a teenager, so he had no such innate fear. Besides, his sensory threads could reach a length of two kilometres if he concentrated hard enough, and that gave him some confidence. He clenched his teeth and dived down in pursuit.

However, Sheyan soon regretted his decision. Not that he could not bear the pressure of the sea water deep down, but when he dived down to a depth of 300 metres, the undercurrent had become a lot more turbulent, as if there was a giant whirlpool which spanned across the entire sea. The increase in turbulence was very gradual, so by the time Sheyan noticed it, it was already too late. He was like a frog that was cooked in warm water; only when the water was already boiling would the frog notice that it had fallen for the trap.

"d.a.m.n it!" Feeling the suction force acting on his body getting stronger and stronger, Sheyan decisively gave up resisting. He simply materialised his ultimate weapon of demolition, the big silver wrench. If worse came to worst, he had no choice but to start demolis.h.i.+ng things.

After being drawn nearly three kilometres deeper into the ocean by the whirlpool, the water pressure had become astonis.h.i.+ngly high. Even the contestants with their digitised body would find such a high pressure difficult to handle. Fortunately, Sheyan specialised in Physique, so except for the tightness on his skin, he felt no other discomfort.

The deep sea was pitch black, but soon, he saw a faint light. It was especially conspicuous in such a deep darkness. When he got near, he realised that the light came from multiple gigantic, weird-looking fish. All of them had a long beard, and at the end of the beard was a phosph.o.r.escent sphere. The light sphere would attract the curiosity of other fish from time to time, which became food for the giant fish.

The weird fish were located at the bottom of the sea. When Sheyan reached there, he felt the pressure instantly dissipating. The force of the whirlpool was originally like ropes that tied themselves to his body and tugged at him hard, but they completely vanished once he reached this place. Thanks to the illumination from the weird fish, he could see the silhouette of a building at the bottom of the sea. He instantly swam there.

Less than five minutes later, Sheyan arrived at a place called "Sea Base Station #1374". Its function was to collect the life energy generated by the islands within a thousand square kilometres around it, as well as to store the extra life energy.

If this was the place which stored the extra life energy, then the life energy of the mayflies collected by the device in the sky would surely be delivered here too! Therefore, the secret that Eve wanted Sheyan to find was not really up in the sky, but down at the bottom of the sea! In fact, the device up in the sky was only an umbrellshaped energy acc.u.mulating and reflecting mirror. Once it had absorbed enough life energy, it would beam the energy into the storage device of the sea base station like a particle cannon.

Sheyan then obtained some terrifying first-hand information. He found out that there were 16,700 base stations in this particular world, and the entire Noah Realm E had 736 of such worlds that were called "life core engines"!!