Lin Moyu flew over, entered the mist, and saw the palace. Surprise flickered in his eyes. "Why does this palace look like I've seen it somewhere before?"
Chaoszi said, "Because its shape changes. It turns into whatever palace you've seen before. For me, it looks like an unimaginably huge pearl."
Little Tree added, "Everyone sees it differently. To me it's a walled garden with a locked gate—inside it's full of Chaos Divine Soil."
So that was it: everyone saw something else. What Lin saw was a palace. He'd traveled widely and seen countless sights—so why a palace? And its style felt both familiar and arbitrary, as if he'd seen it somewhere, and yet not. He searched his memory and couldn't place it.
There was a great door before the palace. The moment he focused on it, the door grew vast and swallowed his whole field of vision. In that instant, the palace no longer mattered—only the door did.
"Open it. I must open it!
"Everything I want is inside. Everything. If I can open it, I'll get it all."
A thousand thoughts sprouted in his mind, but all of them flowed into a single line: open this door—no matter the cost, no matter the effort, even if it kills me.
His soul gave no warning, but Lin still sensed something was wrong. He shuddered and snapped back to himself. The urge had felt so natural—too natural—and precisely because of that, it was abnormal. He shouldn't be thinking like that. Wanting to open the door was fine, but not to the point of throwing his life away. And yet that's exactly what he'd just been thinking.
He remembered what Little Tree had said: anyone who comes here will try every possible way to open the door. So this was why. The door had a strange power—it twisted your thinking and made "opening the door" your top priority, above even life itself. Compared to the Still-Spirit Pearl, this influence was far stronger: no slow seepage—almost outright mind control.
Chaoszi suddenly bolted forward on his own and smashed into the door with a thud, bouncing back hard. The next instant he tried to rush it again. Lin grabbed him. "What are you doing?"
"Let me go—I'm going to ram it open!"
"You won't," Lin said.
"The hell I won't! Let me go—let me hit it!"
Helpless, Lin shoved Chaoszi into his soul world and revoked his free-exit privilege. Chaoszi shouted from inside, still trying to rush out, but Lin's soul power formed a cage and pinned him there. Without Lin's permission, he wasn't getting through. Lin flicked out a drop of refined Pure Water; it fell like a waterfall over Chaoszi. Doused, Chaoszi finally calmed down.
Boom—boom—boom! Deafening blows hammered the door—thousands in a heartbeat. A forest of roots was wildly whipping the gate, as if to smash it to pulp. Chaoszi had just gone mad; now Little Tree had too.
Lin rubbed his temples, exasperated. Before he could deal with Little Tree, Ye Yangyan and the Spacetime Soul Python also charged the door. He didn't know what they saw, but without exception they were trying to break in—even at the cost of their lives. Dealing with them was easy: a thought recalled them. Another drop of Pure Water poured over Little Tree; the drenching snapped him out of it.
Shaken, Little Tree murmured, "Terrifying… Those people back then—was this what they felt?"
Chaoszi had come to as well. "Must've been. I'd heard they went crazy—I didn't realize it was like this."
"What did it feel like to you just now?" Lin asked.
Little Tree thought, then slowly shook his head. "I don't remember clearly. Only that a thought told me I had to open that door. Something vital lay behind it—more important than my life."
Chaoszi said, "I saw an independent world behind it. If I could refine that world, I might evolve a second chaos—no, a third." He'd remembered Lin's storage space—that would be the second chaos.
Everyone saw and heard something different—apparently whatever each most deeply desired. This door was no ordinary thing—especially if even a revivor was affected.
"I wonder if an undead thrall would be influenced," Lin said. He sent one out to face the gate. Half a day later, it hadn't moved at all. That confirmed it: undead thralls were unaffected; only thinking, self-willed beings fell under the sway. No wonder the blue-robed man had been sitting with his back to the door earlier—he didn't dare look at it.
"Master, try the ice crystal," Little Tree said. "It might open the door."
Lin nodded. "All right."
He took out the ice crystal. The door immediately cast a glow onto it; the crystal lifted of its own accord and flew toward the gate.
"It works!" Joy flickered through Lin's heart. He had crushed the craving to open the door, but the residue of that temptation remained—he still wanted it open. Seeing the crystal work, he couldn't help being pleased.
The crystal touched the gate and merged into it. With a soft click, the door began to open. A peculiar aura surged out from behind it; the desire Lin had forced down erupted again, the temptation spiking to the extreme. He fought it down and held himself perfectly still in the air. At the same time he severed the link between his soul world and the outside, so Little Tree and Chaoszi wouldn't see and lose control again.
The door opened only a crack—just enough for one person. Lin came to the slit; he still couldn't see what was inside. He didn't step through immediately. He sent an undead thrall first to scout.
The instant it crossed the threshold, his link to it vanished. It wasn't dead—just out of contact. He hadn't had a "lost connection" like this since the days when he was weak. Ever since entering the chaos, no matter the distance, his tie to an undead thrall was iron. For it to happen again now meant the world beyond the door was very special.
"Is it truly another chaos?" Lin touched the door. His soul sent no warning. In the end, he stepped in. He'd come all this way and opened the door—he had to see.
After he entered, the gate slowly closed.
A day later, a blue silhouette appeared before it. The North Supreme in a blue robe wore a dark, heavy look. "Someone went in. How? Who?"
"Time Reversal."
He rewound time—but Little Tree had wiped the spacetime traces clean. He saw nothing. The North Supreme's face grew uglier.
A strange world. The strangeness came from its Dao, its laws, its aura—everything. As Lin had suspected, it was an independent world. Not a second chaos, but separate from the chaos. It didn't seem as vast as the chaos; he could already see a boundary. It was smaller than Chaoszi's inner world, even. Yet its laws, its Dao, its aura were completely its own.
The undead thrall that had gone ahead was nearby; nothing ill had befallen it, and once Lin entered he regained contact.
"This place is totally cut off from the outside. I can't sense the grand array Tianzai Supreme set up anymore. If the outside of the door merely blocked Supremes so that the Dao could still probe within, then this door blocks even the Dao itself. And yet… it does seem to connect to the chaos somehow. What exactly…? Interesting."
Lin probed carefully. He was eighty percent sure no one had ever been here—he should be the first. The environment was too clean; there wasn't a breath of living aura.
He looked around. Not far away, materials floated—thousands of pieces. He'd never seen most of them, but they all looked extraordinary. They turned slowly, large and small, at a uniform speed around a single center—like a stellar system, planets orbiting a sun.
His gaze fell on the center: a mass of gas, something churning within, but he couldn't make it out from here. He started that way—then remembered he'd closed off his soul world. Little Tree and Chaoszi couldn't see. He lifted the seal.
"Wow—so much good stuff!" Chaoszi yelled.
"You recognize them?" Lin asked.
"Not all, but I know more than half. Old friends."
"Old friends?" Lin echoed.
Little Tree explained, "Back then, like us, many beings were nurtured by heaven and earth. Some were born with a particular heavenly treasure as their body—like the Cold-Ancient Behemoth, or the Chaos-Disrupting Pearl. Only a few had no identifiable 'body' at birth."
A thought flashed through Lin's mind. "You mean these materials are those beings' original bodies?"
Little Tree shook his head. "Not theirs. These are just materials, not yet nurtured by heaven and earth."
Chaoszi cut in, "Before those guys were nurtured, they looked exactly like this. Look at that block of Ancient Ice—bigger than the one you got."
Lin looked where Chaoszi pointed and saw a shard of Ancient Ice. From afar it didn't look huge, but in truth it was massive—merely compressed by some power. If he compressed his own Ancient Ice continent, it might be fist-sized; this one was at least ten times that.
They jabbered away, naming piece after piece, recalling what kind of being each had once become. With no "Dao" peering in here, they could speak freely. From what they said, Lin inferred a possibility: at the dawn of heaven and earth, many materials left this place and entered the chaos. The chaos was then nurturing life, full of Primordial Breath. These materials absorbed that breath and, after being gestated by the chaos, became one top-tier being after another. The Cold-Ancient Behemoth came from here too, and was special—its ice crystal was the key to this place. But because the ice crystal had been nurtured into a living being, it became "tainted," so the key's function temporarily failed. Even so, the behemoth still wanted to return—its instinct, its deepest impulse.
In other words, calling this the origin of countless chaotic beings wasn't wrong.
Linking that to his own situation, Lin reasoned further: the bodies of powerful beings came from here; the Primordial Breath came from the deepest Ancient Wasteland. The two together shaped the early chaos. His storage space, by contrast, has oceans of Primordial Breath but no materials. It has birthed many beings, but without bodies—unlike the original chaos. He hadn't known why before; now he did. His storage lacked these pinnacle materials. With them, they could serve as bodies and make his storage space richer.
Having figured it out, Lin moved at once to collect them. He flew toward the nearest piece, a material called Heaven-Red Stone, which had once birthed a formidable behemoth.
Thump! With no warning, he slammed into an invisible wall. Luckily he hadn't been going too fast, or he'd have really rung his bell. The wall was intangible to the eye but solid to the touch—completely transparent. He rapped it; it was very sturdy. He flung out flame; it went out the instant it touched the wall, unable to linger. Since the flame carried a trace of Dao power, this meant Dao power couldn't "stick" to the wall either.
This place stood apart from the chaos; he couldn't draw on external Dao—only his own. Only then did Lin realize even his Immortality Dao was being affected, something that had never happened before. In independent spaces, under array seals, in Chaoszi's inner world, even in his own storage space—his Immortality Dao had never been hindered. He had already fused it into his body; it shouldn't be affected. Yet here, all Dao were suppressed to less than a tenth of their usual power. The Immortality Dao fared a little better, but even it was under half strength.
Power of Death spread like a net over the wall—he tried to dissolve it. No use; the wall ignored death. He tried the Heaven-and-Earth Jellyfish next; its dissolving power surpasses the Death power's corrosion, but here it too was suppressed. It slid right off the transparent barrier without effect. He had Chaoszi try Pure Water—sheets of it crashed against the wall. Nothing.
The see-through wall barred the way, solid as fate.
He sent a swarm of undead thralls to skim along its length, missing no corner, to look for a flaw. They flew for a long time, traced the barrier around the entire space, checked every nook and cranny—nothing.
Little Tree tried, too—but his unbeatable spacetime arts failed here; he couldn't pass through.
So Lin simply rolled up his sleeves.
If you can't find a way around it—try breaking it.