“Are you uncomfortable?” Lingfeng took a moment to observe Tianming’s eye, but couldn’t see anything.
“I don’t feel anything at all, but it can’t be good.” Tianming frowned.
“I think it’s safer if we gouge out your eyeball,” said Yu Ziqian.
“Fuck off.” After poking himself several times to no avail, Tianming said, “Is she sick in the head? I don’t even know her, but the first thing she does is to throw her eye at me and utter a bunch of gibberish. I must stop her and get her to explain herself.”
“Bro, she’s way stronger than you. Your ranking on the imperial star ranking is a little exaggerated, but hers is solid.” Yu Ziqian appeared anxious.
Tianming looked inside; there was a more important matter at hand, which was to enter the tomb at once. Everything about the stunning girl flashed in his mind—her eyes, the way she spoke, and so on.
“Who is the little fish waiting for?” He was baffled. While his attention was occupied, he failed to notice that the little green pupil turned into a tiny black carp that swam in his golden pupil, gliding around the whites of his eyes. In fact, Weisheng Moran’s beauty was almost breathtaking. If she weren’t a dreamless celestial, Tianming could still think of this as an interesting encounter.
“Fuck!” In his heart, all the things he wanted to say condensed into this one word, perfectly expressing his mood.
……
Thunderous reverberations sounded from all directions. A cloud of dust arose as the surrounding walls shook, a sign that the tomb was still sinking. He turned around and saw the light from the surface grow dimmer and dimmer as the commotion from a billion disciples began fading; the entrance to the tomb was about to be sealed.
Ten breaths after Tianming urged them inside, the mouth of the dragon sculpture was completely sealed. In that instant, the noise and flames outside were completely cut off and they were plunged into darkness. The smell of mold and decay washed over them, the cold, gloomy air entering their lungs. Ever since arriving on the sun, Tianming hadn’t felt such gloominess until now. It was like falling into an ice cave.
The tomb was still sinking, the surrounding stone walls trembling as the rumbles persisted. It was likely that the tomb would sink into the depths and be covered by the earth above, sealed by dust.
Meanwhile, the remaining disciples outside would immediately disperse and search for other opportunities. The imperial star ranking was still outside. For the eight hundred million people who failed to enter the tomb, there were other opportunities to improve their rank and stumble upon good fortune.
“The Sky Palace didn’t say anything about the tomb being everything.”
In the Voidsky Realm, geniuses had their way of doing things, while ordinary disciples had their own approach. Most of the elite disciples had entered the tomb.
There were at least nine thousand five hundred names marked with a red dot on the imperial star ranking and, including Tianming, who was in second place. The skyward eyes dispersed, no longer focusing on this area. The images transmitted were no longer related to the tomb, but focused on the disciples outside. This phenomenon astonished the onlookers in the Myriad Solar Sects. What they wanted to see was the battle between the great talents; however, it was clear that the Sky Palace wasn’t planning to show the fight within the tomb.
“We can’t see what’s happening in the tomb. What’s the Sky Palace doing?”
“I don’t know. The sect master asked and heard that the emergence of the tomb wasn’t known by the first-rate forces in advance, either.”
“The ancestors of the celestial orderians searched for the tomb for a long time, but never found anything. I wonder what the sun emperor thinks of the Sky Palace’s actions.”
“Why do I feel like there’s something brewing?”
“With the emergence of the tomb, this is no longer a battle between disciples, but some kind of sign. As for what it is, I don’t know.”
“The question remains, what’s inside the tomb? Is it treasure that wasn’t left for the Xuanyuan Dragon clan, or just some insignificant odds and ends?”
“All we can do is wait.”
The only thing they could watch now was the imperial star ranking
“Did you notice that the scores of the names with a red dot are still changing? This means that the imperial star ranking is still recording their performance.”
“In other words, we can see who’s winning in the tomb through the changes in their scores.”
“That’s right.”
……
After the strongest shock yet, the tomb finally sank into the depths of the earth and stopped moving. The last shock lasted a long time. The room seemed to spin, causing many of the disciples to find it hard to move in the darkness. The next moment, the rustling of their movements sounded as everything stabilized. The disciples discussed amongst themselves and began to head inward.
Those who made it into the tomb on their own have astralforce, so the disciples in the tomb have at least reached Ascension.
Achieving Ascension before the age of thirty would make anyone in the Divine Moon Realm a top genius. However, there were tens of thousands of such disciples right before Tianming’s eyes. The tomb was so enormous that there was room for even their largest lifebound beasts to battle and rampage. But at this moment, no one was stupid enough to let their lifebound beasts out and block the way. In the secret domain, flexibility was important.
“Dammit. I can’t get rid of it!” Tianming fiddled with his left eye for a long time, but to no avail. The tiny, dark green pupil was planted in his eye like some sort of strange power. There was no way of removing it unless he dug his eye out. It didn’t seem like a special technique either. The only explanation is that it’s an innate skill of her race, similar to the talents of the sky plunderer race. How incomprehensible.
Fortunately, this thing seemed to have no effect on Tianming for the time being. At this moment, the tomb was stable and everyone was rushing inside, striving to be the first and outdo the others. Tianming couldn’t neglect the task at hand and was forced to put aside the matter of the little black carp.
“Don’t panic. This may not be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a token of her love for you. When your relationship comes to fruition, when two strong people meet, man on top of man, crossing your swords, it’ll go away,” Yu Ziqian comforted Tianming.
Tianming was furious about Yu Ziqian’s joke. “Let’s go!” He could only put the matter aside for now. The four followed the crowd, rushing into the dark tomb.
“This place almost feels like the Tomb of the Ancients.” Lingfeng whispered.
“You’re right.”
The entire tomb was eerie and gloomy. The walls were all black, with dragon patterns carved on them. Tianming hacked at the wall with the Grand-Orient Sword and found that it was extremely hard. It was definitely forged from divine ores. As the blade cut deeper, he saw divine ordered patterns that showed traces of breaking down due to age. It seemed like the incarnation of the world’s laws couldn’t last forever.
The crowd madly pressed forward, like fish crossing a river. There might have been a fight if the passage wasn’t wide enough.
“The path diverges up ahead.” Tianming could see farther with his Plundering Eye. At the end of the dark passage were dozens of pathways. When venturing into one of them, he discovered that the path started to branch off again about a kilometer in. One path diverged into ten, ten into a hundred, a hundred into a thousand, and so on. After encountering this dozens of times, the number of people around him had decreased, and only continued dwindling. Because the passages all looked the same, there was little hesitation. With how mysterious the tomb was, no one could tell what treasures existed or in which passages they lay, so everyone left it to luck.
“Dammit, there’s a formation here. We can’t pass! “
“There’s one here as well.”
“Let’s turn around.”
One after another, curses came from everywhere, which meant it happened rather often. There were many divergences, yet the paths were connected to one another so the tomb became a terrifying maze. There were so many intersections that even if tens of millions were to enter the tomb, they would all be swallowed in an instant like ants crawling into an ant trap.
“Where are we?” After a while, Tianming had taken so many twists and turns he was almost dizzy. Although it didn’t seem like they had returned to the start, he had completely lost his sense of direction so he wasn’t sure if they were moving forward. An hour later, the crowd around him had disappeared and there were only three others beside him. Ying Huo stood on his shoulders, glancing around curiously and leisurely flitting about. Tianming thought they would continue in this manner until they ran into an invisible barrier.
“Another formation.” Although they heard the others yelling, this was the first formation they had encountered.
“This is a divine ordered formation, at least third-grade. It won’t be easy to break unless you’re a formation guru. Let’s take a detour,” said Yu Ziqian.
The astralscape of order had more thorough standards regarding formations, heavenly pattern tomes, artifacts, and alchemy. Divine ordered patterns were the foundation of heavenly patterns, saintly heavenly patterns, and tribulation patterns. The Flameyellow Continent’s heavenly patterns were fragments of divine ordered patterns and weren’t whole. Therefore, the races in the astralscape of order didn’t include them. Everything in the astralscape of order originated from nova sources and divine ordered patterns, including patternscribing and heavenly pattern tomes.
