“We need to go!” Haidong Lin grabbed Lu Yun and the two vanished where they stood. An enormous roar split the void the second they left, drowning the spot they were just in.
……
Haidong Lin didn’t stop for a very, very long time. If there’d been any light to be found in their surroundings, Lu Yun would’ve seen that his face was ashen and sweat pouring from his brow. Lu Yun’s own clothes were drenched in sweat too.
“Did, did you take something else as well just now?” Haidong Lin asked in a trembling voice.
Lu Yun opened his hand; his consciousness traced the outline of a black flower glowing with a black hue that bloomed delicately in the dark. Haidong Lin could naturally see it with his mind as well—he reflexively raised a thumbs up to the young man.
“Who would’ve thought that there’d be treasures in the darkness? What a pity that I haven’t determined what it can be used for yet.” Lu Yun put the flower away. “It was growing on the world fragment and absorbing its energy. But, it seems that someone put it there to purposefully draw attention.”
He paused after that musing, suddenly understanding something.
Haidong Lin heaved an immense sigh. “We were damned lucky to escape from that creature’s trap.”
“Trap?” Lu Yun’s eyes widened.
“Yes, that was a trap set by a creature of the dark,” Haidong Lin chuckled ruefully. “Many connate treasures can be found in the gloom. These treasures aren’t limited by order and cannot be produced by a world of order. Thus, they are highly attractive to us cultivators.
“Countless heavyweights of the secondary worlds enter the darkness in search of these treasures. At the same time, the powerhouses of the darkness aren’t idiots. They possess their own orders just like us, so they use these valuables as bait. Whoever comes in search of one will always meet with a grisly end.
“They sometimes even connect the treasures to the darkness and throw them into the secondary worlds. If someone can’t withstand temptation and tries to claim one, they’ll be instantly put under control by the treasure and dragged into the murk.”
“……” Lu Yun stood stock still for a very long moment. “They’re… fishing?”
“Precisely correct,” Haidong Lin affirmed with trepidation. “That world fragment was likely placed there to lure us over. We usually can’t resist heading for the light when it appears in the darkness.”
“……” Lu Yun smiled ruefully. “It looks like we really were lucky.”
“Let’s go. Since we came across a trap, that means we’re not far from a secondary world.” Haidong Lin proceeded ever more cautiously. They’d switched back to spoken speech since both denizens of the dark and secondary worlds were present in the premises. The creatures of the darkness didn’t dare attack en masse.
After another indeterminate period of time, the shadows receded from their view and a world full of light appeared in front of them.
However, it seemed to be ripped apart by darkness. Light and dark intertwined with each other—there were creatures from both sides on the world and they frequently clashed with each other.
“Is this… another broken world?” Lu Yun frowned slightly at the scene. When he saw two ghost bats tear at a human corpse, he couldn’t help but swat the three-meter-tall bats to death.
“No, this is a complete world. Almost all of the secondary worlds are like this.” Haidong Lin stretched out his arms and sucked in a deep breath of somewhat turbid air. This was the smell of home. Although his specific home was the World of Sea, any secondary world could be generally considered his home as well.
Lu Yun lifted his head to regard the blue firmament. While it was blue, it was a dusky blue as there was no sun, moon, or stars in this part of the Boundless Planes. A deep void filled the sky and a jagged streak of darkness ripped through it like lightning, threatening to split the world asunder.
The gloom in this secondary world seeped out of the bolt of darkness to further wear away at the world. Endarkened creatures burrowed out of the jagged streak to descend upon the local inhabitants below.
It felt like a bolt of thunder struck Lu Yun when he saw the black lightning.
“What’s wrong?” Haidong Lin asked curiously when he saw the young man’s expression.
“I’ve seen this kind of lightning before,” Lu Yun murmured after a deep breath.
“This isn’t lightning, it’s the power of the darkness!” Haidong Lin corrected.
“After the original Hongmeng perished, its central core became a new Hongmeng. It’s called the Central Hongmeng.” Lu Yun ignored the man and muttered to himself, “There’s a second realm called the chaos in the Hongmeng, and it used to be that chaos tribulations wreaked havoc on a regular basis. Chaos tribulations!”
He stared fixedly at the streak of lightning, finally understanding what the chaos tribulations were. The roving bolts weren’t lightning and thunder, but the power of darkness!
“It looks like the Ghost Bat King didn’t just want to invade the chaos through the chaos sea, but also infuse the power of the darkness into the chaos sun and moon. When that power reached a certain threshold, the two clashed together and ignited a tide of darkness—the so-called chaos tribulations!”
His heart still quailed at the thought of the tribulations. If they’d happened a few more times, the chaos would most likely fall apart. The chaos tribulations weren’t just a pure explosion of darkness either, they tapped into the terrible curse that the Curse King had laid using the Fire Virtue Potentate and six supreme gods of the chaos as sacrifices.
“Um…” Haidong Lin clucked his tongue with amazement. “If the lands of darkness used this method against the secondary worlds, the worlds would’ve been erased from existence a long time ago.”
Lu Yun flicked a sideways glance at him. “If all of the secondary worlds are dead, what will the endarkened creatures use to train their own powerhouses? …alright, stand guard for me. I’m going to search for the Imperial Seal.”
“The Imperial Seal… is with the emperor of the Hongmeng!” Excitement flashed through Haidong Lin’s face when he mentioned the original emperor. This was someone he venerated and the strongest throughout the Boundless Planes. The emperor was the only one to access eighteen levels of sequence in the primary and secondary worlds.
Lu Yun sat down cross-legged and opened his hands, manifesting an image of the seal over his right hand. It was roughly one third of a meter and a perfect cube. Nine dragons hovered over it, hoisting a pearl over their heads. The characters “As Mandated By Heaven” were carved on it, as well as innumerable glyphs that Lu Yun didn’t recognize.
Thirty-three images appeared over his head—the mark that his future self had left when he journeyed through thirty-three loops. They walked out from his head, each holding a seal and melting into the image of the seal in his hand.
