The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

The most important reason, of course, is distance.

When one's cultivation reaches a very high level, even a small wisp of one's natal energy, related laws, and entangled divine thoughts can be separated as a long-range extension of power, enabling interaction and communication.

It is known outside the realm as "Star Contract and Underworld Transmission".

When Zhao Qing used the Demon Bewitching Sword to sense the Demon Bewitching Star and the Heavenly Dragon Aperture Technique to connect with the stars of the universe, it was a super-distance communication that broke the speed of light. Only by using this as a foundation could the outer realms maintain an extremely vast territory and allow his voice to travel trillions of miles away in an instant.

However, this interaction distance cannot be increased indefinitely.

The universe is so vast that it cannot be fully encompassed by the mind.

The farther away, the more difficult it becomes, and the weaker the signal becomes. It requires more conspicuous and heavy markings, brighter lighting, and the bandwidth and resolution of the transmitted information are also much worse.

Zhao Qing estimated her situation and, considering the obstruction of certain mysterious magical miasma and void chasms, estimated that about 2 light-years was her current limit for long-distance communication.

However, this seems to be closely related to the length of the vertical axis of fate. If she had a longer period of existence in the world, after being cleared of the fog and cleansed, it should not be a problem for that limit to double.

The oldest of the Nine Realms in the Outer Worlds can transmit messages over twenty to thirty light-years.

Large size and long lifespan do indeed bring advantages.

Beyond this line, unless the Nine Realms are set up as relay nodes, the only option is to switch to cumbersome light-speed and sub-light-speed methods, which also lose the confidentiality of direct connection and are extremely easy to be eavesdropped on, intercepted, deciphered, tampered with, traced back to the source, or even have their own coordinates locked by following the message trajectory, bringing about unforeseen disasters.

Forget about layers of encryption and verification mechanisms—even if the enemy can't crack the specific content for the time being, the mere existence of that signal has already exposed countless pieces of information.

The spectral characteristics of the fluctuations, the hierarchical distribution of energy, and the way the laws are intertwined are enough to allow one to make a preliminary judgment on the communicator's realm level, law inclination, and Daoist characteristics, to deduce the overall scale, technological level, and activity status of the forces behind them, and even to speculate on the strategic intentions and expansion types of their civilization.

No one knows what kind of ghost hunters lurk in the "Reef Zone".

Casting a shimmering buoy into the tranquil depths of the sea, clearly announcing its own existence, is undoubtedly a shocking act of folly.

Therefore, rashly sending such signals out of the solar system would have long been considered an unforgivable crime, akin to treason! Even if approved under special circumstances, one must master hundreds of concealment techniques to confuse the heavens and distort the spectrum before daring to proceed with extreme caution.

The limits of extraterritorial boundaries are defined less by force and more by the radius of communication.

"Then theoretically, a radiation range with a radius of twenty light-years should also be included in the ruling area."

Zhao Qing pondered for a moment: "The real problem is that the distance between our solar system and other stars is constantly changing. Tens of millions of years ago, we were neighbors of 5 light-years, but ten million years from now, we might be 500 light-years away! Stars are moving, star fields are rotating, and so-called star maps, constellations, the Twenty-Eight Mansions, and the celestial sphere are nothing more than sand paintings that change in an instant, created in the morning and destroyed in the evening. They have never been fixed."

Within a 300-light-year radius of the Sun, the average speed of matter such as stars and nebulae is approximately 202–241 kilometers per second.

This is known as the Local Static Standard (LSR).

The Sun's speed relative to the local stationary standard is approximately 20 km/s.

Clearly, every 1.5 years, many of the past neighbors will be pushed back by 1 light-year, and on average every 30 years, a colony will be completely lost and out of real-time communication.

It takes the solar system 230 million years to orbit the galactic center once.

Over the past two hundred million years, it has traversed spiral arms and drifted into interstellar forests. Its neighbors have changed countless times.

A rule that can only last for 30 years is an unimaginably long period for ordinary nations, enough to witness thousands of dynasties rise and fall.

But for those Nine Realms Old Monsters who have existed for hundreds of millions of years and whose slumber spans thousands or tens of thousands of years, this time scale is frighteningly short.

The universe itself is constantly tearing apart and reorganizing its map.

The colony that we conquered today at such a terrible cost will be a deserted enclave 300,000 years from now.

The cities, magic arrays, and spiritual veins that were painstakingly built will become isolated islands floating in the sea of ​​stars after 300,000 years. They cannot be taken away or protected, and will only benefit other harvesters in the end.

All stable territories are an illusion.

All great empires will eventually disintegrate on their own, not by being defeated by enemies, but by being quietly dismembered by the migration of the stars.

"The key lies in the difference in the speed of stars and the cultivation cycle of the new nine realms of the colony."

Zhao Qing pondered: "If we can quickly build a powerful outer base for each 'Different Yang Great Thousand' we conquer, and restore it to a level comparable to before the invasion without dragging down the mother civilization, and continue to repeat this expansion, connecting the hundreds and thousands of star systems along the way, then we will have a chance to break through the upper limit of this territory!"

However, this is almost impossible to do.

Upon entering the standard Ninth Realm, long-distance communication is even difficult within one light-year, and the time of loss of contact has been compressed to within 15,000 years!
The low-resource red dwarf star system, which has just been ravaged by war, needs 1.5 years to recover and cultivate multiple Ninth Realm cultivators.

The success rate is extremely low.

If the colony chain breaks at any link—the backlash of a star, the interception of an alien sun, the sweeping of a void storm—the entire chain will collapse, leading to total ruin.

Even more fatal is that if an isolated outpost is targeted and attacked by the enemy, or falls, there will be a major crisis of the secrets of cultivation being leaked! Without timely support and patch updates from the homeland, it will be exposed without reservation!

The enemy will have ample time to slowly search the prisoners' sea of ​​consciousness, strip away the inherited imprints in their bloodlines, and lay out the entire civilization's technology tree, cultivation system, law characteristics, and even strategic weaknesses one by one for study, deciphering and reconstructing them.

This is far more terrifying than losing a star system!
Therefore, the war between the outer realms and the Yiyang Great Thousand will always end with the plundering of resources and the withdrawal of advantages, never taking another step forward.

Like nomadic tribes that move with the flow of water and pasture, they only target celestial bodies that intrude into the gravitational control range of the solar system, capturing anywhere from a million to a billion comets in each battle!
Looking across the endless sea of ​​stars, all the advanced civilizations at this level have unanimously abandoned long-term expansion, retaining only short-term conquest and plunder! There are very few exceptions!

This is an inevitable convergence under rational consideration! The wisdom of survival is sometimes manifested in ambition, and sometimes in restraint.

Only in the high-density regions of the galactic center and in globular clusters could a truly trans-stellar colonial empire be born.

However, this deduction only involves the ninth realm level.

Above the Nine Realms, there exists an even more profound and vast power!

The most powerful being within the will of a star can unleash its brilliance across thousands or even tens of thousands of light-years! If one could obtain the assistance of such a powerful being, overwhelming a million star systems would be a piece of cake!
Normally, stars don't bother with lower life forms; in their eyes, they are all insignificant, including those at the Ninth Realm. Helping them would only shorten their lifespan, offering no benefit and causing them to burn out sooner. The stronger a star's will, the shorter its lifespan and the more difficult it is to communicate with.

The Ten Realms! There has never been a clear record of them in the databases of the outer realms, but their existence can still be roughly confirmed!

According to reliable observations, a galaxy 6 million light-years away exhibits a highly regular appearance and rhythmic fluctuations, indicating either the presence of a super-giant array covering tens of thousands of light-years or the presence of traces of a supreme ruler.

Such immense power is beyond the comprehension of the mere Ninth Realm!
Let's not even mention the mysterious and ethereal tenth realm.

The topic then shifted back to the Chaos Heavenly Capital Extinction Cannon.

“…So it turns out it started from the density gradient of the laws,” Zhao Qing composed himself. “Using the Void Vortex as water and the Chaotic Qi as a boat, we designed a multi-level lock to continuously raise the energy level along the launch trajectory, gradually pushing the ‘momentum’ of a Heavenly Capital magic power to its peak, bearing a power far exceeding what a single caster could unleash!”

“Void rifling, Boundary Pool Whirlpool, Binding Law Heavenly Gate, Milun Casting Arrowhead… Interesting.”

She commented, "The destructive power of its shells lies not in the accumulation of energy, but in the high density of the projectile! It's almost like temporarily creating a super-compressed natal star to bombard the target, making any means of differentiation and disintegration ineffective."

“Indeed,” the Nether Emperor replied. “The melting effect of the chaotic mass and its extremely high plasticity, which is different from most other primordial energies, are the key to creating this cannonball! It is pressurized by various boundary pools and celestial gates along the way, but it will not bounce back quickly in the unrestrained starry sky, spread and dilute. Instead, it will shrink layer by layer and solidify firmly, maintaining an extreme condensed state all the way until the moment it hits the target!”

"It has no fixed form, no inherent nature, yet it encompasses the wonders of all things."

Zhao Qing agreed: "It truly makes full use of the inherent characteristics of chaos. Using it as a material for the projectile may seem rudimentary and not very sophisticated, but the creator of this technique has truly reached a state of perfection in his understanding of the void and the core of chaos. Great skill appears clumsy, and this is exactly what it means."

Ordinary true qi, primordial qi, true essence, and magical power are like gases and liquids; no matter how much they are compressed, they have a stubborn tendency to expand.

If it loses its external restraint, it will escape in all directions, its power will be greatly reduced, and it will be severely weakened over long distances.

Rays are naturally divergent. No matter how many methods are used to gather them, the cross-section will always continue to expand. The energy flux density drops inversely to the square and is easily deflected, dissociated, and dissipated.

"Void Mirror Wall", "Devouring Ray Vortex", and so on can all be countered.

However, the chaotic energy mass does not have this drawback.

It does not know what "self-nature" is, has no fixed form or volume memory, and the deeper it is compressed, the greater its density becomes.

Once condensed, it becomes a unified whole, locking in its phase. Even if it travels hundreds of millions of miles, it is like an iron ball moving through the sky, without leaking or losing anything.

Previously, Zhao Qing was surprised that the density of the Bewitching Sword was close to that of white dwarf matter, and found it difficult to understand the principle behind its creation. Now, upon closer inspection, he realized that it was precisely through the refining process of fusing chaotic energy to shape the material.

It is easy to notice that even after the "potential" of massive magical power is increased by hundreds or thousands of times, it is still confined to a small area, which can reach the density of laws near the star core, causing the tidal tearing effect.

With the addition of length contraction under relativistic velocity, the law density gradient field rises even further, completely surpassing the ordinary nine realms!
Even a mere sweep across the edge of an empty space can tear a massive natal star to shreds, causing its core to vibrate and its laws and patterns to crumble. At best, it severely damages the star's vital energy; at worst, it causes it to disintegrate on the spot.

If it were to hit head-on, there would be no room for struggle; it would be instantly blown to pieces, scattered into the most primitive stardust and gas clouds, and billions of years of cultivation would be wasted, with both body and soul destroyed!

"The key to destroying the enemy lies not in brute force, but in momentum. When momentum accumulates, it becomes unstoppable; when momentum arrives, it becomes invincible!" Emperor You exclaimed.

24 billion years ago, the gods of the outer realms, as usual, launched an expedition towards a strange and vast universe that had been flying by. Their target was a binary star system, consisting of a yellow dwarf star, an orange dwarf star, and more than twenty planets. However, it was relatively young and lacked sufficient resources. In the ensuing battles that lasted for thousands of years, it was ultimately defeated and left in a miserable state.

The surface of the enemy's life-source planet was completely blasted away, turning into a sea of ​​lava. Hundreds of large satellites were pushed and turned to collide with their respective planets, creating craters tens of thousands of miles long and stirring up a fierce void magnetic storm that has lasted for thousands of years.

The outer realms, however, returned laden with spoils, having captured five dwarf planets, nearly 10 billion comets, and countless other resources.

This was originally a great victory! After the two opposing stars fled to a distance of several light-years, the military forces of both sides were too far away to reach them, making it difficult to launch any further attacks. It is highly likely that they will never meet again.

However, sixteen million years later, a completely unexpected catastrophe struck. A massive beam of annihilation energy, originating from over seven hundred light-years away, tore through the void, like divine punishment descending!

Without giving any warning whatsoever! It emerged abruptly from a sparsely populated interstellar cloud cavity, skillfully avoiding all the celestial bodies that could cause gravitational lensing along its path, bypassing thousands of monitoring outposts, and when its final trajectory was calculated and locked, it was less than a trillion miles away from its target!
A dwarf planet that once roamed from that strange and vast universe has been locked onto! Although it adjusted its orbit and that of the surrounding grotto-heavens in time, shifting its position by tens of thousands of miles and deploying a void barrier, the cannon beam also performed a terminal maneuver and trajectory correction, ultimately still hitting the side of the dwarf planet solidly!
The hundreds of billions of clansmen stationed there, along with more than 300 commanders of the Eighth Realm and five divine descendants who were half-step into the Ninth Realm, were all reduced to dust! Even the eighteen war caves, one mining satellite, and the three main shipping lanes that were connected to it were all destroyed, causing heavy losses!
Millions of years of hard work were destroyed in an instant, and countless accumulations were lost.

But this disaster is just the beginning.

Eleven years later, the second extinction beam struck again! It was indeed aimed at another incoming dwarf planet, annihilating it! The Ninth Realm Supreme who attempted to intercept it perished!

Nine years later, the third cannonball; eight years later, the fourth.

The launch intervals are getting shorter and shorter, but the power is steadily increasing.

In just a few hundred years, it has been reduced to once every few months!
Although the accuracy dropped drastically after destroying five dwarf planets, with almost all shots landing in empty air, the enemy quickly switched to shotgun mode, using "Heavenly Scattered Flowers" and "Ten Thousand Calamities Flowing Fire" to compensate for the lack of accuracy with sheer numbers!
A single blast unleashes hundreds of tiny torrents of destruction, blooming into deathly flames in the starry sky.

Although the split chaotic spikes are small, their density is no different from that of the main projectile. Even if they only graz the edge of the star shell, they can tear a trench thousands of miles deep! This is no less than a conventional attack from the Ninth Realm.

Initially, the outer domain was tolerable, since there weren't many high-value targets that were unfortunately hit and destroyed, far less than the loss rate in a real war. However, the subsequent development of the active-guided targeting high-law-density areas, "Influence of Trace," completely eliminated the accuracy defects!
Technological advancements have led to a dramatic increase in threats!

By tracking the field ripples emanating from the natal stars of the Nine Realms, the naturally denser energy fluctuations in the clan settlements and magic array hubs, each shotgun pierce seemed to have developed a sense of smell, spontaneously locking onto and deflecting towards high-value targets!
No matter how many layers of disguise and concealment are used, it is all in vain!

This is no longer a minor ailment like scabies, but a deadly noose that slowly draws blood.

The enemy's war machine is insatiable, vowing to repay the humiliation inflicted by the invaders a thousandfold.

It's hard to imagine an ancient civilization engaging in such irrational and harmful acts of revenge, but the facts are undeniable. Clearly, no matter how many industries in the solar system were destroyed, there would be no profit whatsoever, and it would require a continuous influx of massive resources, burning through the very foundation of the civilization—yet they still did it.

I've never seen anyone hold a grudge to this extent.

It's better to lose both sides than to drag others down with us.

This can't go on any longer.

How to fight back?

The Outer Realm can't even pinpoint the enemy's location.

No one would have thought of leaving surveillance equipment on a fleeting star. Even if they had, it would have been detected and removed long ago. Why would the other side, with such meticulous planning, leave such a flaw?

The trajectory can only be deduced by working backwards.

After being hit by hundreds of thousands of cannon fire, analyzing countless incident trajectories, cracking countless jamming decoys, and exhausting all deductions, they finally traced back to that binary star system, delineating a blurry area spanning a billion miles, after which the accuracy could no longer be improved.

The enemy's artillery positions were clearly multi-node and constantly mobile, not limited to natural detours.

Add to that the 1,500-year observation delay, and it's enough time for the defensive posture in that area to change completely tenfold. The coordinates locked today are merely the location of the enemy 1,500 years ago. Right now, it could be anywhere.

They've tried firing annihilation rays at that misty area and hurling meteorites weighing over a hundred billion tons of black iron.

In the first few hundred thousand years, the Outer Realms used every means possible to unleash destruction across hundreds of light-years, but the result was always the same—no response, like a stone sinking into the sea.

No one knows whether those attacks hit anything.

The Chaos Heavenly Capital Extinction Cannon's firing array is mobile, multi-node, and dispersed, hidden deep within the void and the dark curtain of nebulae. Destroying planets and satellites will not have any substantial impact on enemy artillery positions.

There is no deterrent that ensures mutual destruction.

Organizing various long-range counterattacks is a complete waste of resources.

After analyzing all the possibilities, the war gods of the outer realms finally came to a conclusion of only one word—wait.

Wait for the enemy to stop on their own.

The range of the Chaos Heavenly Capital Extinction Cannon is by no means infinite. This can be confirmed from the attenuation characteristics of its trajectory.

It is certain that as the binary star system gradually moves away and becomes unreachable, the bombardment will eventually weaken and cease.

It's just a matter of enduring tens of millions of years of hardship! Who knows, during its drifting journey, another alien world might have its eye on this civilization, blinded by revenge, and destroy it on behalf of Heaven.

To dare to fire such a high-profile attack in the Milky Way is to create far too much noise and is tantamount to courting death.

But a full million years have passed, and the fighting has not stopped; on the contrary, it has intensified. No third-party force has emerged.

Just as many ancient gods were getting used to the constant bombardment and harassment, the Mother Planet's will issued a rare, clear decree.

He clearly stated that the enemy's war potential has been fully revealed by the continuous shelling, and that its civilizational resilience, technological iteration speed, and strategic will have all far exceeded expectations.

Even if we eventually escape their bombardment range, given their unpredictable pace of growth, they will inevitably expand their power significantly, threatening the very survival of our world!

Billions of years from now, the rotation of the Milky Way will once again pull the solar system within a thousand light-years of it.

At that time, its strength when it returns will be far greater than it is today. How should our realm respond then?

Billions of years may seem like an incredibly long time, but for both sides, which have already reached the level of advanced civilizations, it is merely the eve of their next encounter. The flames of war have already begun to brew!
The hidden dangers must be completely eliminated in this confrontation.

The unprecedented ultimate expedition was thus set in motion.

Over the next few million years, the Outer God system was incorporated into a massive war incubator.

The accumulated war resources of billions of years were poured into it, forcibly creating tens of thousands of Ninth Realm beings regardless of the cost.

What a crazy era that was—countless geniuses were forcibly pushed to the breakthrough stage, and under the violent infusion of resources, the probability of breaking through was forcibly raised from one in a thousand or one in ten thousand to one in ten. Then, stepping over the bones of countless peers, they stepped into the threshold of achieving immortality.

The number of Nine Realms, which would normally take hundreds of millions of years to accumulate through a long process of selection and self-cultivation, has been compressed into a mere million years.

That was the most glorious period in the history of the Outer Realms, and also the most brutal. Before that expedition even set out, it had already drunk the blood of an entire era, all for one purpose: to build a bridge of slaughter across thousands of light-years in the vast sea of ​​stars.

They used the supreme being who had attained immortality as a beacon tower.

This is a luxury that no living being in later generations could ever imagine.

Before this, the furthest distance ever reached in the outer realms was only 2.5 light-years! Yet it still attracted disasters such as annihilation star lightning and ghostly plagues from who-knows-where, resulting in almost half of its forces being wiped out!

But Zhao Qing knew the outcome of that ultimate expedition: the enemy realm was completely sealed off in all directions, all living beings were wiped out, the void was first plowed and then burned, and all planets, satellites, and comets were crushed into dust, ensuring that there was no more remnant soul to cling to.

The price was the layers of dormant star cores she had glimpsed when she first saw the ice giant star.

The elite military force of the outer realms is far superior to the dozens of Ninth Realm experts currently stationed there! This is why Zhao Qing was unwilling to engage in a direct conflict with them and gave up provoking any further challenges.

The fact that this matter was mentioned in passing in this exercise manual is clearly intended as a reminder.

"...The idea that disorder can give rise to order in a dynamic state—the chaotic methods derived from this concept—are indeed extraordinary!"

She pulled herself out of her thoughts, and with a gentle gesture, several faint wisps of chaotic energy emerged. They were thrown into thousands of superimposed void vortexes, solidifying into a nanometer-sized gray pellet, exuding a sense of abyss-like heaviness, and its density was indeed close to that of a neutron star.

The inner universe in the Hai Hui state is filled with chaotic energy. Using the arrow-forging technique in this method, the loading efficiency is astonishingly high.

Furthermore, considering that the Qi energy can prevent rifling wear, and that the energy supplied by the Dharma Form is inexhaustible, the compatibility is even higher.

In fact, Zhao Qing's gains went far beyond these.

The brief descriptions of events such as Annihilation Star Thunder and Ghostly Plague also provided her with a lot of inspiration and gave her a profound understanding of large-scale, three-dimensional battles at long range, which could serve as a reserve for the future.

"By the way, do you think the Red Jade Tai Sui is reliable?"

Zhao Qing asked.

"Reliable?" Emperor You replied calmly, "So-called 'promotion' is nothing more than driving people into a deadly trap and filling the pit of cannon fodder. Their promises may be believable, but one should not be complacent. If given the chance, I will kill them!"

It sounds somewhat ungrateful, but considering that the person in charge of the extraterrestrial layout targeting Earth should be Chi Xiao, who indirectly caused the Netherworld Divine Silkworm to be banished from the heavens, there was already a deep-seated grudge.

Zhao Qing did not say anything more.

It is not her job to teach people to act cautiously and proceed step by step; how can a few words replace a person's accumulated wisdom?

Without further delay, she strode into the distance, her feet naturally shrinking the ground to inches, each step covering several miles, the dawn light stretching into a white glow.

The stars hung low over the fields, and the blinding sunlight spilled over from the horizon, unobstructed, like molten water splashed onto the endless desert, both cold and bright, chilling one to the bone.

The shadows of the crater were as black as ink, while the edges of the impact crater were as bright as silver. There was almost no transition between light and shadow, as if this world only knew the polar day and the polar night, and did not know that there was dawn and dusk in the human world.

The dust particles that had been trampled slowly settled in the windless, airless void, their tracks forming extremely fine and faint spirals.

In the distance, a cliff juts out at an angle, with half of the wreckage of an ancient starship embedded in its surface. The keel is exposed, covered in rust, and the oxidation patterns, etched by cosmic rays over thousands of years, are a deep purple to almost black.

Below the cliff was Emperor You's forging workshop.

Several newly built refining towers spewed out dark red flames.

Hundreds of mountain-sized Nether Worms slowly wriggled, their carapaces engraved with Foundation Building arrays, faintly glowing with a ghostly blue light. With each inch they moved forward, a large amount of gravel was broken down into fine sand, which was then mixed with mucus and piled up into ingots by subsequent worker worms.

A moment later, her gaze crossed the desolate arc of the moon's surface and fell upon the Milky Way stretching across the sky. The boundless darkness was adorned with countless cold lights, some as solid as frost and snow, some as scattered as fireflies, some as gathered as necklaces, and some as faint as wisps of smoke, all guarding that blue planet.

Above, the clouds swirl and curl, like strands of hair falling across a beautiful woman's forehead; the sea is deep and dark, like unpolished ancient jade at a gentleman's waist.

The land, a tapestry of ochre and verdant hues, appears and disappears through gaps in the clouds.

"It is hard to part easily when one is about to leave, so one pauses briefly before departing."

A moment later, Zhao Qing closed his eyes, and with a flick of his sleeve, the newly refined Dingguang Dongque Qi was held in his palm.

She untied the magic net and infused it with her own unique magic talisman, "The Twelve Illuminations of the Mysterious Steps," which she had created in her spare time.

And so, a colorless flower, on the windless moon, leisurely unfurled its twelve petals, each petal a transparent void, yet faintly reflecting a star map that did not belong to this moment.

That is not the starry sky at this moment, but the starry sky of the past, the future, or that never existed, layer upon layer, shining and fading.

One petal reflects the dazzling brilliance of ancient stars, another flows with the vast and boundless Milky Way, and yet another conceals the primordial energy before the chaos was sculpted.

The clear purple patterns lit up one after another, like embankments and sluices, guiding the flowing nothingness into the predetermined riverbed. The void energy circulated and returned between the engravings, gradually condensing into a pool of serene stillness that neither increased nor decreased.

The gap opens.

Zhao Qing's thoughts silently slipped into that gap. Endless darkness stretched out in all directions at the same time, and then collapsed simultaneously.

"Light" hangs suspended in the darkness.

Those were countless extremely fine and faint cyan-gold streaks of light, as delicate as silkworm threads, their density varying.

Some lines are as straight as arrows, some are as winding as streams, some are curled into intricate cloud patterns, and some are scattered into a faint, ethereal mist.

They intertwine, entwine, and overlap, yet never meet, each shining and fading alone in its own dimension.

They wove together into a silent tangled mess.

Zhao Qing quietly absorbed the sensations.

She knew that this was the "sun mark".

……

Half an hour later, the tiny void cracks swallowed Zhao Qing.

Yet there was also a hazy figure walking in her place through the transparent, ever-changing world of the Sensitive Stones. Nine winding mountain ranges each displayed their unique colors, covered with crystal-like trees that jingled and clattered when the wind blew.

Occasionally, rainbow lights would dart away, rushing from the Xun position to the Kan position. These were the lingering breaths dormant deep within the stone embryo, still unknowingly recognizing the approaching beings.

"When the spring breeze returns to the old mound, new shoots will sprout from the depths of the withered roots."

Wherever Zhao Qing's avatar passed, stardust fell in a flurry. With each stardust that fell to the ground, a sword grass sprouted from the stone, budding, unfurling its leaves, and forming dew. The dew reflected a magnificent chapter of swordsmanship.

After traveling slowly for a thousand miles, we arrived at the Dragon World on the other side.

On the vast grassland, the sword grass has grown to half a person's height.

Hunched figures stood densely among the blades of grass.

It's an ice figurine.

The endless ice terracotta warriors, in a solemn and imposing formation, seemed to be waiting for a horn to sound before breaking through the ice.

From the perspective of divine will, each of them is like a small hill suppressing something, yet they are also vaguely connected with the gaze of the distant stars, elevating their essence, with stillness preceding movement, and their unyielding figures merging into a majestic mountain, easily blocking all harm.

Named "The Fading Path," it is an enhancement of the "Thousand Mountains and Evening Snow Formation" from the Sword Tomb. In Zhao Qing's hands, it has incorporated various changes and has already reached the ninth realm.

Various paths exist, all with the same form and appearance, yet their underlying principles are indistinguishable from one another.

In other words, it is a maze and a trap.

Beyond the defensive line formed by the sword spirit array, there lies a vast expanse of desolation, devoid of any sign of life.

Over the years, the time-formatting initiated by the Black King has cleansed the surrounding area for thousands of miles, erasing all the imprints left by countless destinies over billions of years, leaving no trace.

The weathered and cracked earth stretched to the horizon, devoid of birds or insects, only endless grayness and deathly silence.

There is a layer of crystal-clear, ethereal membrane that separates the inner and outer worlds.

It clings to the ground, tangential to it, incredibly vast, gradually curving upwards in the far distance, rising and disappearing into the unseen depths of the high dome, finally converging into a colossal sphere—so enormous that from this vantage point one can only glimpse a tiny arc of it.

It was an Earth that looked like a reflection.

Mountains and rivers hang upside down, seas and rivers hang upside down, clouds surge beneath the surface of the abyss, and thunder rumbles in the depths of the valley.

It is exactly the same as the state of a real place where life has been destroyed, like a one-to-one projection of a 3D screen, a deep simulation.

Countless grottoes, like honeycomb, are densely interlocked and layered, and through immeasurable spiritual refinement and with the mortar of time, they have built this majestic shell that hangs upside down in the void.

It is a decoy.

A pseudo-world that can fool time-formatted systems.

Like flood control, building dikes and dams to divert and disperse the rushing water may be effective in the early stages, alleviating the spread of seasonal decay. However, once the accumulated "water" reaches a near-overflowing level, it becomes difficult to continue, and the dam will collapse.

A suitable outlet must be found.

To serve as a new target, a new "reservoir".

Its name could be: The Urn That Deceives Heaven.

Zhao Qing looked up and gazed intently, examining the mysteries within.

Once the method of inheriting the calamity in the false world was activated, he inexplicably felt that he was the one who was upside down, looking up at an abyss while the upside-down earth was the real place to stand.

A feeling of heaviness rose from the depths of her mind, intangible and formless, yet it pulled her consciousness "down," and down again.

It was as if that was the final destination of all those who had fallen since time immemorial, and the field where she now stood was nothing more than a withered leaf floating in the void.

The relative strength of the forces at play determines which way the water flows.

Under Xia Mi's command, the moon's gaze was cast from the depths of the distant starry sky, repeatedly sketching and reinforcing, building each cavern into its predetermined position within the giant shell, like laying a brick.

If a brick weathers and cracks over time, the moonlight will remove it, refine it, and then replace it with a new brick, constantly repairing it and always maintaining that almost indistinguishable outline.

Hundreds of millions of people who have just embarked on the path of cultivation in recent years, many of whom still rely on Qi capsules to practice, have joined the Sword Realm as a group, contributing the foundation for weaving the underlying dream world and adding materials for the mass production of Nibelungen.

The newly created Nibelungen was merged with the grotto-heaven, and with the help of the mandala pure land method, the corresponding landscapes and creatures on Earth were replicated and rendered, and then cut into thin slices to maximize the use of its area.

The time-series formatting, which should have eradicated all traces of life on the earth's surface over the course of half a year, was replaced by a counterfeit "deceiving urn," which would actually only have cleansed the earth faster. However, with long-term updates that replaced the damaged caverns, the process could be repeatedly postponed.

However, the accumulated "water" has not yet receded, and the power of the tide is growing stronger. One day, the tide will be unable to keep up, and the end will come.

"It's time to resolve the problems left over here!"

Zhao Qing smiled slightly, then suddenly stepped out and traveled more than 13,000 miles away, to the very center of the Shadow Earth.

Countless grottoes lit up simultaneously, their radiance scattered like scales, opening and closing in turn; countless crisscrossing, imperceptible fine lines rapidly increased and repeatedly broke like cotton wool.

The simulated surface seen from the inside is completely different from the view from the outside. In this "lifeline weaving realm", everything exists in the form of abstract, distorted lines, most of which are covered in colorful hues, while a small half of the sphere presents a black and white image.

The former is a pure land where the order of fate has not yet been extinguished, while the latter is a desolate land where the heart has been eroded and only the physical form remains.

Standing at the center of this bizarre sphere, Zhao Qing remained motionless, yet in an instant, she exuded an aura of infinite elevation and ascent. The continuous, strange pixel blocks gradually shrank as her alternative dimensional vertical axis increased, then twisted into a ring, and finally converged to a single point.

The burden of the pseudo-world rests entirely on Zhao Qing's shoulders.

Then, she suddenly leaped up, approaching the real Earth, an invisible force descending around her like a waterfall, like an abyss.

The Heaven-Deceiving Urn maintained its precise tangent arc with the ground, without shifting even slightly. However, as Zhao Qing soared into the air, it rapidly shrank, causing the vast landscape, countless caves, endless light and shadow, and lines to collapse inward, as if being gripped and rapidly contracted.

It gently touched her fingertips and spun around endlessly.

At the same time, Zhao Qing's body underwent a crazy expansion, instantly becoming many times larger.

Her Dharma form stretched across the void, towering into the sky, her shoulders almost level with the clouds, making that tiny pseudo-realm appear even smaller.

That tiny glimmer of light suddenly froze.

Dingguang Cave Gate, with the urn as its blade.

All things return to their origin, and even the smallest gaps can become sharp edges.

It transformed into a dark star that resembled neither a sword nor a seal!

A lone star falls! Carrying the force of a pillar supporting the heavens, it crashes into the silent, mountain-like black silhouette that lies prostrate at the edge of the desolation.

...(End of this chapter)