Overdraw the future and become a peerless martial god

Chapter 187 The Gate to the Realm
He paused, gave a wry smile, and lowered his voice:

"But now my lifespan is coming to an end, my soul fire is incomplete... I've also lost an eye and an arm, I'm a half-dead cripple."

He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, his tone carrying an unprecedented unease:
"I really can't... hold you back any longer."

Lei Jingjing did not answer immediately, but gently poked at the fire.

Sparks flew up, making her cheeks blush slightly.

After a long pause, she spoke in a low voice, her tone still calm, yet revealing a subtle awkwardness and stubbornness:

"I was originally extremely opposed to this marriage."

"He even called my father absurd... Who would gamble their child's marriage on the future of the world?"

She paused, her voice suddenly lowering slightly, as if afraid the firelight would hear her:

"But since... he's already said it."

"And you... can also get to this point."

She lowered her eyes, her voice as soft as the wind, yet no longer evasive:

"It's not that I'm unwilling to comply."

Chu Ning froze, her knuckles tightening slightly as she gripped her knee.

The firelight flickered slightly.

They didn't say anything more.

The distant sand dunes rippled gently, and the night wind rose again, carrying a hint of chill.

But this time, it wasn't so cold.

Night had not yet fallen, and although the Star Platform had ceased its activity, the residual energy at its core still slowly surged.

Chu Ning stood still, closed his eyes and concentrated, his soul wheel trembling slightly.

Suddenly, he felt a surge of "spiritual energy" beneath his feet that did not belong to the sand layer, like a faint breath coming from the deepest depths.

He immediately bent down and used the Thunder Soul Seal to draw a line on the sand. Cracks spread out and the yellow sand slid off, revealing a corner of a black rock monument.

Lei Jingjing gazed at the corner of the stone mark and said softly:
"It's a lockstone. It was erected by Master Hunyuan himself."

"But the main formation of the floating pavilion is already on the upper level. Why would he seal it off again beneath the sand?"

Chu Ning did not answer.

He clasped his hands on the ground, channeled his soul energy, and dragged the entire stone tablet out of the sand.

It was a gray stone monument about half a person's height, standing at the end of a wind-eroded pit. The surface of the monument was as smooth as a mirror, as if it had been washed by soul power for many years. Only the back was covered with extremely fine engravings, densely packed, like bone-deep inscriptions.

It doesn't seem like something written for the world; it's more like a spiritual record left by a master for himself.

The moment Chu Ning raised his palm and lightly touched the back of the monument, a chilling aura surged into his fingertips, like the tendrils of some ancient memory, instantly entangling his consciousness.

[...The boundary lock...was not forged by man...was not severed by the enemy...]

The breath of the soul surged, the words were disjointed, like a broken dream being reassembled.

[...its origin is...the remnants of tools used to mend the heavens.]

Before he could finish speaking, Chu Ning's pupils suddenly contracted, and the seal between his brows burned intensely.

Suddenly, a "pop" sound came from within his sea of ​​consciousness, as if something was being torn out from the depths of his soul.

A very brief, blurry, nonverbal "image of consciousness" suddenly appeared:
— Something stands outside the wind, below the boundary. It has no face, no eyes, no form, like an existence woven from black mist and light noise, yet it is so clear that it shatters the mind.

It made no sound, but Chu Ning heard it say, "It is waiting."

wait for what?
Who is waiting for whom?

The next moment, the "shadow" slowly turned its head.

Chu Ning withdrew his soul consciousness almost instantly.

"Don't move!" he shouted sharply to stop Lei Jingjing, who was about to approach. His voice was very low, and cold sweat was already sliding down his cheeks.

Even without eyes, the gaze of that "shadow" still shook his mind, confused his five senses, and made him feel as if he had fallen into a thunder abyss.

But before he could finish reading the inscription, his soul energy surged erratically within him, forcibly squeezing out the next fragment of information:
[...The other shore has opened...a crack has appeared here...above the Soul Map, below the boundary...]

[...If not sealed off, those who come...will be neither human, nor vessel, nor thought...]

Chu Ning felt countless delirious words exploding in his sea of ​​consciousness, like the ravings of a madman or the nightmares of an old god, rising layer by layer from the deepest part of his soul, making him almost unable to stand.

He gritted his teeth and desperately activated the World Lock Thunder Soul, slowly expelling the chaotic information from his body.

The last paragraph of the inscription is like the light a drowning person sees on the surface of the water as they struggle:
[...To inquire about those below the realm, first inquire about their hearts. If their hearts are not at peace, all spirits will be overthrown.]

Just as these words appeared, the "fuzzy presence" seemed to sense something, its figure trembled violently, and it tried to approach Chu Ning's soul sea again.

Chu Ning suddenly bit the tip of his tongue, causing his soul blood to gush out, forcibly severing the connection between his soul and the inscription.

"boom!"

He knelt on the ground, his shoulders twitching and his hands trembling slightly.

The last line of carvings on the back of the monument tinged with a faint blood-red hue under the starlight:
This world is not a gift from heaven, but a prison.

Lei Jingjing stopped a short distance away, her expression slightly changing. Just as she was about to step forward, Chu Ning slowly raised his head, his voice hoarse yet extremely cold:
"This monument is not a warning."

"It was someone's 'confession' left before they died."

……

The wind has stopped for three days, but the sand has never calmed down.

Chu Ning stood atop the deepest sand ridge in the vast sea, before him a massive sand vortex that seemed to have hollowed out the heavens and earth, resembling a bottomless well.

Wind Heart.

The wind's core is not the center of the wind, but rather "the point where the soul's pressure surges."

According to the inscription on the broken stele, this was the place where Master Hunyuan last "locked the soul mark".

—And this is also the true source of the boundary seam in the entire floating pavilion land.

Lei Jingjing stood not far behind him, her brows furrowed, her voice unusually low:

Do you know what you'll enter if you take another step forward?

Chu Ning didn't turn around, only saying calmly, "If I didn't know, I should have gone in even more."

A flash of anger crossed Lei Jingjing's eyes, and she suddenly gritted her teeth and spoke:
"That's not something from this realm."

"The Floating Pavilion calls it the 'Projection of the Other Shore.' After the Floating Pavilion was established, three Sealing Guardians attempted to approach the Heart of the Wind—"

"One of them went mad, muttering incoherently all day long, claiming to 'live in the future'."

"A self-immolating soul source who claims to have 'dreamed of the collapse of the entire world'."

"There's another one who came back, but he can no longer utter a word. His soul diagram presents... a non-human structure."

Her voice was calm yet urgent: "These are all recorded in the secret pages of the Soul Codex, and even the Pavilion Master is not allowed to look at them."

"Once you go in, you may never come back. Or when you come back... you won't be yourself anymore."

Chu Ning listened, then suddenly chuckled softly, her tone surprisingly calm:

"If there truly is an 'other shore'—"

He turned his head and looked at her:
"Do you dare to look?"

Lei Jingjing was startled.

There was no fanaticism or desperate tragedy in Chu Ning's eyes, only a clarity and inevitability that was almost extremely calm.

"There is more to it than just 'leaving' or 'staying' in this world."

"There is another type of person who must know—where they really are."

His voice was steady, and the dark silver soul lock in his palm trembled slightly, as if responding to the unfathomable echo of the wind beneath his feet.

"The Floating Pavilion taught me what inheritance is, the Boundary Lock taught me what the price is, and the Star Platform taught me my destiny."

"But no one has ever told me—where exactly we begin."

Lei Jingjing looked at him, her expression moved, but she didn't say anything more.

Chu Ning slowly raised her hand and gently grasped Lei Jingjing's wrist.

A wisp of lightning energy traveled from her palm to her fingertips, condensing into a dark silver soul mark on the back of her hand. The lines were as fine as a lock, and the light was extremely faint, yet it seeped into the skin, like a lifeline that could be severed at any moment.

"This soul imprint is connected to your vital energy."

"If I do not return in three days, it will shatter on its own. Then you may make your move."

His tone was low, but every word was steady. Lei Jingjing looked down at the marks on her hand, her fingertips tightening slightly, but she ultimately remained silent.

Chu Ning withdrew his hand, slowly closed his eyes, sat cross-legged, and took a deep breath.

The soul energy surged within his body like a tidal wave, then gradually contracted and compressed, finally sinking into the deepest part of his heart meridian, leaving only a thin thread that pierced through the Five Elements Soul Diagram.

He needed to regulate his breath to the most stable and purest point of his soul intent in order to face the gate to the underworld.

"This is all the preparation I can do."

"The rest I have to rely on myself."

Lei Jingjing took the Soul Seal, her fingers trembling slightly as she forcefully gripped it.

He finally looked at her, his tone suddenly softening:
"……Thanks."

She slowly turned around, her back view crisp and clean.

"I'll stay here and guard the road for you."

"If you do not return in three days, I will break the soul-sealing formation and pull you back."

She paused, as if trying to condense a thousand words into the shortest possible sentence:

"If you come back, remember to tell me."

What color is the other shore?

Chu Ning had already turned around.

But at that moment, he suddenly turned around slowly and glanced at her.

In the darkness of night, his pupils, like dark lightning, reflected Lei Jingjing's figure standing at the edge of the eye of the storm.

She stood atop the boundary lock cast by starlight, her clothes fluttering slightly, her soul calm and still, like a statue waiting for the wind to return to its source.

But deep within those pupils, a blurry, snow-white phantom suddenly flashed by.

It's not Lei Jingjing.

Yet—she looks remarkably like her.

The phantom figure, dressed in pure white robes, with hair flowing gently in the still air, stood half a step behind her, eyes lowered, expression as serene as snow.

Fleeting.

Lei Jingjing was completely unaware.

Chu Ning's eyes flickered slightly, as if something had struck her heart, but she only slightly curled her lips and said, "I'm leaving."

This time, however, he did not turn back.

The wind was silent, yet it seemed to suddenly sense his resolve.

The next moment, the star trail trembled slightly, and the boundary lock cracked quietly beneath his feet, revealing a deep and abyss-like "Wind Heart".

That wasn't the entrance, but rather a "crack" opened by time.

Chu Ning took a deep breath, and the Thunder Soul within his soul resonated with the boundary lock imprint. With a movement, he stepped onto it.

The wind suddenly exploded.

The world before his eyes began to deconstruct.

All familiar dimensions—up and down, left and right, day and night, hot and cold—become invalid.

What he stepped into was not a space, but a collapse of a "mode of existence".

His soul consciousness was instantly compressed into a single line, while his thunder soul seemed to be infinitely extended, repeatedly torn apart between light and darkness; there was no sound of wind in his ears, but countless reversed sounds roared wildly in the depths of his mind—as if the past, the future, and things that had never happened were all vying for him at the same time.

"the other side……"

That admonition from Lei Jingjing echoed softly in the last vestige of clarity in his mind:

What color is the other shore?
He opened his eyes.

The world has been completely rewritten.

The starlight exploded into lines, and his figure, like a bolt of lightning, ripped through the night sky, plummeting vertically through the crack in the Soul Lock in the center of the eye of the storm, where he was bound and swallowed by the remnants of the Boundary Lock like a vortex.

A storm swept through.

The entire desert trembled violently in an instant, the star platform lost its color, and the soul array collapsed.

The boundary lock slowly closed, as if no one had ever been there.

And now, his presence is nowhere to be found in this world.

The star trails in the sky suddenly exploded into countless soul points, falling towards the sand eye.

Deep within the eye of the storm, a faint, thread-like slit of light appeared.

He stepped inside.

When the soul loses its balance, sound, time, and light all collapse.

The world fell silent in the next instant.

It is not quietness, but a "silence" that has stripped away all sound and meaning.

He opened his eyes and saw a place that was indescribable.

It's not black, not white, not any color, but rather the concept of "color" itself is stripped away, flipped, and reconstructed here.

There was no solid ground beneath his feet, and the "space" around him was not composed of lines, but rather of a kind of extremely slow-flowing "folding"—as if the surrounding structure rearranged itself every time he blinked.

Time does not flow.

Light has no source.

And the air... seemed to be woven from "memory," each breath bringing a strange scene unrelated to him.

Then, a voice suddenly rang out.

The voice was ancient and dry, as if it were blown out of a piece of dry bone from millions of years ago, or as if a dream that had been abandoned for too long suddenly opened its eyes from the ruins.

It had no intonation, yet it carried an emotion that sent chills down your spine.

It was neither anger nor joy, but rather a mixture of scrutiny after a long wait, a slight curiosity, and an unfathomable weariness.

It slowly opened its mouth, each word striking the depths of its consciousness like a heavy hammer blow:
"Finally... someone else has come."

Chu Ning's pupils contracted slightly, and in the instant his soul trembled, he suddenly realized something:

The voice wasn't directed at him.

It was said to countless people who "came here but couldn't leave".

He didn't know whether he was "standing", "floating", or "suspended".

Because there is no gravity here.

There is no up or down.

He simply exists—like a torn strand of soul hanging on an invisible "net of existence," with every inch of "space" around him trembling slightly, like the breath of some giant beast.

"Chun Ning."

The voice sounded again.

This time, it was no longer vague, but accurately called out his name.

There was no echo, yet it carried an irresistible pressure, like flames flowing from a crack in a boundary marker, scorching the sea of ​​consciousness.

He tried to speak, but no sound came out. His tongue felt like it had been ripped off, and his throat felt like it didn't belong to him.

The next moment, figures appeared all around.

Their faces were blurred, but they were clad in tattered battle robes, chains, or soul armor. There were men and women, old and young.

They are neither "living" nor "dead".

Rather, they are the souls that have been here.

An elderly man with white hair bowed his head, holding a broken soul lock in his hands. He glanced at Chu Ning and said softly:
“I have been here. I just wanted a little time to finish the book I hadn’t finished telling.”

"I am willing to pay any price. I have said that I am not greedy, I do not fight, I only ask for a little time."

"But it asked me: 'If you weren't yourself, would you still be willing to write?'"

"I can't answer that."

He turned into dust.

(End of this chapter)