I gain ten years' worth of cultivation every day, and even geniuses will only see my doorstep!

"What is that thing?" Hongyue's knuckles turned white as she gripped the spear.

"The patrolmen of the outer realms," Su Yao whispered. "The guardian's divine sense left me a message before it dissipated. The outer realms aren't devoid of life, but the forms of life there are different from ours. In the Chaos Sea, there exist many 'chaotic creatures' formed from the laws of chaos. They have no fixed form but possess an instinctive territorial consciousness. They regard any orderly existence as an intruder and will destroy it as soon as they are discovered. That eye is just the smallest type."

The smallest one. Qin Yuan glanced at the eye three miles away, which was at least ten feet in diameter, but didn't ask how big the largest one was.

Once the eye had moved to the other side of the membrane and the frequency of the ripple scan had gradually decreased, Qin Yuan sheathed his bone blade and signaled for the group to continue. Along the way, they encountered more and more similar entities. Besides the eye suspended in the chaotic turbulence, they also saw a long, tailless creature, like a giant python pieced together from countless shattered lenses, slowly swimming through the chaotic currents. Every time it swam a certain distance, its body would automatically break off a section, the broken part transforming into even smaller fragments of lenses that scattered and disappeared into the chaos.

"It's reproducing," Yueyao whispered.

"It's not reproduction," Su Yao corrected. "It's devouring. Wherever it swims, the energy in the chaotic turbulence is absorbed by it. When it reaches saturation, the excess energy is expelled as fragments. Those fragments will grow into new individuals after a period of time. This is not reproduction in the biological sense; it's more like... division."

"What will happen when it's full?" Yan Lingji asked.

As soon as he finished speaking, the giant python with the lens suddenly stopped.

Its head—if it could be called a head—slowly turned toward the membrane. It had no eyes, but everyone felt its "gaze." A cold, purely instinct-driven gaze, like a hungry beast smelling its prey.

Then it charged at us.

Before Qin Yuan could even shout "Form the formation!", the giant serpent slammed into the protective membrane. The entire stabilizing layer trembled violently, and countless cracks appeared on the membrane's surface, like a piece of glass about to shatter. Qin Yuan unleashed a slash, the blade piercing through the membrane and striking the giant serpent's body, splitting it in two. But the cleaved body did not cease its attack; instead, it split into two independent entities, simultaneously striking the membrane from two different directions.

"This thing is immune to physical attacks!" Yan Lingji's flames had already surged out, and the heavenly fire burned briefly in the chaotic turbulence, incinerating one of the giant serpents with mirrored lenses into ashes. The one that was burned did not split again and completely disappeared.

"Law-based attacks are effective." Qin Yuan quickly determined the pattern. "Physical cutting will cause it to split, but the power of laws like fire, ice, and lightning can destroy its core. It has no weak points; the entire thing must be burned or frozen, and any remaining piece will grow back."

Ice Princess and Crimson Moon attacked simultaneously. Ice Princess's Profound Ice Law froze the giant serpent on the right from head to tail into an ice pillar. Crimson Moon pierced the ice pillar with her spear, and the Azure Wood Power attached to the spear shattered the ice pillar into powder. On the left, Mu Hongyi swung her sword, and the Limitless Sword Intent transformed into thousands of tiny sword energies, shredding the last fragment into the finest dust.

The battle lasted less than twenty breaths. But the cracks in the membrane did not heal; they remained on the surface like an ugly scar.

"This thing has its eye on us." Su Yao crouched down, pressed her palm against the crack, and tried to repair it with the Chaos Origin. The membrane absorbed the material very slowly. After the Chaos Origin seeped in, the edges of the crack did slowly close, but at a much slower speed than the speed at which she was inputting the Origin.

"Stop fixing it." Qin Yuan grabbed her wrist. "Your essence isn't for fixing floors."

Su Yao looked up at him, her lips moving slightly. She wanted to say, "This floor is our only foothold," but she saw another meaning in Qin Yuan's eyes. He wasn't stopping her from repairing it, but he knew he couldn't keep up. There would be even more chaotic creatures on the road ahead, and each impact would leave new cracks; no amount of her source energy would be enough to repair them.

"Hurry up." Qin Yuan helped Su Yao up, then turned to the others and said, "Find the source before the membrane collapses."

For the next three days, they barely stopped to rest.

The membrane continued to narrow, from three people side-by-side to two, and finally to only one person could pass at a time. Qin Yuan walked at the front, his bone blade still gripped in his hand. Yan Lingji followed closely behind, then Yue Yao, Hong Yue, Bing Ji, Jian Wushuang, Mu Hongyi, and Su Yao brought up the rear. The seven women protected Qin Yuan in the middle of the group, and the Seven Star Guardian Array automatically activated, the seven strands of sacred essence intertwining on the narrow membrane to form a barrier of shimmering light.

They encountered three more attacks from chaotic creatures along the way. The first was a giant hand formed from chaotic turbulence, each of its five fingers ten zhang long, its nails covered in barbs. Qin Yuan severed one finger with a single strike, and Yan Lingji's flames burned the severed finger to ashes, but the remaining four fingers simultaneously slammed into a membrane, creating a dent in it. Bing Ji froze one of the hands with her Xuanbing Law, Hong Yue shattered the frozen hand with her Qingmu Power, and Mu Hongyi's Limitless Sword Intent sliced ​​off the last three fingers.

The second wave consisted of a swarm of small fish. Each one was only the size of a thumb, but their sheer number was overwhelming. They converged into a silvery tide within the chaotic currents, surging towards the membrane from all directions. Jian Wushuang closed his eyes and unleashed his sword, countless sword energies colliding head-on with the silvery tide. Each small fish was precisely pierced through its core, but the impact of the swarm still caused the membrane to vibrate violently, creating more than a dozen new tiny cracks.

The third one was a face.

The face slowly emerged from the depths of the chaotic turbulence, its features blurred, only its mouth clear. It opened its mouth and inhaled towards the membrane. A large amount of chaotic energy was drawn from the membrane, its edges began to collapse at an accelerated rate, and a palm-sized fragment broke off from its narrowest point, falling into the chaotic turbulence below, where it was instantly dissolved into nothingness.

Qin Yuan didn't wait for it to take a second breath. He leaped out of the membrane, stepped into the chaotic turbulence, and plunged his blade into the face's brow. The moment the bone blade pierced it, the face's mouth opened even wider, but this time it wasn't inhaling, but a silent scream. Qin Yuan slashed the blade horizontally, cleaving it in two from the brow to the corner of the mouth. Using the recoil from splitting the face, he flipped back onto the membrane, his feet covered in a layer of chaotic turbulence residue; the soles of his shoes disintegrated the instant they hit the ground.