246: Quickly pass the level

A moment later, his gaze shifted slightly, locking onto a point of light that flickered incessantly and drifted unpredictably amidst the violent turbulence—that was the entrance to the Heavenly Stairway! He did not move his body, but the chaos wings behind him gave a gentle flap.

"Void Shuttle!"

His figure vanished from the spot instantly, ignoring the barriers of the violent Great Dao Laws in between, and appeared directly before that point of light, stepping inside in one stride!

With a flash of light, Lin Yuan's figure disappeared from the First Heaven. The Luck Rainbow Bridge behind him, resplendent like a chaotic sun, also faded away, but the immense Luck and might it had condensed were already deeply branded into the hearts of those who witnessed it.

After him, fifteen figures representing different ultimate Daos also passed through their respective entrances almost simultaneously, leaving behind a scene of Chaos and the many Prodigies still struggling.

When the time of one incense stick burned out, the Eye of Heavenly Dao flashed, and the First Heaven battlefield instantly froze. All Prodigies who had not found an entrance or had lost their combat power were ruthlessly teleported out. Of the original six hundred and ninety Prodigies, only three hundred remained. The air was permeated with the smell of blood and the scorched aura of lingering Great Dao Laws. The true screening had only just begun. Upon the Chaos Heavenly Stairway, a more cruel purgatory of Great Dao Laws and a battle for Luck awaited the "true gold" that had survived the torrent of Myriad Dao.

Second Heaven. The moment he stepped into this place, Lin Yuan felt his sense of space completely overturned. Before his eyes was not an open world, but a shattered kaleidoscope, with countless spatial mirrors folded, nested, and faulted at bizarre angles. One moment he was in place, the next step he might tread into a spatial trap filled with invisible blades, or be teleported to an unreachable dead end. His sense of direction was completely lost, and distances were distorted beyond recognition.

"Find and defeat the Guardian to open the entrance to the Third Heaven." The prompt from the Heavenly Dao will was cold and concise.

A blurry shadow, seemingly pieced together from spatial fragments, appeared silently behind Lin Yuan. In its hand, a transparent spatial blade thrust directly at Lin Yuan's heart! The speed was faster than thought, and the attack trajectory was completely integrated into the distorted spatial background.

However, this assassination, which was sufficient to instantly kill a Peak Myriad Dao Realm expert, felt as if it had fallen into the stickiest quagmire the moment it touched within a hundred zhang of Lin Yuan. The Chaos Domain operated on its own, and that peerless spatial blade, along with the Shadow Guard itself, was forcibly imprisoned and analyzed by an invisible, all-encompassing chaotic power.

Lin Yuan did not even turn his head; he only shifted his intent slightly.

"Freeze."

Crack! The Shadow Guard, along with the folded space it occupied, was like frozen amber, solidifying instantly before shattering silently under the crushing force of the Chaos Domain, dissipating into specks of spatial dust. A gate of light leading to the Third Heaven appeared quietly where the Shadow Guard had dissipated.

The Luck Rainbow Bridge behind him shone even brighter, with spatial runes faintly flowing within it.

Time here was like a wild horse off its tether. As soon as Lin Yuan stepped into an area, the speed of time around him suddenly accelerated a hundredfold! The consumption of physical strength, the loss of energy, and even the division and aging of cells were accelerating crazily! If not for his Chaos Body being indestructible through ten thousand kalpas and his Foundation being robust, anyone else would have turned into dry bones in an instant. Yet, the next moment he stepped into another area, time would nearly stop, causing sluggish thinking and frozen movements. Even worse was encountering "Time Reversal," where he would just dodge an attack only to be forcibly pulled back to his original position, facing the crisis all over again!

The Guardian—the Sand Puppet of Time—was condensed from the sands of time. Its attacks contained a terrifying power of time erosion, capable of stripping away Lifespan and decaying Magic Treasure.

Facing this bizarre and unpredictable environment and the Guardian, Lin Yuan remained calm. The chaos green lotus in his Sea of Consciousness flowed with clear radiance, smoothing out the sluggish thinking caused by the temporal disorder. The dark gold runes of his Chaos Body shone in the acceleration zones, forcibly withstanding the scouring of time. When the Sand Puppet attacked, wrapped in the sands of time that eroded all things, Lin Yuan brought his fingers together like a sword, a point of Chaos Heart Light concentrating at his fingertips.

"Break."

A Chaos Ruin Blade, as thin as a hair and with gui xu runes flowing along its edges, swept by silently. There was no earth-shattering explosion; the sands of time, capable of decaying all things, along with the body of the Sand Puppet, were cast into the end of time—the guixu origin point—the moment they touched the Chaos Ruin Blade, silently annihilated and decomposed without even a ripple. The power of time erosion was like a joke in the face of Chaos.

The Wither-Bloom Saint witnessed this from afar, and the Life-Death Domain beneath his feet, where prosperity and withering rotated, fluctuated violently. He himself had only managed a difficult victory against the Sand Puppet by relying on the mysteries of life-death rotation to cleverly resolve the time acceleration and reversal. Lin Yuan's effortless method, which was akin to "erasing" time, left him shocked. Lin Yuan's Luck Rainbow Bridge surged again, and a phantom of the River of Time faintly flowed within the rainbow bridge.

Fourth Heaven. This was the most intangible and also the most dangerous stage. As soon as he stepped into this place, the surrounding scenery changed instantly.

This was no longer a boiling battlefield, but a sinking abyss—the coldest, most desperate corner deep within Lin Yuan's memories!

On Blue Star, that youth named Lin Yuan had parents who were nowhere to be found, and his cultivation was low. The path ahead was cut off, shrouded in darkness. And he himself... was as weak as a candle in the wind, as insignificant as an ant in the dust! That so-called "Primordial Purple Qi" was nothing more than a wisp of delusional straw grasped during a near-death hallucination, and the magnificent journey thereafter, the fame that shook the Divine Realm, were all brilliant bubbles woven by his brain before death!

Cold! Bone-chilling cold spread from the depths of his marrow! Darkness! Despair, thick and inseparable like cold ink, poured crazily into his Sea of Consciousness, devouring the last glimmer of his consciousness!

"Kneel!" A thunderous rebuke, carrying pressure on the level of the Soul!

"Trash!" Countless overlapping voices of scorn, sharp as needles, pierced every inch of his nerves!

"You cannot protect anyone!" The backs of his mother and father before they disappeared... the heart-wrenching, bone-piercing images were ruthlessly torn open by this curse!

"Die!!" Finally, it was countless roars and screams filled with pure malice, converging into a torrent of destruction, crazily surging and echoing in his Sea of Consciousness, which was on the verge of shattering! They greedily licked at the deepest fears in his heart, gnawed at his accumulated guilt, ignited his useless anger, and amplified his bone-deep sense of powerlessness!

It was ending... drowning in this boundless cold and darkness...

Was this... the end?

The Guardian—the Faceless Heart Demon—transformed into the image of the most important family members in Lin Yuan's memory, asking tearfully: "Yuan'er, why must you walk this dead end without light? Turn back now!" The voice was mournful, striking directly at the softest part of his Soul.

If there were even a sliver of a crack in his Dao Heart, he would instantly sink, be devoured by the Heart Demon, become a walking corpse, and be easily "killed" by the Guardian.