198: Star Crisis

Li Dong did not exchange many pleasantries with the Female Shaman.

Saying goodbye? For someone who had just realized his identity as a "cleaner," everything on this land was already in the past.

He simply raised his hand toward the air in front of him, as if pushing open an invisible door.

The power of the Nascent Soul Stage was completely different from before. If the Golden Core Stage was about leveraging Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, then the Nascent Soul Stage was about establishing one's own Law.

In his Sea of Consciousness, the [black crystal stone] and the [ancient stone slab] hummed, like two engines starting up, providing him with precise three-dimensional coordinates.

"Coordinates... Void Realm core..."

With a thought from Li Dong, the space in front of his fingertips began to distort, like a piece of red-hot glass. There was no earth-shattering roar, only a teeth-grinding "hiss."

A pitch-black crack appeared out of thin air.

On the other side of the crack was not the familiar blue sky and white clouds, but a pure, deathly silence capable of swallowing all light.

He looked back; the glaciers remained, and the figures of the nomads had already become tiny.

"Time to go."

He took a step forward, and his figure was instantly swallowed by the crack. The crack then closed, as if nothing had ever happened.

...

"Damn it."

This was Li Dong's first thought after stepping into the true Void Realm.

There was no up, down, left, or right, no sound, and no light. There was only endless darkness and a terrifying pressure that threatened to tear him apart at the atomic level. Countless tiny spatial turbulences, like billions of invisible blades, were frantically cutting into his body.

Compared to this, space travel in the Mortal Realm was simply like a flower in a greenhouse.

The moment his spiritual power shield was raised, it was gnawed away until almost nothing remained; the rate of consumption was ridiculously fast.

At this rate, the spiritual power reserves in his body likely wouldn't last half an hour.

"Damn, I didn't check the almanac before leaving."

He was just weighing whether to retreat and plan for the long term when his body began to act strangely.

The Void Realm runes beneath his skin, the moment they came into contact with these violent energies, not only were they not destroyed, but they... lit up?

They were like a glutton who had been hungry for a long time, seeing a feast laid out before them.

A greedy suction force emanated from every pore of his body. Those spatial turbulences and stray Void Realm energies, which were enough to tear apart a Nascent Soul Cultivator, became as docile as sheep the moment they touched his skin, obediently being sucked into his body.

Then, the [Perfect Dao Body], that unreasonable "processing plant," began to operate.

These violent and chaotic energies were crushed, purified, and converted... finally turning into streams of pure spiritual power, feeding back into his Nascent Soul.

The consumed spiritual power was instantly replenished. Not only was it replenished, but it was even slowly increasing.

Li Dong was stunned for a moment, then expressionlessly twitched the corner of his mouth.

"24-hour fully automated idle mode, and it even restores mana and health... This service is quite top-notch."

With the crisis averted, he began to have the leisure to look around this so-called "Void Realm."

Indeed, there was nothing here. He was like a speck of dust floating in ink, tiny and lonely.

The [ancient stone slab] in his Sea of Consciousness emitted a faint light, guiding him in a vague direction. He just floated along unhurriedly; it didn't consume mana anyway.

He didn't know how long had passed—perhaps a day, perhaps a month. In this place with no concept of time, he suddenly stopped.

Not far ahead, there was something.

It was a piece of... irregular, slowly rotating dark red crystal, about the size of a house. It just floated silently in the darkness, emitting no light and showing no signs of life.

But Li Dong instinctively felt a sense of malice. A pure, unmasked hostility directed at all living beings.

"A new species?"

As he was thinking this, the dark red crystal moved without warning. All its edges instantly turned into sharp spikes, shooting toward Li Dong at an incredible speed.

"Well met."

Li Dong did not dodge or avoid it; he simply extended his right hand and spread his fingers. A miniature [Void Vortex] formed in his palm.

Those spikes plunged headlong into the vortex, not even creating a bubble before being swallowed completely.

Immediately after, a strange energy surged into his body along with the vortex. This energy was cold and deathly, yet it contained a strange fragment of Law.

The [Perfect Dao Body] activated again, digesting and absorbing this energy. Li Dong could feel that his Nascent Soul figure seemed to have solidified just a tiny bit.

"So this place... isn't that poor after all."

He looked at the dark red crystal, which was now too scared to move, as if looking at a walking Spirit Stone.

"Don't run away, let's chat a bit longer."

His figure flashed, and he instantly appeared beside the crystal, throwing a punch. His fist sank into the crystal, and the power of the [Void Realm] erupted.

The dark red crystal silently shattered and decomposed, turning into the purest energy, which he absorbed entirely.

Satisfying. This journey seemed less boring now.

In the following days, Li Dong completely let himself go. He treated this deathly silent Void Realm as his exclusive hunting ground.

He encountered strange plants like dandelions that could spread seeds of mental pollution; he met elemental life forms made of pure lightning with no fixed shape; and he even saw a "swarm" composed of tens of thousands of small creatures that knew how to coordinate in battle.

Every one of these Void Realm creatures harbored great malice toward living beings. And Li Dong was their destined nemesis.

He ate as he walked, and his cultivation steadily improved. The divinity core at his waist, which had fused with the three-colored divine light, was also becoming increasingly powerful in its analytical capabilities under the stimulation of the Void Realm energy; the Law runes inside flickered like a marquee light.

Just as he was enjoying the hunt, the mark belonging to the God Lord on his forehead suddenly sent out a faint tremor. It wasn't fear, but a kind of... resonance?

Li Dong stopped and sensed carefully. In the very depths of the Void Realm, there seemed to be a few signals that were of the same origin as the mark on his forehead, flashing past.

"Heh, so Earth wasn't the only server that got hacked."

He roughly understood. Those signals were likely the "anchor points" established by the God Lord in other worlds, a vast cross-planar network.

"The boss has quite a wide scope of business."

He didn't pay much attention and was about to continue on his way when the [ancient stone slab] in his Sea of Consciousness suddenly shook violently, conveying an unprecedented warning.

Li Dong looked up and "gazed" in the direction the stone slab was pointing. That part of the Void Realm... was not right.

Although he couldn't see anything with his naked eye, in his perception, the spatial Laws ahead were extremely twisted and chaotic, with countless violent Void Realm storms entangled together, forming a terrifying area that could be called a "Sea of Death."

If he rashly charged in, even if his [Perfect Dao Body] could replenish energy, he would likely be torn to pieces.

"Star Sea... Crisis?"

A term inexplicably popped into his head. It was truly fitting.

Just as he was hesitating about whether to take a detour, the blurry Void Realm projection in the center of his Sea of Consciousness appeared again. It was the same as before: no facial features, no sound, just a mass of distorted light and shadow.

It quietly "looked" at Li Dong, and then, a thought was directly injected into his mind.

It was a new route. A... shortcut that went directly through the core of that "Sea of Death," looking even more ridiculous than suicide.

"Are you serious?" Li Dong raised an eyebrow at the projection in his Sea of Consciousness. "What's the difference between taking this route and sticking my head into a meat grinder?"

The projection made no response, only marking the coordinates of that route more clearly, as if to say: Take it or leave it.

Li Dong fell silent. He could feel that although this road looked like a death trap, it seemed to contain some kind of strange pattern, like the calm zone in the eye of a storm. This was an "internal channel" provided by the headquarters boss.

"Fine." Li Dong curled his lip. "I'll trust you once. If your navigation is faulty, I'm going to leave a bad review."

He hesitated no longer, adjusted his direction, aimed at the Void Realm shortcut that looked the most dangerous, and dove right in.