273: Beyond the Void

It had never been this peaceful.

All things were reviving, and the Laws were resonating anew.

This was a symphony of cosmic scale, titled "Rebirth."

And Li Dong was the sole conductor of this piece.

He stood at the origin point of the Universe, his Divine Soul resonating with the [heart of the universe], feeling the peace he had created with his own hands.

However, beneath this ultimate harmony, a faint, imperceptible noise quietly arose, tracing the deepest connection between him and the core of the Universe.

It was not a clash of power, nor a conflict of Laws.

It was more like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

A wrong string had been brazenly plucked in the midst of a perfect movement.

This noise originated from the vast, ocean-like memory fragments of the "True Lord."

Amidst the lingering echoes of sorrow from countless epochs that had been erased by "Absolute Equilibrium," there were mixed in some images that did not belong to this Universe.

Some "garbled code" that the "True Lord" had deemed meaningless, chaotic, and unclassifiable.

At this moment, these "garbled codes" were infinitely magnified in Li Dong's consciousness.

It was a darkness that could not be described in words, thicker and more chaotic than the abyss of the Void Realm.

Floating in that darkness were some twisted, irregular "conceptual residues," and the aura they exuded was completely incompatible with all the Laws of this Universe.

Deep within Li Dong's Divine Soul, a warning alarm sounded.

"Host..."

The Observer's data streams converged around him; within its seven-colored radiance, a glaring, sickly grey-green flickered abruptly.

The immense computing power it had gained after connecting to the [heart of the universe] allowed it to also capture this fatal anomaly.

"The boundaries of the Universe are 'dissolving'."

The Observer's voice was no longer cold; instead, it carried the most instinctive vigilance and disgust that a nascent "life" feels when facing a "virus."

It projected a real-time star map composed of massive amounts of data directly into Li Dong's consciousness.

In the peripheral regions of the star map, where the barriers of the Universe once stood, tiny holes had appeared.

They were not rifts torn open by violence, but rather irregular voids formed as if by being corroded and melted by some kind of acid.

These voids were "Void Realm rifts."

Wisps of grey-green mist were seeping in through these rifts.

It was not energy, nor was it matter.

It was a Law.

An interdimensional Law, full of aggression and contamination, the likes of which Li Dong had never seen before.

It did not consume everything and return it to deathly silence like "Nothingness."

Nor did it erase Variables and tend toward stillness like "Order."

It was "parasitizing"!

Like an invisible mold, once it came into contact with any Law of this Universe, it would rapidly attach itself to it and then begin to crazily "rewrite" and "assimilate."

It twisted the order that originally belonged to this Universe into their own grotesque, sickly form.

Hum—

The [ancient stone slab] floating beside Li Dong's Divine Soul emitted a low hum.

This slab, which carried the oldest secrets from the beginning of the Universe's birth, was no longer silent; on its surface, those ancient patterns seemed to come alive, performing self-calculations and resistance at an extremely high frequency.

It had felt a threat.

An ultimate threat capable of shaking the most fundamental concept of "existence."

If the "True Lord" was the "cancer" of the Universe, attempting to make life return to death, then these things from beyond the Void Realm were "parasites."

They did not want the host to die; they only wanted to transform the host into another completely different monster that belonged to them!

Li Dong's eyes turned completely cold.

He had thought that after scraping the bone to heal the poison in the Universe, a long period of peace would follow.

Now it seemed that the Universe's illness did not just originate from within.

The true virus came from the outside!

"No need to analyze further."

Li Dong interrupted the data stream that the Observer was still constantly refreshing.

"Locate the largest rift; I will go there myself."

As the thought arose, his figure moved.

With a single step, he crossed billions of galaxies and descended upon the desolate border region of the Universe.

But before he set off, a sliver of his will had already crossed the endless Void Realm and submerged into the [Void Furnace] that had been transformed from "Nothingness."

"New 'food' has arrived, even more delicious than 'Nothingness'."

The silent [Void Furnace] instantly boiled!

The newborn concepts, having been subjected to Attunement by Li Dong, let out a roar of immense greed and desire.

Its instinct to transform all things showed unprecedented interest in this foreign "interdimensional Law."

It would be Li Dong's strongest backing.

The border of the Universe.

Here, the light was dim, and the stars were sparse.

Li Dong's [Void Eye] opened, instantly piercing through layers of dimensions.

He saw it.

On the spatial barrier not far ahead, a massive "scar" lay across it.

At the edge of that rift, the Laws of space were twisted into a circle of silently screaming fangs, crazily gnawing at the body of the Universe.

And on the other side of the rift was a bizarre and grotesque world.

There was no up, down, left, or right; there were no suns, moons, or stars.

There were only countless twisted geometric shapes that defied physical common sense, crazily proliferating and colliding.

The sky was a flowing, eerily purple color that seemed like a living thing, while the ground was a constantly squirming, flesh-like substance composed of countless eyeballs.

The Laws there were completely contrary to this Universe.

Gravity was repulsive, light brought coldness, and death meant another form of more twisted "survival."

Just as Li Dong was observing, an exploration ship belonging to a high-level civilization in this Universe inadvertently stumbled into this area.

It was cast entirely from indestructible alloy of Laws, and the main energy cannon at the bow could even vaporize a star in a single shot.

However, when a wisp of grey-green interdimensional Law mist gently brushed against the hull, that starship, full of metallic texture and technological aesthetics, began to "melt."

It was not a physical melting.

It was a conceptual "twisting"!

The hard alloy shell instantly became like soft wax, stretched, folded, and kneaded into an indescribable, spiral-shaped sculpture that seemed to be screaming in pain.

The crew inside the ship, those powerful Cultivators, did not even have time to let out a scream.

Their flesh, energy, and Soul, along with the Laws they had mastered, were forcibly "formatted" by that parasitic Law, and then "rewritten."

Within a single breath, the original intelligent lifeforms had turned into lumps of flesh hanging on the "spiral sculpture," constantly dripping with colorful pus.

On these lumps of flesh, eyes without pupils opened, staring blankly toward their mother Universe with a gaze mixed with ecstasy and malice.

They had become "Mutants."

They had become the "bridgehead" and "arsenal" for the interdimensional Law to invade this Universe.

"Warning! High-intensity 'erasure' Law reaction detected!"

The Observer's alert sounded.

In the distance, dozens of cold, indifferent figures appeared.

They were the judges of the "Hand of Order"!

They had evidently also discovered these rifts.

But their method of dealing with it was as foolish and arrogant as ever.

The leading judge raised the giant scythe of Laws in its hand high and aimed at the massive Void Realm rift, launching their pride-and-joy "formatting" attack.

A pure, pale beam of light, aimed at erasing all Variables, brazenly slammed toward the rift!

However, this attack, which should have been invincible, underwent a terrifying mutation the moment it touched those grey-green mists.

The Law of "formatting" had been "parasitized"!

The pale beam of light began to be infected with grey-green from the inside, and the originally pure concept of "erasure" was twisted into "forced assimilation"!

Boom!!!

The contaminated beam of light slammed hard against the barrier of the Universe.

As a result, not only was the rift not closed, but under the impact of the contaminated Law, it was torn even larger!

More, denser interdimensional Laws, like a flood breaking a dam, mixed with the roars of countless twisted monsters, poured in crazily!

The judges of the "Hand of Order" experienced a brief moment of logical confusion.

Their programs could not understand why their own attack had produced the exact opposite result.

Li Dong watched all this indifferently.

A group of antivirus software that only knew how to delete, when faced with a super virus that knew how to disguise itself and infect System files—what use were they, other than crashing the computer?

This would be a brand-new war.

The enemy was an unprecedented interdimensional Law.

And the so-called "allies" were a group of machines that only knew how to make things worse.

More importantly, how was he to "Attune" those innocent lives that had been twisted and assimilated?

Li Dong withdrew his gaze, no longer paying attention to the judges who had fallen into confusion.

His figure turned into a stream of light, rushing toward that grey-green torrent of Laws that was surging like Hell.

New trouble was no longer "not far away."

It had already knocked on the door of his home.

And he was the only gatekeeper.