395: Projection of Will, Divine Chessboard

The core secret chamber was deathly silent.

Lin Fan sat cross-legged, his eyes tightly closed.

Inside his Godhead Core, that wisp of Origin Will, forged into a probe, had already pierced into the string of Coordinate Beacons flashing with red light.

There was no explosion.

There was no teleportation.

Buzz.

A hum, inaudible to the ears, exploded on the level of his will.

Everything he "saw" was instantly disintegrated, stretched, and distorted into meaningless lines.

The concepts of time and space lost all meaning here.

His will was dragged by an irresistible force through layers of thick, viscous "World Membranes."

Each layer was imprinted with a completely different mark of rules.

Some were violent, some deathly still, some full of life, and some were pure Chaos.

'Is this... dimensional travel?'

Lin Fan's thoughts were pulled into fragments during this bizarre journey.

'This feeling is much worse than death.'

He had no physical body, yet he felt the illusion of being crushed into countless pieces and then forcibly stitched back together.

An unknown amount of time passed.

It could have been a moment, or it could have been an eternity.

The frantic dragging sensation came to an abrupt halt.

His Will Probe finally reached its destination.

Then, he was plunged into unprecedented shock.

There was no interstellar base as he had imagined, no solemn halls, not even any physical matter.

This was a place of... absolute Void Realm.

In the Void Realm, hundreds of millions of light rays composed of pure rules crisscrossed, weaving into a massive God's Chessboard that could not be measured by sight.

Some of the chessboard's lines were burning, representing "Destruction."

Some were frozen, representing "The End."

Some flickered with pure white light, representing "Order," which Lin Fan had just come into contact with.

And upon the chessboard floated some indescribable "chess pieces."

They were not statues or models.

It was a blood-colored nebula representing "Strife."

It was a dim crystal symbolizing "Decay."

It was a wisp of "Plague" fire that constantly split and healed.

Lin Fan's will lingered at the edge of this conceptual chessboard, as tiny as a speck of dust that could not be observed at all.

'Holy crap...'

'What kind of ghostly place is this?'

'The Anomaly Elimination Alliance's command center is just a board game?'

His inner monologue was frantically scrolling in this absolute silence.

Just then, he "saw" the other side of the chessboard.

There stood several blurred, distorted, yet unimaginably massive outlines.

They seemed to have no fixed form, being merely aggregates of pure will and rules.

The presence emanating from each figure gave Lin Fan's wisp of will, which had traveled there with great difficulty, a sense of being on the verge of being assimilated or evaporated.

'More than one...'

Lin Fan's will suddenly shrank.

This was a trap, but he hadn't expected that behind this trap wasn't just one enemy.

But a group.

His "gaze" soon locked onto one of the figures.

That figure was composed entirely of pure white Order runes, exuding a majesty that judged everything.

But where his right arm should have been was a heart-palpitating patch of constantly churning, distorted nothingness.

The Order there had been severed.

It was that Elder.

'Boy, that's a nasty wound.'

A trace of schadenfreude flashed through Lin Fan's will.

But in the next second, all his thoughts were frozen by a sudden coldness.

Beside the chessboard, an outline composed entirely of shadows seemed to have noticed something.

His indescribable "face" turned toward where Lin Fan's will was located.

There was no gaze.

No Divine Thought swept over.

It was merely an act of "attention."

The rules of the Void Realm around Lin "Fan's" Will Probe began to violently distort and collapse.

An unspeakable pressure descended from thin air.

It was as if the entire chessboard, the entire high-dimensional spacetime, viewed him as a foreign object because of this gaze, wanting to squeeze him out of "existence" entirely.

His Will Projection, the probe forged from the Godhead Origin, began to show fine cracks on its surface, flickering as if it would dissipate at any moment.

'I've been discovered!'

Alarm bells rang in Lin Fan's heart.

He immediately wanted to cut the link and let this wisp of will self-annihilate.

But it was too late.

The shadow's "gaze" was like an invisible shackle, pinning him, this "speck of dust," firmly in place.

"Hmm?"

An ancient and raspy ripple of will echoed above the chessboard.

"A speck of dust has fallen onto the chessboard."

As this ripple of will sounded, the other towering figures all turned their "attention" over.

Among them was the one-armed Order Elder.

When his will swept over Lin Fan's faint probe...

His body, composed of pure Order, suddenly shook.

A violent will, mixed with shock, anger, and cold killing intent, erupted.

The chaotic and distorted nothingness at his severed arm became even more violent because of this fury.

'Crap, it's an acquaintance.'

Lin Fan's will trembled frantically, liable to be directly crushed by this aftershock at any moment.

"It's you."

The Order Elder's will made no sound, but transformed into two cold characters, directly imprinted deep within Lin Fan's consciousness.

It wasn't a question.

It was a sentence.

He recognized the "flavor" of this will; it shared the same source as the power that had severed his arm.

Humiliation.

Unprecedented humiliation.

He, the dignified Ruler of the Order Divine Court, had actually had his Divine Body severed across dimensions by an ant in his eyes.

And now, the tentacles of this ant actually dared to court death by crawling onto his chessboard of its own accord.

A will far more terrifying and pure than the previous giant Hand of Order locked onto Lin Fan.

It was an absolute, unquestionable concept of "Obliteration."

"An ant."

The Order Elder's will, containing supreme heavenly might, exploded like thunder in Lin Fan's Sea of Consciousness.

"Dares to set foot in the Divine Realm."

The moment the words fell.

An invisible blade condensed from the concept of "Obliteration" itself crossed the chessboard, ignored all distance, and slashed directly at Lin Fan's nearly collapsing Will Probe.