136: Chapter 136 Both Venerable Ones are Chess Players, Ancient Lock Awakens

Jiang Feng did not stop.

His right hand remained suspended in place, while his left hand had already moved.

The moment the finger light shattered, an extremely thin remnant thread of karma floated out from the source of the black-gold meteor shower.

It could not be captured by the naked eye.

It was something that could only be seen at the level of laws—the karmic tail left behind by a cross-dimensional attack.

To throw a punch is to create karma.

This is the rule.

Venerable Ming could not escape it either.

He pinched the remnant thread with two fingers and yanked it back.

The thread pulled taut.

The other end passed through the dimensional barrier, traversed the Chaos Realm, and led directly to the Supreme Void—Venerable Ming's true form.

The channel was more than three times thicker than the one pulled from Venerable Xuan.

The defenses were also countless layers thicker.

Seven Hunyuan-level seals were nested on the walls of the channel, each one engraved with runes of the Law of Destruction, and touching any one of them would detonate the entire channel.

Between the seals were three karmic backlash traps—the moment they were triggered, karma would backflow into the intruder's source, shattering it instantly.

Venerable Ming had learned his lesson this time.

Seven layers of locks, three traps, and maxed-out Hunyuan-level defensive specifications.

If any other entity of the same dimension came to dismantle it, anyone with a brain would have to think twice.

Jiang Feng did not think twice.

800 Jian.

His left hand grabbed the first layer of the seal on the outer wall of the channel, and his five fingers closed.

Rip—

Like tearing open a package.

No technique.

No methodology.

No offsetting of laws.

It was purely, in the physical sense—brute force.

The first layer of the seal shattered.

A muffled groan came from the Supreme Void.

The second layer.

Rip.

The muffled groan turned into a roar.

The third layer, the fourth layer.

Two screams overlapped, passing through the dimensional barrier and drifting over Blue Star, like wailing ghosts coming from the horizon.

The dragon girl squatted on the balcony, the corners of her mouth still stained with "insanely spicy" powder, her vertical pupils wide. Hearing that sound, the corner of her mouth twitched.

Venerable Ming's voice.

Last time in the Samsara Endless Prison, this chess player's tone had been condescending and carried the air of a cosmic tycoon.

Now—he was screaming like a slaughtered pig.

The fifth layer.

The three karmic backlash traps detonated simultaneously.

The karmic torrent backflowed—

It did not flow in.

The Law of Karmic Chains hanging on Jiang Feng was plundered from those Supremes of the primordial era.

It was Hunyuan-level, specifically designed to counter karmic-type methods.

The three torrents crashed into the Law of Chains, splashing like water, evaporating, and dissipating.

The sixth layer.

The seventh layer.

When the last layer of the seal was torn open, Venerable Ming's scream changed pitch—the roar turned into something approaching a wail.

At the bottom of the channel.

Venerable Ming's source core was exposed.

Nakedly.

Without any cover.

Jiang Feng reached out, poked his two fingers into the deepest part of the channel, and pinched it.

A yank.

A mass of dark red light was forcibly pulled out from the Supreme Void.

It was denser and more violent than the cyan-gold ancestral source of Venerable Xuan, with a fishy, sweet aura of blood churning on its surface, and every fiber was struggling frantically—like a fish dragged out of water, its tail slapping loudly, leaping and thrashing, but unable to escape.

Venerable Ming's source essence.

The accumulation of eons.

Held in the palm by two fingers.

The system sound exploded.

"Ding! Congratulations to the Host for successfully plundering the hongmeng ancestral source ×1 from the Chess Player, Venerable Ming!"

"11th Turn Advancement Mission Progress: 2/3!"

"Host's current six-dimensional base attributes have been updated..."

The numbers on the panel jumped for a few seconds.

1200 Jian.

Jiang Feng incorporated the dark red ancestral source into his body, and the Pangu Dao Fruit pounced on it like a starving tiger, wrapping it up tightly in a few moves.

The karmic thread in his palm snapped.

The channel collapsed.

The vast starry sky returned to silence.

...

The Supreme Void.

Venerable Ming stumbled back to the chessboard.

His seven orifices were bleeding.

Dark red blood streamed out from the corners of his eyes, ear canals, nostrils, and corners of his mouth, quietly and unhurriedly, like water leaking from a broken faucet.

Opposite him, Venerable Xuan sat holding his teacup, motionless.

Golden blood still hung from the corner of his mouth; the injury from when Jiang Feng plundered his source last time had not yet healed.

The two chess players.

For the first time in eons, they were both wounded and sitting at the same chessboard.

Two new cracks had appeared on the chessboard.

One was shaken out by the karmic backlash when Venerable Ming's source was plundered, and the other was left behind when the dark red ancestral source was torn away and the underlying logic of the chess game was forcibly tampered with.

The two new cracks crossed diagonally, meeting the first one—left by Jiang Feng's punch—at a single point in the center of the chessboard.

Three cracks, one intersection point.

Venerable Ming lowered his head and stared fixedly at that point.

The location of that point was exactly Blue Star.

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing the dark red blood over a large area, but he didn't care anymore.

He was silent for a long while.

"It awakened along with him."

His voice was as hoarse as if crushed sand and gravel were rolling inside.

"For every bit stronger that brat becomes, it awakens a bit more."

His finger pressed beside the light point of Blue Star, his fingertips trembling. "He absorbed your ancestral source, and it opened its eyelids. He absorbed my ancestral source—"

He paused for a beat.

When he looked up again, his pupils held pure, cold fear.

"—It is about to open its eyes."

Venerable Xuan set down his teacup.

His hand did not tremble.

But the surface of the tea in the cup rippled twice before settling.

He stared at the intersection of the three cracks on the chessboard; for the first time in eons, something loosened in those eyes that could calculate everything.

He pondered for a long time.

He spoke.

The interval between each word was twice as long as usual.

"From the very beginning... we were not playing chess."

Venerable Ming looked up abruptly.

"That thing is sleeping in the core of Blue Star."

Venerable Xuan's voice was extremely slow, as if fishing words out of deep water. "Pangu tried to break the seal and was erased by us. Everything that followed—the layout, raising the chess pieces, harvesting the source—"

He paused for a beat.

His gaze fell on the light point of Blue Star.

"Was all to help it... select a key."

A key.

The two words landed on the chessboard.

Heavier than Venerable Ming's world-destroying finger light.

Venerable Ming's complexion became terrible to the extreme. His lips trembled twice, and he squeezed out a sentence.

"...Are we also pawns?"

Venerable Xuan did not answer.

His gaze passed over the dense chess pieces on the board, penetrated the dimensional barriers, pierced through the intervals of all known space, and landed on that eye deep within the core of Blue Star that was currently opening.

Then he gently flipped over the chess piece that symbolized himself.

He did not say anything.

For the first time.

That hand which had held the teacup for eons—truly trembled.

...

Deep within the crust of Blue Star.

Six thousand kilometers.

That huge eye, woven from billions of ancient patterns—its eyelid cracked open a slit.

Extremely thin.

Less than one percent of the entire eye.

But the light leaking from the slit—had no color, no spectrum, no wavelength.

The retina received the signal, but the brain could not translate it into an image.

There was only one feeling.

Ying Zheng felt it.

The zhenguo sword stopped humming.

It wasn't returning to calm—it was that it didn't even dare to tremble.

The emperor's hand pressed on the hilt, his knuckles turning white.

For two thousand years, his back had never bent a second time; at this moment, it hadn't bent, but it had stiffened.

Xiao Zhenjiang felt it.

The old commander stood on the highest beacon tower of the Starry Sky Great Wall, the wind blowing into the gaps of his armor, but he did not move.

Those eyes that had stared at the starry sky for decades looked down for the first time.

The dragon girl felt it.

Her vertical pupils suddenly contracted to needle points.

The warning shriek of her Ancient Ancestral Dragon bloodline was sharper than ever.

She subconsciously shrank half a step behind Jiang Feng, the potato chip bag in her hand crinkling loudly.

Liu Cuilan felt it.

In the living room, she was curled up on the sofa knitting a sweater.

Her hands paused.

She turned to look out the window.

She couldn't explain it.

She just felt—that something was looking at her.

Looking at everyone.

That wisp of colorless light pierced through ten thousand meters of crust, penetrated the taixu barrier, and shot into the starry sky.

Extremely thin, extremely far.

The landing point—one hundred thousand li away.

Xuanji's body was still falling.

Her source was exhausted, her aura like a thin thread, and the golden patterns on her body were extinguishing one by one.

The moment the light landed on her, the collapse stopped.

It was not repair, not healing.

It was something more fundamental that gently supported her existence, which was shattering.

Like a hand—without any purpose, without any temperature—it just caught her.

Xuanji's eyelids trembled.

Before her consciousness sank into darkness, she saw—at the location of the pale golden mark on her chest whose connection had been severed, new patterns were growing.

Not Venerable Xuan's gold.

It was an extremely ancient, nameless hue, like the last stroke left behind by some civilization from eons ago.

Exactly the same as the carvings deep within the crust of Blue Star.

Then she knew nothing more.

...

Tianshu Dragon Garden. Balcony.

Jiang Feng stood by the railing.

He lowered his head to look at his palm.

In the center of his palm—at the location of the Pangu Dao Fruit core—a pattern had appeared.

Very small, very shallow, as if it had always been there and only allowed him to see it today.

He had never seen it before.

But the flow of the pattern, the style of the carving—

Originated from the same set as that eye six thousand kilometers deep.

The night wind blew from the direction of Dongjiang City, carrying the dampness of rotting phoenix tree leaves in late autumn.

Downstairs, the dragon girl had already fallen asleep.

Her snoring started again, full of vigor, penetrating two floors of the ceiling, interspersed with a sentence of sleep-talking: "...One more bag of insanely spicy..."

In the direction of the living room, Liu Cuilan picked up the knitting needles again.

The sound of the knitting needles clinking together mixed with the chirping of insects in the distance, peaceful, ordinary, no different from any other night.

Jiang Feng stared at the pattern in his palm for a long time.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Then opened them again.

"...So, was Pangu also created by you?"

His voice was very soft, so soft it almost melted into the night wind.

No one answered.

The pattern in his palm lit up for a moment.

Then it dimmed.

Like a silent nod.