Chapter 176 A Dream Across Thousands of Miles, Descending to the Forbidden Land of the Demon Capital
Demon City, three thousand meters beneath the deep sea.
This was the shadow side of the Great Xia's most prosperous metropolis, and also the core lifeline of the reclusive Lin family—the "Grand Treasury Vault."
At this moment, the atmosphere inside the vault's command center was suffocatingly oppressive.
"The Shadow Guards have been wiped out... Young Miss Lin Yan was slapped into the wall and remains unconscious to this day?"
Lin family Elder Lin Kurong stared fixedly at the battle report in his hands, his withered fingers digging deep gouges into the special alloy tabletop, his voice as raspy as sandpaper grinding against the ground.
Before him were a few Shadow Guards who had luckily escaped.
These death soldiers, who usually killed without blinking, were now curled up in a corner, their bodies trembling uncontrollably.
"Elder... that was not a human... that was a god..."
One of the Shadow Guards had unfocused eyes; due to extreme terror, fine cracks had already appeared in his Sea of Consciousness.
"He didn't even open his eyes... he just turned over, and we felt as if the sky had collapsed. That suppression of status was like a Mortal staring directly into the abyss; even the thought of resisting would be instantly erased..."
Lin Kurong's heart shook violently.
As a Lin family Elder, he knew Lin Yan's strength all too well—a Peak Great Grandmaster, combined with the Lin family's secret Cultivation Technique, was enough to run rampant across the Great Xia.
Yet, before Jiang Chen, she couldn't even take a single slap?
"Activate the 'Heavenly Origin Unity' Formation! Raise all defense Ranks to SSS!"
"Invite out those guest experts in the vault who are in closed-door cultivation; even if a God of War descends, they shall not take a single step in here!"
Meanwhile, in the Great Xia Imperial Capital, at the God of War Committee headquarters, Long Zhantian was staring blankly at the holographic star map before him.
On the map, the coordinates of the Northern Frontier Fortress were emitting an extremely bizarre frequency of Mental Energy.
"Chairman, according to satellite monitoring, the spatial structure of the barracks where Jiang Chen is located has undergone extremely unstable folding."
A technical Major General reported, covered in sweat.
"This folding is not destruction, but an extremely sophisticated 'dimensional compression.' It looks... as if, while he is sleeping, his subconscious is attempting to connect to another coordinate."
God of War Tian Shu took a deep breath from the side, his eyes filled with awe:
"I understand. Jiang Chen is not just receiving a transmission of power; he is now attempting to 'Patrol the Heavens in a Dream'!"
"Look at the trajectory of these fluctuations; the target is pointed directly at the Demon City. If I am not mistaken, he felt in his dream that the Lin family was too noisy and is preparing to go to the Demon City for some 'physical silencing.'"
Long Zhantian stood up abruptly, his eyes burning with intensity:
"As expected of a successor of the Emperor Realm! He can even achieve spatial displacement while sleeping; this is simply treating the Laws of the Universe like his own bedsheets!"
"Pass down the order, blockade the Demon City airspace! Tell the Lin family, if they disturb Consultant Jiang's sweet dream, there will be no need for Consultant Jiang to act; I, Long Zhantian, will personally flatten their Lin family ancestral grave!"
The big shots' wild imaginations had reached a height that even Jiang Chen himself could not comprehend.
In their eyes, every snore of Jiang Chen's was simulating the frequency of the Big Bang of the Universe.
Northern Frontier, inside the special-grade barracks.
Jiang Chen was currently having an extremely frustrating dream.
In the dream, he was in a massive sauna, just about to ask a maid to add some essential oil, when the maid disappeared.
In her place was a faint scent of wood; the fragrance was refreshing to the heart, instantly cooling down his originally somewhat feverish Divine Soul.
"Mmm... such fragrant wood... want to hug..."
Jiang Chen smacked his lips, his originally reclining body moving slightly.
In reality, Su Qingyue and Mu Qingxue, who were guarding the bedside, exchanged a look, their beautiful eyes filled with heartache.
"Brother Jiang Chen has sweat on his forehead; was the consumption from that slap earlier too great?"
Su Qingyue bit her red lips lightly, holding a towel soaked in Heavenly Phoenix essence blood and dew, and wiped Jiang Chen's forehead with extreme tenderness.
The towel brushed past the tip of Jiang Chen's nose, bringing with it a faint, maidenly fragrance.
Mu Qingxue silently took Jiang Chen's hand, feeling the warmth radiating from his palm, and said softly:
"That palm strike of his just now forcibly drew upon the Spiritual Qi within a hundred miles; he must be suffering from an overdraft of Mental Energy right now. Qingyue, help him cover himself with the quilt; do not let the cold air of the Northern Frontier invade."
Just as the two women were being tender and considerate, they did not notice that the purple ripples around Jiang Chen had become thick to the extreme.
Hum—!
In that instant, Jiang Chen's body seemed to turn into a transparent phantom.
Under the astonished gazes of Su Qingyue and Mu Qingxue, a phantom figure wearing loose pajamas and with a blue slipper dangling from one foot passed directly through the walls of the barracks and disappeared into the Void Realm.
Demon City, Lin family Grand Treasury Vault.
Known as an absolute defense that not even a micro-nuclear bomb could blow open, it now welcomed an uninvited guest.
Tap.
A soft sound.
That was the sound of a plastic slipper making contact with the alloy floor.
Amidst the dense laser beams and gravity traps capable of strangling a Great Grandmaster, Jiang Chen's projection appeared leisurely.
He kept his eyes closed, his face lazy, and he was even yawning.
Those laser beams, capable of piercing steel plates, rippled like water the moment they touched Jiang Chen's pajamas, automatically avoiding him.
"Warning! Illegal intrusion! Illegal intrusion!"
The vault's alarms blared instantly.
Hundreds of fully armed Lin family guards swarmed in, and they were all dumbfounded as they looked at the youth who was walking through the center of the vault as if it were an empty space.
"How is it possible... the nine-layered Formation outside doesn't even let a fly in; how did he appear directly here?"
"He... he seems to be sleepwalking?"
A guard trembled as he raised an electromagnetic oscillation spear, attempting to block him.
But when the tip of his spear neared the three-meter radius around Jiang Chen, the originally rigid alloy spear bent and softened just like a noodle.
Because Jiang Chen had caught that scent, his body spontaneously walked toward the core of the vault.
His gait appeared extremely comical, swaying left and right, yet every step landed precisely on the blind spot of the Formation.
That was not calculation; that was a crushing of dimensions.
"Stop! This is the Lin family Forbidden Ground!"
Two guest experts at the pseudo-God of War Rank appeared, the two of them joining forces to manifest a massive bronze tripod, attempting to suppress this bizarre phantom.
Jiang Chen, however, seemed to have been disturbed, his brows furrowing slightly.
He muttered in his dream: "So annoying... flies..."
Subsequently, his foot, wearing the slipper, kicked forward extremely casually.
That kick, under the augmentation of the projection, transformed into a spatial crack spanning a thousand meters.
Boom—!
That bronze tripod, capable of suppressing rivers and mountains, didn't even last a second before it was kicked into a sky full of copper shards by that kick.
The two guest experts didn't even have time to scream before they were swept into a wall crack by the ensuing spatial turbulence, hanging neatly "next door" to Lin Yan.
The entire scene was deathly silent.
The Lin family guards dropped their weapons and knelt on the ground, trembling uncontrollably.
This was not a battle at all.
This was a high-dimensional life form clearing the field.
Jiang Chen finally walked to the deepest part of the vault.
There, a massive piece of wood, pitch-black throughout and emitting a faint, divine light, was floating quietly in mid-air.
The Millennium Soul-Calming Wood!
One of the foundations of the Lin family's dominance over the Great Xia, and also the key to nourishing the Divine Soul and opening the Divine Path!
Jiang Chen revealed a satisfied smile in his dream.
Like a child hugging a body pillow, he reached out and embraced the priceless Soul-Calming Wood.
And at the top of the Soul-Calming Wood, a metal fragment emitting an ancient aura also began to flicker with an unusual light.
That was... the Divine Key.