106: Chapter 106 Undercurrents

In the months following the activation of the Seal repair circuit, the front lines of the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist experienced their longest period of calm since the fall of the Crown Prince.

Within the coverage area of the Twilight Light Network, all scorch marks from the Ash Law were slowly fading, and a faint greyish-green began to emerge on the surface of the scorched earth—the first wild grass to grow naturally in the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist in countless years.

Tie Chui expanded the self-circulating Pill Room complex from the front-line camp to every outer outpost. The supply cycle for Purification Pills was compressed from days to an hourly basis, and the healing rate of Devouring Abyss wounds in critically injured personnel was climbing month by month.

Little One no longer squatted in the corner of the Pill Room copying data; she was now the inventory manager for Purification Pills for the entire front-line camp. Her spiritual power logbooks had grown from one to several, each filled densely with stability tests and mineral crystal consumption data for different batches of pills.

Shen Ye made several trips between Wanxiang University and the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist, conducting a complete cross-comparison between the monitoring data of the Seal repair circuit and the ancient inscriptions deciphered by Jiang Yue.

Jiang Yue found the original design blueprints for the repair circuit in the backup archives of the Core Heritage Hall, and at the end of the drawings was a line of notes left by the Twilight Ancestors.

The line was extremely short, but every word felt like an ancient echo coming from the depths of the Seal: "Although the Ancestor of the Abyss has been sealed, the distorted Shiyuan Law within the Bloodline of the Void Race cannot be eradicated by the Seal alone. The collapse of the Abyssal Empire does not signify the end of the distortion. Anyone who inherits its legacy can become a new source of proliferation."

After translating the line word for word, Jiang Yue remained silent for a long time.

Her fingers rubbed repeatedly against the edge of the translation draft. The ancient characters on the paper, illuminated in pale gold by the afterglow of the Twilight Light columns, felt like a needle pricking through the certainty of victory she had held until now.

"The Crown Prince's Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body project was merely an imitation of the Ancestor of the Abyss's distorted Law. The true source of the distorted Law has never been any single person, but rather everyone who actively accepts and utilizes this power. As long as there are people willing to inherit the distortion, the Ancestor of the Abyss will never truly sleep."

She took off her glasses, rubbed her reddened eyes, and encrypted the translation draft to send to Shen Ye, Lin Tianyin, and Gu Qinghan, while also copying it to General Lin Yuan's front-line command post.

The early experimental records sent by Cang Ming from Eternal University also confirmed this.

Detection data from the Northern Mining District monitoring station showed that after the Crown Prince's fall, the fragments of the Shiyuan Law remaining in various experimental bases did not all disintegrate on their own.

Some fragments stopped decaying shortly after the Crown Prince's death—they had been reactivated by some external Law resonance and were continuously sending out extremely faint Law pulses from deep within the ruins.

The pulse frequency was identical to the Law patterns on the Crown Prince's personal Seal, but it was younger and sharper, like a newly forged blade that had not yet been stained with blood. The quenching patterns remaining on the blade were identical to those of the Crown Prince, yet they carried a certain unfamiliar aura.

"Someone is organizing his legacy for him."

Cang Ming attached the pulse frequency spectrum captured by the monitoring station to the encrypted message, "It is not the remnants of the Nomadic Royal Court, nor the remnants of the Ash King. It is the heir to the Abyssal Empire—although the Crown Prince's Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body has perished, the Law patterns he left behind are being reactivated by another force. This force comes from deeper within the Empire's core area, a place that even during the Crown Prince's lifetime was rarely accessible to anyone, and even the Bai Family's ancient star chart only marked a few outer detection points."

Along with the message, he sent a very brief recording of Law fluctuations. The background of the recording was mixed with extremely subtle low-frequency vibrations, which were identical to the vibration frequency when the Crown Prince fused with the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body in the Law Pool of the core area.

But the rhythm was different—the Crown Prince's vibrations were domineering and rapid, like a trapped beast bound by chains trying to break free; the vibrations in this recording were extremely slow and steady, like some monster hiding in a ten-thousand-meter abyss slowly opening its eyes.

Immediately after, Gu Qinghan's flight path map was also updated.

She cross-referenced the coordinates of the pulse source captured by Cang Ming with the unexplored grey zones deeper within the core ruins; all pulse signals pointed to the heart area of the Empire that the Crown Prince had never opened to the outside world during his lifetime.

Her voice in the encrypted channel was as calm as ever, using few words, but she paused briefly at the end, which was rare: "Deeper within the core area of the Abyssal Empire, there is an area painted pure black on all military maps. The Crown Prince rarely mentioned it during his lifetime, and all his public combat plans bypassed that area. However, from the last few encrypted logs in his backup data, it can be seen that he had visited it alone many times, and each time he returned, he would seclude himself in the Law Pool for a long time. The last time that area was mentioned in the logs, he only wrote one sentence."

Shen Ye turned the detector toward the area deep within the Empire's core, a region that even Bai Ye's Time Law beacons could not fully penetrate.

The heart deep within his Dantian beat powerfully; every pulsation echoed the Law frequency of the repair circuit, and at the same time, it produced an indescribable resonance with the extremely faint low-frequency vibrations coming from the depths of that darkness—not repulsion, but recognition.

Something in that darkness recognized his Twilight Energy, or rather, recognized the Mirror Fire left by the Twilight Ancestors deep within the Seal.

In the ancient artifact repository on the top floor of the Golden Pagoda, Bai Ye performed a deep match between the Bai Family's ancient star chart and the pulse frequency sent by Cang Ming.

The matching results left him silent before the star chart for a long time, so long that the star chart administrator beside him couldn't help but ask, before he slowly put away the star chart and sent a set of extremely short coordinates to Shen Ye.

The star chart marked an area deep within the Empire's core that had never been explored by anyone; it was the Forbidden Ground of the ancestral mausoleum of the Abyssal Empire's royal family, which only Void Race members with royal blood could enter.

The reason the Crown Prince's personal Seal could trigger Law resonance there was that he belonged there—and that place was also where the Ancestor of the Abyss first distorted the primordial abyss countless years ago.

"After the Ancestor of the Abyss distorted the primordial abyss, the distorted Shiyuan Law was passed down generation after generation along the Bloodline of the Void Race royal family. The reason the Crown Prince's personal Seal could resonate with it was that his Bloodline itself came from there. Now that the Crown Prince is dead and the Empire's line of succession is broken, that distorted Shiyuan Law will not dissipate on its own. It will seek a new vessel—anyone who inherits the Crown Prince's legacy, or anyone in the Void Race royal Bloodline willing to actively accept this power, could become a new source of proliferation."

Shen Ye spread Jiang Yue's translation draft, Cang Ming's pulse spectrum, and Bai Ye's star chart coordinates on the table, and after cross-comparing them point by point, he reached a conclusion he had to accept.

When Qin Sese had someone deliver newly brewed savage spirits from the Northern Mining District, she included a note: "As long as the enemy isn't unkillable, the rest is no different from before."

Yan Shan took the wine flagon and took a big gulp, saying this wine was stronger than the last batch; Hou Tu squatted nearby, using his mineral vein perception to repeatedly check the underground Spiritual Qi flow in the pure black area deep within the core ruins, discovering that the Law structure there was extremely deep and dense, thicker than any Seal structure he had seen before.

The Abyssal Empire would not dissipate on its own just because of the Crown Prince's demise.

The Crown Prince was merely the strongest vessel of this distorted Shiyuan Law in the current era, not the source itself.

As long as that Shiyuan Law existed deep within the Bloodline of the Void Race royal family, there would always be someone drawn to it, eroded by it, and assimilated by it—a new successor would appear sooner or later.

Repairing the Seal would take a long time to complete. Facing a source of distortion that might awaken prematurely, the Law density of a Level 2 God might not be enough to deal with that ancient heart in the deepest part of the Seal.

The goal for the next step was clear: continue to consolidate the Law density of the Divine Kingdom and accumulate the final reserves for breaking through to a Tier 1 God.

The night over Wanxiang Lake was slowly rising from the intersection of the four tower light columns. He pressed Liu Yang's amulet against his chest; every pulsation of the Heart of Twilight deep within his Dantian pumped Twilight Energy into his limbs and bones, echoing the Twilight Light Network still spreading at the edge of the horizon.

The next step was to complete the final accumulation in silence.