87: Chapter 87 It wouldn't want to devour me, would it?

Mo Yufei looked up suddenly, his pupils contracting sharply. At the skyline, a glowing object shimmering with seven colors was flying straight toward his location at an incredible speed!

A subtle, almost imperceptible sense of spatial attraction became clear in an instant, leaving Mo Yufei with a hint of doubt and confusion.

"It really is chasing us!"

Mo Yufei's heart shook violently, and he dared not linger. He slapped Dabai's back hard, "Dabai, run at full speed! Dive deep into the dense forest on the left, don't stop!"

Dabai let out a low roar, its four limbs pushing off the ground with explosive power. Its massive body nimbly leaped and maneuvered through the dense forest, thick tree trunks flying past its sides.

Yet even so, the approaching speed of the seven-colored streak of light behind them was still ridiculously fast, and the distance between them was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.

In the communicator, Wang Chen's voice remained urgent, mixed with the static of the equipment running; he was clearly frantically retrieving data.

"I've detected here that the core has completely deviated from its original trajectory. It's not moving randomly; it's actively locking onto you! Old Mo! Are you hiding something from me? What connection do you have with this core?!"

"I don't know either!" Mo Yufei responded in a deep voice, though he couldn't help but wonder if this was the protagonist's treatment, where he didn't even have to go looking for it.

He then said to Wang Chen, "I can't shake it off at all; the speed difference is too great!"

"Jiji!" Benboba on his shoulder shrank its neck in fear, its round eyes fixed on the approaching seven-colored streak of light, its voice trembling.

"Boss, this thing doesn't want to devour us, does it? I feel like it's so fierce! No, wait, it's so greedy! It's staring at us like we're prey!"

"Dabai, run faster! It's catching up!" Benboba screamed.

The stream of light tore through the air and arrived in an instant, hovering ten meters above Mo Yufei's head. The shimmering colorful light slowly expanded and dispersed, eventually condensing into a pure white glowing mass.

This was the source core of the Taoyuan Secret Realm.

A hazy, soft halo constantly flowed around the edges of the glowing mass. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple—the seven colors intertwined and blended, as pure as the first ray of spiritual light at the birth of heaven and earth.

The surface of the glowing mass was crisscrossed with complex patterns, resembling some kind of rune imprint that held the rules of this world.

The frequency of the runes' vibration was ethereal and unique, carrying the irresistible, invisible power of the world's rules. It precisely locked onto Mo Yufei's limbs, firmly imprisoning him in place, unable to move a single inch.

Mo Yufei felt his body stiffen, becoming heavy to the extreme. His limbs felt as if they were filled with lead, locked firmly in place by the invisible rules of the world, unable to move at all.

His body was still that of a mortal.

Apart from his Soul Talent and the mental control ability gained in The Apocalypse, his body had no cultivation, and his meridians were ordinary.

Although his physique had been enhanced by his ability, it still could not compare to the world core formed by the will of this incomplete world.

Ten meters above his head, that core emitting white light surged and rolled violently.

It possessed no intelligence, no sense of good or evil, no schemes or conspiracies; from the moment of its birth, it strictly adhered to the most primitive and fundamental instinct of the Fragment World.

At this moment, it was frantically capturing a faint trace of world origin aura seeping out from Mo Yufei's body—the aura of the Taoyuan Secret Realm.

Mo Yufei looked at the glowing mass that had immobilized his body, his mind quickly calculating a way to cope.

Normally, he could return directly to the secret realm when encountering danger, but now that this thing was latched onto him, he feared that returning directly would bring this thing back with him.

Bringing it back wouldn't be the issue; the problem was, as Wang Chen said, world fusion! There were so many people in this small world; if they were all brought into his secret realm, would his home still be his own?

The light of the world core suddenly became incredibly intense. The originally gentle glow completely lost its softness, turning into a surging, violent torrent of origin energy that swept down like a tidal wave.

Countless fine threads of rules, like tentacles extended by instinct, pierced through the air and struck straight toward the center of Mo Yufei's brow, into his sea of consciousness.

It wanted to devour. It wanted to merge.

It sensed the aura of world origin on this creature—it was weak! Instinctively, it sought to annex it, thereby completing its own transformation and advancement.

In that very instant, countless fragments flashed through the mind of the imprisoned Mo Yufei like lightning, and all his confusion was suddenly cleared away.

He remembered what Wang Chen had once told him about the third method of merging world cores: the cores of Fragment Worlds are all engraved with innate, primitive instincts. When sources of the same origin meet, they must devour and merge; survival of the fittest is the only iron law.

However, he had stayed in the Taoyuan Secret Realm for a long time, and there was nothing in the entire realm—not even a sentient being. From beginning to end, he had never found any trace of a core.

After hearing Wang Chen's explanation of world cores, he had always been puzzled, thinking that the core of the Taoyuan Secret Realm was hidden in the deepest part of heaven and earth, inaccessible to mortals.

It was not until this moment, the instant he was instinctively locked onto and frantically devoured by this fragment core, that he finally grasped the truth completely!

It turned out there was never any hidden core. He himself was the core of the Taoyuan Secret Realm.

His soul origin was the sole foundation supporting the existence, operation, and derivation of the entire Taoyuan Secret Realm, but because the secret realm had limitations, he could not fully master it.

From the moment his soul was bound to the Taoyuan Secret Realm, he was the core, the origin, the very world itself.

And it was precisely because of this that the aura of the world core was constantly lingering around him.

It was also because this pure origin aura was exposed that it attracted the fragment core before him, which only followed its instincts, to travel across half the secret realm.

It was not targeting him, nor was it deliberately scheming against him. It was simply following the instinct engraved deep in its origin, chasing a stronger source of the same origin, wanting to devour, merge, and strengthen itself.

The moment he realized everything, the external pressure had already reached its peak.

The violent power of the world origin constantly washed over Mo Yufei's body. His mortal frame could not withstand the crushing and tearing of a world's origin. His bones trembled and went numb, his meridians ached as if they would burst, every inch of his flesh endured the excruciating pain of being torn by rules, and his muscles spasmed and trembled uncontrollably.

If an ordinary person were here, their body would have already shattered and their soul would have dissipated, solely from this instinct-level devouring pressure.

Yet within Mo Yufei's sea of consciousness, his vast soul was as steady as a rock. Regardless of the surging external origin, the tearing of rules, or the layers of devouring power, his soul origin remained unmoved.

The fragment core continued its instinctual devouring tirelessly, the glowing mass diving and applying pressure again and again, extending rule tentacles, persistently trying to drill into Mo Yufei's sea of consciousness to annex that trace of world origin it craved so intensely.

It had not yet developed intelligence and did not understand fear or the disparity between them. It only knew that within the biological body before it lay an supreme opportunity that would allow it to complete its ultimate transformation.

On the side of the forest, Dabai's fur stood on end, and it roared anxiously and crazily at the sky, repeatedly charging hard against the invisible rule barrier, only to be bounced back every time by the terrifying origin pressure.

Benboba used Wind Blade to strike at the rule barrier, but it was useless. Both of them could feel that Mo Yufei was in great danger, yet they were completely unable to intervene in this confrontation that existed only between the soul and the world origin.