Chapter 4721: So It's a Soul?
The silver radiance contained an astonishing amount of silver white substance, each mote carrying ruinous force from the Life Forbidden Zone.
In an instant, it pierced the defensive ring of Undying Spirit Arms, vaporizing them in great numbers.
At the same time, the silver substance shattered time and space, leaving Lin Moyu no chance to react.
His body and soul were both annihilated once more, every last inch destroyed.
Bathed in purple light, Lin was reborn again and let out a sigh.
"What a pity. It can kill me in a single strike, but the interval between blows is too long and not continuous."
The enemy's attack was powerful, its dense silver substance capable of vaporizing him in a heartbeat.
The flaw was that each shot had a gap before the next, with no follow up, only enough to trigger one rebirth at a time far too little for his "seeking death" plans.
Even so, Lin clearly sensed the Life Forbidden Zone's annihilation in that power.
Though still far weaker than the real Forbidden Zone, it was much stronger than the diluted ruinous force filtered through worlds.
He also realized that with his current capability, he was nowhere near ready to enter the Life Forbidden Zone.
Stepping into it now would be certain death.
The Forbidden Zone's ceaseless annihilation would quickly burn through all his rebirths.
With that sort of consumption, not even a hundred thousand, a hundred million, or a hundred billion rebirths would be enough.
These thoughts flashed like lightning through his mind as Lin stared at the silver white giant, curiosity in his eyes.
The giant was made from countless motes of silver dust and something else.
When Lin had smashed it with the Calamity Scepter just now, those "other things" had briefly revealed themselves.
He had originally assumed that under the Life Forbidden Zone's invasion, this world held nothing but silver white substance.
Now, clearly, that was not the case.
Some things still existed here, though they were not living beings.
The Calamity Scepter swung out again.
Locked on by the scepter's power, the giant could not evade and was smashed back into dust.
One hit from you, one hit from me perfectly fair.
In the next instant, the silver dust reformed into a giant, and once more a rain of arrows flew forth, blasting through the Undying Spirit Arms' defenses and vaporizing Lin.
Lin revived and immediately raised the Calamity Scepter to shatter the giant again.
Neither side dodged, and neither could have dodged; they simply exchanged kill for kill.
The giant clearly possessed no consciousness.
It did not notice anything strange about Lin being reborn again and again.
It only followed a single instinct: to erase all intruders.
Throughout this back and forth, Lin kept watching closely.
Each time the giant shattered, those strange "things" appeared for a fleeting moment.
Fleeting instant after fleeting instant, he finally discerned something.
"That is… a soul?"
Startled, Lin blurted, "How can that possibly be a soul?"
In the Eye of Undeath, he saw no soul flame at all.
He had never encountered such a thing: every soul, without exception, possessed a soul flame.
The soul flame was the mark of a living being.
Never had there been a soul without one.
Though shaken and doubtful, Lin did not rush to a conclusion.
He decided to keep observing.
Vaguely, he felt that understanding this would be very important to him.
As though he was brushing against a field no one had ever touched before.
There were countless unknowns in the world, and even the strongest could not know everything.
The situation before him was one such unknown.
Lin shared what he had seen with the Primordial Chaos Gem.
The gem was just as shocked, having never seen anything like it either.
Lin then sent his awareness into the Heaven Sundering Crystal and reported everything to Emperor Pocang and True Lord Seeking Knowledge, hoping they might have an answer.
They had never seen this phenomenon either, but they did at least know something about the Silver White World.
Both had come into contact with it long ago.
Not only them many peak powerhouses had tried.
They and various other strongest beings had all dispatched teams to explore it.
Every expedition had been wiped out the instant it entered.
Once, a peak powerhouse had personally gone in, but lasted only a few breaths before staggering out gravely wounded.
The Silver White World was placed on their list of death lands, one of the forbidden worlds that must never be entered.
They had not recorded much else about it, which was no surprise.
The Primordial Chaos Gem had warned earlier that information would be thin.
After all his questioning, Lin still had no clear answer.
He knew he would have to rely on his own observation and research.
The cycles of death and rebirth continued unchecked.
His duel with the giant went on and on.
The giant could regenerate endlessly, backed by the entire world and nearly immune to attrition.
Lin was the same; his rebirth consumed power slower than he gained it, so he too had no fear.
After untold deaths, Lin discovered something new.
Now he was absolutely certain that what he saw was indeed a soul specifically, a vaporized soul.
When intruders' souls were vaporized by the silver dust, they did not actually vanish.
Instead, they were broken down into extremely tiny particles.
These fragments were so small they no longer possessed soul flames and had shed the attributes of living beings.
Yet they still truly existed.
Not only that, they fused with the silver white substance.
In a far tinier form, they slipped into the silver dust, using it as a carrier.
Because they had been vaporized, these remnants were effectively refined and purified.
What remained was a collection of pure soul particles.
After burrowing into the silver dust, these pure particles began to show a strange mutual attraction.
Drawn together, they fused into a single giant.
The giant thus possessed the ability to control the silver dust.
It could compress that dust to hundreds of times the usual concentration and launch devastating attacks.
That capability came from the soul particles.
The Calamity Scepter, however, merely broke apart the fused silver dust making up the giant.
It did not truly damage the soul particles within.
Flames welled up in Lin's palm as the World Burning Fire burst forth, transforming into a sea of fire.
In a heartbeat, silver dust rained down like a storm.
The World Burning Fire crackled and hissed, shrinking rapidly.
The silver substance could even vaporize the World Burning Fire, which was utterly unreasonable.
Lin immediately recalled the flame, knowing it could not burn away these soul particles.
The World Burning Fire had never failed against souls before, yet this time it did nothing.
Lin became even more intrigued: how could souls become like this?
These soul particles retained a trace of living instinct, yet they were not genuine life and lacked any wisdom.
Their form was completely peculiar.
His mind spun at full speed, deducing every possibility.
In the end, he arrived at an answer that seemed illusory yet very likely true.
These soul particles were the other side of the soul.
All things in existence had a duality of real and unreal, yin and yang; the soul was no exception.
Souls were generally regarded as "unreal," but at sufficient strength could turn unreal into real.
Thus cultivators concluded that souls inherently possessed both sides.
In truth, that was not so.
The soul only resided in the "unreal" realm; in essence it belonged to the real side.
Moreover, the soul brimmed with vitality and should not be called unreal at all.
By contrast, the soul particles before him were invisible, lifeless, and infinitesimal these were the truly unreal side of the soul.
They were the soul's void aspect.
Having no life force whatsoever, they could not be refined by the World Burning Fire.
Now that he understood their mode of existence, a bold idea arose in Lin's mind.
"If I could scatter my soul, turning it into soul particles, extinguish my soul flame, and yet still retain complete memory and awareness…"