The Insect Stele was vast; Lin Moyu's soul-sense kept pushing deeper, and it was going to take time. Although the stele had been stilled for the moment, its inner powers hadn't fully gone dark. Lin saw countless "Jin Supremes" roaming everywhere inside—endless in number.
"Both power and will have taken form?" he thought.
He understood: these were manifestations of the Jin Supreme's own strength and intent. Either way, they'd been given shape—each "Jin Supreme" carrying a slice of the original's power and will, usable as avatars. The Jin Supreme normally sat here and did not go out; when he did need to "go out," he sent these avatars while remaining unmoved himself. The area around the stele was a forbidden zone—no insects near it; farther out, endless swarms stood guard. He wasn't unwilling to travel—he couldn't. The stele was too enormous to be shifted lightly; if it moved, that would mean the Jin Supreme was going all-out. In all these ages, aside from his bout with the Calamity Supreme, he'd never fought at full strength again. Of the eight current Supremes, seven are his juniors, and they know very little about this mysterious elder.
Threading past avatar after avatar, Lin delved into the stele's interior. He came upon countless insects—strange of form—being incubated. The stele could gestate insects. Besides normally reproducing swarms, the powerful "ancestor insects" were all stele-bred. In the swarms' eyes, being birthed by the stele was the highest honor: any new life that came out was born a Dao Lord and, on maturity, would inevitably reach the Chaos Realm—immensely strong, with a higher ceiling than ordinary worms.
Past the incubation zone lay a boiling sea—pale yellow, exuding an indescribable stench that seeped through soul-sense and made Lin nauseous. Insect eggs lifted from that yellow sea and rose into the incubation area.
"So the true root of the eggs is this sea."
He drove his soul-sense down into it. Within the yellow sea were myriad arrays, continuously drawing in chaos qi from outside, exchanging it among themselves, and recombining it in every possible way. The combinations were random; sometimes they failed, sometimes they succeeded. On success, the fused power produced something new—then a drop of fresh blood flew in to merge with it, producing a new insect egg. The blood came from the many corpses in the sea: uncountable giant beasts of every kind, ceaselessly supplying blood. Every blood was different. Chaos qi drawn from outside was split apart and recombined; when a recombination worked, it fused with a given blood to form all manner of insect eggs—some strong, some weak. The permutations were essentially infinite, so the kinds of insects gestated were likewise innumerable.
"Literal combinatorics," Lin sighed. For Jinri God-Lord to have conceived this back then—genius. In that age, the blood of top beings was far more valuable, and the Chaos Ancient Wilds' power more primal and vast. Had the stele appeared then, his plan might truly have worked. But now, the Chaos Ancient Wilds were weaker, and there weren't enough mighty bloodlines to fuel it; at best, the stele-bred swarms could dominate the Antarctic.
"Such is fate."
Lin's will passed through the sea and went deeper, into the stele's very core. He was sure that aside from the Jin Supreme himself, no one had ever been here. If he wanted to break the stele, he'd only need to destroy its core—no matter how strong a treasure is, the core is its limit. Of course, if he tried that, the Jin Supreme would kill him on the spot.
He saw more "Jin Supremes" again—but these weren't avatars. They were imprints the Jin Supreme had left within the stele, filling the core in every corner—endless. So long as his will endured, no one could seize the stele. In danger, he could even abandon his flesh, take the stele as his body once more, and flee; later, he could recondense a new body with little loss in realm. Whatever the age, the Jin Supreme had prepared his escape route. Given a chance, he could smash through the void, ride the vortices at its deepest reaches, and enter the Ancient Wilds; once within, even Dao would have to spend a great deal to hunt him down.
There Lin saw a vast net. It linked every "Jin Supreme" within—missing none—and one thin thread extended outward to silently bind the Jin Supreme's flesh. Yet the Jin Supreme seemed wholly unaware. The instant he saw it, Lin knew he'd found the reason.
"This should be it," he thought—seven or eight parts sure—yet he wanted confirmation. He raised his voice: "Senior, have you ever noticed—a great net at the stele's core?"
The Jin Supreme looked puzzled. "What net?"
As expected—he didn't know. He was inside the net, and so could not see it. He only knew he and the stele were bound and assumed some flaw during refinement—after all, he'd lost his body back then and only by luck survived to finish refining, then took form with the stele as core. That guess would be natural—even anyone else would have thought the same. But if that were all, a Supreme over so many years should have found a solution. He hadn't—so there had to be another cause. Now that Lin had seen the net, he was fairly certain: this was the problem.
He described the internal net to the Jin Supreme. The Supreme seemed unconvinced: he was a Supreme—how could Lin see what he could not? Lin didn't know why he could see it; he just could. No need to belabor the point. The next step was dealing with the net.
He didn't touch it. Anything that could bind a Supreme's will and blind his senses would not be ordinary; poke it rashly and trouble might erupt. He sent what he'd seen back to Little Tree and Chaos Seed. Chaos Seed hesitated. "Is that… the Spider-God Web?"
Little Tree studied a long while—also unsure. After Lin explained the Jin Supreme's situation, Chaos Seed said, "No, that can't be right. The Spider-God Web can stick to souls, yes, but it can't hide itself from the target."
Little Tree suddenly said, "If another thing was paired with it, it could. As I recall, didn't the Ancient-Wild Progenitor Worm kill the Myriad-Legged Spider back then?"
Chaos Seed nodded. "Yeah—everyone knows that."
"And did you know the Hidden Spirit Pearl ended up in the hands of the Chaos Heaven Worm?" Little Tree said.
"Huh?" Chaos Seed blinked. "You mean the Hidden Spirit Pearl?"
"Yes. Pity he didn't have time to refine it fully—or the Jinri God-Lord would never have killed him."
"No wonder—then that's it. It's the Hidden Spirit Pearl!"
Lin smiled. Having one old fogey around is like a treasure; having two is doubly so. In that age of turmoil, both Little Tree and Chaos Seed lived until near the end, and knew many things. News hadn't been siloed then, and the Ancient Wilds weren't so rigidly divided; information moved fast—especially for Little Tree, whose roots spread through half the Chaos, bringing him staggering amounts of intelligence. From their accounts, Lin could now sketch that great chaos of old: the weak died first; the stronger lived longer. That fit the laws of heaven and earth. Little Tree and Chaos Seed lived long because they were strong; Chaos Seed, though not a fighter, nurtured nine Supremes and nine Quasi-Supremes in his inner world. Those eighteen, once they left, weren't the very top, but numbers matter—that was Chaos Seed's life-saving capital. In the end, as survivors grew fewer and stronger, they, too, could not escape fate.
Piece by piece, they laid out the Jin Supreme's problem. He was Jinri God-Lord—and strong—but not strong enough by their lights, so he died earlier than they did. More importantly, there were things he simply didn't know. The Ancient-Wild Progenitor Worm had killed a variant called the Myriad-Legged Spider and refined it into the Spider-God Web, which could bind souls and keep them from escaping—handy for the Progenitor Worm's hunts. Few knew this; as it happened, both Little Tree and Chaos Seed did. In those days the Ancient Wilds also birthed several spirit pearls with different effects—like the Chaos Spirit Pearl, the Illusion Spirit Pearl, and so on. One was the Hidden Spirit Pearl. It never developed intelligence and had a single function: concealment. It could hide body and soul from discovery. With no combat power of its own, it was underrated—and later fell into the hands of the Chaos Heaven Worm. Using its power, the Chaos Heaven Worm ambushed many strong foes—but he was impatient and never fully refined it (the pearl is notoriously hard to refine and takes a long time). He was eventually killed by Jinri God-Lord. But the Hidden Spirit Pearl and the Spider-God Web had already been integrated into the bodies of the Chaos Heaven Worm and Ancient-Wild Progenitor Worm respectively—so when Jinri God-Lord refined the two into the Insect Stele, both the Pearl and the Web became part of the stele.
Had Jinri God-Lord finished the stele smoothly, it might have simultaneously possessed the Pearl's concealment and the Web's binding—plus gestation and evolution—combining many powers in one, a terrifying supreme treasure. His vision might truly have been realized. But he was killed; he abandoned his flesh and fled with the half-finished stele. Though he lived, the refinement was interrupted and he'd lost his body, leaving the stele forever imperfect. In that moment his soul was caught by the Spider-God Web, tying him to the stele so tightly they could hardly be parted. Ages later he awoke, completed the refinement, and took form through the stele—but he never knew he'd already been snared by the Web. And because the Hidden Spirit Pearl was present, he couldn't perceive the Web at all—so he could never find the cause.
The bystander sees clearly where the one in the game is blind. Lin had the root cause. Solving it wasn't actually hard: the Hidden Spirit Pearl and Spider-God Web, though inside the stele, had not fully fused. Find the Pearl and refine it; the Web would then reveal itself, and at that point Jinri God-Lord could handle it.
Little Tree said, "The Hidden Spirit Pearl is far more useful than most realize—almost no one knows the right way to use it. Master, you must obtain it."
"Would it let me evade its probing?" Lin asked.
Little Tree grunted assent. "As long as you merge the Hidden Spirit Pearl into your soul-world, it won't be able to probe your soul-world." The Pearl's single-function design makes its effect shocking; even Dao can't probe through it. Little Tree had once tried to find it—and failed, because of the Pearl's very nature. Who knew the Chaos Heaven Worm had gotten it in the end? Had that worm had the patience to fully refine it, Jinri God-Lord would have found it nearly impossible to kill him.
The Pearl was somewhere within the stele. The interior was vast, but diligent searching would find it. Lin began tracing along the Spider-God Web. The Web had a specific structure and certain patterns; in its corners, Jin Supreme's soul-imprints were everywhere.
"Even if I refine the Hidden Spirit Pearl, it'll take him quite some time to extricate himself," Lin mused. "After so many years, they're nearly fused. He'll have a headache." It wasn't his problem.
As he searched, the Web grew thinner; even the Jin Supreme's soul-imprints faded. Lin knew he was nearing the Pearl. Finally the Web vanished entirely—and so did the imprints. By sense, the way ahead was a void—nothing there—yet in fact the Jin Supreme's imprints were everywhere, and the invisible Web as well. He could not touch it: a single brush and his soul-sense would be stuck; the Hidden Spirit Pearl could even mislead him and make it impossible to find.
The difficulty spiked to near-infinite. Anyone else would be at a loss. Lin thought a moment and had his solution.
This was the Chaos Ancient Wilds, not some other heaven-and-earth. Here he could use the Cause-Seeking Ring.
With the Jin Supreme right before him, Lin chose to activate the Ring inside his own soul-world.
"Effect without cause!" he intoned, "Find the Hidden Spirit Pearl without touching the Spider-God Web."
A mighty backlash surged—far stronger than he'd expected. Cracks split his body and soul; after several seconds under the pounding counterforce—bang—he exploded, flesh and spirit.
The Jin Supreme froze. What was that? How had Lin suddenly blown up? Even as a Supreme he'd never seen something like this. For the moment, he held his hand and watched.
A heartbeat later, purple light flashed; flesh reknit; Lin was whole again—like a hallucination. Even so, new cracks veined his newly reborn body, though he didn't explode this time. With his current physical and soul strength, the flooding backlash killed him only once; in the past, it would have taken dozens of deaths. The Pearl's peculiarity exceeded expectations—it could even screen a part of causality. Otherwise "finding only the effect—the Pearl—without the cause" wouldn't have forced him, now, to die once.
The Jin Supreme looked oddly at him. "Are you… all right?"