It was indeed for Lin Mohan's sake that Lin Moyu was willing to say a bit more—he didn't want her legacy sullied or distorted. Unfortunately, Youkui wasn't very receptive. Though she kept asking him to "advise" her, her look and tone held skepticism and a touch of scorn. After all, she was at Perfection, while he was only Chaos Realm—Great Completion. In a world where strength is status, being one notch lower in realm puts you far lower in standing. Even the title "Grand Elder of the Central Alliance" didn't seem to carry much weight here.
Lin Moyu's interest waned. After saying that one line, he put two fingers together and drew lightly forward. A phantom sword appeared in the air and cleaved into the earth—the very "One Sword Cleaves the Heavens" Youkui had used. Lin's version didn't carry much force and was far weaker than hers in raw power, but the sword-will within it made Youkui's expression change.
The slice seemed to do nothing at first. A few breaths later, a hair-thin fissure opened in the ground, stretching downward and forward without visible end; a long, deep sword mark spread across the earth, vanishing into the horizon. Not only that—the sky itself split, as if cut neatly in two.
Youkui stood frozen, recalling her own strike. Though hers had been grand in power, if it came down to pure sword-will, she had lost. Lin's felt like the original; hers a mere imitation. The difference was the refinement of the will. Lin's sword-will was several times more condensed—yet he'd said he "didn't understand swords." If he didn't, what did that make her?
"Elder Lin—" Youkui snapped to and looked around, only to find Lin already gone. She searched the surroundings and found no trace of him, as if he had never appeared. Helpless, she could only mull over what he'd said: "Do not borrow from the outside; seek only from the self."
"Could it be… our method really is wrong?" she sighed softly, turned, and left—by chance, in the exact same direction as Lin Moyu.
To Lin, Youkui was just a brief interlude—forgotten as soon as he left. Another month later, Xiaopeng reached their destination. From afar, Lin saw a mountain: suspended in the void, twisting and reshaping itself—now tall, now low. Intense spatial waves poured off it. All the ripples they'd met along the way had originated here.
"That's the Space God-Mountain—the Skyscreen Beast's true body," Chaoszi said.
Above the mountain, Lin saw the Calamity Supreme's grand array. He was about to approach when his soul suddenly warned him: danger ahead. At the same time Little Tree called out, "Wait—there's something wrong with the space in front!"
Even as he spoke, wummm—the Space God-Mountain shuddered, and a ring of spatial ripples blasted outward. Space ahead convulsed; countless auras flared; soul-flames danced wildly before his eyes. For millions of li around the mountain—empty a moment before—beings suddenly appeared in droves: Lower-Domain behemoths and Lower-Domain cultivators. The beasts were endless, hurling themselves madly at the human cultivators; the humans formed arrays to resist. The beasts struck in frenzied waves, one after another, without end. Many of them fought at top-tier Perfection, just below Supremes and pre-Supremes. On the human side, the strongest were merely Perfection, holding by virtue of the Lower Domain's superior battle power at equal realm. Even so, things didn't look great.
Lin watched without intervening. The humans were under heavy pressure, but their strength wasn't shabby; they wouldn't crumble quickly. The beasts, though, attacked like lunatics.
"Their eyes…" Lin noticed blue light burning in the beasts' eyes; beneath it, their gazes were dull. They weren't merely berserk—they were under outside influence. Naturally, from the thing coming out of the deep Ancient Wilds. The Lower Domain is saturated with the Skyscreen Beast's leftover impurities; these mindless beasts were full of those impurities too—dregs, grudges, tangled wills of many fallen powers. Exactly because of that mess, the beasts were the first to be affected—bloodthirsty, battle-mad, stripped of their usual cold reason. For some reason, they had gathered and were storming the Space God-Mountain. This wave was already frightening; the next wave was on the way—and many more after, in an endless stream.
"But why are the Lower-Domain people getting more excited the harder they fight?" Xiaopeng asked. They should have been under crushing pressure; yet excitement flashed in their eyes. That wasn't mere love of battle—there was something more.
After watching a while, Lin understood, half amused. "They're using them as practice."
Indeed, the Lower-Domain Perfection experts were sparring on the giant beasts—nurturing themselves through battle, seeking insights and breakthroughs. Every large fight was an opportunity.
Boom! The God-Mountain quaked again, sending out another spatial ripple. The void shifted; the scene around Lin changed. He was in another space. The Lower-Domain ground vanished; the sky turned to nothing; chaos-void opened all around. The battle continued—on a vastly larger scale. He saw more beasts. Fights raged in every direction—far more than the one he'd just watched. The Space God-Mountain was far from small; the black-red "ground" he'd seen hadn't vanished—there were many such lands in the distance, each an independent space.
Only now did Lin grasp that this space was the true Lower Domain. What he'd seen before was just an independent space formed by a wave from the God-Mountain—real, but not the whole. The closer he drew, the more ripples he crossed, until he finally beheld the Lower Domain as it truly was.
Judging from the sheer number of Lower-Domain vs. beast battles, their scale was no less than wars between the extreme domains. There were at least a thousand battlefields here, each in its own pocket space, not interfering with the others. The Lower-Domain combatants numbered in the tens of millions; Perfection experts alone exceeded a hundred thousand. Thanks to the Hidden Spirit Pearl, no one noticed him.
"What's inside the Space God-Mountain?" he murmured. He had a strong sense that something was within. Probing for the array, he found it inside the mountain. Silently, he drew nearer and asked Little Tree, "Any way in?"
Little Tree pondered. "Something's off about it. I'll try." He wasn't certain—only that he could attempt it.
Lin didn't interrupt. Little Tree hunted for coordinates. Half a day later Little Tree suddenly acted, rapidly erecting a spacetime tunnel. "Master—now!"
Lin dove in the instant Little Tree spoke; he trusted him completely, whatever lay at the other end.
The tunnel was longer than expected; even though they'd been close to the God-Mountain, they traveled for a while.
"What we see as the God-Mountain isn't where it truly is," Little Tree said. "It's been hiding in another independent space all along—at the overlap of multiple spaces—and it keeps shifting position. It's not easy to find."
The Space God-Mountain was the Skyscreen Beast's true body; his mastery of the space Dao came from this. Manipulating space was as natural to him as eating or drinking; with a thought, countless spaces were born and died. Enemies he trapped were cast into an infinity of spaces and died in despair.
As Little Tree explained, he kept adjusting the tunnel's endpoint, tracking the Mountain with fine, focused work. After another half-day, they arrived. Exiting the tunnel, they faced another Space God-Mountain—this one a hundred times smaller than the previous, but a hundred times more refined. It was studded with countless mirror-facets, each showing a battlefield.
Chaoszi blinked. "What is this?"
"This is the real Space God-Mountain," Little Tree said. "What we saw before was just what it wanted us to see."
"So the thing I saw was fake?" Chaoszi gasped.
"Not fake—a projection," Little Tree said. "A real construct, but still only a projection. If I weren't also adept with space—and if Master hadn't insisted on going in—I wouldn't have found this place."
"If this is the real Mountain, then what's in the one the beasts are trying to rush?" Lin asked.
"That should be the Mountain's inner world," Little Tree said. "An infinity of independent spaces—no two alike."
"Kinda complicated," Chaoszi muttered.
"It isn't, really," Little Tree said. "This true Mountain is the root. From it, innumerable independent spaces are evolved. Bundle those together, wrap them in a projected 'Mountain,' and people take that projection for the real one. Then the Skyscreen Beast evolved another inner world around that projected Mountain, and inside that inner world split off innumerable independent spaces. That's basically it."
"So… matryoshka dolls?" Chaoszi snorted. "And what's the point?"
"It increases the safety of his true body," Lin said. "To hurt it, you'd have to break the inner world and all its spaces, then the projected Mountain and its spaces."
Little Tree nodded. "Exactly. It makes him far safer."
Chaoszi sniffed. "He still died in the end."
"That's a different matter," Little Tree said. "If it were you or me, we'd do the same."
Chaoszi fell silent. True—who wouldn't?
Lin stepped up to the Mountain. The real Mountain wasn't towering like the Insect Stele; though not small, it could at least be seen in full. It was like a huge, perfect gem of mirrors, each showing a battlefield in one of the independent spaces spawned from it. He could watch any front through them.
He reached out to sense the Calamity Supreme's array—and found it wasn't here. Outside, he'd felt it clearly "inside the Mountain," but now the sense had shifted: not in the true body, but in one of the spaces it created.
He began to search. There were so many spaces, it made the eyes swim—even for him, this would take time. After half a day, he finally found the array in a mirror with no battle taking place.
"How do we enter that independent space?" he asked.
"I can try to locate it," Little Tree said, "but I can't promise precision. If I miss, getting back will be troublesome. Or… Master can refine the Space God-Mountain—then you can control every space."
Lin nodded. Soul-flame gathered in his palm; just as he prepared to refine, the flame flickered and extinguished itself. A frantic alarm blared in his soul: "Danger! Danger!"
He pulled back. That warning had saved him many times; it would not be wrong here. But why would this Mountain trigger such a frenzy—enough to snuff out his flame? His soul was telling him plainly: do not refine the Space God-Mountain.
"Why?" He couldn't figure it out. "Is the Skyscreen Beast truly dead?"
"He should be," Little Tree said. "Otherwise the Mountain wouldn't be here. If he were alive, how would his true body be lying around?"
But if he was dead, where did the danger come from?
"Did I miss something?" Lin said. "Tell me everything about the Skyscreen Beast—everything, not a single omission."
Sensing the gravity, the two spilled all they knew. Lin sifted it again and again, folding in his own knowledge, eyes narrowing—danger sign in them—and the corner of his mouth lifting in a faint smile. Lin rarely wore that expression; it meant he had found something both fascinating and dangerous.
He turned it over and over, kneading every shred of information together. At last he had an answer. As always, not absolute—but over ninety percent.
"I finally know who you are."
He hadn't raised his voice, yet the words landed with weight.
"Master—you know who's who?" Chaoszi asked.
Lin shook his head lightly. "We'll talk after. Little Tree—find the Calamity Supreme's array."
At the same time he took out the Causality-Seeking Ring and "planted the fruit" for Little Tree, guaranteeing he would definitely locate it.