The light faded.
After Stone Ridge Mountain underwent one final violent tremor, the tearing sensation vanished completely. Chu Qing stood atop the mountain peak. The rocks beneath his feet were still scorching hot, but the surroundings were no longer the familiar present world.
The knuckles he pressed hard against the rock turned faintly white.
Before him stretched a sea of gray. Thick, profound, boundless. This gray airflow flowed like glue, every drop as heavy as a mountain.
This was the Chaos Sea.
Chu Qing raised his head. Far away, in the depths of that endless gray, a brilliant band of color stretched across his vision. It was not a river, but a quicksand belt formed from countless stars, plane fragments, and world wreckage dragged together by some terrifying gravitational force.
Streams of light constantly streaked through the riverbed. Every flicker represented the termination of a world.
Chu Qing felt his chest tighten, and a trace of sweetness rose in his throat. The laws here were no longer gentle. Like steel needles, they tried to pierce every pore of his body and forcibly reshape his bones.
"Shang Xie," Chu Qing called softly.
A mournful cry that only he could hear came from within the Mountain Body. It was Stone Ridge Mountain's pained response.
Buzz—
The towering Stone Ridge Mountain began to shrink rapidly. Suppressed by the rules of the Chaos Sea, the once-massive mountain range was forcibly folded. Its status was contracting, its Aura drawing inward.
A few seconds later, Stone Ridge Mountain had become a dim meteor, rising and falling amid the gray chaotic currents, looking incomparably humble.
Chu Qing looked at his right hand. With a flick of his fingertips, a pitch-black vortex sprang into existence in the void.
A spine a thousand zhang long tore through the air.