"What is this chain?"
Following the mist humanoid—his past self's personality—Chiba looked over, his brows slowly furrowing as he spoke unconsciously.
"No! This gap?"
Then, in the next second, his eyes suddenly widened. His whole body nearly jolted as he blurted out instinctively.
"That's impossible! These four chains should represent the rules. How could there be a gap like this?"
Then, as if utterly shocked, he could not help denying it again.
"You didn't see wrong. There is a gap in this chain. And look again at the chain that visually forms a straight line with it."
The mist humanoid nodded and said so.
"The chain that forms a straight line..."
Hearing this, Chiba's gaze shifted before finally landing on the chain extending from the lower left of the Light Orb—the lower-left chain that lined up with the gapped chain in the upper right.
"There's a gap there too?"
He blinked and looked toward the mist humanoid.
At this moment, there was indeed another gap in the lower-left chain. However, this gap was much smaller than the one in the upper left and seemed to still be closing.
"Yes. That is where we were carried by the exploding Nightmare Cycle Universe's core and crashed through."
The mist humanoid said so.
"The place we crashed through?"
Chiba paused slightly upon hearing that and spoke.
However, though he had frozen for a moment, understanding gradually appeared on his face.
"That's right. Back then, my physical body was directly annihilated after that massive Cosmic Core explosion. My soul should have been annihilated as well. Unlike those other two, I was relatively just an ordinary person. Not only could my body not withstand the energy and storm of rules from that explosion, even my soul could not possibly escape unharmed. Fortunately, just as my