♂
Strife
Once I had figured this out, I immediately forced Chen Taixian back. Then I charged back along the route I had taken. Chen Taixian, of course, pursued me relentlessly. We could both shrink space and were both skilled in speed, so naturally, we exchanged several furious sword strikes along the way!
The violent explosions showed no sign of stopping either. I had no idea what had happened outside, but the commotion was tremendous. Without hesitation, I charged straight to the top of the sky, then simply did not leave through the dao arena. Instead, I split open the boundary wall with a sword and tried to charge directly out of the perimeter!
However, after breaking through the boundary wall, I was stunned. The outside was not starry space at all, but a stretch of chaotic darkness. My mind froze for a moment before I remembered the black eye I had seen through Chen Yixian's ring. It seemed that unless I left through the dao arena, there was no way to escape this planet!
But that moment of hesitation allowed Chen Taixian to catch up with me again. We exchanged several more sword strikes, but in the end, I blasted him far away with the Spirit-Absorbing Art!
The black, chaotic region did not change in the slightest beneath my bombardment. It seemed that this all-encompassing thing was an energy-based existence, and the energy I fired at it merely added to its strength. Once it reached its critical point, it would still emit beams of light just as it had before!
When that eye was closed, it was this black, chaotic substance. When it opened, it was the spread of colors produced by energy fission. That was why it looked like an open "eye" from a distance, when in fact