While most of the mighty figures in the Primordial World rode their escape lights through Chaos, bound for the Purple Sky Palace beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens, Di Jiang went the opposite way. His body merged completely with space as he dove toward the deepest reaches of the isolated Netherworld Blood Sea, where filth and mystery coexisted.
The deeper he went, the thicker and heavier the surrounding blood became. The fierce, baleful energy and resentment it contained were nearly solid; an ordinary Golden Immortal would likely have their Body Protection Divine Light corroded away here. But for Di Jiang, whose Primordial Spirit had long since been tempered to withstand baleful energy and who wielded spatial abilities, it posed little hindrance.
However, as he continued to descend, Di Jiang gradually sensed something unusual. The blood around him did not grow darker or more polluted. Instead, it slowly began to take on a crystalline clarity!
When he finally reached the Blood Sea's true bottom, the sight before him surprised even him, a Primordial Origin Golden Immortal.
This was no filthy place piled with endless pollution and remains, as he had imagined. Instead, it was a realm of indescribable purity.
Here, the dark-red blood looked like enormous rubies, translucent and slowly flowing, refracting a hazy, profound radiance.
There were no longer any wailing resentful souls in the water, and he could barely sense any violent baleful energy. In their place was ancient, pure life force that had settled here over countless epochs, along with a serenity that seemed to have been purified to the utmost.
Di Jiang's divine sense swept across the area, and he immediately understood: karma fire! This was the power of the Karma Fire Red Lotus! The core region of this crystalline Blood Sea still retained traces of the Red Lotus's extremely pure residual laws of karma fire.
Over the long ages, the Karma Fire Red Lotus born in the Blood Sea had thoroughly burned the sea's deepest, most primordial region—the place where the remains of Chaos Demon Gods and Pangu's tainted blood had settled since the beginning of creation!
The Red Lotus's flames had burned away and purified the frenzied baleful energy, resentment, and karma, leaving only the purest, most primordial life essence and fragments of the Chaos Demon Gods' laws, which had fused into the blood.
"What an extraordinary treasure!"
A glimmer of amazement flashed in Di Jiang's eyes. This crystalline blood was a top-tier healing elixir in the Primordial World, containing immense vitality and the power of creation. It would be no exaggeration to say it could bring the dead back to life and regrow flesh on bare bones! It could even repair one's origin and temper the physical body with wondrous effects.
If his purpose here weren't clear, and if the karmic connection between this place and Minghe hadn't already been set, he would have wanted to collect some for emergencies.
He committed the discovery to memory, composed himself, and continued with his main task—finding the entrance to the Netherworld. Floating in this splendid, silent crystalline Blood Sea, Di Jiang half-closed his eyes and sharpened his senses to their utmost.
He fully activated the Space Law, and his divine sense spread like the most delicate of feelers, carefully probing every subtle fold, ripple, and fault in space. Any unusual spatial fluctuation could be a gateway to another realm.
At the same time, he set in motion the Earth Law he had learned from Houtu. The earth bore all things with virtue. Though the Netherworld lay beneath the earth, on its shadowed side, it was still fundamentally connected to the earth. Sensing through the Earth Law could help him detect the deep, weighty pulse unique to the underground world.
Time seemed to lose all meaning in the silent depths. Like a patient hunter, Di Jiang scanned and checked every inch, one by one.
He had no idea how long it had been when his divine sense swept over a patch of crystalline blood that seemed no different from the rest. At last, the Space Law registered an extremely faint ripple, almost too subtle to notice! At the same time, the Earth Law sensed a deeper, heavier, more ancient pulse of the earth coming from below.
"Found it!"
Di Jiang's eyes snapped open, shining brilliantly! He locked onto the area and appeared there in an instant. The blood before him was still crystalline, but through the lens of his laws, he could see an extremely unstable spatial node, one that seemed ready to close at any moment. Beyond it came a desolate, lifeless aura that nevertheless held the truth of reincarnation and the cycle of life and death!
Beyond it lay the nascent form of a world, not yet fully formed and still taking shape!
A satisfied smile appeared on Di Jiang's face. After all that effort, he had finally found this deeply hidden, crucial place. Spatial power enveloped his body, and like a drop of water merging into the sea, he silently passed through the fragile spatial node!
The moment he crossed the fragile, unstable spatial node, the world around Di Jiang abruptly changed. The Blood Sea's distinctive baleful atmosphere vanished, replaced by an extreme coldness and emptiness.
It was a boundless gray void. There were no sun, moon, or stars, no mountains or rivers, only the purest Extreme Yin Power permeating every inch of space. Unlike baleful energy, this force was not violent. It carried a quality of stillness, repose, and return to the void, as though it could freeze the soul and quiet all agitation.
In this silent void, Di Jiang keenly sensed faint, elusive traces of mysterious Dao resonance. They held the meaning of endings and beginnings, demise and rebirth, like an invisible wheel turning slowly yet steadily.
"Extreme Yin Power, and this must be the Cycle of Reincarnation Dao Charm. There's no doubt about it—this is the Netherworld!" Di Jiang thought, now certain of the place's identity.
He had been so cautious, insisting on verifying it himself, because the Primordial World was vast and wondrous beyond measure. When Pangu created the world, the clear and turbid separated. But besides the main Primordial World, countless subsidiary worlds, secret realms, and grotto-heavens depended on it. They were known as the three thousand great worlds, beneath which lay an uncountable number of middle and small worlds, as well as worlds as tiny as motes of dust.
These worlds had all kinds of properties. Some were as hot as furnaces, some as frozen as forbidden lands; some teemed with life, while others were filled with deathly energy. An unformed world brimming with Extreme Yin Power had distinctive characteristics, but it was not unique.
If he failed to confirm its identity and went to all that trouble only to bring back an insignificant yin-element minor world, that would be a truly laughable blunder.
"Fortunately, the Cycle of Reincarnation Dao Charm can't be faked."
Sensing the unique aura tied to the fundamental laws governing the Primordial World, Di Jiang was completely reassured.
Di Jiang surveyed this nascent form of the Netherworld. It was still far from being a complete world—not even a small world, in fact. At most, it was a tiny nascent world holding special laws and potential. Its internal rules were incomplete, its spatial structure extremely simple and fragile, and apart from the pervasive Extreme Yin Power and the Cycle of Reincarnation Dao Charm, it was almost entirely empty.
But that was precisely why it was easy to move! If it were a fully developed great world with complete laws, then even with Di Jiang's cultivation as a Primordial Origin Golden Immortal, moving it as a whole would be difficult. The main concern was that it might provoke a backlash from the world and bring unpredictable consequences.
But this nascent world, tiny as a mote of dust, was like an uninflated balloon: simple in structure, light in weight, and easy to move!
"This will save me quite a bit of effort."
At a thought from Di Jiang, his immense spatial power spread like invisible hands, gently yet firmly enveloping the entire nascent Netherworld.
Bzz—! The gray void trembled softly. The pervasive Extreme Yin Power and Cycle of Reincarnation Dao Charm seemed to sense the outside force and stirred slightly, but they did not resist strongly. After all, this world had yet to develop consciousness, and its laws had not yet solidified.
Carefully, as though lifting a fragile glass vessel, Di Jiang used spatial power to slowly sever its connection to the Blood Sea beneath the Primordial World, then gradually compressed and gathered it together.
The process went unexpectedly smoothly. In only a short while, the boundless gray void had transformed in Di Jiang's hand into a fist-sized gray cloud, slowly rotating. Inside it, Extreme Yin Power streamed like mist, while threads of the Cycle of Reincarnation Dao Charm flickered on and off like lightning.
"Gather!" Di Jiang gave a quiet command and stored the nascent Netherworld, the foundation of the future cycle of reincarnation, in his Primordial Spirit space, where he temporarily nurtured it with his own magic power.
Having finished, he felt the weighty future nestled in his Primordial Spirit space, small though it was, and smiled with satisfaction.
The Netherworld was now in his hands. The first step of his plan had been perfectly accomplished!
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