"Something wasn't right..." Qin Shaofeng muttered inwardly.
He tried tapping the black shadow with the Sword Sheath. There was only a dull thud, as though he had struck solid rock.
Yet when he withdrew the Sword Sheath, a faint golden halo spread across the point of contact, vanishing in an instant.
"This is... the aura of a Space Barrier?" Qin Shaofeng's heart skipped a beat.
He had seen similar sights in the Lower Realm. They were features found only in storage spaces opened by cultivators wielding great divine abilities.
He drew a deep breath and angled the Xuan Lightning Sword toward the black shadow. "We'll know if we try."
Lightning flowed along the blade and surged into the lakebed, exploding into a dense net of electricity around the shadow. The mud and sand churned from the shock, and the roots shook violently, but the black shadow remained utterly unmoved. Not even the slightest crack appeared.
"How strange." Qin Shaofeng frowned deeply. "Was I wrong?"
He pushed the Lightning Eye to its limit once more. Lightning patterns swirled in his pupils, nearly illuminating the lakebed completely. This time, he saw it more clearly—the inside of the black shadow was not solid. Faint bands of light crisscrossed within it, uncannily like the arrangement of Space Nodes.
"That's right..." He scratched his head, suddenly thinking of something. "Could it need a particular method to open?"
Just as he was pondering it, his wrist suddenly sank.
The Xuan Lightning Sword began trembling on its own. The lightning patterns on its blade seemed to resonate with something beneath the lake, emitting a soft hum.
Following the direction pointed by the sword, he saw a palm-sized black crystal embedded in the silt at the edge of the shadow!
Was that the switch?
"This..." Qin Shaofeng had