Meanwhile.
In Chaos.
Lei Jun's movements as he refined the opportunity paused slightly.
He smiled.
"I'd originally thought that giving him a little guidance and repaying the opportunity would be enough!"
"I didn't expect him to put down roots in the courtyard!"
"He's certainly taken it in stride!"
Then.
Lei Jun shifted his attention away and focused once more on refining the opportunity.
At this moment.
It wouldn't be long before the opportunity "returned to its ancestry."
After a little while.
Lei Jun would be able to use this opportunity to quickly find a way to reach other worlds.
In a flash.
Time passed.
Who knew how long had gone by?
When a ripple resembling the Space Demon God's appeared in Chaos.
In that instant.
Lei Jun understood many things.
More importantly, in the next moment, he found a new world.
A place unlike the Primordial Wilderness.
This place wasn't large.
Yet it held a few mysteries that even made Lei Jun raise an eyebrow.
After thinking it over.
Lei Jun spoke a single phrase.
"System Space?"
In Chaos, many things were jumbled and had no discernible order.
Time, for example.
Although, from the Primordial Wilderness's perspective, not much time had passed while Lei Jun refined the opportunity and caused it to "return to its ancestry."
All that had happened in the meantime was Yang Mei sensing the ripple.
And putting down roots in the Small Courtyard.
In truth.
If a Primordial Wilderness cultivator came to Chaos to experience Lei Jun refining the opportunity, it would feel quite different.
It would seem incredibly long.
Long enough to experience another transformation!
That was Chaos.
Many of the experiences and rules of the Primordial Wilderness didn't apply here.
Just as the laws of macroscopic physics no longer applied once you reached the microscopic level.
However.
Compared to Chaos, the Primordial Wilderness was the "microscopic world"!
Tiny as a single star in the vast Universe.
The difference was this:
The Primordial Wilderness was full of certainty, while Chaos was indeterminate!
But then again.
If time was jumbled, why wouldn't space be, too?
Therefore.
Using the methods of the Primordial Wilderness to find another world in Chaos, one different from the Primordial Wilderness, had zero chance of success.
Fortunately, Lei Jun had realized this.
And adjusted his approach in time.
He had also obtained from Yang Mei the Origin opportunity that had once belonged to the Space Demon God.
The Space Demon God truly deserved his reputation as one of the foremost among the Three Thousand Chaos Gods and Devils. Even with Lei Jun's current cultivation, he couldn't help admiring the Space Demon God's level of understanding of the Dao of Space.
It was fair to say:
One more step forward, and the Dao of Space would become the Great Dao of Space!
That was the equivalent of "Proving the Dao" in Chaos!
Of course.
Even without having Proved the Dao, the Space Demon God's Origin opportunity was enough to help Lei Jun find other worlds many times faster.
At this moment.
Through this opportunity, Lei Jun discovered a strange place.
If not for Lei Jun's "broad experience,"
It would have been difficult to describe.
However.
His knowledge didn't come from the Primordial Wilderness.
It came from before he transmigrated.
From the novels he'd read!
The protagonists who transmigrated in those novels almost always had a Golden Finger.
Some had relatively ordinary ones.
Perhaps some kind of Supreme Treasure or something.
Like the Chaos Bead...
But most had a cheat called a "system."
The place Lei Jun had discovered at this moment could be called the "System Space"! Of course.
It was also where all the rewards for the "protagonists" in those novels came from.
In other words.
"After the protagonists completed their system missions, their rewards came out of here and appeared in the protagonists' hands."
That was why Lei Jun called it the System Space.
It wasn't merely the protagonists' personal storage. The two were clearly different.
For a moment.
Lei Jun felt a little emotional.
"I never imagined I'd make a discovery like this!"
"If not for the Space Demon God's opportunity, I might not have found it so quickly!"
"And judging by the state of this space, it seems..."
"It's also searching for the Primordial Wilderness?"
Lei Jun raised an eyebrow.
He understood.
"If nothing unexpected happens,
"and this space finds the Primordial Wilderness,
"then the Primordial Wilderness..."
"Will probably see Transmigrators appear, just as I thought before!"
"In other words, 'the protagonists from the novels'!"
The Space Demon God's Origin opportunity.
Not only had it helped Lei Jun find the System Space.
It also let him remain undetected by the being behind the System Space.
And conduct a preliminary investigation of the System Space.
For instance, as things stood.
As long as he didn't probe too deeply, Lei Jun could not only determine the space's purpose but also conduct a cursory investigation of its interior!
When he finally probed inside, he was in for a surprise.
Lei Jun was delighted.
"They came prepared!"
"The Pangu Axe, the Chaos Bead, the Chaos Green Lotus, the World-Destroying Grinding Wheel... the Great Wasteland Pagoda, the Heaven and Earth Mother Qi Cauldron?"
"Well, I'll be!"
"They've got transcendent treasures from other worlds, too!"
"Too bad..."
"They're all projections, not the real things. They need outside power to materialize!"
Worried that he might alert the being behind the System.
Before long.
Lei Jun withdrew his perception.
But his thoughts were still racing.
It couldn't be helped.
Just that brief investigation had left him with a lot to think about.
"Just as I thought!"
"I can't limit myself to the Primordial Wilderness."
"Chaos is so vast, and I've only just come out here, yet I've already found something!"
"It also confirms my earlier suspicions!"
"There really is more than one Primordial Wilderness!"
"And this System Space has some tricks of its own. It can obtain the Origin opportunities of Chaos Supreme Treasures from other Primordial Wildernesses and project them here!"
At this moment.
Lei Jun understood.
And began to form a theory.
"First of all, there's no such thing as a free lunch!"
"The System may be helping the protagonists, but it must have an ulterior motive!"
"Take the Supreme Treasures and other spiritual objects in this System Space, which are only projections for now. If they're all materialized, or the power of the Primordial Wilderness is drained, will those so-called protagonists still be alive?"
"Even if there's Chaos beyond the Primordial Wilderness, anyone who relies on the System will be abandoned by it one day unless they completely break free!"
"In other words, the protagonists are basically the System's tools,"
"Or even..."
"Pigs being raised for slaughter?!"
That was what Lei Jun thought.
He used a particularly unpleasant word.
But honestly.
That was exactly what he believed.
The System's motives were just too suspicious. It had appeared out of nowhere and offered supposedly supreme benefits, as though it expected nothing in return.
As if it had come purely to do good deeds.
But was that possible?
If someone had told Lei Jun something like that before he transmigrated, his first reaction wouldn't have been delight.
It would have been suspicion of a scam.
Not only that.
In the end, he might even find that he'd been sold off and was still helping the other party count the money!
In any case.
If Lei Jun had activated a System when he first transmigrated, he definitely wouldn't have been thrilled.
He would have been thinking about how to take it out first.
What he hadn't expected was:
The System hadn't come looking for him.
He'd gone looking for the System first!
And on top of that...
The system's "lair"!
Of course...
It might only be one of them.
After all, there were far too many systems.
Then.
Two choices lay before Lei Jun.
Either strike first.
Or wait and see.
The former gave him a certain degree of initiative.
But while the situation remained unclear, he might end up on the defensive instead.
Besides, everything in the System Space right now...
Could only be called projections.
Even if Lei Jun took it all down intact, the gains he would actually reap wouldn't amount to much.
He could even imagine what would happen.
Once that being learned that someone had taken out the System Space, it would surely make all the projections disappear at once.
It might even launch a much stronger intervention.
In the end.
Lei Jun wouldn't have gained anything useful.
And might even alert the enemy.
"Better to wait and see."
"Or rather..."
"Let it come to my home ground! The Primordial Wilderness!"
Lei Jun wasn't familiar with Chaos.
There were too many variables.
Until he had complete confidence, whatever he did would have unpredictable results.
The Primordial Wilderness was different.
With Lei Jun's current cultivation, he could control the whole domain!
In Chaos, he might worry about being discovered by that being.
In the Primordial Wilderness, that simply wouldn't happen.
Lei Jun was confident of that.
He had reached this conclusion because the beings that created the systems still needed to parasitize the "protagonists" and rely on them to carry out their plans.
That meant they most likely weren't capable of doing it themselves.
Or, at the very least, they couldn't do it alone!
Either way.
It meant that.
On Lei Jun's home ground, the system couldn't detect his presence.
"In that case."
"I'll wait and see."
Lei Jun's thoughts shifted as he made a few quick calculations.
Soon.
He had worked out the result he wanted.
"At this rate, when it finds the Primordial Wilderness, it should be..."
"Around the end of the First Sermon?"
"That's soon!"
As he thought this.
Lei Jun's thoughts shifted again.
His primordial spirit withdrew from Chaos and returned to the Small Courtyard.
He was far faster than the System Space.
Judging by this alone.
Lei Jun's realm was above that system's.
Clearly.
Even systems had different levels.
Lei Jun murmured to himself,
"I just don't know what level the system coming this time will be."
"System?"
"Celestial Venerable, what are you muttering about?"
"What is a system?"
A clear, melodious female voice rang out, but it didn't come from anyone's mouth. It came from a tree.
The Laurel Tree.
Youying, who had been in a state of semi-seclusion, had been keeping a close eye on Lei Jun, who was lying beneath the tree—beneath her true form.
So.
The moment Lei Jun awoke from his "slumber"...
She sensed it at once.
Hearing her question, Lei Jun gave a soft laugh.
"Nothing."
"You'll find out when the time comes!"
"Just an uninvited guest!"
At that moment.
Youying wasn't the only one who froze. The other cultivators had just emerged from seclusion, too.
After Lei Jun awoke.
The cultivators in seclusion all came out one after another.
Without exception.
The chance to be reborn alone was enough to make them deeply grateful.
Not to mention the chance to reach Hunyuan.
So.
No matter what, they had to show their gratitude.
However.
As soon as they emerged.
They heard Lei Jun's quiet words.
An uninvited guest?
Could it be...
Someone like Yang Mei?
But since Lei Jun showed no intention of saying more, they didn't press him.
Instead, they seemed to share an unspoken understanding and spoke in unison.
"We pay our respects to the Celestial Venerable!"
Of course, it wasn't just their voices.
They bowed, too.
The Ancestors of the Dragon, Phoenix, and Qilin Clans, for instance, lowered their heads, showing no arrogance whatsoever. They wouldn't dare show Lei Jun any disrespect.
To be precise, they felt nothing but reverence.
Even the Spirit Root bent slightly to show its respect.
After that.
After that.
Though their words were no longer in unison.
They all meant the same thing.
"Thank you, Celestial Venerable, for granting us this opportunity. Without it, I wouldn't just have failed to reach Hunyuan—I might have lost my consciousness entirely! My thanks again, Celestial Venerable!"
"If there's anything you need from me, Celestial Venerable, just say the word!"
"I'll give my life without hesitation!"
Some spoke like this.
Others were a little less serious.
"Forgive me, Celestial Venerable. I wanted to bow to you, but I'm only a pebble, and I cultivate the Way of Hardness. I simply can't 'bend my waist'!"
"In that case..."
"I'll kowtow to you ten thousand times!"
With that.
The sound of "thump, thump, thump" rang out, rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
Looking again.
It was a little pebble, "jumping in place"...
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