The entire void seemed to be gripped by an invisible giant hand. Even the light began to twist into spirals.
"Boom—"
A soul-shaking rumble came from the heart of the black hole. It wasn't a sound, but the wail of space itself.
A crack a million kilometers long suddenly split open across the surface of the colossal, seventy-billion-kilometer-wide body. Blazing white energy erupted from it like a volcanic blast.
From the fissure, an arm covered in black crystalline armor slowly reached out.
As its five fingers spread, the surrounding space cracked like glass, forming a web of fractures.
Then a second arm emerged. The two enormous hands gripped the edges of the fissure and heaved.
"Riiip!"
Space was torn apart by sheer force, and a figure a million kilometers tall stepped out of the black hole.
The clone slowly opened his eyes, revealing two tiny black holes spinning within them. Wherever his gaze fell, space crumbled inch by inch, forming thin Space Rifts.
Then, more than a thousand cracks split open across the black hole's surface at once.
One million-kilometer-tall clone after another stepped out, each radiating an unsettling pressure.
They formed up in orderly ranks.
After splitting off a thousand Divine Power Clones, the black hole itself had shrunk by less than one ten-thousandth.
At its core, the Star Core, a high-grade Origin Treasure, blazed with light. Combined with the Black Hole Clone's own recovery, it replenished the lost energy in the blink of an eye.
Yan Ning waved his hand, and more than a thousand World Rings opened at once.
The thousand clones turned into a black torrent and filed into the rings in perfect order.
As the last ring closed, the starry sky suddenly fell silent. Only the Black Hole Clone, seventy billion kilometers in diameter, remained, slowly revolving in the void and radiating a suffocating pressure.
Looking at the thousand or so rings floating before him,
Yan Ning's lips curled upward.
"Now nothing can go wrong. With this many divine bodies, I could use them as bombs and blow up anyone below a Universe Lord!"
"Only me and that Netherworld Lord fellow can pull off something like this."
Whoosh!
Yan Ning vanished from the spot again.
He returned to the outer region of the universe.
Yan Ning stood in the cold void of space and lightly flicked a finger. A translucent, moon-white crystal appeared, floating before him.
The crystal was only the size of a fist. Moonlight shimmered across its surface like flowing water, and the faint outline of a miniature palace could be seen within.
It was the shrunken Moon Wheel Palace.
"Moon Wheel Palace, let me see what you can do!"
With a quiet shout, he poured surging divine power into the crystal.
In an instant, the entire starry sky trembled.
"Vmmm—"
The moon-white crystal suddenly burst into dazzling light, illuminating several light-years in every direction like a supernova.
Amid the brilliant radiance, a magnificent palace rapidly grew in size.
The palace was entirely moon-white, its surface carved with countless intricate Law Secret Patterns. Each line flickered on and off as if breathing.
The Moon Wheel Palace swelled rapidly, expanding to a diameter of over a hundred kilometers in the blink of an eye.
A gigantic full moon floated above the palace, accompanied by nine Nine Moon Illusions. They revolved slowly along some mysterious trajectory, casting a cool, clear radiance.
Wherever the moonlight reached, space automatically crystallized into a shimmering barrier, enveloping the entire palace.
Yan Ning inspected the High-Level Palace Treasure with satisfaction.
Its defense was powerful enough to withstand a Universe Lord's full-force attack.
More importantly, the Moon Wheel Palace came with a "Moon Shadow" function that could perfectly conceal his whereabouts. Unless a Universe Lord came in person—or a powerful Universe Strongest—no one would be able to detect it.
"Time to set out."
He flashed into the Moon Wheel Palace's main hall.
The space inside was far more vast than the palace's exterior suggested. The interior stretched over ten thousand kilometers in every direction.
He channeled divine power and activated the Secret Script.
"Moon Shadow."
The Law Secret Patterns on the Moon Wheel Palace abruptly shifted their arrangement. The entire palace gradually turned transparent, then vanished completely against the backdrop of the universe.
Not only that, but every trace that might reveal his whereabouts—spatial fluctuations, energy emissions, and more—was perfectly concealed.
"Now, let's see what a High-Level Palace Treasure can do at full speed!!"
Divine Power Burning!
Boom!!
Endless divine power burst into flames and surged into the Moon Wheel Palace!!
In an instant, the Moon Wheel Palace disappeared from its position.
It hadn't actually vanished. It had simply moved so fast that it reached light speed in an instant and entered the Dark Universe!
Ten times the speed of light, a hundred times, a thousand times!
It kept accelerating!
Yan Ning grew more and more excited!
Fast—too fast!
An F-class spaceship—no, no spaceship in the universe could ever reach this speed!!
With his divine power burning at full force, the Moon Wheel Palace soon exceeded ten thousand times the speed of light, and it was still accelerating!
Yan Ning wanted to see its limit!
His divine body stood more than five thousand meters tall!
At full burn, his divine power was rapidly consumed, but he didn't care about such a small amount.
Soon, the Moon Wheel Palace reached a hundred thousand times the speed of light.
Then it hit the limit.
His main body could only burn divine power fast enough to reach that speed for now!
But he could sense that this was only the limit of his Divine Power Burning, not the Moon Wheel Palace's limit!
Yan Ning's eyes shone with brilliant light. The corners of his mouth lifted involuntarily, and irrepressible excitement surged in his chest.
The sensation of moving beyond the limits made his whole body shiver. Every cell seemed to be cheering.
He felt the Moon Wheel Palace unleash a violent energy that tore through the Dark Universe. The sense of freedom, as though he were breaking free of the universe's restraints, made him burst out laughing.
"Fantastic! Now this is what real speed feels like!"
His laughter echoed through the empty main hall of the Moon Wheel Palace.
As someone who had crossed over from another world, experiencing something so far beyond the laws of physics was simply exhilarating.
Spaceships and sports cars didn't even come close.
He played with Treasures.
But soon, reason prevailed.
Yan Ning took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
He carefully gauged the rate at which his divine power was being consumed and furrowed his brow.
"A hundred thousand times the speed of light is incredible, but the rate of Divine Power Burning is ridiculous."
He calculated silently.
"At this rate, my own divine body won't last long."
His gaze swept over the more than a thousand World Rings floating around him. Each contained a Divine Power Clone a million kilometers tall. His reserves were plentiful, but there was no need to waste them like this.
"Ten thousand times the speed of light offers the best value."
After precise calculations, Yan Ning reached his conclusion.
"That'll give me plenty of speed while keeping the divine power consumption within an acceptable range."
"The straight-line trip from here to the Falling Cloud Secret Realm should take about a hundred years."
Yan Ning stroked his chin as he thought.
"I can use that time to study the Beast God Path."
With a thought, he rearranged the Moon Wheel Palace's interior.
A cultivation platform rose on one side of the main hall.
He sat down on it and began to cultivate.
It would still take some time for the Alien Races to discover that he had left the Ancestral God Secret Realm.
Even if they knew he'd left, they probably wouldn't be able to find out where he was.
A hundred years passed in cultivation as swiftly as a white horse flashing past a gap.
Yan Ning awoke from his deep cultivation.
He slowly opened his eyes. Secret Patterns of fire and spatial laws seemed to intertwine in his pupils, then vanished in a flash.
"Have we arrived?"
He stood and looked outside through the Moon Wheel Palace, his brow furrowing.
The starry sky before him was eerily still. There were no abnormal energy fluctuations, no spatial distortions, and not even a decent star in sight—only a few lonely wandering planets drifting in the darkness.
"The coordinates the system gave me point here."
He cautiously controlled the Moon Wheel Palace as it slowed, then brought it to a complete stop in the void.
The nine Nine Moon Illusions above the palace lit up together, casting cool waves of probing light that scanned every inch of space within several light-years.
"Strange."
Yan Ning tapped the armrest lightly, lost in thought.
A secret realm singled out as a mission by the system shouldn't be so ordinary. Unless...
"Unless the entrance to the secret realm has been deliberately concealed by some force! Or maybe I haven't found it yet. This could be a hidden secret realm!"
A gleam flashed in his eyes.
Yan Ning took a deep breath and slowly closed his eyes, sinking his entire mind into his sea of consciousness.
His spiritual sense poured out of him like a tide, turning into countless invisible threads that spread in every direction.
"If the detection equipment is useless, I'll use the most primitive method."
Each thread of spiritual sense carried a sliver of his consciousness. Like countless tiny detectors, they carefully sensed the slightest changes in every inch of space around him.
This method took time and effort, but the advantage was that no disguise could fool it.
Time passed in silence.
On the first day, his spiritual sense covered a radius of a million kilometers, but he found nothing.
By the third day, he had expanded his search to ten million kilometers, but still found nothing.
On the seventh day, as his spiritual sense swept across a seemingly ordinary stretch of void, it suddenly caught the faintest fluctuation. It vanished like a ripple from a dragonfly touching water, but Yan Ning shuddered.
"Found it. Something's strange here!"
He immediately withdrew his spiritual sense from every other direction and focused it all on this area.
Searching with such complete concentration placed a heavy strain on his mental energy.
His spiritual sense combed through the void again and again like a fine-toothed comb.
At last, on his thirty-seventh scan, he caught that faint fluctuation again. This time it was clearer, like a whirlpool hidden beneath the surface of a calm lake.
"This is it!"
Yan Ning snapped his eyes open and flashed to the source of the fluctuation.
To the naked eye, there was nothing here. It looked no different from the surrounding starry sky.
But he knew the secret lay beneath this ordinary appearance.
He extended his right hand, palm facing down, and slowly released a wisp of divine power infused with the Fire Void Law.
His divine power flowed through the void like water, outlining a blurry shape: a circular area about a thousand meters across, with an incredibly subtle distortion in the spatial structure along its edges.
"Just as I thought."
Yan Ning's lips curved slightly. A distortion this faint was impossible to detect with ordinary means. Even a Universe Venerable would overlook it unless they were searching deliberately.
Only someone like him, scanning every inch with spiritual sense, might notice it.
But who would go to such lengths to search the universe?
He bent down and gently pressed his palm against the invisible boundary.
The sensation was strange, like pressing against an exceptionally elastic membrane. It was neither completely solid nor purely empty.
"So the entrance to the secret realm is here. How do I open it?"
Yan Ning fell into thought.
He tried increasing the flow of divine power, but the membrane only dimpled slightly before springing back. He tried to break through it with the laws of space, but found the spatial structure here unusually stable. Forcing his way in might trigger unforeseeable consequences.
Just as he was at a loss, the Chaos Bell inside him suddenly gave a light tremor.
Sensing its master's intent, the Chaos Bell began to emit a low hum.
The sound seemed to come from time immemorial, bearing an unparalleled majesty that could suppress all the heavens.
Right! He still had the Chaos Bell!
The Chaos Bell could control the forces of time and space and suppress the elements of earth, water, fire, and wind!
Opening a mere Secret Realm Gate would be nothing!
"Chaos Bell, I'm counting on you this time."
As soon as he spoke, he closed his eyes slightly. In the next instant, the Chaos Bell flew out from between his brows and landed in his palm.
Vmmm!
His body began to grow. In the blink of an eye, his five-thousand-meter-tall divine body had returned to its original form.
The five-thousand-meter-tall divine body suddenly blazed with brilliant light.
Mysterious Law Secret Patterns lit up across every inch of his skin. They were the sign that his Fire-Void Fusion Law had reached its peak.
His divine power surged through his meridians like a raging sea, roaring like thunder.
"Divine Power Burning!"
With a furious roar, Yan Ning's right arm bulged with muscle, veins standing out.
The Chaos Bell in his palm suddenly expanded, transforming into a colossal bell ten thousand meters tall.
The ancient inscriptions on its body lit up one by one, each rune containing the power to create heaven and earth.
Illusory images of the sun, moon, and stars, as well as mountains, rivers, and streams, appeared across the bell's surface, as if it bore an entire universe.
Yan Ning slammed his palm hard against the Chaos Bell.
"Dong—"
The instant the bell rang, the entire starry sky trembled.
Visible ripples of sound spread out from the Chaos Bell.
Where they passed, time stopped and space froze.
Several distant rogue planets came to an instant halt, even their rotation stopping.
The floating cosmic dust froze in place as well.
In that instant, ninety percent of his divine body was consumed!
But the very next second, his divine body had recovered completely.
The power bank inside the World Ring had begun to show its usefulness.
Yan Ning saw clearly that when the bell's ripples swept over the hidden spatial barrier, the invisible barrier suddenly revealed itself: a translucent silver membrane covered in mysterious runes.
At that moment, the runes flashed frantically, trying to resist the Chaos Bell's might.
"Crack... crack!"
A faint sound of shattering rang out.
Web-like cracks began to spread across the silver membrane, and the runes went dark one after another.
Yan Ning could sense that this barrier contained extremely advanced spatial laws, even mixed with a trace of the power of the time law.
If an ordinary Universe Venerable came here, they might not even notice it, let alone break through it.
But just what kind of Treasure was the Chaos Bell?
"Rumble!"
With a deafening crash, the silver membrane finally gave way and collapsed like a shattered mirror!
Countless space fragments scattered in every direction, carving streaks of black through the void. Beyond the shattered space, a gigantic vortex over ten thousand kilometers in diameter appeared. Chaos Airflow churned within it, and the outline of a mysterious world could just barely be seen.
"Hahahaha, it's open!"
Before you continue