Setting the Stage

Those low growls came and went, like echoes drifting from an immense distance, or like dead souls sealed deep within the crystal making one final struggle. Chu Ming looked at the crystal.

The crystal was black as ink, blood-red patterns flowing across its surface.

Deep within those patterns, the phantoms of the three lords were curled into a ball, utterly motionless.

Yet their auras still circulated within the crystal, fused as one with it.

He raised a hand and inscribed a seal onto the crystal's surface with the Law of Order.

The instant the seal took shape, those low growls vanished completely.

Chu Ming stored the crystal deep within his domain.

Within the domain, amid the void of the twenty-five starfields, that black "star" floated in silence.

Now another crystal joined it, merging with it.

The fused crystal grew somewhat larger, and its rotation quickened as well.

Chu Ming sensed the fluctuations of that crystal.

Very powerful.

If he could refine it...

He shook his head, suppressing the thought.

Now was not the time.

He raised his head and looked ahead.

The aura of the Creation Spring Eye was drawing ever closer.

That pure source of Order had grown so dense that it was nearly condensing into substance.

With every breath, he could feel that source circulating through his body, nourishing his Dao Seed and stabilizing his domain.

Yet amid that purity, the mixed-in aura was becoming clearer and clearer.

It shared the same origin as the source of Order, yet was utterly its opposite.

Like the two sides of a single Dao Seed.

One side was Order; the other was...

The final barrier was a colossal net woven from countless chains of Chaotic Laws.

The net stretched across before Chu Ming, hanging down from the void above and extending