Having confirmed this, he lingered no longer and turned toward the arched doorway.
The doorway closed behind him. The law fibers along its edges wove themselves anew from both sides toward the center. Their ends joined, entwined, and locked together at the closure. Once the weaving was complete, the texture of the seam flowed seamlessly into the surrounding wall, leaving no trace.
Chu Ming stood before the sealed wall, sensing that the inner chamber behind him had returned to a completely enclosed state.
The law samples within the crystals continued to exist beyond the wall with their original colors and pulses, occupying spaces independent of his presence. He turned and retraced the corridor toward the side hall. His footsteps sounded evenly through the passage, blending with the rushing of laws deep within the walls as they faded into the distance.
A section midway along the corridor widened to either side, its ceiling rising into an arch. The law patterns on the four walls curved smoothly around the corners. Chu Ming stopped there. The layer of fine sand between his soles and the Light Membrane supported his weight evenly. He turned toward the wall and spread his divine sense over the entire topology map.
The chart unfolded in his sea of consciousness. Seventeen dark-gold points of light were distributed at equidistant coordinates throughout the Turbid Source Land. A faint, pulsing halo surrounded each point, its radius proportionate to the law density around its region: halos in denser areas had narrower radii, while those in less dense areas spread outward more freely.
With a thought, he laid out the coordinates, pulse frequencies, and surrounding law-density data of all seventeen points in his sea of consciousness. Seventeen sets of fine dark-gold numerals appeared beside the points simultaneously, like a star chart with every