The Lost Power

After confirming that there was no danger below, Lin Yan slowly descended into the ice cavern with Jiang Nannan and Zhang Lexuan.

It was their first time witnessing such a miraculous and majestic sight, and the two women could not help crying out in astonishment.

A moment later, the three regained their senses. The shock had yet to fade from their faces as they slowly made their way toward the Ice Lotus at the center of the cavern.

The closer they drew to the Ice Lotus, the more bone-piercingly cold the surrounding temperature became.

By the time they reached the space beneath the Ice Lotus, the area had nearly turned into a vacuum—the extreme cold had frozen even the air, causing it to condense and fall.

Standing beneath the Ice Lotus and looking up, they saw layer upon layer of crystalline petals, clear and cold, more exquisite than the finest sapphires in the world!

Gazing at this naturally formed miracle, Lin Yan's thoughts stirred. He slowly raised a hand and tentatively reached toward the Ice Lotus overhead.

The instant Lin Yan's fingertips touched the Ice Lotus, the enormous flower—and even the entire underground ice cavern—suddenly began to tremble faintly!

The next moment, the endless cold that had lain dormant within the cavern and the subterranean ice for countless millennia surged forth as a tide of frost.

Like fledglings returning to their nest, it gathered into a vortex of cold air and poured entirely into the icy flames at the heart of the lotus!

Faced with this sudden and bizarre development, Lin Yan swiftly took the two women into the air and retreated above the cavern, watching the changes below while remaining ready to leave at any moment.

Only after a full quarter of an hour did the massive tide of cold gradually begin to subside.

At the same time, as the cold was drawn away, the originally frigid ice cavern unexpectedly began to carry faint traces of warmth!?

Just as Lin Yan and the others were filled with astonishment at this transformation, another change descended!

The Ice Lotus's long, densely spread roots, which had originally burrowed into the ice, suddenly began rapidly losing all vitality and energy from the bottom up, turning into ice fragments that scattered through the air!

After absorbing the endless cold and all the vitality and energy from the rest of itself, the enormous, crystal-glowing Ice Lotus finally began to drift down from above, like ripe fruit falling from its stem.

And with every inch it descended, its lotus body condensed further. By the time it finally landed at the center of the ice cavern, the entire Ice Lotus had shrunk to the size of an adult's two palms!

At the same time, Lin Yan did not know that, at the exact instant the Ice Lotus matured and fell, a vast sea of ice-blue flames suddenly appeared in the skies above the Far North!

Elsewhere, Luo Ye, who had been hiding within an iceberg, immediately detected the sudden phenomenon of the sea of flames!

"The ice-blue flames have appeared. My chance to escape has finally come!"

Excitement nearly overflowed from Luo Ye's face. After calming himself slightly, a deep-blue crystal suddenly appeared in his palm, as though it contained a vast world of ice and snow!

Staring at the crystal in his hand, Luo Ye's excitement grew ever more fervent. He murmured in a low voice, "Snow Empress, Ice Empress, you still won't be able to stop me!"

"Today, I will take the Ice God Crystal with me!"

"Besides, I was the one who found the Ice God Ruins in the first place. You can keep the Ice God Scepter for me a while longer! One day, I will personally reclaim what belongs to me!"

By the end, Luo Ye's voice was filled with extreme greed and confidence!

The next moment, Luo Ye suddenly raised his head to look at the sea of ice-blue flames in the distant sky, and the greed in his eyes grew even stronger!

Then Luo Ye took out his Treasure Mirror again and asked hoarsely, "Treasure Mirror, tell me, what are these ice-blue flames? And why have they suddenly appeared?"

The instant Luo Ye asked his second question, the Treasure Mirror, which had always known everything and answered every question, unexpectedly froze for a moment!

The next second, two lines of text slowly appeared!

[Answering the first question requires 100 energy points—(Pay?)]

[Answering the second question requires 999...999 energy points—(Pay?)]

??!!!

When Luo Ye saw the endless string of nines on the second line, his expression changed drastically in an instant!

In all his years, he had encountered a question requiring nearly infinite energy to answer only once before!

And that time, the question he had asked was about the origin of the Treasure Mirror itself!

"Luo Ye! The skies over the Far North are on fire!"

"When will the opportunity you mentioned finally come?!"

An angry and anxious voice came from behind him, abruptly interrupting Luo Ye's thoughts. He had no time to think and instinctively put away the Treasure Mirror at top speed...

At the same time, when the Ice Lotus in the underground cavern completely condensed into form, the sea of flames in the skies over the Far North slowly faded away and vanished without a trace.

And at the very moment Luo Ye used the Treasure Mirror to investigate the cause of the icy flames and directly turned his attention toward Lin Yan, an unseen connection quietly formed once again!

This connection transcended causality and fate, unrestricted by time or space!

It was an inevitable connection that surpassed laws, planes, and universes!

At the same time, the instant this connection formed, the dormant Prajna Heart Lamp in Lin Yan's sea of consciousness suddenly stirred and directly pulled his consciousness inside!

As his consciousness sank into the depths of the Prajna Heart Lamp, it felt like the snap of a finger, yet also like the passage of countless ages!

The next moment, a vast and boundless scene slowly appeared within Lin Yan's consciousness!

It was an endless ocean, clear and luminous, covered in soft, warm radiance. Countless strands of light crisscrossed through it, while specks of starlight rose and fell in flickering motion. This was the Sea of Destiny, and also the world Origin Sea of the Douluo Plane!

To Lin Yan's consciousness, it seemed like only an instant before something silently appeared above the once tranquil Origin Sea...

A wisp? A stream? A mass?

Energy? Matter? Authority?

At that moment, Lin Yan ransacked everything he had learned across two lifetimes but could not find any words that could accurately define its existence.

In the end, he could only imitate the phrase "Laozi defined the Dao" and forcibly call it "a force"!

This force was neither light nor wave, neither energy nor law... It seemed colored yet colorless, shaped yet shapeless!

Yet although Lin Yan could not identify what this "force" truly was, he instantly recognized the "golden star" wrapped within it!

That "golden star" was himself! It was his true spirit!

And the scene naturally recorded what had happened after he transmigrated to the Douluo Continent!

The next moment, the force carrying Lin Yan's true spirit suddenly evaporated by one-third without warning.

At the same time, Lin Yan's true spirit developed a fate line, a timeline... within the Douluo Universe and the Douluo Plane. It silently merged into the universe's Origin Sea and also into the Origin Sea of the Douluo Plane!

"So this was the process of being reincarnated after I transmigrated..."

After witnessing this scene, Lin Yan finally understood. So this was how he had registered his existence and been reincarnated into a legitimate local resident!

Just as Lin Yan thought the scene was about to end, it suddenly shifted. A dark, filthy, narrow alley appeared before his eyes.

Within that dark and filthy alley, a small, frail beggar child was curled up in a corner, shivering.

Just as Lin Yan wondered why such a scene had appeared, the one-third of the force that had previously evaporated to establish his identity gathered from the void above a pile of rubbish not far from the beggar child!

The next moment, that one-third of the force drifted down and merged entirely into a battered, broken bronze mirror below!

At that moment, the little beggar curled up nearby unconsciously murmured, "So hungry... Where can I find something to eat..."

As the beggar child's murmur faded, the battered bronze mirror instantly released a faint, eerie glow, as though it had quietly undergone some unknown transformation!

After the transformation was complete, a line of clear writing slowly emerged upon its smooth mirror surface...