He stood where he was and recovered his breath for a few moments, allowing the roots inside him that were processing the high-heat fragments to complete their initial digestion. During the absorption process, he sensed that the new dark-red pattern on the canopy had formed a distinct correspondence with the previous ice-blue pattern—one cold and one hot, one contracting and one expanding, maintaining a stable balance upon the canopy. As his body adapted to this new combination of rules, his temperature fluctuated slightly, rising by several degrees before returning to its normal range under the adjustment of the Frost Rule.
He took out the Data Pad and crossed off the coordinates of the Molten Core. The next target was Undercurrent, at the end of Section Four, located in the fifth section of the Arc Corridor near an open area without any obvious celestial structures. Undercurrent had no fixed territory. It was itself a continuously spreading energy field, completely unlike the other lords' habit of occupying fixed physical spaces.
He put away the Data Pad, turned, and left the outskirts of the dwarf star that was still collapsing. Raising a hand, he tore open a rift. Before stepping into the Interlayer, he checked his internal condition one last time. The four layers of patterns on his trunk were operating steadily in their respective positions: ice-blue, dark gray, dark silver, and dark red. The four colors did not interfere with one another, like four ropes of different colors neatly tied around the same pillar.
He withdrew his consciousness from the canopy and stepped into the rift.
Undercurrent's territory covered an extremely vast region, stretching from the start of the fifth section of the Arc Corridor to near the boundary of the sixth, spanning more than ten thousand kilometers. There were no large