Domain Expansion

A dome of dark green light. A towering altar of white bones.

Lu Ping stood ankle-deep in the tide of snakes, the hem of his black uniform soaked through with clammy cold sweat.

The scraping of scales beneath his feet was sticky and dull. Tens of thousands of blue-black serpents crawled madly counterclockwise around the central black stone altar according to some bizarre pattern.

Qian Chun took a deep breath, dark red compressed blood coiling around her right fist as she slammed it fiercely into the ground.

Boom!

The blast wave instantly tore the snakes within a ten-meter radius into chunks of flesh. Dark green fluid splattered across the carvings at the altar's base, hissing with a piercing corrosive sound.

Yet in less than half a second, the surrounding snakes surged back like a tidal wave, tightly filling the cleared space.

The severed remains squirmed together and fused, seeming to grow even more numerous.

"We can't kill them all, and I can't sense the Cursed Womb's true body."

Qian Chun withdrew her fist, foul-smelling slime clinging between her fingers. Her brows furrowed tightly. "It has no intention of facing us head-on."

Lu Ping remained calm and casually cut away a corner of his clothing that had been splashed with dark green fluid.

The fabric fell to the ground, hissing continuously before being completely corroded away moments later. It was obviously highly toxic.

He raised his eyes toward the dark green light screen around them, inverted like a giant bowl, faint light reflected in his gaze.

[Domain Expansion].

It was the ultimate masterpiece of a sorcerer materializing their [Innate Domain] in reality and imbuing it with their own technique.

Within this absolute space, the caster not only gained all-around "attribute boosts," but the technique imbued into the domain also possessed the rule of "guaranteed hit."

The price was an enormous consumption of cursed energy, along with a temporary "burnout" after the technique overloaded.

"It's stalling for time, using the barrier's rules to complete its descent ritual," Lu Ping said evenly.

"Then we'll smash it from the outside!"

Qian Chun snorted coldly and raised both hands, fingers interlocked and pointing overhead.

The blood within her body compressed rapidly at her fingertips, condensing into a blood bead no larger than a needlepoint.

[Crimson Blood Manipulation: Piercing Blood]!

A red flash shot skyward amid a shrill sonic boom, striking the very top of the canopy with precision.

The seemingly indestructible dark green light screen shook violently. That single blow actually tore open a half-meter-wide crack.

Beyond the crack were not the city's neon lights they had expected, but only an oppressive darkness—no sun, no starlight.

"Did it work?"

A flicker of delight crossed Qian Chun's eyes. Cursed energy surged through her body again as she prepared to widen the opening.

"No." Lu Ping reached out to stop her, calmly watching the slowly healing crack.

"It was too easy. A proper closed domain requires immense cursed energy, precise barrier technique, and an understanding of one's own technique that transcends life and death. A newly formed Cursed Womb cannot possibly achieve perfection."

He shifted his footing to avoid a blind snake snapping at his ankle, then continued,

"This is merely an incomplete, semi-closed domain. We haven't stepped on the barrier's weak point yet. That crack in the sky is more like a trap it instinctively left behind."

Before he had finished speaking, the change in the air proved Lu Ping's deduction.

No breeze came through the torn crack. Instead, waterfall-like dark green fluid began seeping out. It cascaded down the light screen and poured into the snakes below.

Rustle, rustle, rustle—

Drenched in the fluid, the snakes seemed to enter a frenzy of feeding, their bodies swelling to twice their original size.

They no longer merely carpeted the ground. Instead, they piled atop one another like human towers, forming massive scaled platforms that forcibly lifted Lu Ping and Qian Chun upward.

The two rapidly rose higher, drawing closer and closer to the top of the altar, whose full shape had remained hidden from view.

The snake bodies beneath his feet were slick yet hard. Lu Ping stood on them without wavering in the slightest.

He swept his gaze over the oval edge of the barrier and the faintly contracting summit of the light screen above.

"Qian Chun, what do you think the shape of this barrier resembles?" Lu Ping suddenly asked.

Qian Chun was using a web of blood to shred the flying snakes lunging at them. She froze at his question, then her expression shifted slightly.

"An oval, pointed at both ends... like a cocoon?"

"It's a snake's gallbladder."

Lu Ping's words seemed to freeze the air around them for an instant.

"This closed barrier is a snake's gallbladder magnified countless times. Water gathers, bile is secreted—the ritual is about to enter its second stage."

As he spoke, the tide of snakes had already carried them to the top of the altar.

At the center of the flat stone platform floated a colossal stone egg as tall as two people. The phantom forms of two ghastly white giant serpents were tightly coiled around its surface. As they writhed, the cracks across the egg kept widening, while dark green cursed energy glowing like fireflies pulsed outward and inward like tides.

[Twin-Snake Egg].

"Found you!"

Killing intent nearly overflowed from Qian Chun's eyes. Bloody light flickered at her fingertips, the searing heat warping the air.

"Smash that egg, and the barrier will naturally come apart!"

"Wait."

Lu Ping's voice remained utterly emotionless as his right hand swiftly clamped around Qian Chun's wrist.

His palm was icy cold, yet steady and powerful.

"Lu Ping?" Qian Chun turned toward him, her eyes full of impatience and confusion.

"What appears within a domain is not necessarily the real body. It is the manifestation of the caster's inner landscape."

Lu Ping watched the stone egg pulse rhythmically, his tone calm.

"The sacrificial process here is so standardized that an identical altar and ritual must also exist somewhere in the real world. Before it was born, the Cursed Womb observed that scene and designated it as the ritual for its own descent."

He released her hand, his gaze passing beyond the stone egg and into the deeper void.

"This [Twin-Snake Egg] is most likely still in the ruins of the real world. Attacking this illusion now would accomplish nothing except awaken its defensive mechanisms early."

Qian Chun calmed down and withdrew the blood she had been poised to unleash, though the anxiety in her eyes did not fade.

"Then are we just supposed to wait here and die? Once it fully hatches, the domain's technique will activate. Even if this domain is incomplete and lacks 'sure-kill' and 'guaranteed-hit' effects, the enhanced snake venom within it alone will be enough to melt us into bloody water."

Lu Ping fell silent. He understood their current predicament all too well.

He still had a massive weakness when it came to dealing with domains.

In this era, the most orthodox method of countering a domain was to deploy one's own domain and clash with it.

But he could not do that yet.

The measures passed down in the world included New Shadow Style: Simple Domain, which left its user unable to move; Hollow Wicker Basket, which required maintaining a specific hand seal with both hands; and Falling Blossom Emotion, the Three Great Families' closely guarded passive defensive technique.

...An incomplete Domain Expansion might barely count as one of them.

He had not yet fully mastered any of those methods.

He slightly closed his eyes and secretly formed a concealed hand sign within his sleeves, attempting to connect with the Shadow Wolf left outside the barrier.

An extremely faint sting came from his fingertips, like touching ice through layer upon layer of thick calluses.

There was only the vaguest trace of a connection. It was utterly incapable of conveying complex tactical commands.

Inside and outside the barrier were, in the end, two severed and independent spaces.

The hissing of the snakes grew increasingly shrill. The white serpent phantoms on the surface of the [Twin-Snake Egg] began letting out piercing cries like the wails of infants.

Fragments of the stone egg began to fall away, revealing black-red scales beneath.

There was not much time left.

Faced with the threat of imminent death, Lu Ping's state of mind instead grew calmer and calmer.

The automatic circulation of the Three Corpses within him made his thoughts clearer than ever. The world before his eyes began to lose its color, leaving behind only the paths along which cursed energy flowed.

"Since it stubbornly follows the rules of the ritual..."

Countless pieces of information linked together, yielding an answer that belonged solely to this moment.

Lu Ping slowly opened his eyes, an easy composure that seemed to command the entire situation appearing on his face. "Then we'll give it a perfect ritual."

"What do you mean?"

"This domain is its recreation of the scene of its birth. In other words, according to its understanding, the ritual must rigidly complete every step before it can truly be 'born.'"

Lu Ping stepped forward, facing the violent pressure of cursed energy as his black coat snapped in the wind.

"Newborn creatures often possess intelligence no different from beasts. Beasts do not consider whether rules are reasonable. They only look at results."

He turned to Qian Chun, an unfathomable light in his eyes.

"Since we cannot find a flaw in the barrier for now, we'll create a ritual 'flaw' that it cannot refuse and fabricate a 'sacrifice' to deceive the domain."