The Ancient Imperial Daughter Is Dead-So Who Is She?

He immediately focused his mind. The Source Seal formed by the tiny primordial spirit's hands abruptly changed, shifting toward detection.

For safety's sake, he activated the [All Causes Barrier] once more. With two layers of protection overlapping, even if something strange lurked here, he could rest easy.

Whoosh!

At this moment, the vast attainments in Source Arts accumulated across three lifetimes were fully mobilized.

Tan Lin rapidly deduced and analyzed the patterns and origin of that trace of fluctuating ripples.

His mastery of Source Arts had already surpassed the Source Heavenly Masters of later generations. As he employed it now, it was as though the center of this entire small world had shifted onto him. Mystic Yellow Qi swirled around him, giving rise to great wonders.

Time passed bit by bit, and the secret land remained utterly silent.

"Here..."

Suddenly, Tan Lin's residual soul slightly raised its eyelids.

He had already locked onto a location that appeared to be the most ordinary spot in the secret land.

It was a sheer cliff wall. Its spiritual energy was not the richest, nor was its terrain anything unusual. It was precisely the kind of place most easily overlooked.

Yet the core node of the restriction resonating with the Dragon Vein was hidden behind that stone wall, borrowing the terrain and layout of the entire secret land to create an almost natural concealment effect.

Seeing this, Tan Lin did not hesitate in the slightest. The tiny primordial spirit joined two fingers like a sword, mobilizing a nearly imperceptible wonder of Source Arts with his divine sense before pointing through the air.

Whoosh!

This finger strike was not meant to forcibly break the restriction.

The instant that Source Pattern wonder touched the stone wall, it transformed into the most nimble key, perfectly suited to the restriction. Following the trajectory of that resonant ripple, it gently imprinted itself upon an invisible intersection of stone patterns.

Buzz...

The next instant.

A ring of formless ripples spread across the surface of the stone wall. Then, without a sound, it sank inward, revealing a narrow, deep entrance.

In an instant, an aura far purer than that of the secret land outside—mixed with the sedimented ancient presence of hundreds of thousands of years, along with a strange and elegant fragrance—rushed toward Tan Lin outside the cave.

At that moment, as the entrance opened wide, Tan Lin noticed under [Inverted All-Causes Vision] that two brand-new Causal Lines had suddenly emerged from the Soul Pearl Barrier.

One of them instantly branched into numerous Branch Lines, while the other gave Tan Lin an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

He frowned slightly, believing it was merely an illusion, and did not dwell on it for now.

All doubts would be answered once he entered the cave.

Of course, this wisp of his true residual soul would not enter personally. He immediately stripped out the incomplete primordial spirit stored within the Soul Pearl and sent it into the cave with a single thought to investigate.

At this moment, that faint, invisible fluctuation abruptly became clear.

The primordial spirit flew into the cave and proceeded onward.

This cave was deeper than Tan Lin had imagined. It contained another world within, winding like a sheep's intestine for over a thousand miles and nearly exceeding the limit of his current remote control.

The paths inside had not been excavated by people. Instead, they looked as though they had been gnawed out by countless unknown creatures.

Splash...

After proceeding another seventy-odd miles, the primordial spirit continued winding downward and entered an underground karst cave.

The karst cave was like an independent small space. Much like the secret land and the outside world, it was nearly isolated—a small world within a world.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit looked around and saw countless multicolored Source Ores covering the cave walls.

It resembled a mineral vein. There was the most ordinary common Source, all manner of strange variant Source, and quite a few Divine Source Blocks deeper within, emitting dazzling divine radiance.

The refracted light from these crystals illuminated the entire karst cave in a fantastical riot of colors.

But that alone was not enough to shake Tan Lin's mind.

What truly astonished him was that countless silkworm larvae crawled over and inside those Source Ores.

The silkworm larvae inside and outside the Source Ores came in every conceivable variety and size.

The small ones were like grains of rice, while the large ones were as thick as an infant's arm.

Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, gold, white...

Their colors seemed even more brilliant than the Source Ores, nearly encompassing every color in the world. Some were even entirely transparent, with rosy radiance contained within them.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit silently continued deeper.

Scattered Divine Source Blocks began appearing inside. Naturally, the silkworms upon the Divine Source were different as well, with distinct patterns resembling stars, burning clouds, birds, and beasts emerging across their bodies.

There was no need to sense their aura. They looked extremely high-grade at a glance.

Countless dense silkworm molts and cocoons lay all around the Source Ores.

Within his field of vision, aside from the silkworms inside the Source, the other larvae were not completely motionless. They were certainly not dead things.

They lay quietly upon the Source Ores, occasionally wriggling as they breathed in and out the pure spiritual energy evaporating from the ores throughout the karst cave.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit advanced several more miles. The space within the cave grew increasingly spacious and no longer narrow, yet there was still not the slightest sound.

But the environment here was not lifeless. The surrounding air seemed peaceful, while some mysterious Dao rhythm drifted through it.

"From this point onward, they are all descendants of Divine Silkworm Ridge. There are too many... Did they come here in this era to seize the nest, or had they already crossed paths with Tianling during the Archaic Era?"

Tan Lin's primordial spirit walked and paused, taking in everything along the way as ripples rose in his heart.

Questions intertwined within his mind.

Still, he was not overly surprised.

The Archaic Era had ended, but descendants of Divine Silkworm Ridge had not gone extinct in the outside world. They had not only been extracted from stone, but some had always survived outside and fortunately propagated to the present day.

After all, those qualified to use Divine Source Liquid were ultimately few—elites.

Even among the descendants, not every silkworm was a Divine Silkworm. They needed to possess Ancestral Blood, and it had to be sufficiently concentrated.

Tan Lin could tell that the silkworms from before were likely descendants of Divine Silkworms that had accidentally broken free from Source Ore seals, multiplying generation after generation over countless years. Their Ancestral Blood was exceedingly thin.

By now, even the earliest descendants to break free had already perished.

Those at the outermost edge of the karst cave could even be said to differ little from ordinary mortal silkworms.

But from the area where Divine Source Blocks began appearing, things were entirely different. Not a single silkworm larva clung to the surfaces of the Source Ores.

The farther inward he went, the denser the life essence became. He saw true descendants of Divine Silkworm Ridge.

For example, several silkworms seemingly forged from purple-gold, with a pair of transparent thin wings growing from their backs, as well as a snow-white silkworm king radiating hazy Dao rhythm.

Of course, these were merely descendants possessing Ancestral Blood, not Divine Silkworms.

Even so, these silkworms were more noble than the royal descendants of certain Primordial Royal Clans.

Yet even here, the karst cave had not reached its end.

Tan Lin had already guessed that true Divine Silkworms must exist in the deepest part of this place.

And there might be two of them, corresponding to the two Causal Lines that had emerged from his Soul Pearl Barrier.

That meant this World Within World should have existed during the Archaic Era...

So how was this some secret land of the Heavenly Mystic Ancient Clan?

It was clearly an ancestral nest of Divine Silkworm Ridge!

For one moment, Tan Lin vaguely suspected that his memories had become confused.

Was Tianling, his beloved from the Archaic Era, truly born into the Heavenly Mystic Ancient Clan rather than Divine Silkworm Ridge, another great royal clan?

"When I fell in the Archaic Era, there were still at least three or four hundred thousand years before the end of that era. Over such a long span of time, it seems many things must have deviated from their original course..."

Tan Lin pondered deeply.

Finally, before long, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

At the end of the karst cave lay a spacious underground cavern. Countless stalactites hung from the ceiling, and what dripped from them was not water, but Dragon Marrow.

At the center of the cavern was a small Dragon Marrow Pool that had accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years.

Aside from that, two enormous Divine Source Blocks seemed to have taken root there over endless ages, merging with the cavern floor. They soaked in the Dragon Marrow, with only a small portion of their uppermost surfaces exposed.

The submerged portions of the two Divine Source Blocks were both over three meters tall. Divine splendor flowed within them, and their bodies were crystal-clear.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit gazed through the Dragon Marrow directly at the two Divine Source Blocks.

At once, two breathtakingly beautiful figures sealed separately within the Divine Source came into view.

"How... is this possible?!"

In that brief instant, Tan Lin's emotions, originally as calm as an ancient well, underwent a rare and violent upheaval.

His gaze locked tightly onto the Divine Source Block on the left.

The person within was a woman with waterfall-like purple hair draped around her shoulders, dressed in a magnificent long purple palace gown.

Her beauty was peerless, her skin icy and her bones jade-like. Her picturesque eyes were closed, and her long, curled lashes cast a faint shadow beneath the overlapping radiance of Divine Source and Dragon Marrow.

That face...

No, not just that face. Every detail of her entire body was exactly the same as the woman he remembered from his previous life, as though they had been carved from the same mold!

Whether it was her exquisite features, the noble bearing between her brows, or her overall temperament—even every inch of skin and every strand of hair—there was not the slightest difference.

At that moment, Tan Lin's vision blurred slightly, and his mind shook.

"Tianling?!"

Upon recognizing the woman within the Divine Source, a name nearly escaped his lips.

Yet the state of mind tempered through countless ages gradually calmed his turbulent emotions. He neither spoke nor lost his composure.

However, the doubts lingering deep in his mind grew even heavier at this moment.

More than half a year ago, when he had first awakened, he had used [All-Cause Vision] to inspect things. None of his Causal Lines had been connected to Tianling.

In the Archaic Era, although the Soul Pearl did not possess its current miraculous ability to inspect the movements of Anchor Points at the ends of Causal Lines at any time, he could be certain that there had been a Causal Line between himself and Tianling.

If that line no longer existed, it could only mean that the line had broken—that the person at its Anchor Point had passed away.

At least, Tan Lin had never encountered a phenomenon where a Causal Line was hidden.

"What exactly... is going on?"

Tan Lin's primordial spirit hovered before the Dragon Marrow Pool, motionless as a clay statue.

Outside the karst cave, his residual soul was frowning deeply as it scrutinized the two brand-new Causal Lines that had appeared on the Soul Pearl Barrier earlier.

The instant one of those lines had emerged, he had inexplicably found it somewhat familiar. At first, he had assumed it was an illusion, but now it seemed the matter was likely not so simple.

"It is only a familiarity that feels like déjà vu. It may not truly be her. But why does she resemble her so closely?"

"A similar flower? No... impossible. Even if she were a similar flower, how could she bloom in another clan?"

Layers upon layers of doubt piled up as countless deductions and speculations raced through his mind like lightning.

"Could it be... possession by a primordial spirit? Or perhaps... one of the transformations in the Nine Transformations of the Divine Silkworm, imitating her appearance?"

As those thoughts stirred, Tan Lin's primordial spirit within the karst cave suddenly moved. It stared at the perfect body within the Divine Source, then formed hand seals as it murmured an incantation.

Then, two beams of divine light suddenly shot from the tiny primordial spirit's eyes and entered the Divine Source sealing Tianling.

Immediately afterward, the tiny primordial spirit revealed an expression of understanding.

"Empty... The Immortal Platform is empty. This should indeed be Tianling's body, but her primordial spirit has already vanished... In the end, she still died..."

However, another thought soon arose in his residual soul's mind.

An empty Immortal Platform did not necessarily mean that her primordial spirit had truly vanished.

A fragile primordial spirit could still be preserved into later ages by sealing it within a Dao Artifact, Divine Source, or another object. Moreover, if someone possessed heaven-defying talent and encountered the right opportunity, they could shed their old shell and live another Lifetime, or even possess another person...

In short, there were simply too many possibilities.

And the most crucial point of doubt was this: if Tianling's primordial spirit had truly vanished, then what was the point of preserving her body?

Then there was that Causal Line carrying a trace of familiarity. It kept making him feel that perhaps Tianling had not truly died.