Shrouding the Heavens: The Female Emperor's Strictest Master, Those Years

He immediately focused his mind. The Source Seal formed by the tiny Primordial Spirit's hands suddenly changed, shifting toward detection.

As a precaution, he activated [All Causes Barrier] once more. With the two layers of protection stacked together, even if something strange lurked here, he could rest easy.

Whoosh!

At that moment, the immense Source Arts attainments accumulated over three lifetimes were fully mobilized.

Tan Lin rapidly deduced and analyzed the patterns and origin of that ripple of fluctuation.

His mastery of Source Arts had already surpassed that of the Source Heavenly Masters of later generations. As he wielded it now, it was as though the center of this entire small world had shifted onto him. Mystic Yellow Qi swirled around him as immense mysteries took shape.

Time passed bit by bit. The hidden land remained utterly silent.

"Here..."

Suddenly, Tan Lin's remnant soul slightly lifted his eyelids.

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

It was a steep cliff face. Its spiritual energy was not the richest, nor was its terrain in any way remarkable. It was precisely the sort of place most easily overlooked.

Yet the core node of the restriction resonating with the Dragon Vein was hidden behind that cliff face. By borrowing the terrain and formation of the entire hidden land, it produced an almost natural concealment effect.

Seeing this, Tan Lin did not hesitate in the slightest. The tiny Primordial Spirit raised two fingers like a sword, directing a trace of nearly imperceptible Source Arts mystery with his divine sense before pointing through the air.

Whoosh!

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

The moment the Source Pattern mystery touched the cliff face, 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 intersection of stone patterns invisible to the naked eye.

Buzz...

The next instant.

A ring of invisible ripples spread across the cliff face. Then, without a sound, it caved inward, revealing a narrow and profound cave entrance.

In an instant, an aura far purer than that of the hidden land outside, mixed with the ancient deposits of hundreds of thousands of years and carrying an elegant, peculiar fragrance, surged toward Tan Lin outside the cave.

As the entrance opened wide, under [Inverted All-Causes Vision], Tan Lin noticed that two brand-new Causal Lines had appeared upon the Soul Pearl's barrier.

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

He frowned slightly, believing it to be an illusion, and did not dwell on it for the moment.

All his doubts would be answered once he entered the cave.

Naturally, this remnant soul of his true self would not enter personally. He immediately separated the incomplete Primordial Spirit stored within the Soul Pearl and sent it into the cave with a thought to investigate.

At that moment, the faint and invisible fluctuation abruptly became clear.

The Primordial Spirit flew into the cave and traveled onward.

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

The path within the cave did not appear to have been excavated by human hands. Instead, it looked as if it had been gnawed out by countless unknown creatures.

Splash...

After another seventy or so li, the Primordial Spirit continued winding downward and entered an underground karst cavern.

The karst cavern resembled an independent small space. Like the hidden land and the outside world, it was nearly isolated—a small world within a world.

Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit raised his gaze and surveyed the surroundings. The cave walls were covered in countless Source Ore blocks of every color.

It resembled a mineral vein. There was the most common ordinary source, as well as all manner of strange variant source. Deeper inside, quite a few Divine Source blocks radiated dazzling, brilliant divine light.

The refracted light from these crystals illuminated the entire karst cavern in bizarre, shifting colors.

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

What truly astonished him was that countless silkworm larvae crawled all over the insides and outsides of those Source Ore blocks.

The silkworm larvae inside and outside the Source Ore blocks came in all sorts of strange forms and sizes.

The smallest were like grains of rice, while the largest were as thick as an infant's arm.

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

Their colors seemed even more dazzling than those of the Source Ore blocks, encompassing nearly every color in the world. Some were even completely transparent, with rosy light contained within their bodies.

Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit silently continued deeper inside.

Scattered Divine Source Blocks began to appear. Naturally, the silkworms upon the Divine Source were different as well, their bodies bearing distinct patterns resembling stars, fiery clouds, birds, beasts, and more.

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

Around the Source Ore blocks lay countless densely packed silkworm molts and cocoons.

Within his field of vision, apart from the silkworms inside the source, the other larvae were not motionless. They were certainly not dead objects.

They rested quietly atop the Source Ore blocks, occasionally wriggling as they inhaled and exhaled the pure spiritual energy emitted by the ore throughout the cavern.

Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit ventured several more li deeper. The cave's interior grew wider and wider, no longer cramped, yet it remained utterly silent.

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

"From this boundary onward, everything behind it is a descendant of Divine Silkworm Ridge. There are too many... Did they come here in this era and seize the nest, or had they already come into contact with Tianling during the Archaic Era?"

As Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit walked and paused, taking in everything he passed, ripples arose within his heart.

Streams of doubt tangled together in his mind.

Yet he was not overly surprised.

The Archaic Era had ended, but the bloodline descendants of Divine Silkworm Ridge had not vanished from the outside world. Not all had been extracted from stone; some had always survived outside and, by fortunate chance, reproduced until the present day.

After all, those qualified to use Divine Source Liquid were ultimately few. They were the elite.

Even among 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 their seals within source, then reproduced generation after generation for many years. Their Ancestral Blood was exceedingly thin.

By now, the descendants that had first broken free from their seals had already perished.

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

But from the region where Divine Source Blocks began to appear, things were completely different. Not even a single silkworm larva clung to the surfaces of the Source Ore blocks.

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

For example, several silkworms that seemed forged from purple-gold, with a pair of transparent thin wings growing from their backs, as well as a snow-white silkworm king wreathed in hazy Dao resonance.

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

Even so, these silkworms were nobler than the royal descendants of some Primordial Royal Clans.

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

By now, Tan Lin had already guessed that true Divine Silkworms had to exist in its deepest reaches.

There might even be two of them, corresponding to the two Causal Lines that had appeared upon the Soul Pearl's barrier.

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

So how could this be some hidden land of the Heavenly Mystic Ancient Clan?

It was plainly an ancestral nest of Divine Silkworm Ridge!

For a moment, Tan Lin vaguely suspected that his memories had become muddled.

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

"When I died 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 period, it seems many things must have diverged from their original course..."

Tan Lin pondered deeply.

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

At the end of the karst cavern was a spacious underground grotto. Countless stalactites hung from its ceiling, dripping not water but Dragon Marrow.

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

Other than that, two enormous pieces of Divine Source seemed to have rooted themselves there through endless ages, merging with the grotto floor. They soaked in the Dragon Marrow, with only a small portion of their outer layers exposed.

The submerged portions of both pieces of Divine Source were over ten feet tall. Divine splendor flowed within them, and their bodies were crystal-clear.

Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit looked through the Dragon Marrow and stared directly at the two pieces of Divine Source.

At once, two peerlessly beautiful figures sealed separately within the Divine Source entered his sight.

"How... is this possible?!"

In that brief instant, the emotions that had been as still as an ancient well within Tan Lin underwent an exceedingly rare, intense upheaval.

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

The figure within was a woman with waterfall-like purple hair flowing loose over her shoulders, dressed in a magnificent long purple palace gown.

Her face was stunning, her skin icy and bones jade-like. Her picturesque eyes were tightly shut, while her long curled lashes cast a faint shadow beneath the overlapping glow of Divine Source and Dragon Marrow.

That face...

No, not merely that face. Every detail of her body was exactly like the beauty from his memories of 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 entire 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 trembled.

"Tianling?!"

Having recognized the woman within the Divine Source, a name nearly slipped from his lips.

Yet the state of mind tempered through countless ages gradually calmed his emotions. He did not speak, nor did he lose his composure.

However, the doubts lingering deep in his mind grew even denser.

When he had first awakened over half a year ago, he had used [All-Cause Vision] to examine things. Not a single one of his Causal Lines was connected to Tianling.

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

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

At least, Tan Lin had never encountered Causal Lines concealing themselves.

"What exactly is going on..."

Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit floated before the Dragon Marrow Pool, motionless as a clay statue.

Outside the cave, his remnant soul was staring grimly at the two newly appeared Causal Lines upon the Soul Pearl's barrier.

The instant one of those lines had formed, he had inexplicably found it somewhat familiar. At first, he had assumed it was merely an illusion, but now it seemed matters were not so simple.

"It is only a sense of familiarity, as though I have seen her before. It does not necessarily mean she is truly Tianling. But why would she resemble her so closely?"

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

Layers upon layers of doubt shrouded him. Countless deductions and speculations raced through his mind like lightning.

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

As his thoughts churned, Tan Lin's Primordial Spirit within the karst cavern suddenly moved. Staring at the perfect shell within the Divine Source, he formed hand seals and murmured an incantation.

Then, two beams of divine light suddenly shot from the tiny Primordial Spirit's eyes and sank into the Divine Source sealing Tianling.

Immediately afterward, realization appeared on the tiny Primordial Spirit's face.

"Empty... The Immortal Platform is empty. This should be Tianling's body, but her Primordial Spirit has already vanished... She ultimately still died..."

However, another thought soon surfaced in his remnant soul's mind.

An empty Immortal Platform did not mean the other party's Primordial Spirit had truly dissipated.

A fragile Primordial Spirit could still endure into later ages if sealed within a Dao artifact, Divine Source, or another object. Moreover, if one possessed extraordinary talent and encountered the right opportunity, one could shed an old shell and live another lifetime, or even seize another's body...

In short, there were simply too many possibilities.

And the most critical point of doubt was this: if Tianling's Primordial Spirit had truly vanished, what was the meaning 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.