"How long has it been?"
"A little over twenty-seven hours."
Ning Qing stood behind Chen Shu and placed both hands on his shoulders, gently kneading his trapezius muscles. "You're reading so slowly this time," she said softly.
"Mm."
In this book, the Sacred Ancestor had poured his feelings into every stroke. There were words between the lines, so Chen Shu had to read carefully.
Chen Shu closed his eyes.
His shoulders did not ache at all. Even if they had, she was kneading the wrong place with the wrong technique. But feeling the softness of her fingers and the care behind her touch was still comforting.
Chen Shu rolled his neck and touched the Crystal.
The Crystal contained a space of its own, vast beyond measure, far larger than any Space Stone or Secret Realm. Whenever Chen Shu opened it or stored and retrieved something, he always accessed the same place. He guessed it was the center of the Crystal's space. His consciousness also spread outward from that point, and how far he could probe and control depended on the strength of his soul, growing gradually with his cultivation.
By now, the area he could probe was probably wider than Yuanzhou Province at its widest point, yet he still had not found the Crystal's boundary.
He could not enter the Crystal himself, so he had no idea how vast its space truly was.
"The edge..."
So although the Sacred Ancestor had gone to the Withered Plane and struck at its Deity and homeland, destroying its advantages and causing it to weaken over time, he had also left behind the seeds of that plane's civilization, along with his own promise.
But when he returned to this plane, he had probably been gravely wounded. Unable to fulfill his promise, he had entrusted