"It's you, young Meng," Qu Zhoufu said softly. "You're too gifted. Count back through the generations-countless people spent their whole lives unable to master the three chapters of saber and sword, let alone at your age."
"...And what does that mean?"
"This is the sheer cliff that stopped him," Qu Zhoufu said softly. "He spent forty years unable to get past it, so he could only leave the other half of this Ancient Pendant here."
The old man looked at him. "The void saber and the real sword are the foundations for entering the Void Truth and Clear Reality Scripture."
Pei Ye watched his body walk up to the Ancient Pendant. Qu Zhoufu followed, teaching him to open it with the second chapters of saber and sword.
Pei Ye had seen Illuminating the Nether empty. One side held a hard, perfectly shaped spherical hollow, which he now knew had once housed the Bead; the other was a neatly hollowed-out square, though he did not know what it had once held.
Now, before Meng Li, the side that had held the Bead was already empty. But within the square side, a dark mass of soft, slippery, putty-like substance still floated. The instant his gaze touched it, it seized his attention. Small as it was, it was as fathomless as though it contained the entire starry sky.
Meng Li slowly extended a finger and touched the square cage. The substance instantly bit into him-and then Pei Ye lost all sensation of this body.
Illuminating the Nether perceived everything through the level of Spirit Profound, yet it had failed to record what this body experienced at this moment. Still, Pei Ye could roughly tell that he was undergoing a trial.
The darkness crawled out of the cage and sank into Meng Li's body