Su Chen could see the shadowy figure very clearly as soon as it appeared.
It was truly just a shadow.
A shadow without a body.
It floated swiftly towards Su Chen.
Even though the shadow was doing nothing other than floating, Su Chen didn’t dare to let the shadow get close to him.
He hurriedly retreated as he expanded his hand slightly. Five red lotuses appeared in his hand and shot off towards the shadow.
Even though the lotuses were small, they burned fiercely when they landed on the shadow.
“Hiss!” The shadow shrieked shrilly, the ear-piercing cry causing Su Chen’s skin to crawl.
The shadow turned around and began to fly away.
When Su Chen saw that it was trying to run, he activated Sumeru Void.
At this point, he was extremely proficient with spatial Method Power, and Sumeru Void achieved unprecedented effectiveness in his hands. Su Chen reached out and made a grasping motion, and the s.p.a.ce affected by Sumeru Void suddenly appeared to congeal and condense until it was a small ball of s.p.a.ce.
The shadow continued to fly forwards within that small Sumeru Void microcosm, but it never reached the end.
It didn’t even realize that it had been confined to this small ball.
It wasn’t until it noticed a ma.s.sive eye staring at it from the outside that it began to shriek in fear.
Then, its body began to emit a blue smoke as it was burned alive.
“It’s a shadow lifeform!” Diomedes cried out.
Shadow lifeforms only lived in the Shadow Realm. Why had one suddenly appeared here?
What was going on?
Diomedes was dumbfounded.
On the other hand, Su Chen appeared to have been somewhat enlightened.
“So my boots opened a pathway between the two realms?” Su Chen muttered to himself.
Even though the Method Power on the boots had set up the formation of their own accord, Su Chen had still given it some guidance.
This guidance was related to his ability to teleport.
After all, Su Chen needed to greatly increase his mobility.
He hadn’t expected, however, to somehow connect two different realms together.
This was no ordinary skill - it transcended the limits of what an Origin Skill or an Ancient Arcana Technique could achieve.
Well, that made sense. After all, didn’t Method Power supercede Origin Skills and Ancient Arcana Techniques in the first place?
Wasn’t it quite normal that Method Power was able to do something like connect two different realms?
If it had done something that any normal Origin Skill could have achieved, wouldn’t that have been more abnormal?
It could only be said that its effectiveness was so great that it was precisely what Su Chen didn’t need.
“So letting it ‘grow’ without supervision has its consequences,” Su Chen muttered.
The boots were a good pair of boots, but they weren’t necessarily useful to him here.
“Divine Tool! It’s actually a Divine Tool!” Diomedes exclaimed in shock.
No ordinary Origin Tool could link two realms like that, but the boots could. That was why Diomedes called it a Divine Tool.
Su Chen, however, shook his head. “It’s not quite there yet.”
Upon hearing this, Diomedes seemed to come to his senses. “Yes, you’re right. We’re in the void, where the borders between realms is much weaker. These boots are probably only effective in this kind of location. It"s not a connection between two realms, but a tunnel to a single one. That probably doesn’t matter much to you, though.”
Every realm had a protective barrier of its own, so opening a tunnel between two realms required breaking down two of these barriers, not one.
However, these boots weren’t actually that powerful. They were only able to open up one side, resulting in a one-way tunnel. Because Su Chen was currently in a void, the boots only needed to break down the barrier of that particular realm to connect Su Chen to it.
As such, it was more like an incomplete Divine Tool.
To most people, incomplete Divine Tools weren’t particularly useful. Even so, to Su Chen, there was no difference between it and a complete Divine Tool.
After all, he was currently capable of living in the void. He would be able to use this pair of boots to enter the void as he pleased, then use the boots to travel to any other realm that he wished to go to.
To him, this was almost equivalent to opening a tunnel that connected two different realms.
However, just because he could go didn’t necessarily mean that he would.
The other realms were not really fun places to be. Usually, to someone who wasn’t familiar with what was on the other side, the risk could prove to be fatal.
At the very least, Su Chen absolutely wouldn’t go to a place like the Shadow Realm, because any lifeform that entered that place would be consumed and be turned into a shadow. This was somewhat similar to how the void would reduce all organisms to their most basic state.
Unless there was a place like his current island that would allow him to study shadow Method Power and adapt to it, Su Chen would be courting death if he tried to go there.
“Can it take us back to the Primordial Continent?” Diomedes asked.
Su Chen shook his head. “It’ll be hard without exact coordinates.”
Creating these spatial tunnels required a certain location to be found, like teleporting to a certain location on a map.
In order to do that, you would need to know where that location on the map was first.
If you had never even seen the map before, how would you know where on that map you wanted to go?
Especially if that map was exceptionally complicated and vast.
This Divine Tool had only just been completed, so Su Chen’s opening of a connection to the Shadow Realm was purely an accident. Only when Su Chen returned to the Primordial Continent would he be able to take note of the Primordial Continent’s coordinates. Otherwise, the boots wouldn’t be able to help him return to the Primordial Continent.
As such, the best way for Su Chen to return would be to figure out a way to find the first entrance.
The first entrance was a tunnel to the void in and of itself. However, it already had a specific coordinate on the Primordial Continent that it led to.
“Why don’t we try our luck? Who knows, we might get lucky,” Diomedes said.
“It’d be more likely to attract the attention of some creatures that we can’t defend ourselves again.” Su Chen wasn’t interested in taking Diomedes’ bait. Opening a tunnel to a different realm was extremely dangerous, since it was impossible to predict what sort of trouble they would bring upon themselves. If they accidentally let in some powerful, slippery creature, the island would be heavily damaged even if they weren’t killed by it.
“Then open the tunnel outside, in the void!” Diomedes said.
This was a good idea.
The void’s destructive power was effective against almost all living creatures no matter what realm they were from. Otherwise, the void wouldn’t have been so isolated from its surroundings.
Any creature that could live in the void, apart from creatures born in the void, would need to have mastered spatial Method Power.
“We can give it a try. Even if we aren’t able to return to the Primordial Continent, it’s not a bad idea to be able to identify the beacons of a few of the other realms.”
For the next period of time, Su Chen continued his hunt for Void Starmetal, from time to time attempting to open tunnels to other realms with his boots.
However, he very quickly discovered that using the boots to search for other realms was very difficult.
After all, he was trying to search for targets on an incredibly complicated, vast map, which also contained a large amount of empty s.p.a.ce.
If Su Chen were to pick out a point on that map while blindfolded, it was possible that he would come up empty-handed.
Actually, that was far more likely than him finding a connection to a different realm.
And even if he was able to open up a connection to another realm, those realms were often completely empty.
After all, not all of the realms were that interesting.
Su Chen activated nearly twenty tunnels but was never able to discover a single foreign realm.
However, he did come across quite a few more dead Sovereigns. Soon, he would have enough to craft another piece of equipment.
This time, however, Su Chen had learned his lesson and didn’t try to create another piece of equipment - if he were to let Method Power do as it pleased again, who knew what kind of outcome he could expect? It was better to wait for Jiang Hanfeng and the others to help him out.
Some more time went by. It was impossible to know how long, but it definitely felt like at least a few months.
Su Chen’s mastery of spatial Method Power continued to advance, and the ground that he could cover continued to increase. However, he simply couldn’t find the exit to the Abyss.
Su Chen knew that everything within the Abyss had changed after it had collapsed. The path, which had seemed so simple before, had expanded due to the void. And without any landmarks to guide him, Su Chen had no idea which direction the exit was in, making it extremely difficult to try and find the exit.
But as time went on, and his mastery of Method Power improved, Su Chen firmly believed that he would be able to find the exit sooner or later.
One day, Su Chen was still searching when he suddenly saw a large group of fuzzy shadows in front of him.
Su Chen was very familiar with these shadows.
They were left behind by the Sovereign statues.
But why were there so many of them?
Su Chen saw that there seemed to be hundreds of them.
He was momentarily taken aback, but after a moment’s thought, he suddenly erupted with a jubilant shout.
The exit!
He immediately realized that he was near the exit!
Only that could explain why there were so many Sovereign statues near the exit.
Because when the Abyss began to collapse, most of the Sovereigns had gathered around the exit.
They fought here, escaped from here, and died here.
And once the Abyss fully collapsed, exterminating all living creatures inside, all of the Sovereigns that hadn’t been able to escape had all died here, forming a ma.s.sive cemetery of Sovereigns.
Upon realizing this, Su Chen couldn’t stop himself from gazing around excitedly.
He had finally found a way home!
When he realized that there was still time, he flew forwards past Sovereign statue after Sovereign statue.
Those Sovereign statues were filled with Void Starsilver. If Su Chen were to collect all of it, he would have been able to sell them for enough to buy out the entire Seven Kingdoms.
Even so, what really attracted Su Chen’s attention was the exit that would lead him home.
As he flew forwards, his powerful perception of spatial fluctuations let him know that there were some coming from right in front of him.
That must be the exit!
Su Chen continued to advance as quickly as he could until a dot of light could be seen off on the horizon.
That dot of light was coming from the other end of a tunnel that led to another realm. It was the only real source of light in this otherwise pitch-black environment, making it a good landmark.
Even so, Su Chen saw a giant shadow near the entrance envelop him.
No, it wasn’t a shadow - it was a ma.s.sive, whale-like creature.
It hadn’t died. Instead, it was swimming through the void like a fish in water.
It slowly swam back and forth, guarding the exit.
Then, it stopped and turned to glance at Su Chen.
Its eyes were filled with killing intent.
A Sovereign!
When it saw Su Chen, it stopped and slowly opened its mouth.
Not good!
Su Chen instinctively recognized that something was wrong. Just as his opponent opened its mouth, he had already activated Light Shaking Phantom.
Boom!
A ma.s.sive wave of energy shot out of the whale Sovereign’s mouth, sweeping through the void and swallowing up where Su Chen had been just a moment ago.