Chapter 4727: Dark World
The Linguistic God World's qualitative transformation brought enormous benefits to the Little Tree as well.
Not only to it: the gestation of Chaos Seed and Little Peng also stepped into a new phase, and at this rate they would complete their rebirth before long and return to the world, undergoing a complete metamorphosis.
Lin Moyu came before the Little Tree.
"Little Tree, how do you feel?"
The tree's branches swayed gently.
"It feels very good. The world has become stronger, and I can benefit along with it."
By now, the Little Tree had long since grown into a towering giant, standing between heaven and earth and rooted in the Forbidden Zone of Life.
Lin pressed his hand against its trunk, and from his palm he could clearly sense that the Little Tree's power level was extremely high.
Its power seemed to have surpassed the level of worlds themselves, faintly resembling the Calamity Scepter's level.
Lin had once felt the power inside a leaf of the Primordial Spirit Tree; although that leaf did not contain much power, its level was even higher than the Little Tree's now.
"The Little Tree's transformation came from that Primordial Leaf.
"It seems a single leaf is not enough."
His thoughts turned to the root fragment he had taken during the great calamity.
If the Little Tree could absorb it, its level might rise again.
Retracting his hand, he asked in a low voice, "What kind of world did you find this time?"
"It should be a very strong world," the Little Tree answered.
"Weaker than the last one, though."
After it had discovered that previous Seventh Cycle world, Lin had told the Little Tree to use that one as the minimum standard when searching for new world remnants.
The tree had followed that instruction, which made the search slow; otherwise, with so many worlds, it would have found many more remnants already.
The appearance of the World Wall had given Lin a sense of urgency.
He needed more remnants of powerful worlds to continue strengthening the Linguistic God World.
He went to the translucent leaf, and the Little Tree opened a spatial channel upon it, sending him through.
Traveling along the passage, Lin watched the Forbidden Zone of Life outside.
The void beyond was pitch black, utterly lifeless.
The Primordial Stone had once described this place: countless worlds had once shone upon the void, and generally the stronger the world, the brighter its light.
But there were exceptions such as the world he was now approaching.
From far away he could already see the end of the passage, and there the exit lay in total blackness.
Even with his vision, he could see nothing.
He halted at the mouth of the channel, not stepping through immediately.
Instead, he summoned Undying Soul Soldiers and sent them in first.
They shot out of the passage without losing contact with him and without encountering any immediate danger.
The problem was that the information they sent back was still nothing but darkness.
Lin linked his sight to one of them and confirmed it personally: his view was entirely black, not even five fingers visible before the face.
Each soldier was shrouded in its own ghostly flame, yet that light could not extend outward or illuminate the surroundings.
He could not even lower his head and see the fire on his own body.
Black indescribably black, so black that nothing could be seen.
"This world…"
He moved his mind, and an invisible soul particle flew in.
If the Soul Soldiers could not see, he would test with the soul instead.
Soul particles could also share his vision, acting as another pair of eyes, but the result was unchanged he still saw nothing.
In the soul particle's view, there was only empty, pitch black void.
The darkness devoured not just light but even the power of perception.
His powerful soul could not sense anything about the environment around it.
Then he opened the Undying Eye and finally perceived something.
Within the blackness, clusters of faint soul flames flickered here and there.
These flames seemed to have lost their consciousness and drifted aimlessly, without any destination.
"They are dead."
By observing these soul fires, Lin determined that their owners were already dead; what remained held no consciousness and seemed to have lost even basic instinct.
Although extremely weak now, their fundamental quality was not low on the contrary, they had once been very strong.
"These look like members of the exploration team."
The thought stirred in his mind.
He directed a Soul Soldier to fly toward one of the soul flames and bring it back.
In the darkness, the soldier had to grope forward; the blackness distorted its sense of direction, and it took great effort to locate the flame.
Then, feeling its way back again, it finally returned to the spatial channel after half a day of blind searching.
For a distance of less than ten thousand meters, a round trip had taken an entire day.
What it brought back was a completely blackened corpse, only about one meter tall humanoid, but not human.
A bad premonition rose in Lin's heart: this world's remnant was going to be troublesome.
He awakened the Primordial Stone.
"Have you seen a world like this before?"
The stone peeked carefully out of the channel's exit, looked around, then glanced at the humanoid corpse.
"Yes," it whispered.
"This is a Dark World."
"Dark World?"
Lin had learned yet another new term.
"…And I could really use some flowers…"
"This is a special type of living world," the Primordial Stone explained.
"Its laws devour all light, plunging everything into darkness complete darkness, a world with no light at all."
"This darkness targets not only sight but also the soul.
"Any outsider who remains in a Dark World long enough will lose all sense of direction and perception, first becoming lost and in the end staying there forever."
"This corpse is an example," it went on.
"Its soul and body were both infected by the Dark World's laws, and so it was trapped here until it died."
What the stone described matched almost perfectly with what Lin had seen so far.
As they spoke, the soul flame inside the corpse suddenly went out, and its body began to rot.
"His soul and flesh could exist only because of the Dark World's laws," the stone said.
"Now that he has left that world, he is being completely destroyed."
Lin waved his hand, and a tongue of Undying Flame flew onto the body.
The rotting process halted inside the fire, and flesh and blood began to regrow.
The extinguished soul flame reappeared and slowly started to recover as well.
"Perhaps we can get some information out of him," Lin said.
The Primordial Stone shook itself.
"I doubt it. From what I know, no one who enters a Dark World ever discovers anything."
"Even most native creatures of such worlds drift through their lives in a muddled daze.
"Only a few can make use of the Dark World's laws to step onto a cultivation path."
"But those who can cultivate there are very troublesome foes."
The stone had used the word "troublesome," not "powerful," which meant their realms might not be high, but they would be very hard to handle.
"Even so, they should all be dead by now," Lin replied.
"They may well be," the stone agreed, "but do not forget the law born entities in the Dark World.
"They are the real problem."
"Your World Burning Flame is very strong, Master, but whether it can resist the Dark World's laws is uncertain.
"The Dark World is an extreme kind of world very troublesome indeed."
"If it proves too difficult, you might consider giving up and letting the Little Tree search for another suitable world instead, rather than wasting time here."
Lin thought for a moment.
"I still want to try."
"The structure of this world… is rather interesting."
Within the Undying Flames, the being who had died who knew how many years ago was transformed into an undying spirit and now knelt obediently before Lin.