novelraw Chapter 870 - 869 - Vortex of Life and Death
Chapter 870 - 869 - Vortex of Life and Death
The realms were governed by the rules of Heaven and Earth. The ability to fly was restricted to different cultivation realms in each level but also there was a maximum height no matter how much Qi they had at their disposal.
It was caused by density of Qi, Laws, and comprehension limits of each realm.
The Wings of Freedom was able to let the crew violate those rules of flight for the simple reason that its creator was a Sliver Tier Immortal. Just like his Nautilus Class vessels exceeded the ability over time due to his ever increasing expertise.
At such a grade, carrying a crew was easy, but Lind was nowhere close to a Shard Tier. He had also never had the chance to test if the lower quality ships could work at higher realms as they did not survive his ascension.
He could build them again but cultivators, even him, always strove to move forward. He could not perfectly replicate the desperate construction he did in the Barren Realm nor could he make the Nautilus Class work in the Celestial Fields.
He had never tested the limits but now he saw he was worried about the wrong thing. All his calculations and assumptions had been built on a premise that was false.
It was not a dome covering the refined area from the unrefined one, but a vortex!
The ship had come to a stop in the center of the vortex itself. Unlike the expectation, it was not dome but a concave hole they were inside.
The wall of Qi flowed down into some kind of black void area that made up the core but at the very center was a column of pure vitality and life! He had no other name for the feeling as all fatigue faded from them.
Laws did not exist yet they were alive. Heaven and Earth could not couth the place they were in, yet it did. How could such a thing be possible?
"True Lord, we are able to scan above the blackness around us, but we get nothing from inside those areas. The scan just dies." Lind nodded and looked over the system panel where Wen would usually be.
He saw impossible readings but it slowly made sense.
"I had it backwards. The Qi is not falling from the sky down a dome, but is being pulled up to here. It could not reach all the way." The reality had been backwards to everyone all that time.
Everyone had thought death had fallen from above, but it was coming from below! Qi, life, Laws, and everything made of it was ripped wholesale from the very realm's bedrock. If not for the Sacred Paths reinforcing it all, the Celestial Fields would have been refined long ago from what he could guess.
The dome was actually a direct sign of the limit of the direct extraction and it was pulling everything inward! The edge was not crumbling as Qi dispersed from the world but it had already been extracted!
It was dying from being leeched of all the resources and then crumbling. It was not simply collapsing to the void!
He now understood why his seed was even more critical. What he had created was like an anchor holding the ship in place off the coast. That area was alive so long as the seed lasted and now the tree.
Lind becoming a True Lord likely caused that area to thrive even more.
He also was fascinated by the fact that while the direct blackness around them culled the artifact signals, it did not cause harm.
"We can't see it or understand it. It is not actually black." He made a leap as it looked damned odd on the screen. "I will be right back."
He left the bridge before anyone could stop him. He quickly made his way down the corridors to the nearest exit hatch. The door cycled open for the airlock and he went in before the incoming sound of feet could catch up.
If his suspicions were right, no one else could see what he was about to.
The panel on his left flickered yellow until it went green. It confirmed the outside was safe as he suspected. The outer door slid aside and he was hit with a feeling of life.
His hair began to grow and his nails also but he was not dying or aging. He was simply being stimulated! The lost life was returning until he closed it off.
He took some solace that a million years had passed so it was not civilizations he was benefiting by for a moment there. He was about to step forward but shock flared as he saw green leaves poking out from the walls!
The wood used in the framework and walls was being made to grow as well!
He quickly ducked out and closed the door. The exterior of the Wings of Freedom told the tale of their journey.
Metal fatigue showed where panels had strained from the speed and torsion on the hull but it had held. He also was interested how the metal did not seem affected by the voluminous vitality flowing over them.
His Eyes burned for even the instant he tried to examine the energy around him. It was not Qi but it was chock full of it too.
That was all he grasped before it nearly blinded him. He then went to the edge of the living quarter section and braced himself.
He looked down into what looked black on all the displays and scans.
Horror.
He was looking at horror incarnate.
There were 3 gigantic orbs but they were like fine tendrils he watched rip apart the Laws and Qi at a speed he had never conceived possible. He felt the death of everything as he watched it with his Eyes.
He tried to think of anything he could do but at the distance they floated and how big they already looked, they had to be kilometers across!
How could such things exist in the Celestial Fields without inviting the Wrath of Heaven?!
"Void of Eternity?" He tried again to feel it but confirmed there was no sensation of Heaven and Earth like he was used to. If not for the Laws and Qi inside him, he would think the world was already dead.
Confusion crossed his mind as he wondered why he was not being ripped apart from Qi and Laws escaping him like it normally would in a drastically thinner Qi area.
His sliver was perfectly stable and he felt no danger at all. Was the ship protecting him?
He tried to fly but nothing happened. The Laws that governed his natural ability did not exist! He then tried to fly with Qi but the result was the same.
The issue that time was flying was an interaction between the cultivator and the world. If there was no Qi or Laws to interact with, there was no flying.
He then simply tried to jump and was stunned when he did go up, but not down!
He lashed out a solid line of earth Qi to the hull and was glad that worked at least. He was then sort of standing on nothing as he tried several methods to move.
It was revealed that only simple elemental Qi actions would work. Fire would burn, wind blow, water drip, and so forth but that was the limit.
No Arts, techniques, or conjurings did a damn thing!
Confusion now truly flared as how was the Wings of Freedom working?
He then smacked his own head as he realized the truth. The Hacore. The harmonies were the sole source of power and safely inside the ship. They were over the 1 area the 3 orbs could not touch them.
"So, only one way to go." Up was a blank expanse of sky but he knew nothing was up there. Something had to be refining the broken down Qi, Laws, and so forth into the column they were inside.
He pulled himself down and frowned as he saw the panel was flickering. Something was wrong.
He infused Qi and the door barely opened to reveal an expansive set of branches filling the airlock!
He burned the wood carefully to let him in so the door could close. Once the seal was in place, he let loose and the excessive branches were reduced to ash.
The inner door suddenly swung open to reveal a harried Veran staring angrily at him.
"TRUE LORD! How could you risk yourself like that?!" Lind blinked at his reaction before a slow smile crossed his face as he scratched his cheek.
"I am afraid I was not thinking clearly. I apologize but I have a destination. We need to go down, quickly." Veran pointedly stared at him until they headed back to the bridge.
Veran took over the helm as Lind took the command chair.
"Scan as far as we can straight down. The black areas are useless to us. We are looking for an artifact or maybe some wards. Do not move outside the column no matter what!" The ship view showed they were moving down while staying level.
It was quite boring and days passed before a hit finally came back. The column also had gotten wider.
"True Lord, there is a structure, a big one!" Jeryl called out and the front screen flicked to a bottom view.
The storm of information made some static but eventually, it cleared to show a massive floating structure.
It was a massive octahedron with swirling gold and black on its surface. He could see the lower half took in 3 streams of absolute black but the column came from the 4 panels of the top half.
A shocking thing was noticed beyond it.
A yellowed hill of grass and a valley untouched by anything but normal death was there!
"There is a pocket like the Temple Lands there!" Her voice spiked in awe as they finally came to a stop just above the tip of the massive structure. It dwarfed the drydock Lind had built for the Wings of Freedom.
"We have found what we were looking for. Now, we need a way in." Lind's voice made many eyes light up with life. Hope had died to get them there and now, they had found the source of all their woes!