Beastmaster of the Ages

“Back then for Middlekin Star Ruins, someone would die if they went in too deep.” Tianming had even used a Middlekin Star Ruin’s divine channel to kill quite a few of the Eightpart Pantheons.

As Tianming fell into the Chaos Star Ruin, he looked around and noticed the differences from a Middlekin Star Ruin. Middlekin stars were bright like a dazzling jewel, whereas it was completely dark here.

Furthermore, it actively absorbed light. His body had originally been glowing, but once he entered, it only lit up the darkness for a moment before the glow was snuffed out as if the light were being swallowed the moment it emerged.

However, Tianming could still sense that the mist-like power surrounding them was chaos nova source.

“This Inverse Battlefield has a layer of soul power added to it... and yet it produces chaos nova source?” It was truly marvelous.

The lack of light didn’t affect Tianming’s vision, and he saw a small black sphere ahead! Upon closer inspection, rather than a sphere, it was better described as a spherical vortex. Its power constantly contracted inwards. As a result, the tiny star had no order formation at all, and yet managed to remain very stable with almost no power leaking out.

That truly was different from the Upper Star Ruin’s middlekin stars, which could explode at the slightest provocation.

Looking around further, there were quite a few of these black spherical vortices. Their compression wasn’t as extreme as middlekin stars, so their volume seemed slightly larger, but they were definitely much denser than Nullity.

According to Mu Qingqing, this middlekin star before him with a diameter of around ten thousand meters was skypiercer-class.

“There are quite a few middlekin stars here!” Mu Qingqing said with a little surprise after coming in.

“They’re like clusters of black grapes,” Tianming said, curious as he wandered around. They were in the upper half of this divine channel where space was still stable. Those floating middlekin stars had already detached from the depths and could be taken away at any time.

“By our estimation, middlekin stars come from the Ancestral World!” That was the same as in the Realm of Order.

That was actually hard to comprehend. Ancestral World had primeval source, which was an entirely different type of energy. Yet it produced middlekin stars en masse as if they were grapes.

“Then where are the vines of the grapes? Where are the roots? And what soil do those vines take root in to be nourished with nova source?” Tianming muttered. He was likening nova source to a kind of fruit.

“The space below is chaotic and twisted. Too deep, and it’s easy to lose contact completely and never find a path back. So whether those ‘vines’ or a place where they take root truly exist is still unproven. Anyway, the people of the Realm of Chaos only need to know that if a divine channel suddenly opens in the Inverse Battlefield, there will be middlekin stars inside that can be brought back for replenishment,” Mu Qingqing said softly.

“Then... has the supply of middlekin stars ever been cut off?” Tianming asked with a smile.

“Never. If it ever stopped, the Realm of Chaos would be done for,” Mu Qingqing replied.

Tianming asked helplessly, “Same in the Realm of Order. The consumption of nova source is entirely replenished by Middlekin Star Ruins. Only then can all the races of the cosmos continue to thrive and pass on their legacies.”

At present, the nova source of the various worlds were their foundation. If consumption and replenishment failed to balance out, they would inevitably run out sooner or later.

“There’s no helping it. Life is born from nova source,” Mu Qingqing said.

“Do you have a sense of crisis, then? Even if the supply has never stopped, what if one day it does? We think we control the whole universe, but from another angle, aren’t we like little pets being fed inside a cage?” Tianming said with a laugh.

Mu Qingqing gave him a sidelong look. “You’ve got quite the imagination. If there really were an existence feeding the entire universe, how strong would it have to be? Who would be its opponent? Where would it live? The universe has existed for countless epochs, with creation and consumption of nova source never ceasing. How could there be such a long-lasting ‘feeding’?”

“I don’t know, but I know this much: ‘big’ and ‘small’ are relative. From where you’re standing now, the universe seems boundless, but to an existence beyond the universe, it might be nothing more than a birdcage. It’s the same as comparing us to normal gods. A mortal raising ants in a yard, and a cosmic god keeping mortals in a small world are not that much different, right?” Tianming said with a grin.

“By your logic, the world would have no end. It’ll continue endlessly, layer after layer, one universe outside another,” Mu Qingqing said with a shake of her head.

“No, I actually think it does end,” Tianming said seriously.

“How so?” Mu Qingqing asked.

Tianming looked at the chaos middlekin star before him and said, “In all things, big comes in large, massive, and infinite. Small can come in tiny, microscopic, and then infinitesimally small. From the infinitesimally small world to the infinitely large world, a great staircase is formed. But if we twist that staircase into a ring, containing the infinitely large within the infinitely small, the universe thus gains an endpoint... When everything completes a cycle, each segment of the worlds can be both the end and the beginning.”

“Does this ring refer to space or time?” Mu Qingqing asked.

“Both!” Tianming paused, then said, “Maybe time isn’t a long river, but a closed loop. The future we run toward might be the ancient starting point. By the same logic, space isn’t one ring fitting over another, but one ring locking into the next. In the end, the largest world locks into the smallest. We’re in one segment of that chain; to our left is a world bigger than ours, and to the right is one smaller than ours.”