Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

The place where the black stele should’ve been was empty, but there were a lot of… black gaps floating in the air.

Li Yao did not know how to describe such things. They were like the branches of a tree that had been dug out and burnt into carbon powder before they were consolidated into the weirdest and most twisted form. They were also like the burnt corpses of a lunatic artist who had been inspired by a nightmare.

Hundreds of real black gaps in the three-dimensional world were not affected by gravity at all. They sent out spider-net-like ripples as if they were embedded in the air. The smallest gap was about three to five meters long and sent out multiple waves and tentacles.

The biggest gap had dozens of roots, with a length and width of more than a hundred meters.

“Is this… a wormhole?”

Li Yao found it hard to believe.

When he was performing a space jump, he had seen or scanned wormholes with his magical equipment more than once. The so-called ‘wormholes’ were not really round holes. Most of the wormholes were in the form of extremely twisted cracks, which were very similar to the black cracks in front of him.

However, the wormhole was a gap between the three-dimensional universe and the four-dimensional space. It shouldn’t have a real body. It shouldn’t even be visible to the naked eye and could only be scanned by telepathic thoughts and spiritual waves. How could it be like this? Visible? Touching?

Li Yao even felt that the ‘solid wormholes’ were the marks of some bizarre-shaped alien species that had been burnt by the flames in the depths of hell.

Li Yao swallowed hard. Manipulating the muscles that he had trained countless times, he activated the magical equipment mechanically and performed the scanning and exploration procedures.

Yes, the scene in front of him was not a 3D illusion. It was indeed some kind of material that was neither gold nor stone but extremely hard. It was embedded in the air, and from the depths of the material, intense radiation was being released continuously, which could accelerate the ultimate division, mutation, and failure of cells.

The ‘light of life’ was released from the black gaps. The community of black crevices was almost five thousand meters in diameter. Li Yao circled around the community of black crevices and found more traces of human exploration squads, including magical equipment, crystal suits, used strengthening drugs and cans of high-nutrition drugs, bloodstained medical gel, broken shells, and so on.

Besides, judging from the distribution of the traces, they were gradually shrinking and eventually disappearing below the black gaps.

“What do you mean?”

Looking at the twisting black gaps floating in midair, Li Yao mumbled to himself, “Did Ding Lingdang, Long Yangjun, and Li Linghai arrive at the black stele after they took care of the rampant wild Pangu Clan, only to find that the black stele had ‘split’ into thousands of cracks and that they had crawled into the gaps?”

Li Yao was not sure whether or not the black gaps in the air were the broken pieces of the black stele, or whether or not they were the real entrance to the tomb and the correct way to open it.

After scanning again and again and making sure that there were no other fatal radiations other than the ‘Light of Life’, Li Yao held his breath and bound the smallest black gap with his telepathic thoughts, trying to move it with the technique of controlling objects remotely.

After he reached the Divinity Transformation Stage, Li Yao’s life magnetic field had become stronger than ever. He could even manipulate the magnetic field of a planet and absorb the gravity for his own use.

When his telekinesis ability was activated to the maximum, he could move objects weighing more than five hundred tons. Even the Giant God Soldiers and starships could be lifted and pushed easily.

But no matter how he pushed and pulled, the black gap remained firmly fixed in the air, not moving in the slightest.

Li Yao switched to three clusters of black gaps and exerted all his strength, but he failed to move them at all.

“This—this is impossible!”

Li Yao was breathing hard and sweating hard. He observed the black gaps with wide-opened eyes, not knowing how they were fixed in the air. They were like the brand of the three-dimensional universe.

Shua!

Li Yao unsheathed his chainsword and held it high with both hands. The aura of the sword soared into the sky and turned into a crimson dragon more than ten meters long.

Li Yao’s face was extremely solemn. It had been a long time since he had poured all his mental power, will, and strength into one sword aura and slashed it so seriously.

Hiu!

When the sonic boom echoed, the crimson dragon had already turned into a streak of redness and slashed at a black gap.

It was a perfect attack. Even if ‘Sword Addict’ Yan Liren came close, his control over speed, strength, and rhythm would not be any better than Li Yao’s. Whatever was blocking the attack -crystal suit, giant soldier, starship, or even a star fortress-Li Yao was confident that he could cut them in half.

However…

“Clang!”

The crisp sound of something breaking did not come from the black gap but from Li Yao’s chainsword. The moment the aura of the sword passed through the black gap, a ‘Blade of Space’ seemed to have dashed out of the gap and shattered the chainsword easily.

Since Li Yao had poured too much spiritual energy into the attack, the broken chainsword did not stop reacting. It continued splitting into hundreds of pieces and exploded. Li Yao held his sword and breathed heavily. He was dazed for a long time before he raised the broken sword to his eyes.

The chainswords that were qualified to be used by him were, of course, the ultimate weapons that boasted the most cutting-edge technology of the federation, the imperium, and the Sanctuary Alliance and were made of the most solid super alloys that would not break even if dozens of crystal suits were cut apart. But such a marvelous weapon was shattered by the black gap the moment it was unsheathed.

And on the black gap…

There was not even a tiny gap.

Li Yao’s eyelids twitched violently. His pupils constricted to the size of two glittering needles.

He retreated hundreds of meters without saying a word. Taking a deep breath, he opened the cover of all the remote magical equipment on his crystal suit one after another. Hundreds of beams of light interweaved and bombarded a cluster of black gaps like a storm.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The cluster of black crevices was immediately wreathed in flames, blast, and dust. A giant fireball hundreds of meters in diameter gradually rose up, causing the vines and creepers nearby to shriek. In Li Yao’s most terrifying attack, the extreme temperature in the deepest part of the fireball was close to the burning of a star!

However, when the fireball was extinguished and the smoke dispersed, all the black gaps were still intact. There were no traces of them being burnt at all.

The products of the ancient super civilizations talked about their strength and the ignorance of their latecomers quietly.

“Damn. Impenetrable!”

Li Yao spat. After the fury and frustration, he calmed down quickly and sat cross-legged, pondering

He found that he had made a mistake.

The black gaps could not be cracked by brute force.

In terms of violence, Ding Lingdang might be on par with him, but Li Linghai and the other experts in the exploration team were definitely no match for him.

However, since all of them had crawled in successfully, it meant that the black gap was in a certain… ‘open’ state.

“Right, I’ve been making the mistake of thinking that we have the key to the real entrance of the ancient tomb. I have half of it, and Li Linghai has half of it. “But the two ‘half-keys’ are supposed to be combined. If they were the key to the real entrance, Black Star Emperor Wu Yingqi would’ve been able to open them eight hundred years ago. There’s no reason that Wu Yingqi’s remaining soul could not find what Li Linghai and his foster father found.

“At that time, Wu Yingqi’s explanation was that his remaining soul was too weak, and he was afraid that the depths of the ancient tomb were too dangerous, so he did not dare to take the risk easily. However, no matter how you looked at it, Wu Yingqi did not seem to be such a rational and patient person. “But is it possible that the key is not meant to open the ‘black stele’ but for other purposes?

“The real entrance to the ancient tomb, be it in the form of a ‘black stele’ or a ‘black gap’, is not entered by a key but by something else.

“Wait. What did I just say-drill?”

Li Yao stared at the black gap.

The black gap gazed at him, too.

Li Yao’s soul was deeply attracted by the bizarre-shaped, raging, dancing black gaps. The drumming that originated from his heart and the whispers that originated from his eardrums seemed to be calling from the depths of his brain again.

He suddenly had a very strange feeling that this was not an exploration but a return home.

The depths of the black crevice were his hometown, the starting point for all human beings in the Pangu Universe.

Li Yao’s eyes locked onto a cluster of black crevices more than ten meters in diameter and two to three meters wide. There was no reason other than his intuition.

“This is mine.”

Li Yao walked to the bottom of the cluster of black gaps and pressed them with his hands, applying pressure evenly. He was not pushing the gaps but trying to squeeze himself through them.

At first, the black gap did not move at all.

The material could not be separated by Li Yao’s bare hands even though it was made of the hardest alloy and the most furious spiritual energy.

However,

When Li Yao’s impetus reached its limit and every cell in his body was activated, the extremely hard material turned soft and thick like super-dense glue. First, his ten fingers, then his two hands, then his two arms-Li Yao was squeezed into the black gap!

arms

Watching his arms disappear as if they had been swallowed by the black gaps was a very weird feeling.

It was like the ‘wall-piercing technique’ in the ancient legends, where one solid object pierced through the other.

Then again, even the hardest super alloy material, when observed from the micro level, was empty except for the tiny nuclei and electrons.

As long as the internal and external balance could be changed, why couldn’t the solid pass through the solid?