đź“– Chapter 1080 - Origin of the Hand!
As soon as Wang Baole’s words rang out, the restriction in the fog suddenly halted, and after a few breaths to time, its power dispersed like an ebbing tide.
It wasn’t that the restriction as a whole had disappeared, but it was making an exception for Wang Baole, allowing him to sweep the entire trial land with his divine sense in an instant!
Even Wang Baole himself was taken aback by this scene, and his breathing instantly hastened. He had only been giving it a try when he’d spoken just now. If it didn’t work, he still have other ways of finding the other trial takers.
But he didn’t expect his words to be so effective…
And the implications behind this matter made Wang Baole’s mind reel. But right now, he didn’t have any spare time to think about it. Thus, after bowing once toward the fog, he instantly locked on to a few targets with his divine sense.
At the moment, there were more than 30 people immersed in the enlightenment of their ninth past life. Wang Baole didn’t know the person closest to him, but there was another a little farther away whom he knew very well.
It was… Xu Yinling!
Thus, Wang Baole naturally chose to go to her. After all, even though she was a little farther away than the nearest person, reaching her would still take less than a hundred breaths of time. And so, his figure instantly turned into a long arc of light that charged toward Xu Yinling.
Xu Yinling was quite cunning. Unlike others, she didn’t meditate in a clearing, but used some special method to hide in the fog. If Wang Baole’s divine sense wasn’t able to sweep across wide ranges, or if he had only sent it to the clearings, then he wouldn’t have found Xu Yinling at all. At the same time, Xu Yinling had some other arrangements in place to ensure that her body was relatively safe while she sought enlightenment of her past lives.
But these arrangements were unable to stop Wang Baole at all. As soon as he neared Xu Yinling, he waved his right hand, and thuds echoed through the fog.
From time to time, the sounds of spell formations shattering rang out as well. If someone was able to be like Wang Baole and extend their divine sense into the fog, they would see cultivators under Xu Yinling’s control falling to the ground one after another, as well as threads of spell formations snapping constantly.
Xu Yinling’s arrangements fell apart completely in less than thirty breaths. Then, Wang Baole’s figure vanished, and when he reappeared, he was already sitting cross-legged in front of Xu Yinling.
Wang Baole was completely impassive as he looked at the beautiful woman in front of him, not caring at all about her enchanting figure. He immediately formed hand seals, causing layers of suppression to fall on Xu Yinling and sealing away the area. He even rotated his own Dao Planet to suppress her paper Dao Planet. After laying down some more seals, he summoned a clone to stand guard.
Then, the Underworld Fire blazed in his eyes, surging out of his body and enveloping the two of them. At the same time, Wang Baole used the method of the Underworld Dream to establish a connection with Xu Yinling’s soul.
To Wang Baole, this was already a familiar process. In less than a minute, his body trembled, and what appeared in front of his eyes was… a wondrous and bizarre world!
In this world there was neither sky nor land. There were only countless bubbles floating in the void. Some bubbles were big, and some were small. Some were colorful, and some were dull. Some bubbles were transparent, and there were even some in the process of popping.
There were so many bubbles that Wang Baole couldn’t see the end of them.
But the bubbles weren’t static, instead moving along according to some sort of rule. At the same time, although each bubble had a different degree of blurriness, there were shifting shadows to be seen in all of them.
The shadows within the bubbles were also varied. There were cultivators, mortals, vicious beasts, vegetation, and other strange creatures. Some lived mundane lives, while others lived through extraordinary events. There were grievances and hatred, gratitude and affection, and even some extremely bizarre occurrences. Each bubble seemed to contain its own story, its own world.
“This…” Wang Baole’s consciousness rippled. After scanning all the bubbles in his sight, he sensed a familiar aura from these bubbles.
It was… the aura of a dream!
Wang Baole had been through the Underworld Dream, and he had even used it to enter other people’s past lives. Thus, he was quite familiar with dream worlds. He confirmed it several more times before finally accepting his conclusion.
“These… are all dreams!!
“The ninth life is actually countless dreams! But … are dreams in these bubbles the dreams of everyone in the world, or… were all of them dreamt up by a single person!?” By now, Wang Baole’s experiences were quite vast, so he quickly recovered from his shock and focused his attention on the bubble he was currently in.
This bubble contained Xu Yinling’s dream.
In this dream, Xu Yinling was a very ordinary little fish. She swam along in the river, with no waves or strange events interrupting her ordinary life. If there was one thing special about her, it was that she liked to swim close to the water surface. She seemed to want to peek through the water surface and see the outside world.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she kept failing. But she never gave up.
Wang Baole silently watched the little fish that was Xu Yinling. He was about to leave, but at that moment… he suddenly saw a fox appear on the riverbank!
Wang Baole knew this fox. She was the fox in his life as the little white deer, as well as… the fox doll that had fallen on the Wang Yiyi’s head in the eighth life.
When the fox appeared, Wang Baole paused for a moment and didn’t leave. He saw the fox crouching down on the riverbank and staring at the fish just under the surface of the water. A strange light flashed in the fox’s eyes as she stuck her palm out and… snatched the little fish out of the water!
No matter how the little fish struggled, it was useless. The fox licked her lips and was about to put the fish into her mouth, but at that moment, Wang Baole suddenly spoke up.
"Put her back."
The little fox paused and raised her head to look at Wang Baole.
One person and one fox stared at each other.
After a long time passed, the little fox’s eyes showed a dissatisfied light. She exerted a bit of force in the paw holding the little fish.
“Hmph.” Wang Baole snorted.
With that, the power of Ebbing Time enveloped the surroundings, causing the little fox to tremble. The dissatisfaction in her eyes was instantly replaced by panic, and she quickly put the little fish back in the water before turning around and running away.
Wang Baole shook his head as he looked at the scars the fox’s claws had left on the little fish’s body. The reason he’d stopped the little fox was because he had entered this past life through Xu Yinling’s soul, so once she died here and woke up, he himself would awaken as well.
Now, he didn’t pay any more attention to the little fish. Wang Baole’s consciousness instantly leaped out of Xu Yinling’s dream, entering the vast void that contained all the bubbles.
He wanted to find the source of all these bubbles!
But after leaving Xu Yinling’s dream, Wang Baole didn’t see that the little fish endured her shock and pain and approached the water surface once again, looking in… the direction of Wang Baole’s departure.
It seemed that it was aware of why it had survived.
But even if Wang Baole knew about this, he wouldn’t care. The only thought in his mind was to find the origin of all this, to see if this world was still Wang Yiyi’s room.
The answer… was no!
After flying an unknown distance past innumerable bubbles, Wang Baole finally discovered the structure of this world. The dream bubbles were all spinning around a vortex…
And deep in the vortex… was not Wang Yiyi’s room. It was…
A crystal coffin!
The gargantuan blood-colored centipede was still crawling around on the coffin. As soon as Wang Baole saw it, the centipede distorted and turned back into the face Wang Baole had seen before. The face looked at Wang Baole with a meaningful smile.
“You have it, don’t you…
“I will… find you, observe you, and if you are suitable… I will decide on you!”
The voice of the centipede face was like heavenly thunder exploding in Wang Baole’s mind. This voice… he had heard it once before. In his life as a Burning Torch godling, when the hand arrived and destroyed him, that voice had echoed out.
“Next time, I’ll decide on you!”