Within the silver light was an astonishing quantity of silver substance. The silver substance carried annihilation power from the Life-Forbidden Zone and in an instant pierced through the defensive ring formed by Undying Spirit Soldiers. Large numbers of Undying Spirit Soldiers were vaporized in a single moment. The silver substance simultaneously destroyed time and space, giving Lin Moyu no chance to react.
Lin Moyu was once again vaporized. Every inch of his flesh and soul was destroyed by the silver substance.
Amidst violet light Lin Moyu completed a new birth and at the same time let out a sigh.
The opponent's attack was very powerful. The dense silver substance could vaporize him in an instant. Its flaw was that there was always an interval between each attack and there was no continuity. Each attack could only force him to be reborn once, which was not enough for him to carry out his grand enterprise of courting death.
Even so, from within it Lin Moyu clearly sensed the annihilation power of the Life-Forbidden Zone. Though still far inferior to the true Life-Forbidden Zone, compared to the annihilation power that had already been filtered and fused by Heaven-and-Earth, it was much stronger.
Lin Moyu also clearly realized that with his current ability he was still far from being able to enter the Life-Forbidden Zone. If he went in now he would definitely die. The ceaseless annihilation power of the Life-Forbidden Zone would rapidly burn through all of his rebirth chances. At that point, even if he had a hundred thousand rebirths, even a hundred or a thousand times more, it would still be useless.
His thoughts flashed like lightning. Lin Moyu looked at the silver-white giant, his gaze full of interest.
The giant was formed from countless silver-white substances, and besides that there were some other things mixed in. Just now, when he had scattered it with the Calamity Scepter, those things had flashed by for a split second.
He had originally thought that under the erosion of the Life-Forbidden Zone's power, nothing remained in this Heaven-and-Earth except the silver-white substance. Now it seemed that was not the case. Some things still existed, only those things were not living beings.
The Calamity Scepter swung out again. Locked onto by the Calamity Scepter, the giant was likewise unable to evade and was once more smashed into powder.
"You hit me once, I hit you once. Very fair."
The next instant the silver-white substance recombined into a giant. At once, ten thousand arrows were loosed again, piercing through the Undying Spirit Soldiers' defensive ring and vaporizing Lin Moyu.
After rebirth, Lin Moyu once again raised the Calamity Scepter and smashed the opponent apart.
Neither side dodged, and neither could dodge. Back and forth, they killed each other again and again.
The giant clearly had no consciousness. It did not in the least realize there was anything wrong with Lin Moyu being reborn over and over. It only had instinct, the instinct to annihilate all intruders.
During this process Lin Moyu kept observing. Every time the giant was shattered, those things would appear for a brief instant.
Moment after moment, and at last he discerned a hint of something.
"This is… a soul."
A jolt ran through Lin Moyu's heart and he blurted out, "How can it be a soul?"
In the Undying Eye he had not seen any soul flames. This had never happened before. As long as there was a soul, there would be a soul flame. The soul flame was the mark of a living being. He had never seen a case where a soul existed without a soul flame.
Doubt and disbelief rose in his heart, yet Lin Moyu did not rashly arrive at a conclusion. He decided to keep watching. Faintly he felt that understanding this matter was very important to him, that he was touching on a domain that no one had ever reached.
There were many unknowns in Heaven-and-Earth. Even Supremes could not know everything. What lay before him now was one such unknown.
Lin Moyu conveyed what he had seen to the Hongmeng Gem. Hongmeng Gem was also astonished. It had never seen such a situation either.
Lin Moyu's awareness entered the Po-Cang Crystal. He told Po-Cang Emperor and Xunzhi True Lord what he had seen, hoping to get some answers from them. They also said they had never seen the situation Lin Moyu described, but they did have some understanding of the silver-white Heaven-and-Earth.
They had both once encountered the silver-white Heaven-and-Earth. Not only them but many Supremes had come into contact with it. They, and each Supreme, had all sent teams to try entering. The result was that as soon as those teams entered, they were wiped out in an instant.
Supremes themselves had once come here, but had only entered for a few breaths before retreating grievously injured.
This silver-white Heaven-and-Earth had been listed by them as a deathland, one of the Heavens-and-Earth that could not be entered.
They did not have much more information about the silver-white Heaven-and-Earth. That was normal. Hongmeng Gem had said as much before.
A round of questioning yielded no answers. Lin Moyu knew he could only rely on himself to observe and study.
Life and death continued to repeat. He and the giant continued their back-and-forth. The giant could continually be reborn, with an entire Heaven-and-Earth as its backing, almost without fear of consumption.
Lin Moyu was the same. The speed at which he spent rebirths could not keep up with the speed at which he accumulated them, so he feared even less.
After an unknown number of deaths, he finally made another small discovery.
Lin Moyu was one hundred percent certain that what he had seen was a soul, a vaporized soul. After intruders' souls were vaporized by the silver-white substance, they did not completely disappear but were broken down into an extremely tiny granulation.
They were too tiny, so tiny they had already lost their soul flames and cast off the attribute of being a living being. But they truly existed, and not only existed, they had fused with the silver-white substance.
In an even more minuscule form they bored into the silver-white substance and took it as their carrier. Because they had been vaporized, it was equivalent to them having been refined and purified. The remaining tiny soul granules were all very pure.
These pure soul micro-particles, after entering the silver-white substance, developed a strange attraction between each other. So they drew one another in and fused together, turning into a giant.
The giant also possessed the ability to control the silver-white substance and could use silver-white substance at several hundred times the normal concentration to attack. This was an ability brought by these soul micro-particles.
What the Calamity Scepter scattered was only the silver-white substance that had combined into the giant. It did not truly harm the soul micro-particles inside.
Flames rose in Lin Moyu's palm. The Undying Fire flew out, rumbling into a sea of fire. In an instant, the silver-white substance fell like a storm. The Undying Fire hissed and crackled, shrinking rapidly.
The silver-white substance could even vaporize the Undying Fire. This was simply unreasonable.
Lin Moyu immediately recalled the Undying Fire. He knew the Undying Fire could not burn away these soul micro-particles. Undying Fire had always been invincible in dealing with souls, yet this time it had achieved nothing.
Lin Moyu grew even more curious. Why had souls become like this? These soul micro-particles possessed part of a living being's instincts yet were not true living beings, had no wisdom. Their form was extremely peculiar.
His mind ran at full speed, deducing all kinds of possibilities. In the end he obtained an answer that seemed illusory yet was very likely correct.
These soul micro-particles were the other side of the soul.
All things in Heaven-and-Earth have a real and illusory, yin and yang duality. The soul was the same.
The soul was originally considered illusory, but when it grew strong enough it could transform illusion into reality. So cultivators had always believed that the soul naturally possessed both real and illusory sides.
In truth, that was not the case. The soul simply resided in the illusory realm, but in essence it belonged to the real. At the same time the soul brimmed with vitality and so should not be considered illusory.
By contrast, the soul micro-particles before his eyes were tiny to the extreme, invisible to the naked eye, devoid of vitality. They were the truly illusory side of the soul.
The soul micro-particles were the soul's illusion. Without any vitality, the Undying Fire could not refine them.
Now that he understood the form in which they existed, Lin Moyu could not help but give rise to a bold thought.
If I could scatter my soul, turn it into soul micro-particles, extinguish the soul flame yet at the same time preserve complete memory and awareness…
The answer Lin Moyu had arrived at shocked even himself and overturned his former understanding.
What had seemed illusory about the soul was actually its real side, and the granulated, vitality-lost soul before him was truly the soul's illusory side.
The soul's real and illusory could also be seen as the soul's life and death.
In its normal state the soul was alive, yet that life was still illusory, not complete. Even alive, it did not live entirely.
These soul micro-particles had lost vitality yet truly existed, like the body of the soul. Dead, yet not completely dead, still retaining some instinct.
Only combining the two was the soul's true state.
A bold idea sprouted in Lin Moyu's heart: to turn his own soul into micro-particles and at the same time let every particle possess a soul flame, thereby completing the fusion of real and illusory and making the soul stronger.
He also thought that if he could scatter these soul micro-particles throughout Heaven-and-Earth, he would be able to completely control every corner of Heaven-and-Earth. Any event that occurred within Heaven-and-Earth would be known to him.
Pushing the thought further, if these soul micro-particles became strong, each as strong as his current soul body, just how powerful would he become then?
And also, these soul micro-particles had been vaporized by silver-white substance yet could still exist. Did that not also mean they might be able to exist within the Life-Forbidden Zone as well?
After all, what the silver-white substance contained was the weakened form of the annihilation power. Though there were differences, their origin was connected.
The more Lin Moyu thought, the bolder he became. He suddenly saw a path that passed through the Life-Forbidden Zone.
He realized that the path he had previously imagined was incomplete. If he walked according to that previous path, he would ultimately end up like Po-Cang Emperor, smashed to death in the Life-Forbidden Zone. The only difference would be that Po-Cang Emperor could persist for ten breaths, while he might hold out for twenty.
Once one entered the Life-Forbidden Zone, there was no way back out. Between ten breaths and twenty breaths there was no essential difference.
Now that he had seen a path, he had to find a way to walk it. The method lay within his own soul.
When others died, their souls were vaporized and turned into soul micro-particles. He could naturally do the same. The difference was merely that others changed into soul micro-particles after death, while he would have to produce soul micro-particles while still alive.
Vaporization was an excellent method, a way to seek opportunity amid being vaporized.
Lin Moyu gained a bit of insight. He began to examine his soul, wholeheartedly focusing, making the process of his soul's vaporization slow down, turning the entire vaporization into slow motion that he replayed again and again in his mind.
At the same time, the Calamity Scepter did not stop. It continued to smash apart the giant. In the continuous shattering and recombining of the giant, he searched for clues, searched and experimented, failed, then searched and experimented again, over and over.
Lin Moyu had no idea how many times he had tried or how much time had passed. One time after another, without end. His stubbornness and persistence were like back when he had endlessly experienced life and death.
Yet Lin Moyu delighted in this, never tiring. As long as he gained a tiny harvest, it was enough to make him excited.
He had died countless times in the past, but the sum of all those deaths still did not surpass the number of times he had died this time. It was just that this time the interval between deaths was longer, so the hidden ability of rebirth had not been activated and his flesh and soul had not been strengthened.
After innumerable deaths, Lin Moyu finally found a suitable method.
At the moment of vaporization, he tightened his soul with all his strength, compressing it to become dense and solid. He used his own power to compress the soul.
When the silver-white substance fell on his soul, the soul began to vaporize. Because it had already been compressed, the vaporization process was slightly slower than usual.
During this process Lin Moyu continued compressing his soul, doing his utmost to compress it into a single small point, gathering all will, memory, the essence of the soul into this one point.
When the silver-white substance collided with the soul compressed to the extreme, it was like the world creating explosion, detonating inside the soul. Amidst the rising smoke, a tiny crystal formed.
The crystal was several times smaller than a fingernail. It continued colliding with the silver-white substance and was not vaporized. Finally, with a pop, it burst apart and turned into countless micro-particles invisible to the naked eye.
Violet light flashed and Lin Moyu completed rebirth. He saw that within his soul there were now over a thousand tiny soul particles. Each tiny particle contained his soul, practically a miniature soul avatar.
He drew out one of the soul micro-particles and examined it carefully. It was precisely what he wanted.
The soul micro-particle flew out and made contact with the silver-white substance. The soul micro-particle was not vaporized. It seemed to have adapted to the silver-white substance and could freely exist in this Heaven-and-Earth.
From this moment on, this Heaven-and-Earth was no longer a deathland to Lin Moyu. A place where even Supremes had been unable to enter was now somewhere he could move freely.
This adaptation of soul micro-particles to the silver-white Heaven-and-Earth was immensely significant. It meant he had found the right path.
For now it was only the silver-white Heaven-and-Earth. In the future he still had to adapt to the Life-Forbidden Zone.
Lin Moyu was confident that he would definitely traverse the Life-Forbidden Zone and reach that place no one had ever reached before.
What lay beyond the Life-Forbidden Zone? What was inside the Heaven-and-Earth Wall? He would go see it with his own eyes and personally experience it.
With these soul micro-particles in hand, the next steps were easy. Using them as seeds, he could, during the vaporization process, create more and more soul micro-particles until they filled his entire soul, completing the fusion of the soul's real and illusory.
At that time, his soul might not grow much stronger in raw power, but its essence would be transformed, laying the foundation for the future.
Lin Moyu once again began methodically manipulating things, continuing to perform his crazy operations between life and death.
With each cycle of death and vaporization, the number of soul micro-particles increased. Lin Moyu felt as if he had countless soul avatars. These soul avatars did not yet have much combat power, but that was only for now. In the future, who knew.
At the same time waves of insight surged up inside him.
The flesh is real, the soul is illusory. Flesh and soul, real and illusory reflecting one another, that is the true self.
At the same time, the soul itself also has real and illusory. When real and illusory merge, the foundation of the soul will be completely solidified.
Then what about the real and illusory of the flesh?
Lin Moyu realized that if the soul itself had real and illusory, then the flesh should as well. The two each had their own real and illusory. Only by finding both sides could one move toward perfection.
Now he had already found the soul's real and illusory. As for the flesh's real and illusory, he had no clue for the moment.
He shared his thoughts with the Hongmeng Gem. Hongmeng Gem did not understand at all. What Lin Moyu was talking about lay beyond its knowledge.
That was fine. There were still two elders at home he could consult.
After hearing Lin Moyu's explanation, Po-Cang Emperor and Xunzhi True Lord both froze on the spot. Seeing their expressions, Lin Moyu knew he had asked the wrong people.
Everyone had always believed that flesh and soul were simply the two sides of real and illusory, a complete whole. No one had ever thought that each of them itself might also have a real and illusory division.
Helpless, Lin Moyu could only continue his own research. Having two elders at home did not necessarily mean having two treasures. Supremes too sometimes could only say "I do not know."
Soul micro-particles gradually increased, filling his soul body. Lin Moyu was like a painter, adding color to his own soul and making it ever more brilliant.