Space was quiet in a way that felt unnatural.
Not peaceful.
Quiet like a sealed tomb.
Li Xiao Bai floated beside the broken remnant of Heavenly Court, letting distance grow between himself and the jagged ruins. The fragment looked smaller every time he glanced at it. Not because it moved away, but because his mind refused to grant it importance.
Dead things did not deserve attention.
What mattered was the chain.
He could feel it even when he stopped thinking about it. A tight coil around his soul, cold and absolute, as if his existence had been measured, judged, and approved for a temporary delay.
He raised his hand and pressed two fingers against his own chest.
There was no physical chain there.
The restraint existed deeper, where ordinary touch could not reach.
Li Xiao Bai closed his eyes.
Information path was not brute force. It was clarity. It turned vague impressions into confirmed facts. In the Gu world, he could read an immortal formation from the scars it left behind. He could stare at a battlefield and smell deceit the way others smelled blood.
Now he would do the same, with himself.
He reached into his immortal aperture and drew out a cluster of mortal Gu. Small, pale, unimpressive. In another setting, they would have been dismissed as trash.
Here, they were instruments.
He placed them in a loose circle over his palm and fed them a thread of immortal essence. The Gu trembled, their bodies lighting up with faint patterns like ink spreading across paper.
A simple killer move.
Not for combat.
Not for concealment.
For reading.
The moment it activated, a thin layer of sensation slid over the chain around his soul, as if a blindfold had been loosened by a fraction.
He inhaled once, steady.
Then he examined.
The first thing he noticed was structure.
Not random. Not improvised.
The chain had segments. Each link carried markings so fine that most immortals would miss them. Lines curved and intersected, then folded into symbols that did not belong cleanly to any single path. They were a language written with dao marks.
He pressed deeper.
A faint pressure pushed back against his perception, like a warning.
Do not pry.
He ignored it.
Warnings were information, not authority.
The killer move shifted. The Gu in his palm rearranged their light. He sacrificed one without hesitation, letting it burn out to sharpen the read.
The chain did not change.
His understanding did.
Beneath the outer layer, he found a second layer.
Not concealment.
Not protection.
A verdict.
The dao marks carried a cold, rigid meaning. They were not wind, not water, not fire, not star. Not heaven path either.
They felt like rules carved into reality by an indifferent hand.
Not mercy.
Decision.
Allowance.
Denial.
Li Xiao Bai opened his eyes, expression calm.
A concept close to judgment.
Rare. Dangerous. The kind of trace that drew calamity because it brushed too near the idea of deciding who was permitted to exist.
Heavenly Court would not leave such a thing on a piece they did not fully control. Star Constellation would not either. Her style was calculation and fate, not verdicts hammered into the soul.
So whose hand had written this?
Li Xiao Bai continued.
He fed more essence into the move. The remaining Gu began to crack, their bodies unable to endure the pressure of analyzing something that high.
He did not care.
Mortal Gu were cheap. Information was not.
The chain answered with a faint echo.
Not sound.
Resonance.
A signature left behind by its maker.
Li Xiao Bai stilled for a heartbeat, then tightened his focus and followed the resonance like a hunter following a scent.
It was not a name. Not a voice.
It was an intent sharp enough to cut.
Boundary.
Limit.
An obsession with defining edges, with proving there was no place that could not be reached.
A memory surfaced. A rumor from an era of Venerables. A shadow that refused to fade even after death.
Limitless.
Li Xiao Bai did not let the thought turn into certainty too quickly. Certainty was something people died for.
But the match was too clean to ignore.
The style.
The direction.
The coldness of it.
Limitless Demon Venerable.
He let the killer move collapse. The last Gu turned to ash. The faint light faded, leaving only the silence of space and the steady pressure of the chain.
He stared at his empty hand.
Why?
That was the only question worth keeping.
The chain had saved him from Chaos. Not fully. Not kindly. Only enough to buy seconds. Enough to prevent immediate dissolution. Enough to push him out of lawlessness and into lawful space again.
A rescue measured with a ruler, not with mercy.
Li Xiao Bai did not pretend he understood the goal.
A Venerable did not act without purpose. Especially not Limitless.
Was this a leftover arrangement. A delayed mechanism. A trap that required a living piece.
Or something worse.
A test.
Li Xiao Bai remained motionless.
He reviewed facts instead of fantasies.
First, the chain carried verdict-like dao marks.
Second, the signature resembled Limitless.
Third, it had already proven its function. It held him together, dragged him through a closing seam, and remained after crossing.
Fourth, it did not answer him.
Fifth, he was still alive.
Therefore, it was not an immediate execution device. If it were meant to erase him, it had infinite opportunities inside Chaos.
That meant the danger was delayed.
Delayed danger was still danger.
Li Xiao Bai lifted his head and looked toward the distant star system again.
A small sun. Several faint orbits. One world that held gravity in a way that felt familiar.
The solar system.
His instincts did not call it home. His memory did.
He did not trust feelings. He trusted patterns.
A place with air.
A place with life.
A place where information could be gathered, resources taken, and the state of his soul repaired.
If the chain was a plan, then he needed to grow strong enough to read that plan without being crushed by it.
If the chain was a trap, then he needed to step into it with open eyes and prepare an exit.
Either way, standing still achieved nothing.
Li Xiao Bai adjusted his posture in space, then released a controlled burst of immortal essence. His body shifted, aligning with the solar system's pull.
He did not waste.
He moved like a man counting each breath.
Before leaving, he glanced once at the Heavenly Court remnant behind him.
A broken tooth in the mouth of the universe.
No value.
No attachment.
Then he turned away completely.
As he drifted forward, he spoke once, quietly, not for comfort.
'Immortality.'
The chain tightened by a fraction, as if acknowledging the word.
Li Xiao Bai's expression did not change.
Let it watch.
Let it measure.
In the end, measurements could be broken, and verdicts could be exploited.
He continued toward the solar system, carrying the chain like a silent question.
And behind him, the ruins of Heavenly Court drifted in emptiness, forgotten.