Traveling through the Shattered Realm, the greatest danger was navigating the gaps between different small worlds.
Even with the protective authority granted by a Wizard Lord and their Realm-Breaking Stones, the priests had to remain vigilant at all times.
It was like crossing a single-log bridge over a cliff—one careless step meant falling into the Dark Side of the Universe.
No priest who fell into the Dark Side of the Universe had ever returned alive.
Du An was making his very first realm-breaking crossing.
Boundless darkness surrounded him, making it impossible to tell up from down or left from right.
He held a small tetrahedral stone. One of its vertices currently pointed the way forward.
Enveloped in a faint halo, Du An stood upon a cloud, riding the mists as he followed the Realm-Breaking Stone's guidance.
Every so often, the stone's direction shifted. At times, Du An even felt he was spinning in circles.
Though he hailed from the highly advanced Ring World, Du An had long since abandoned his habit of trying to explain everything with science.
An unknown amount of time passed before light suddenly flared before his eyes. After the sensation of piercing a thin membrane, a violent blizzard slammed directly into his face.
The wind and snow struck his body and face with the agonizing pain of nails driving into flesh.
Even the powerful physique of a priest could not resist it in the slightest.
Du An hastily mobilized the cloud beneath his feet to shield his entire body.
Yet, in mere seconds, the cloud showed faint signs of being blown apart.
He immediately realized this world's danger level far exceeded his capabilities. Taking a quick step back, he retreated in the opposite direction of his entry.
Plunging back into the darkness, the freezing pain of the blizzard vanished instantly, as if it had all been nothing but an illusion.
But a glance down at himself—at his disheveled white robes and frost-coated body—confirmed that it had been completely real.
Du An smoothed his hair and robes, shaking off the shards of ice and watching them disappear into the darkness.
No trace of frustration showed on his face from this initial failure. With steady composure, he recalibrated the Realm-Breaking Stone for a new target.
"I can't choose a small world too close to the center. The danger level is too high," he murmured. "I'll try a peripheral world. There might be fewer fragments, but I can use it to adapt to the environment first."
The Realm-Breaking Stone locked onto a more distant small world, and Du An pressed forward on his cloud.
After escaping the Ring World, Du An had successfully advanced to a 5th Tier Cloud Hidden Priest, which was one tier lower than the Star Glow Priest rank he had anticipated.
The Wizard Embryo Fragments he possessed came from the collapsed Ring World. Or rather, the wizard embryo had shattered right before the Ring World's total collapse.
That had been the initial cause of the Ring World's destruction.
The fragments Du An obtained made up nearly half of the original wizard embryo. Among the newly ascended priests, he possessed immense potential.
The issue with his divine soul had hindered his progress.
However, compared to everything he had already accomplished, this minor setback was hardly worth mentioning.
The days ahead would consist of long cultivation and continuous fusion, until he reached the supreme realm of a Great Wizard and wielded the ultimate power to control everything.
Once he stood at that apex, Du An would have the power to guarantee his own survival even if the entire world were destroyed.
After fumbling through the darkness for a long time, a soft, non-glaring light appeared before Du An once again.
This time, he arrived in a world blanketed in yellow sand. Above, thick, overlapping layers of dark clouds obscured the sky.
Scattered across the sand were huge piles of miscellaneous items, rising like towering mountains of garbage.
The gloomy clouds completely blotted out the sky.
The entire world gave off a desolate and dreary feeling, as though it were genuinely an abandoned piece of trash.
Du An took out a jade slip, running his fingers over it to read the informational guidance stored inside.
"This place seems to be the Trash Realm, designated as a dumping ground. It's already been confirmed to have no exploration value. Hmm, let's try another world."
Just as Du An was about to withdraw again, his divine soul suddenly stirred. For some inexplicable reason, he felt a hauntingly familiar sensation attracting him from somewhere far away.
His calm expression instantly changed. Raising his eyebrows, Du An looked off into the distance.
"This feeling... could Chen Dong's divine soul have landed here?"
Du An had never understood why a single soul-splitting process had resulted in him missing the vast majority of his divine soul.
He was forced to search for new Wizard Embryo Fragments in the Shattered Realm while simultaneously trying to recover his missing divine soul.
However, he didn't hold much hope of actually finding it.
After all, the immense size of the Shattered Realm and the unpredictability of where the divine soul might have landed both presented enormous obstacles to its recovery.
His only hope lay in the fact that the two divine souls originally belonged to the same person. In the unseen, there might be some attraction between them that they had yet to grasp.
And now, in only his second small world within the Shattered Realm, Du An had encountered a presence suspected to be his divine soul. It forced him to admit that fate and coincidence were truly powerful and elusive.
"To think my luck is this good, encountering Chen Dong's divine soul in just my second world! Then again, it might be something else. I'll go take a look first."
There was no spiritual rhinoceros in this world, but Du An still had a substantial reserve within his body, so he didn't need to be too frugal.
He immediately rode his cloud high into the sky.
But not long after taking flight, several red laser beams suddenly shot up from the ground to illuminate him.
"Hmm?"
Meanwhile, Li Ban was staring blankly at the text on the screen when the monitor in front of him suddenly let out a violent rattle and went black.
Had it crashed?
The machine then produced a loud "bang" as thick white smoke started billowing from its crevices.
"Ah!" Nana yelped in fright beside him.
She was terrified that this junk machine might have ruined Priest Ban's Storage Card.
If it had, wouldn't she—the one who suggested reading it—be guilty of a massive mistake?
Li Ban remained calm. Mimicking Nana's previous actions, he pulled the inserted Storage Card from the machine and flipped it over to inspect it. He found no signs of damage, nor did he smell anything burning.
"It's fine. The reader probably overloaded and caused the machine to crash. The card isn't damaged," he said.
Nana patted her chest, easing her tension.
She sneaked a glance at Li Ban, a little flutter of joy in her heart.
Now it seemed that Priest Ban was just as gentle as Priest Zhong Ye.
Stealing another peek at Priest Ban's handsome face, Nana felt a mix of delight and regret.
Li Ban did not notice Nana's emotional changes. Pocketing the Storage Card, his mind was still occupied by his half-deciphered confusion.
There were only two sentences in the suicide note he could understand.
The first sentence made sense to him; it was likely Gu Yi's internal struggle before deciding to undergo the personality split.
He just didn't know if the mention of sixty-seven minutes held any special significance.
But to Li Ban, it probably didn't matter anymore.
But what did the second sentence mean? Everything is fake, do not believe any of it?
Did Gu Yi mean the Laboratory was fake, or something else?
Li Ban recalled the Experimental Capsule he had been in when he first arrived in the Shadow World.
Images of the Experimental Capsules in the Laboratory and the Experimental Capsules in the Ring World then flashed before his eyes.
The Experimental Capsule constructed by the brain domain platform possessed the highest level of technological sophistication.
In contrast, the Experimental Capsule in the Shadow World was extremely outdated and primitive.
"Could it be... that even the Ring World was virtual?"
Li Ban let his imagination run wild, ultimately amusing himself to the point of laughter.
But as he laughed, he found he couldn't laugh anymore.
Though the Shadow World before his eyes wasn't a virtual simulation, to the Great Wizards, it was nothing more than a small world within the Shattered Realm.
These small worlds each possessed their own distinct internal laws and stages of development.
It wasn't out of the question to say that these small worlds were also virtual worlds constructed by the Great Wizards.
Li Ban shook his head.
"Actually, whether it's virtual or not doesn't hold much meaning for me."
"I'm already a part of this place."
But Li Ban was also certain that Gu Yi's suicide note contained information he was previously unaware of.
And this information might expose the relationship between the Ring World and the Wizard World.
Li Ban might never be able to escape these overlapping layers of worlds, but that wouldn't stop him from finding their laws so he could survive—or grow strong. Strong enough to control those very laws.
"First, I'll head to the base Priest Zhong Ye mentioned. If the reader there can't read the contents of the note—perhaps I'll have to make a trip to Trash City."
Through the introductions of Priest Zhong Ye, Nana, and the others, Li Ban now had some understanding of the Trash Realm, which he had been calling the Shadow World.
The scope of this small world was not large, roughly equivalent to the total landmass of two continents in Li Ban's original world.
Trash City was situated dead center in the continent.
Although the Ash Alliance had many branch squads, they mostly roamed and dwelled along the edges of the continent. Moreover, they were frequently forced to relocate due to the pursuit of Trash City's forces.
Priest Zhong Ye had also mentioned that the edge of the continent wasn't an ocean, but an invisible, intangible wall that people could not cross at all.
As for where a sliced-up world like this got its sunlight and rain, they weren't clear either.
They only knew that the rules of the world were just like this.
After a brief one-day rest at the abandoned base, this Alliance squad had to hit the road again.
Before setting off, Li Ban used a High-Power Battery to replenish the energy for his Virus element.
Because he planned to continue sleeping and return to the Wizard World later, before leaving, he used the Iron-Eating Sword to help the group sort through the garbage, finding some usable resources.
But just as he prepared everything, closed his eyes, and mobilized his spiritual rhinoceros, he suddenly sensed a powerful spiritual rhinoceros fluctuation radiating from the distant sky.
He and Priest Zhong Ye in his wheelchair exchanged a glance, knowing the other had likely felt that unprecedented fluctuation as well.
Priest Zhong Ye's face showed some excitement; he even sat up, trembling.
"Is this... has a new priest arrived?"
Such a massive momentum meant it definitely wasn't some unlucky bastard who had fallen through a rift. It should be a priest entering through a normal entrance of the Shattered Realm.
Did this mean their forgotten peripheral land had finally been remembered by others?
While Li Ban was vigilant, Zhong Ye hopeful, and the others looked on in bewilderment, a faint white light suddenly swooped down, landing directly behind the group.
When Li Ban got a clear look at the person who had landed, his first instinct was to immediately close his eyes and return to the Wizard World.