"You... you already thought of a way out for us?" Ming Kai had expected Li Ban to scold him for his cowardice.
After all, when he first chose to follow Li Ban, he believed he had made up his mind to face death.
Ming Kai thought for a moment. "It's not that I'm afraid to die—"
Li Ban knew that as an ordinary person, Ming Kai was on the verge of being broken by the Sea of Monsters.
If Li Ban hadn't had the Star River, the Director's help, and Shaman Ming to bring him in, his own performance wouldn't have been much better than Ming Kai's.
He patted Ming Kai's shoulder. "I don't want you throwing your lives away either. I can't make absolute promises, but I can tell you this: even if I leave the Recycling Station, I'll find a way to save you."
As long as he became a Great Wizard, he could enter and exit the Recycling Station at will. Even if the Wizard Lord placed restrictions on this place, Li Ban could still prioritize saving the people who had helped him.
Besides, perhaps his ultimate goal would turn out just as the Director had suggested—driven by external forces and fate, it would become his mission to "halt the world's infinite cycle of reboots."
However, just thinking about that ultimate goal felt a bit surreal.
Even though Li Ban had plenty of his own burdens pressing down on him, his promise still helped Ming Kai relax significantly.
Ming Kai nodded heavily. "Alright. I'll do everything in my power to assist you, Captain—whether that means entering the Sea of Monsters or helping the Director from the perimeter."
Knowing he wouldn't just be throwing his life away in a meaningless death rekindled Ming Kai's courage to fight.
By the afternoon of the following day, the giant dragon Dila, who had been flying smoothly, suddenly slowed his pace.
The people riding on his back pitched forward violently before their safety harnesses yanked them back.
Li Ban looked up. In truth, he had already caught sight of the Heaven Beyond Heaven everyone had been talking about.
Unlike the black and red Sea of Monsters, which could be seen from far away, Heaven Beyond Heaven was located atop a towering mountain peak.
If anyone tried to look in this direction, they would only see steep cliffs piercing the clouds; they couldn't see the bugs, nor could they see Heaven Beyond Heaven itself.
But as they rode the black dragon closer to the cliff, a sudden suction force violently tugged at them.
To prevent himself from losing his balance and being sucked away, Dila had immediately used all his strength to resist, which caused the sudden "hard brake."
However, a hazy expanse of fog blocked the way ahead, making it impossible to see exactly what was generating such a powerful pull.
Li Ban narrowed his eyes and used his Spiritual Eye Technique to pierce the fog, revealing the scene inside.
Upon a mountain peak that already sat at an extremely high altitude, there was actually a massive waterspout!
"This is Heaven Beyond Heaven? It's more like the Sea Beyond Heaven, isn't it?"
Li Ban hadn't expected a phenomenon normally reserved for rivers, lakes, and seas to appear in mid-air.
There clearly weren't any rivers here; they hadn't even seen a stream.
Yet the rotating water column within the white mist continuously sustained itself. Its diameter exceeded fifty meters, and as it spun, water droplets splattered in all directions.
After observing it a moment longer, Li Ban noticed that while the spinning pillar of water looked like a waterspout, the actual current wasn't moving from the bottom up. Instead, it was spiraling down from some unknown place in the sky, crashing onto the mountain peak before finally vanishing into a massive depression formed over countless years, absorbed by the mountain itself.
The bizarre part was that no lake or flowing water pooled in the mountain's depression.
All the water was being directly absorbed by the mountain.
Because of this, the surface of the mountain outside the mist actually looked even more barren and desiccated than the surrounding areas.
"The laws of reality here are even more bizarre than the rest of the Recycling Station."
Zhu Yao, who was also using her Spiritual Eye Technique to observe the inside of the mist, nodded. "The Sea of Monsters is simply dangerous, but this place is incredibly eerie. It's not just the water and the cliffs that are abnormal—even the bugs inside are bizarre."
Dila's massive size made it difficult for him to enter the mist.
Li Ban ordered him to fly to the base of the mountain and wait.
He summoned his own clouds to carry Ming Kai and Guo Kao, while Zhu Yao carried Tail.
At the same time, they erected a protective barrier around the clouds to resist the powerful suction radiating from the water column.
The five of them flew into the mist, continuing their approach toward the spinning water pillar that reached up into the sky and connected to the mountain below.
When they got within fifty meters of the water column, both Li Ban and Zhu Yao found the barrier too difficult to maintain and were forced to stop.
The mist here was even thicker. The other three could barely see a thing, feeling as though they were wading through an expanse of pure white.
Li Ban and Zhu Yao, however, felt a new kind of pull.
It wasn't targeting their physical bodies, but rather drawing on the spiritual rhinoceros within them.
"That really isn't ordinary water. There's a massive amount of spiritual rhinoceros in it!"
"Yes," Zhu Yao said. Having been here twice before, she understood a bit more. "Unfortunately, any spiritual rhinoceros that enters Heaven Beyond Heaven can never be retrieved. In the Sea of Monsters, we have to desperately expend our spiritual rhinoceros, but here, we have to desperately protect it."
The two of them were already struggling to hold on. Now, burdened with three ordinary people who weren't Priests, the spiritual rhinoceros in their bodies was depleting rapidly.
"Let's head back first."
Li Ban led the group back, dropping the three off beside Dila.
"You saw it yourselves. You can't see anything inside the mist, and Zhu Yao and I can't go deeper while carrying you. Just wait here for a bit. Zhu Yao and I will go in alone to take a look."
Tail had lost her patience with the mist a long time ago.
She could still fight in the Sea of Monsters, but here in Heaven Beyond Heaven, she was completely useless.
She hated this feeling of powerlessness, yet she knew that under these circumstances, only Priests had the power to resist. The rest of them were like ordinary mortals swept up in the tides of an era, possessing absolutely no means to fight back.
This wasn't the first time she overwhelmingly desired to become a Priest.
She had originally had a plan in mind and had even started preparing the materials, but unfortunately, those hopes were extinguished when the Recycling Station appeared.
After entering the Recycling Station, she realized that even Priests struggled to protect themselves. Only then did she slowly tuck away her indignation and continue searching for ways to survive.
She wouldn't die, and she wouldn't give up. Even if the person who killed her in the future turned out to be the next season's version of herself, she would fight until the very last moment.
Ming Kai and Guo Kao raised no objections either.
The three watched as Li Ban and Zhu Yao flew high into the air once more, disappearing into that vast expanse of white mist.
Unburdened by the others this time, Li Ban and Zhu Yao managed to get much closer to Heaven Beyond Heaven.
They stopped less than twenty meters from the spinning water column. Any further, and they wouldn't be able to resist the immense suction, risking an involuntary slip into the water.
"Li Ban, look at the center of the water column," Zhu Yao said, pointing ahead.
Li Ban pushed his Spiritual Eye Technique harder and looked again.
At the spot Zhu Yao had pointed out, he saw many tiny, fragmented patches rapidly surging upward against the current, shooting toward the very top of Heaven Beyond Heaven.
The shapes of those patches were highly irregular, resembling a mirror shattered into countless pieces after being casually tossed to the ground.
Acting like living creatures, they darted up against the current.
Sometimes they were battered down a few meters by the waves, but they never gave up. After dodging the brunt of the force, they continued drilling their way upward.
"Those aren't the bugs, are they?"
Li Ban had heard there were many bugs in Heaven Beyond Heaven.
But since entering the mist, he hadn't seen a single one.
It wasn't until Zhu Yao pointed them out that he saw the strange patches in the middle of the water column.
Those patches were completely different from the bugs he had pictured, but right now, it was the only plausible guess.
"Yes. All bugs are in this state when they're in the water. If they burst out of it, they transform back into the bugs we recognize."
Zhu Yao shared everything she knew with Li Ban.
"Some people have entered Heaven Beyond Heaven before, attempting to leave the Recycling Station from here. But after they went in, they also transformed into unrecognizable shapes. A Priest who managed to escape from inside told us that upon entering, they lost all sensation of their bodies and spiritual rhinoceros, forced to act purely on instinct. There was absolutely no difference between them and those bugs. But the vast majority of people simply couldn't adapt to bodies turned into fragments. In the end, they were all flushed into the mountain by the current, never to be seen again. That Priest who luckily escaped with his life was only accidentally carried to the edge by the current; he smashed his way out, breaking through the gravitational pull. There was another Priest waiting outside to catch him. Otherwise, the moment he regained his human form, he would have been sucked right back in."
"If people turn into fragments upon entering, then where did these fragments come from? They aren't other people from the Recycling Station, are they?"
"We aren't entirely sure, but... we can't rule out the possibility."
Li Ban tilted his head up and looked at the very top of Heaven Beyond Heaven.
The mist up there wasn't quite as thick, allowing him a faint glimpse of an azure sky.
But Li Ban was starting to doubt whether that blue expanse was truly the sky. Perhaps it was a pool of deep blue water, held back by a transparent membrane.
"The Director told me that Heaven Beyond Heaven connects to the Unreturning Place."
Zhu Yao's expression dimmed for a fraction of a second, but she nodded firmly. "Yes, Priest Qian Que and I had the same suspicion when we came to observe back then. So we didn't try anything more and returned to the Sea of Monsters."
"Were you afraid that breaking through Heaven Beyond Heaven would bring the bugs here into the Wizard World?"
"It wasn't just the bugs. We were also worried that the rules of the Recycling Station's world would clash with the normal functioning of the Wizard World." Zhu Yao laughed bitterly. "Of course, it's also possible we were just giving ourselves too much credit."
But as Priests of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda—and especially since Qian Que shouldered the duty of guarding the Unreturning Place—they hadn't dared to gamble their hope of escape on such a risk.
"Still, breaking through here is definitely no easier than the Sea of Monsters. We didn't try, but others did make attempts to break through. And Priest Qian Que told me that in the Director's records at Wanghai Cliff, no one has ever managed to break through here either."
Li Ban retracted his gaze, looking back at the water column right in front of him, and said in a deep voice, "I want to go inside and take a look."
Zhu Yao looked at Li Ban in astonishment, never expecting him to still want to test the waters after everything she'd just explained.
Pursing her lips, she eventually gave a heavy nod. "Alright. I'll wait outside to pull you out."
It wasn't that Zhu Yao didn't want to go in with him, nor was it that she didn't dare.
Rather, if something happened to Li Ban inside and he needed to escape quickly, someone had to be waiting on the outside to pull him clear and ensure he wasn't sucked right back in.
Naturally, Li Ban wasn't going to just dive headfirst into the water column on a whim. He began making preparations.
"I have chains here. Can we link ourselves together with them?"
"No, someone tried that before. Once inside the water column, the part of the chain submerged will also turn into fragments. If it stays in for more than a minute, it will completely snap away from the chain outside."
"Which means if someone is stuck halfway in the water and halfway out for more than a minute, their body will snap in half as well?"
This water column was immensely complex, concealing terrifying power of natural laws.
"It feels as though a three-dimensional being will turn into a two-dimensional one the moment they enter."
Since he couldn't rely on external tools or spiritual rhinoceros, he could only depend on himself.
Li Ban sorted through the facts, giving himself mental cues.
"Since the fragments inside the water column can move toward the top of Heaven Beyond Heaven through sheer willpower, it proves that people—or other living creatures—don't completely lose their consciousness in there."
"It's just that Priests, suddenly stripped of their spiritual rhinoceros and faced with a mutated physical form, fail to adapt in the moment. Unable to control themselves or move, they're ultimately flushed into the mountain and lost forever. Powerful Priests actually fare worse than the fragments already existing in the water."
"Wait, could the fragments originally in the water actually be the Priests who got flushed into the mountain? Except they didn't try to flee outside the water column, but just kept swimming up... perhaps they've already lost their memories and sanity, left with nothing but instinct."
"The truth is, as long as I can find a way to adapt to that state as quickly as possible and master a way to move, swimming upward isn't impossible. After all, countless bugs bore their way out of the Unreturning Place every year."
"Right. If I can move up, I can move to the side. Once I confirm something is wrong, I have to figure out how to move sideways to escape the water's gravitational pull and break out of the column. As long as I can get part of my body out, Zhu Yao will be outside to pull me free."
Li Ban pondered a few other possibilities, then asked Zhu Yao, "Do you need to go out and rest for a bit to replenish your spiritual rhinoceros?"
"No, I've been actively absorbing spiritual rhinoceros."
Zhu Yao had worried that Li Ban might need her help, so ever since they entered the mist of Heaven Beyond Heaven, she had deliberately maintained her spiritual rhinoceros at full capacity.
Since Zhu Yao was in peak condition, that wasn't an issue.
"Alright, let's start now. I'm going to dip part of my body into Heaven Beyond Heaven first, and then I'll submerge completely within a minute."
Li Ban explained his plan to Zhu Yao.
He then relaxed slightly, allowing his body to be drawn in by the water column.
The moment one of his arms plunged beneath the surface, he immediately began circulating his spiritual rhinoceros again to resist the pull.
After that, he focused on sensing the condition of his arm inside the water.
However, when Li Ban looked beneath the surface, he discovered that what materialized where his arm had vanished wasn't an irregular fragment—it was a small patch of fine, dense starlight.
"This is—did the power of the laws here directly draw out the power of the Star River in my body to resist?"
Li Ban knew the power of the Star River within him was incredibly unique and extremely difficult to mobilize. In the face of ordinary spiritual rhinoceros or physical attacks, it wouldn't take the initiative to jump out and defend him at all.
The Star River would only appear on its own under special circumstances.
The last time was in the Leader's brain domain construction platform, when the Star River emerged to help him repel the Virus's corruption.
"Maybe what the Star River was resisting back then wasn't the Virus element itself, but the power of the laws as the Virus rewrote data?"
Li Ban immediately tried moving the limb that had transformed into stars. To his relief, he found it responded to his thoughts.
It was just that compared to moving a physical body, manipulating the Star River was vastly more difficult. It demanded his complete, undivided attention; otherwise, he would lose control.
"Could it be that in my past life, I was actually a Great Wizard?"
Li Ban didn't wait any longer and dove headfirst into the water.