Chapter 490 461: Bronze Fragment, Miracle of Life

In the ancestral hall, the candlelight flickered unsteadily.

Outside the hall, Song Ciwan formed a hand seal to investigate. At last, amidst the swirling, chaotic strands of Blood Evil Qi, she finally saw the source of it all!

It was a fragment, one deeply embedded in Jing Huaisheng's heart.

The fragment was stained dark red by flesh and blood, making it appear seamlessly integrated with his heart at first glance. If not for Song Ciwan's keen Spiritual Eyes, it would have been impossible to spot the abnormality within his heart.

But looking closely now, she could just make out a hint of eerie green within the dark red, giving it the vague texture of bronze.

It looked like a Bronze Fragment—

The moment that thought formed in Song Ciwan's mind, her vision suddenly wavered and transformed!

What was it?

It was mountains and rivers, the heavens and the earth, the vast cosmos. It was birds and beasts, Humans, demons, and the Ten Thousand Races. It was infinite life, flourishing and withering in cycles; it was the sun, moon, and stars, revolving for all eternity.

It was so vast, and within that vastness were strange lines of light that seemed both tangible and illusory.

These lines of light wove through mountains and all of creation, flowed through the bloodlines of every living thing, and connected heaven and earth, the distant and the near, past and future, eternity and the single instant!

Then, in a sudden moment, comprehension dawned on Song Ciwan.

'Those crisscrossing lines, seeming both tangible and illusory—how could they possibly be mere light?'

'They were clearly the resonance of the Dao, the fundamental principles of existence!'

They were the Dao and the principles governing the universe, they were time and space, growth and decay, they were…

'What were they? What else was there?'

Song Ciwan felt her heart pounding in her chest. In all her years of Cultivation, she had grasped many profound truths, but never before had she felt as if she were walking right beside the Dao itself, reaching out her hand to touch the Great Dao!

She was about to touch it, to grasp it…

Compared to this vision, everything she had comprehended before was clearly just scratching the surface of the Great Dao—

In her daze, Song Ciwan reached out. But in the next instant, just as she seemed to grasp something vital, her heart leaped, and the world beneath her feet gave way to the Void.

Of course, she hadn't actually missed a step.

At her Cultivation Realm, something as simple as missing a step was nearly impossible.

And yet, despite not actually falling, she was overcome by the distinct sensation of having done so.

After that sensation of falling, the countless lines before her vanished. The images of mountains and plains, the sun, moon, and stars—they all disappeared.

In their place was…

Infinite chaos!

There was no light, no form, no objects, and no life.

The mountains were gone, the stars were gone; the world had become chaos.

Until, at some unknown moment—a sudden, sharp moment—a sphere appeared in the infinite chaos!

It was an azure sphere, appearing tiny at first glance, yet seeming infinitely vast upon a closer look.

The sphere spun rapidly in the chaos, like a meteor, its origin unknown as it shot toward some distant point!

It was just a fleeting glimpse, but in that single instant, the sphere vanished from Song Ciwan's sight. For some reason, however, that one glance left an incredibly deep impression on her.

In fact, the vision from that one glance seemed to be carved directly into Song Ciwan's Heart Soul.

For an instant, Song Ciwan was overcome with a sudden sense of grief and sorrow.

She pressed a hand to her chest. When she blinked again, her vision was clear.

The ancestral hall was still the same hall, and the people within it were still the same people.

The monstrously-formed Huai Sheng, with his six arms, was still in the hall. And the Bronze Fragment was still embedded in his heart, breathing and beating in time with it.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP—

So full of life.

It made everything Song Ciwan had just witnessed seem as ephemeral and unreal as a dream.

Only then did Song Ciwan truly come to her senses.

'So that's what happened.' When she used her Physical Eye Divine Techniques to peer at the fragment in Huai Sheng's heart, she had been pulled into a bizarre, ineffable Illusion Realm by the fragment's mystical aura!

'How incredible.'

For someone of her Cultivation Realm to be pulled into an Illusion Realm so easily…

It wasn't that Song Ciwan was too weak; it had to be that the fragment was incredibly powerful and had an extraordinary origin.

Song Ciwan stood rooted to the spot. Though she remained perfectly still, a storm raged within her mind, while deeper still, profound thoughts flowed like a quiet river.

She refused to believe that what she had just seen was merely an illusion!

Whether it was the feeling of being on the verge of touching the Dao itself, or the fleeting glimpse of that soaring sphere in the chaos... it all gave Song Ciwan a sense of profound reality.

No!

'It must have all been real.'

'Perhaps they were events that had actually happened, recorded by the Bronze Fragment.'

Song Ciwan reached out her hand and made a soft grasping motion.

Beside the ancestral hall stood an ancient willow of unknown age. Hanging from its branches were several silk-spinning green caterpillars.

One of them, withered and near death, suddenly detached from its dark strand of silk and fell into Song Ciwan's open palm.

A wisp of True Qi emanated from Song Ciwan's palm. In that instant, she used it to deftly pluck at a certain line within the caterpillar's body—

It was not, of course, a physical line, but one that existed between the tangible and the illusory—a line only Song Ciwan, with her current perception, could see.

As this line was plucked, the caterpillar—which moments before had been so shriveled it seemed completely devoid of life—suddenly curled its body and twitched.

Once, twice, three times…

The shriveled, curled caterpillar unfurled its body and suddenly raised its tail in the center of Song Ciwan's palm.

And then, it began to spin silk!

One strand, two, ten, a hundred… countless strands.

The caterpillar spun silk at an incredible speed. To Song Ciwan, it was like watching a wondrous and vivid silent play unfold in real time.