Chapter 498 - 467: A Big World, a Small Me

Song Ciwan’s gaze swept across her surroundings. At first, she thought she had arrived in a vast jungle.

But she soon discovered that perhaps "jungle" wasn’t the right word for this gigantic place.

If not a jungle, then what was it?

Green waves rolled all around her. Slender, green stems shot up toward the heavens. Standing among these green stalks, Song Ciwan tilted her head back. The first thing she saw were enormous leaf tips swaying in the wind.

Only then, through the gaps between the crisscrossing, swaying leaves, could she see fragmented sunlight and patches of the azure sky.

Suddenly, on the tip of a tall, bent leaf ahead, a "basin" of water rolled precariously, on the verge of falling.

—It was called a "basin" of water not because it was held in one, but because this single droplet was as large as a basin!

The droplet was enormous, even larger than Song Ciwan herself. It was perfectly round, a cohesive sphere of water trembling on the tip of the leaf.

Song Ciwan looked up, and a sense of alarm immediately flared within her. With a light shift of her feet, she moved to dodge the massive droplet.

But while her reaction was quick, her speed was not. The strangest part was that her body had always been incredibly light. In the past, with a single, casual step—without even using a Body Technique—she could easily cover several hundred feet.

If she were to use a Body Technique—be it the Martial Technique Inch Heart, End of the World; the Void Rune Technique’s Space Shifting; or even the newly learned Shrinking Inches—she could cover hundreds of miles in a single instant.

With such Power, she had long since reached an Extraordinary, transcendent state; her body could not possibly be heavy. Furthermore, with a Lifespan measured in eons, her very essence had achieved Transcendence. In this Mortal World, what force could possibly restrain her?

And yet, the world is vast and full of wonders. At this very moment, Song Ciwan was experiencing a profound heaviness, as if her legs were filled with sludge.

As a result, she was a moment too slow to dodge.

The basin-sized droplet, like a heavy, giant ball, plummeted from the sky. It grazed her left arm before crashing to the ground with a tremendous thud.

Fine spray splashed up, and Song Ciwan felt a piercing sharpness, as if countless steel ball bearings made of water were pelting her.

But thankfully, while her speed had been slightly sluggish, her physical strength was still that of the Body Refining Fourth Level.

The heavy, sharp spray of water didn’t harm her in the slightest.

However, to her left, a giant ant half as tall as a person was struck by the falling droplet!

BOOM!

The water slammed into the giant ant. Song Ciwan clearly saw its entire body get crushed, as if suppressed by the weight of an Abyss.

Its slender legs were flattened against the ground, and its long antennae curled up. The giant ant, enveloped by the water, stiffened completely, as if it had become a preserved specimen.

Song Ciwan stood her ground and let out a soft breath. Only then did the heart-pounding aftershock of the event wash over her.

She raised her hand to form an incantation seal, using the Great Derivation Birth Skill to analyze her surroundings while rapidly circulating the True Qi in her body.

The Sutra of Sitting and Forgetting circulated through her meridians, seemingly slow yet actually swift. In her Sea of Consciousness, the Samadhi True Fire flickered faintly. Song Ciwan’s mind grew steady and focused. Gradually, she felt as though a fog was lifting from the world before her, and she finally gained a preliminary, clear understanding of her situation.

First, the giant jungle before her was not, in fact, a jungle at all.

So what was it?

A prairie?

Or rather, it might just be a single, lush clump of green grass.

It was simply because this patch of grass was too large. Every living thing within it, from the ants on the ground to the dewdrops on the leaves, was immense. This was why Song Ciwan—standing beneath the blades, her body so minuscule she was only slightly larger than an ant—had mistaken the patch of grass for a forest upon her sudden arrival.

’What a strange world,’ she thought. ’Grass as vast as a forest, ants as large as a person...’

’So, did the grass get bigger, or did I get smaller?’

’And why does my body feel so heavy and my movements so sluggish here?’

Song Ciwan circulated her True Qi. Only after exerting thirty percent of her strength did clouds begin to form beneath her feet. Gradually, Riding the Clouds and Mist, she flew out from the grass and up into the sky!

The world before her was indeed immense. The grass was huge, the shrubs were even larger, and a distant stream rushed by like a great river. The willow trees by its banks looked like world-trees reaching for the heavens.

Song Ciwan had to fly for quite some time, to the point where beads of sweat formed on her temples and a subtle fatigue crept into her body, before she finally surpassed the height of the willow trees and could see the wider, more distant world.

By this time, through her various analyses, Song Ciwan had finally figured out her predicament.

’Perhaps the world grew larger, or perhaps I shrank—’

’—that part doesn’t matter. What matters is that the very air in this world is permeated with a terrifying, chaotic, and suppressive force.’

It was precisely because of this strange field that her physical reactions had slowed. In truth, her speed hadn’t actually decreased; she simply hadn’t adapted to the field in this world yet.

In this strange world of sand, even the air was heavy. Since Song Ciwan was still exerting force as she would have in the Mortal World, it was only natural that her efforts fell short and her speed suffered.

She flew on her cloud, simultaneously using the Shadow Tracking Technique to enter a strange, semi-invisible state.

Following the guidance of her intuition, Song Ciwan then flew upstream along the creek.

Along the way, she saw a fish leap from the bottom of the stream. Amid a tremendous SPLASH, the gigantic fish, like some colossal monster, nearly jumped right onto her cloud.

She also saw dragonflies that roared like fighter jets as they flew over the surface of the stream!

A kingfisher, which looked adorable from a distance, created a gust of Wind with its wings as it drew near, rippling the auspicious cloud beneath Song Ciwan’s feet.

If Song Ciwan hadn’t immediately used Upright Shadowless to render all Attacks incorporeal, she might have had to engage the kingfisher in an aerial battle!

Birds chirping, fish leaping, water splashing, green grass swaying, willow branches drooping... these scenes seemed so ordinary at first glance. But with everything super-sized, they all took on a magnificent and terrifying quality.

As Song Ciwan flew, she carefully sensed the spatial rhythm of this world, discovering that the density of space here also far exceeded that of the outside world.

After flying along the stream for a short while, covering a distance of about six miles, she suddenly saw clusters of blossoms ahead. Beside the splashing stream, a vast, magnificent field of giant flowers in a riot of colors appeared!

Above the flower field, dragonflies and butterflies danced and fluttered.

Beautiful young men and women rode on the backs of the dragonflies and butterflies, chasing one another and laughing merrily amidst the blossoms that seemed to fill the entire world. They were like Elves among the flowers.