Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1106 - Heavenly Coffins Internal Space
Chapter 1106 – Heavenly Coffin’s Internal Space
Liu Wuxie furrowed his brows and remained silent.
Within moments, nearly a third of the cultivators entered the heavenly coffin.
“I suspect this heavenly coffin might be an artifact,” Liu Wuxie said after glancing at the colossal structure. Someone had forged it. It hadn’t formed naturally.
Perhaps someone had buried it so long ago that its spiritual essence had faded away, leaving it dull and lifeless.
“An artifact? You’re saying that this is a heaven-spirit artifact?” Qiao Bian asked, his expression shifting. Only heaven-spirit artifacts could freely change sizes, like the Divine Sun Sword.
“Heaven-spirit artifacts can indeed shift sizes and house internal space,” Liu Wuxie explained, shaking his head. “But it can’t store origin force.”
He dismissed the assumption without hesitation. This coffin wasn’t merely a heaven-spirit artifact. Most likely, it was a genuine immortal artifact.
Liu Wuxie kept that to himself, as voicing it would spark chaos. If it genuinely was an immortal artifact, who could hope to claim it?
Even with all his strength, Liu Wuxie wouldn’t be able to seize it unless he could refine it, control it, and reshape it.
“So, what now?” Qiao Bian asked, waiting for Liu Wuxie to decide whether they would enter or stay behind.
“If I’m right and this is a powerful artifact,” Liu Wuxie said, his tone thoughtful, “Then what’s inside isn’t just space but an entire world. The one who crafted that must have stored countless treasures inside.”
He didn’t elaborate further, but the implication was clear. Many immortals raised creatures within such artifacts, relying on them to generate faith energy. If this truly were an immortal construct, there had to be life within, or perhaps even civilizations.
Unlike interspatial rings with limited capacity, an immortal artifact’s internal world could hold rivers, mountains, and entire landscapes.
“If that’s the case, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” one of the Dragon Emperor Academy disciples urged. They feared others would seize all the treasures before they got in.
“There’s no rush,” Liu Wuxie said flatly. “If there’s an entire world inside, do you really think that the treasures inside are just lying around, waiting to be picked up?”
The laws would suppress this artifact if it were to appear in the Celestial Realm. On the True Martial Continent, however, no such restrictions existed. In other words, the internal world could expand limitlessly, with no boundaries.
However, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Too many people could get lost inside and never find their way out again.
“You four, stay outside,” Liu Wuxie said to the four women. “Have Hei Kui protect you and move away from the coffin. Don’t get too close.”
They were entering an unknown world, and even he couldn’t predict what dangers lay ahead.
“We’re going with you!” Chen Ruoyan insisted. She wasn’t after treasures; she simply didn’t want to be left behind.
“Don’t be reckless,” Liu Wuxie warned. “It’s not an ordinary place. Out of the tens of thousands who went in, not even one in ten will return alive.”
“If that’s true,” Xu Lingxue said, “then all the more reason to go with you. We won’t let you face danger alone.”
“Brother Liu, bring them,” Qiao Bian added.
Liu Wuxie hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them there, but his faith energy had been sounding the alarm since he arrived here. He sensed a terrifying number of mysterious imprints.
Each one pointed to a possible link to the Golden Cauldron Pavilion, and there were so many imprints that it chilled him to the core.
If they were to walk in without caution, they could fall into the Pavilion’s trap. At least outside, the women had a chance to survive.
In the face of their determination, however, Liu Wuxie couldn’t bring himself to refuse.
He nodded in agreement.
The matter involving the Golden Cauldron Pavilion would have to wait.
Two hours later, most of the crowd had already entered the coffin.
“Let’s move,” Liu Wuxie said.
With fewer people remaining outside, he led the four women, along with Ruan Ying, Hei Kui, and the others, through the triangular gate. The moment they stepped in, the artifact’s suction force gripped them.
The suction dragged them forward, dragging them deep into the coffin in an instant.
No one expected the presence of a suction force.
“Brother Liu!” Xu Lingxue and the others cried out, but the suction tore them apart before they could reach each other.
Liu Wuxie reached for them, but the suction force flung him deep into the void.
“Damn it! Damn it all!” he cursed.
His preparations were thorough, but he hadn’t anticipated this.
They were together, but some invisible force had scattered them across this unknown realm. He couldn’t stop his descent. A violent gale howled around him, sucking him deeper into the darkness.
Liu Wuxie woke face down on scorching sand, grit clinging to his face.
He coughed, spitting out grit from his mouth, and immediately checked himself.
No injuries.
The moment he looked up, he saw an endless desert stretching in every direction with no other soul in sight.
“Xue’er… Murong… Xin’er… Ruoyan…” he called out, his voice carried by the wind.
Only silence answered him. His words echoed back across the dunes. He tried reaching Hei Kui and the others with his divine sense, but he received no response.
The realm was cut off from the True Martial Continent—a sealed world of its own.
The spiritual energy felt foreign, and completely different laws governed this realm.
Looking up, Liu Wuxie saw a hazy sky, dim and colorless, with no sun in sight.
He immediately knew where he was; he had to be inside the heavenly coffin.
And now, it felt like a prison. Its internal structure reminded him of the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.
Escaping wouldn’t be easy.
Without wasting another second, he unleashed his divine sense, scanning the barren surroundings for any sign of life.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Liu Wuxie muttered, frowning as he examined the flow of energy around him. “The spatial laws here are different from the outside world. My dao techniques feel sluggish.”
He could sense a force suppressing his dao techniques and the laws he had mastered. Those who entered the coffin were most likely experiencing the same thing. Their cultivation remained, but something dulled and muted the laws they relied on.
“I see now,” he murmured. “The spatial laws here surpass the laws in the outside world. That’s why the laws here have sealed the techniques we mastered outside.”
It felt like being dragged from open air into deep water; every movement strained and unnatural. The pressure here was immense. Even the simplest technique became difficult to perform under these conditions.
“I have to find them quickly… before anything happens,” Liu Wuxie said, urgency in his voice.
However, he had no sense of direction. He could only pick a path and move forward. He tried activating a Communication Talisman to contact the others, but the laws in this internal world rendered the talisman useless.
“First, I need to escape this desert,” he muttered.
He attempted to fly, but he failed. This was no ordinary realm—it was the internal world of an artifact. If this were truly an immortal artifact, there would be an artifact spirit guiding them. However, Liu Wuxie found no trace of one.
Perhaps the spirit had died along with its master.
After a full day and night of walking, measured only by his sense of time, as the sky offered no sun or moon, Liu Wuxie covered at least five hundred miles. And still, there was no end to the desert.
His lips were cracked and dry; he felt utterly exhausted as he finally slumped to the ground. He took out some water and drank big gulps, feeling his strength return to him.
“This world is larger than I imagined,” he said under his breath.
The elevated spatial laws devoured his true essence at a much faster rate. Anyone below the middle stages of the Earth Profound Realm would likely collapse before getting far.
……
Meanwhile, outside the coffin, several figures appeared, each cloaked in silence. They were radiating the overwhelming presence of the Heaven Profound Realm.
They said nothing and simply shot into the coffin like streaks of light, entering without any hesitation.
Moments later, a red-clad figure stepped to the coffin’s edge. Unlike the others, she didn’t rush inside. She took out a special spiritual talisman and placed it on the coffin’s surface.
The moment it made contact, thousands of glowing patterns erupted and surged outward in every direction, covering the coffin in a complex web of symbols.
“Perfect,” the red-robed woman said with a faint smile before stepping into the coffin herself.
……
Three days passed in the outside world, and Liu Wuxie finally saw the edge of the desert. The realm forced everyone who entered to wander blindly. No one knew if there were treasures ahead or if they were walking toward danger.
As he stepped beyond the sands, Liu Wuxie crouched beside a small stream, scooping water over his face and rinsing away the layers of sand that clung to him.
Relief washed over him as he cooled off.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed movement in the underbrush. Occasionally, profound beasts darted through the woods.
“What kind of coffin can nurture life…” Liu Wuxie muttered, watching the forest stir.
The artifact’s owner had to have placed those creatures here. Somehow, they had been surviving in this internal world for generations, multiplying over the years.
Liu Wuxie even began to suspect that ancient humans were still alive here, taken long ago and sealed within by the artifact’s master, never knowing that a world existed beyond this one.
In their eyes, this internal world could be the only world they know. It made him wonder—was his world any different? Were they all just livestock penned in some higher cage?
Was the only path to freedom through shattering the void and ascending to a higher plane?
After washing up, Liu Wuxie changed into fresh robes and stepped away from the stream, heading deeper into the dense forest.
Suddenly, he caught the sound of approaching footsteps.
He ducked behind a tree, concealing his aura.
“Damn it! We’ve searched for days and found nothing!” one voice complained. Two young cultivators came walking through the trees toward Liu Wuxie.
They had likely entered the coffin before him and searched in vain ever since, without finding treasure or even a way out.
“Relax,” said the man on the right. “Since we’re already inside, we’ll find the exit eventually. Besides, with the spatial laws here, this place is perfect for training. We might even break through to the Heaven Profound Realm before we leave.”
The man’s optimism wasn’t misplaced.
With the presence of origin force, breakthroughs in cultivation could happen faster here than anywhere on the True Martial Continent. Some cultivators were probably on the verge of breaking into the Heaven Profound Realm within this sealed world.
