Chapter 617: Falling Into the Void

"Hold on! This is just the spatial tearing when anchoring coordinates!" Lin Yu's voice exploded like a thunderclap within Su Ming's Consciousness Sea. His Soul Body radiated brilliant light, splitting off a stream of pure soul power to help Su Ming resist the tearing sensation.

The water membrane shook with increasing violence.

The distorted star chart was on the verge of fully solidifying, and the World Gate was about to stabilize and open.

Then, at that very moment, a sudden anomaly occurred!

"Boom!"

From within the World Gate, a blinding light erupted, a hundred times more dazzling than the sun itself!

This was not the gentle light of a spatial passage opening that Su Ming had expected. It was a terrifying, savage, pale-white radiance brimming with pure destruction.

The instant the light shot out, the first layer of the water membrane formed by the Ruo Shui formation was sliced open like a tattered rag slashed by a blade, torn apart by a massive gash.

Then, immediately after.

"Crack, crack, crack..."

A series of fracturing sounds echoed across the stargazing platform.

The surface of the dark-blue water membrane was instantly covered with countless hairline cracks spreading like spiderwebs.

A sinister cold, a presence that seemed capable of freezing the very soul, frantically seeped out through those cracks.

This presence was ten times more concentrated than the trace that had leaked from the spatial crack earlier!

"Something is wrong!"

Lin Yu's illusory eyes shot wide open. His Soul Body trembled violently within the ring's space.

"This is not a normal opening! This World Gate was not pushed open by you!" Lin Yu's voice turned piercing, even carrying a rare note of panic. "Something is pulling the World Gate from the other side! It is forcibly expanding the passage!"

Su Ming's heart was seized with terror.

He reacted almost on pure instinct.

"Sever the connection!"

Su Ming's hands violently thrust outward, attempting to forcibly cut off the spiritual energy being fed into the World Gate through the three keepsakes.

But it was too late.

The pulling force emanating from within the World Gate surged hundreds of times stronger in the instant the pale-white light erupted.

Su Ming felt the ground disappear beneath his feet.

To his horror, he realized he could no longer control his own body. That terrifying suction was not just pulling at his divine sense, it was acting directly upon his physical flesh.

His body was like a leaf caught in a hurricane, lifted from the ground and dragged helplessly toward the cracked center of the water membrane.

"Damn it!"

Su Ming's eyes nearly split at the corners as his right hand shot out, desperate to grab hold of a nearby Greenstone pillar.

But the suction was far too immense. The moment his fingers brushed the pillar's surface, the stone column shattered under the colossal force, exploding into a cloud of dust.

"Cheep!!!"

Ying let out a shrill, piercing cry.

Her tiny body was sent tumbling through the air by the howling wind, but at the very last moment, she clamped her pitch-black claws onto Su Ming's collar like iron vises, refusing to let go.

One person, one bird, amidst the pale-white radiance, hurtled uncontrollably toward the fractured Ruo Shui World Gate.

Ears were filled with the deafening roar of the storm.

In the final instant before his vision was completely swallowed by the pale-white light, Su Ming only had time to leave two brief words within his Consciousness Sea for Lin Yu.

"Take care."

"Take care, my ass! Guard your Spiritual Platform, you brat!"

Lin Yu's roar reverberated madly within Su Ming's Consciousness Sea, but it was quickly drowned out by the external clamor that threatened to tear everything apart.

The pale-white light instantly devoured all of Su Ming's vision.

Every rule in front of him was collapsing. There was no up or down, no left or right, no passage of time. Even the sensation of his own gravity vanished completely.

Su Ming felt as though he had been stuffed into a giant, high-speed spinning meat grinder.

"Riiip!"

A space fragment, invisible to the naked eye, sliced past his left side like the scythe of the Grim Reaper.

Su Ming did not even feel the pain, only heard a faint sound of tearing fabric. The tough robe on his left arm, specially made by the Cloud Hidden Sect's Outer Affairs Hall, along with a large chunk of flesh beneath it, vanished without a trace in an instant.

It was not until a breath later that the piercing, bone-deep agony erupted into his mind like a volcanic explosion.

"Gaaah!"

Su Ming clamped his lips shut, blood gushing from the corners of his mouth.

He did not dare show the slightest carelessness. In the void, he forcibly curled his entire body into a tight ball. His hands clasped protectively over his head, his legs tucked up, guarding his most vulnerable face and Dantian at the very center.

"Ruo Shui, protect me!"

He roared in his heart as the spiritual energy within his Golden Core surged out like a broken dam, layering sheet after sheet of dark-blue water membranes over his skin.

But this Ruo Shui protective layer, strong enough to withstand a full-force strike from an early Golden Core cultivator, was as fragile as window paper pasted over a pane in this chaotic spacetime tunnel.

"Riiip!"

"Bang!"

Countless razor-sharp space fragments, laced with violent foreign laws, relentlessly slashed against the dark-blue water membrane.

The first layer shattered instantly.

The second was torn apart by force.

The third lasted only half a breath before dissolving into vapor.

Su Ming could only frantically wring out the spiritual energy within his Golden Core, mending a layer as each one broke, patching an inch as each one tore. It was a brutal tug-of-war on the edge of death.

"Cheep cheep..."

Ying, clinging tightly to Su Ming's collar, had completely lost all her earlier arrogance. She buried her tiny head deep into the crook of Su Ming's neck, her black feathers pressed flat against her body, letting out faint, pitiful whimpers.

Had it not been for Su Ming's Ruo Shui spiritual energy shielding her as well, this young beast of ancient bloodline would have been shredded into a mist of blood the moment they entered.

"Three feet to the right front! Dodge!"

In the Consciousness Sea, Lin Yu's voice suddenly turned razor-sharp.

Su Ming did not have time to think. Relying purely on absolute trust in his Master, he violently detonated the remaining Ruo Shui spiritual energy at the sole of his left foot.

Using the recoil, his body clumsily tumbled half a turn through the air.

"Huum!"

At the very moment he rolled, a pitch-black spatial rift, a full zhang in length, howled past his spine.

Wherever that rift passed, even the surrounding pale-white light was devoured into nothingness.

Su Ming broke out in a cold sweat.

If he had reacted even half a beat slower, that rift would have split him clean in two.

"This is not a passage at all... this is a collapsing ruin!" Su Ming gritted his teeth, speaking through the Consciousness Sea.

The surrounding environment was far too bizarre. Aside from the lethal space fragments, a constant stream of eerie whispers assailed his ears.

The language was incomprehensible, yet it felt like countless steel needles piercing straight into the soul, evoking an overwhelming urge to abandon resistance and let oneself be torn to shreds.

"Seal your hearing! Those are the lingering echoes of Void Nightmares, they can corrupt your Dao heart!"

Lin Yu warned at breakneck speed while using his soul power to protect the flickering solitary lamp within Su Ming's Consciousness Sea.

At this moment, Lin Yu's Soul Body was also in an extremely dire state.

To resist the oppressive laws seeping into the Consciousness Sea, he was burning the Qingyan soul power he had just devoured but not yet refined, paying an incalculable price.