Chapter 131: Premonition of Danger

"Although I could not complete the deduction due to the exhaustion of energy, I clearly sensed that there is no path forward. Even the Fifth-Level tier is severely incomplete."

"This incompleteness is not merely due to the cultivation methods; more importantly, the potential of this path has already reached its limit. No matter how talented one may be, it is impossible to break these shackles. One can only be trapped, unable to make a breakthrough."

Chen Ming pondered this, and a question gradually rose in his mind.

"If that is the case, how did that Demon God become so powerful?"

As he mused, an unusual intuition and premonition emanating from his true spirit made him feel as though he had grasped a crucial point.

"Perhaps it is related to the anomaly that occurred in the world where that Demon God originated, much like what is happening in this world."

In the world where Chen Ming was reborn, the system of Battle Qi also has its limitations. Although there is still some potential to be tapped, it remains firmly imprisoned at the level of a Third-Level Firmament Knight. For countless years, many geniuses have been unable to break through this ceiling.

The only exception was the Ancestral God of the Royal Court. Born as a child of destiny during a time of chaos, he carried the vast majority of the world's source energy during his lifetime, forcibly elevating himself to the Sixth Level.

Perhaps that Demon God was no ordinary figure in its own world either. It might well have been a child of destiny from another realm.

"However, the fall of that Demon God also carries a sense of mystery. What kind of circumstances could cause such a powerful being, one nearing the realm of immortality, to perish?"

He recalled the scene he had witnessed earlier.

A wisp of the Demon God's remnant soul had manifested in the world. It was merely a fragment left behind after its fall, far from being restored to its peak, yet it could briefly contend with the world's consciousness and even orchestrate a scheme under the world's blockade to forcibly possess an Ancestral God.

"And with that Ancestral God as a disguise, once it obtained a body capable of housing its essence, even the world's consciousness could no longer lock onto it. The danger it poses is now immeasurably greater than before."

He thought this, a sense of crisis surging in his heart, causing him to frown.

"Are we almost there?"

Reaching a plain, Chen Ming looked ahead.

It was evident that this region had not been visited for a very long time. Around him lay only corpses that appeared to have completely decayed, from which a dense demonic aura was slowly emerging.

From this point on, the entire landscape seemed to act as a dividing line, as if the earth had been forcibly cleaved in two.

Through his senses, Chen Ming perceived that the land ahead possessed a subtle power of isolation and repulsion, appearing disconnected from the world he stood in, as if it were fundamentally out of place.

This was a region almost independent of the world, seemingly existing within an alternate space; although he could clearly sense it, a barrier always remained.

The surroundings were eerily quiet. Even the large and small demonic beasts that were ubiquitous elsewhere had vanished, making the atmosphere extremely strange.

Sensing this, Chen Ming felt no surprise. He merely lowered his head to look at the scattered corpses.

The corpses were arranged in a regular pattern, mostly draped in animal hides and covered in various scars. They resembled crude, brutal works of art, combined to form a bizarre design.

He leaned down to examine them; the internal organs had been removed from these bodies by artificial means. Beside these corpses, there were often altars, each topped with a terrifying statue of a three-headed, six-armed Demon God.

These had been placed here by the Demonic Humans. Not daring to venture deeper, they could only leave them in the periphery as offerings to the Demon God.

"Besides this purpose, there seems to be another," he thought, gazing at the bodies.

As he watched, perhaps it was an illusion, but subtle, uncanny changes began to occur in the corpses.

A naked female corpse lay quietly on the ground. From her current form, one could vaguely discern her former beauty, but now, her body was tinged with an eerie dark green hue. It seemed that Chen Ming's arrival had triggered a change; her originally stiff face began to soften, wearing a half-smile as if observing the strange traveler before her.

With this as a starting point, all the surrounding corpses began to stir and shift slowly.

Sensing these anomalies, Chen Ming frowned and looked behind him.

There, too, was a corpse. It had been on an altar far away, but now, unknowingly, it had moved behind him.

"There are no spirits present; it seems something else is influencing these corpses, causing such strange transformations."

He muttered to himself while observing his surroundings.

"Is it because we are at the interface?" The thought crossed his mind.

At the intersection of two worlds, various strange phenomena often occur. This is because different worlds possess different rules. Where two worlds meet, their disparate laws collide and fuse, easily giving rise to unpredictable anomalies.

"It is a pity. If time were not so pressing, I could stay here for a while. By studying these phenomena, I might gain some insight into the laws of both worlds."

With this thought, he moved his mind, and his powerful soul directly manipulated the female corpse before him to begin a careful study.

"The anatomical structure is identical to that of an ordinary human female, though she appears to have practiced Battle Qi, making her stronger. There are no other abnormalities, only the slight rot resulting from death. Only in the abdomen..."

He sensed the corpse carefully, then with a flick of his mind, he sliced open its abdomen and extracted a crystal radiating a profound luster.

The crystal was pure and emitted a peculiar fluctuation, identical to the one Chen Ming had obtained in the Demonic Human tribe. However, its purity was slightly lower, appearing somewhat unrefined.

This type of crystal had always been a specialty of the region inhabited by Demonic Humans; it could effectively accelerate their growth and facilitate their transformation into stronger beings. It now appeared that they were birthed here, nurtured by these corpses.

"Born at the intersection where two sets of laws collide—does this contain fragments of the world's laws?"

Chen Ming thought silently, looking at the crystal.

As the divine spark within his body turned gently, a bit of demonic power began to evaporate from the deep crystal, as if being expelled by something. When only a tiny fragment remained, Chen Ming moved, triggering his true spirit to swallow it directly.

Suddenly, Chen Ming felt his true spirit leap. It seemed that a bit of profound law was being absorbed into his body through this process.

However, perhaps because he had undergone a similar process before, this change was very faint. After a while, Chen Ming sighed with some regret: "A pity. Although it contains a portion of the power of laws, the repetition is too high; by now, it is of almost no use."

Before him, the female corpse with the eerie expression began to emit a stench of decay the moment the crystal was removed. In an instant, it withered away, as if it had endured a long passage of time in a single moment.

These corpses had long been dead; they had only been able to maintain their forms due to the weak law crystals within them. Once Chen Ming removed them, they were instantly returned to their original state.

He did not even glance at the decaying corpse, but instead looked ahead and took a step forward, instantly crossing the spatial barrier to arrive on the other side.

"Hmm?"

The moment he arrived, Chen Ming felt a wave of manic pressure incessantly assaulting him from all sides, constantly weighing down upon him as if he were a foreign object.

This was because the laws here were composed differently. In this world, Chen Ming was an absolute outsider, and thus he was naturally repelled by this space.

And this was merely an artificially formed alternate space. If it were a true, small world, entering as openly as he did would result in even greater pressure, and the world's consciousness might even manifest actively to bring down divine punishment.

At the same time, as he entered this domain, the disguise he had maintained became slightly insufficient. A trace of his aura leaked out, triggering a reaction from an consciousness with extremely powerful life force ahead.

"This feeling, along with this powerful life force and aura of destruction... it seems almost certain."

He thought this, then examined himself and frowned.

With another shift of his will, the law power he had comprehended from the Demon God—derived from the swallowed crystal—gradually surfaced, slowly masking his original aura.

Immediately, the constant repulsive force from the surroundings began to subside, deceived by the homologous law power emanating from his body.

Sensing his own change, he nodded: "This should be enough."

"At the current level, as long as I do not get too close, or if I do not take the initiative to attack, even if the opponent were standing right in front of me, they would be unable to discover me, provided their strength does not vastly exceed my own."

At that moment, in the distance, a powerful will suddenly began to churn, then gradually came to a halt; it seemed to have detected nothing unusual and returned to calm.

Sensing this, Chen Ming smiled slightly: "Is this sensation coming from the center of this place?"

"However, although the essence is the same, the strength of this entity is worlds apart from the one I encountered decades ago."

"The previous one was something I could suppress before I had even reached the Fourth Level, while this one is not only powerful enough to open and form a small alternate space here, but I can also sense a subtle premonition of danger."

He thought this, a faint sense of crisis persistently nagging at his heart, making him vigilant.

This was astonishing. One must realize that after occupying nearly half the world, supported by the vast source energy of the world and the power of faith, Chen Ming had already surpassed the limits of the Fifth Level, reaching the threshold of the Sixth. If one added the status of his world-standing and the blessings of countless believers, he could even contend head-on with the Sixth-Level Ancestral God of the Royal Court.

Such an existence, even in the inherited memories of Chen Ming—in a universe filled with gods and supreme power—would be a top-tier hegemon capable of dominating a world.

For something to pose a threat to such an existence, the enemy ahead must at least be at the limit of the Fifth Level. How could Chen Ming not be surprised?