After a while,
Gu Qingfeng took out a full eighteen Fragment Crystals of the Wu Dao Age from Chu Jiaohong's storage thumb ring. He tested them one by one, finding they were no different from the one in his hand. When he probed them with his divine sense, they all led to the same Lost Land of the Wu Dao Age—a place without heaven or earth, without light, with nothing but endless darkness and endless void.
These Fragment Crystals all contained mysterious and powerful forces. Refining them would undoubtedly bring unimaginable benefits.
However, no one would likely think to refine them.
Setting aside whether it was even possible to refine them, even if one could, they would absolutely be unable to withstand the mysterious power within. Forcibly refining them would only lead to a violent, bodily death.
But that wasn't the important part.
What mattered was that these things were, after all, Fragment Crystals from the Wu Dao Age.
The Wu Dao Age!
That was the most mysterious era between Heaven and Earth. Legends said this era hid not only the secrets of becoming a god, but also the greatest secrets of Heaven and Earth.
It was no exaggeration to say that even a piece of shit, as long as it was from the Wu Dao Age, would be absolutely priceless.
Let alone a Fragment Crystal from that era.
Chu Jiaohong had so many Fragment Crystals in her possession, yet she had only used one to nurture an external incarnation. Perhaps her abilities only allowed her to nurture one, but more importantly, she probably didn't want to waste such treasures.
Gu Qingfeng examined the eighteen Fragment Crystals of the Wu Dao Age once more, then stored them away, thinking they might come in handy someday.
After putting away the eighteen Fragment Crystals, he finally picked up a Fragment Core to study.
Just a single glance at this thing made it feel extraordinary.
The eighteen Fragment Crystals seemed to contain chaos within, but it was a static chaos.
This Fragment Core, however, while also containing chaos, held a changing, dynamic chaos.
In other words,
the Fragment Crystals seemed like dead objects,
while this Fragment Core was like a living thing.
Back when Gu Qingfeng was roaming the Heavens, he had witnessed the explosion of Great Thousand Worlds more than once and had even personally experienced it once. He knew very well that when the space of a Great Thousand World exploded, it would inevitably split into countless Fragment Crystals, most of which were spatial fragments.
Over long years, these Fragment Crystals would gradually nurture into cores, known as Postnatal Cores.
However, if a Fragment Core was directly split off during the explosion of a Great Dry World, it was a Prenatal Core.
Although both were Fragment Cores, there was a world of difference between them. Postnatal Cores were nurtured from countless Fragment Crystals and might contain unimaginable power, but beyond that, they held little research value.
Yet,
Prenatal Cores were different.
Since Prenatal Cores were directly split from a world's space, the power they contained was not only innately pure but also held far greater research value.
One must know, it was no accident for a world's space to explode and split off a core. During the explosion, sect secret realms within the Great Thousand Worlds, the cave mansions of great powers, even Small Thousand Worlds could potentially form Fragment Cores as the space exploded.
But that was only the case for the explosion of a Great Thousand World's space.
The core in Gu Qingfeng's hand was not something split from the explosion of a Great Thousand World's space, but from the Wu Dao Age.
That era had no Great Thousand Worlds, nor any Small Thousand Worlds; there was only Heaven and Earth.
An explosion in the Wu Dao Age was almost equivalent to the explosion of Heaven and Earth.
When a Great Thousand World's space exploded, the split-off core could be a Small Thousand World, a sect secret realm, or a great power's cave mansion.
As for the Fragment Core of the Wu Dao Age, Gu Qingfeng truly had no idea how such a thing had formed.
Even
he couldn't determine whether this Fragment Core was a Prenatal split or a Postnatal nurturing.
The Wu Dao Age was too mysterious, so mysterious that Gu Qingfeng dared not rashly speculate or guess, nor dared he recklessly enter to investigate.
It wasn't that he didn't dare.
It was a very complicated feeling.
He wanted to enter and investigate.
Yet he was afraid.
Afraid of danger?
Or afraid of death?
No!
Neither.
Gu Qingfeng feared neither danger nor death.
So what exactly was he afraid of?
He himself didn't know.
He just felt a nameless fear deep in his heart, a bewildering fear, a bewildered fear.
And so,
Gu Qingfeng closed his eyes, reclining inside the grand carriage, lost in thought for a moment. He didn't know how much time passed before he sat up, shook his head, tilted his head back to take several gulps of wine, and finally decided to go in and take a look.
Once decided, he didn't hesitate. Gu Qingfeng directly released his divine sense, quietly entering within.
Previously, when he entered through a Fragment Crystal, it was a place without sun, moon, light, heaven, earth, or world.
This time, entering through this Fragment Core, it was similarly a place without sun, moon, light, heaven, earth, or world.
The only difference was,
the inside of the Fragment Crystal had not only no sun, moon, light, heaven, earth, or world, but also nothing at all—a void, only darkness, endless darkness.
But the inside of this Fragment Core was not like that.
Here, though there was no sun or moon light, dark clouds blotted the sky, lightning flashed and thunder roared, gloomy and dim, as if it were the end of the world.
There was no heaven, earth, or world, but instead stretches of desert ruins. In the sky floated mountain ranges, while below were bottomless chasms.
Fierce winds swept up sand and dust, rolling in, sweeping across everything here.
Countless flashes of lightning and peals of thunder crazily crashed down like judgments, judging everything.
What the hell kind of place was this?
He didn't know.
Gu Qingfeng cautiously probed his surroundings.
A deathly silence.
Aside from desert, there were only ruins.
Nothing else.
Moreover, this place was extremely bizarre, its environment terribly terrible. Those dark clouds were definitely not ordinary dark clouds, the lightning was not ordinary lightning, and the fierce winds were certainly not ordinary winds. What exactly they were, Gu Qingfeng had never encountered before. He just felt that every existence here, even a single grain of sand, seemed to contain a terrifying aura, making his divine sense quite uncomfortable.
After probing this place for a while, it felt like staying in a smoke-filled room for a spell—somewhat suffocating.
Ever since Gu Qingfeng's Nirvana Silence rebirth in the Great Northwest nine years ago, his mental state hadn't been great. Though not exactly weak and feeble, it was close. Recovering one's essence, qi, and spirit was incredibly slow, and Gu Qingfeng had no other method.
After probing a while longer, feeling increasingly suffocated, Gu Qingfeng cursed angrily, steeled his heart, withdrew his divine sense, and directly entered with his true form Physical Body.
To his surprise, after his Physical Body entered, it felt even more uncomfortable than before.
The earlier discomfort felt like being in a smoke-filled room, suffocating. Now it felt like being inside a furnace, burning up.
"This place is really damned weird!"
Gu Qingfeng looked around, searching again and again, but still couldn't find the cause.
He stopped, scooped up a handful of desert sand. It didn't seem particularly unusual. He looked up at the lightning strikes above; they didn't seem ordinary either. Yet, these seemingly ordinary desert ruins, lightning strikes, all seemed to contain a mysterious and eerie aura. Even a damned gust of wind blowing over felt the same, all as if scorched by fire, seemingly carrying a kind of heat.