Gu Qingfeng pondered for a long time but still couldn't figure it out. Thinking about it until his head ached, he gave up and stopped trying. Once again, he jumped into the Magical Treasure Eye. As before, it felt like falling into a turbulent current, and he returned to this Desolate Ancient Ruins, as if he had traversed time and space back to the starting point.
Gazing at the slowly rotating Chaotic Current whirlwind in the sky above, then looking at the mountain range lying across the endless desert like a dragon's skeleton, Gu Qingfeng shook his head, feeling a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
With a sigh, he entered the Giant Cauldron once more.
Seeing Ancestor Lin Chi again, withered and on the brink of death like a corpse, Gu Qingfeng was already numb. He paid no attention to Lin Chi and headed straight for the Magical Treasure Eye.
The Seal enveloping the Magical Treasure Eye was profoundly mysterious, like a water mirror. He reached out and tapped the Seal, causing ripples to spread across its surface.
Previously, he had tried to see if he could forcibly break the Seal. One attempt nearly caused the structure of the Giant Cauldron to collapse. Worried about damaging the cauldron, Gu Qingfeng had stopped.
Now that he was trapped here, he couldn't care less if the Giant Cauldron got damaged. Tipping his head back, he drained a jar of wine, then raised his fist and slammed it against the Seal.
Bang!
One punch!
Bang! Bang!
Two punches.
Gu Qingfeng began to pummel the Seal frantically. It wasn't that he wanted to smash it open by force—after all, the Seal would disappear on its own once Ancestor Lin Chi was killed. If his only goal was to open the Seal, there was no need for such a roundabout method.
Could it be that Gu Qingfeng, furious at being trapped and unable to escape, wanted to vent his anger by wrecking the Giant Cauldron?
He was indeed trapped here, temporarily unable to leave.
Although he felt frustrated, it was just frustration, far from reaching the point of furious desperation.
The reason he was unleashing his absolute power to smash the Seal was because Gu Qingfeng suspected there was a connection between the Giant Cauldron and these Desolate Ancient Ruins.
Otherwise, why would jumping into the Magical Treasure Eye bring him back to these ruins? And why would exiting through the Chaotic Current whirlwind in the ruins return him to the Magical Treasure Eye of the Giant Cauldron?
He was certain there had to be some connection between the Giant Cauldron and these Desolate Ancient Ruins, and Ancestor Lin Chi was undoubtedly part of it.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He continued hammering the Seal that enveloped the Magical Treasure Eye, punch after punch, each strike more powerful and ferocious than the last. As he relentlessly assaulted the Seal, it grew increasingly blurred and indistinct.
At the same time, the structure of the Giant Cauldron became more and more chaotic, as if it might collapse at any moment.
Not only that, the entire Desolate Ancient Ruins began to churn into chaos. Especially the Chaotic Current whirlwind in the sky—as the Giant Cauldron's structure destabilized, the whirlwind also grew turbulent. The entire sky seemed to spin, and the endless desert was stirred into a frenzy of flying sand.
Just as Gu Qingfeng had guessed, the Giant Cauldron truly had some connection to these Desolate Ancient Ruins.
Considering this, a possibility occurred to him: if he smashed the Seal and the Giant Cauldron collapsed, would these Desolate Ancient Ruins collapse along with it?
If the ruins collapsed, would that mean he could escape?
He didn't know.
Gu Qingfeng didn't dwell on it further, simply unleashing his power in a continuous, frenzied assault on the Seal.
"Break for me!"
With a furious roar, Gu Qingfeng mustered all his strength and slammed it into the Seal.
A deafening explosion erupted.
The Seal cracked like glass, spiderweb fissures spreading across its surface. At the same moment—crack!
The structure of the Giant Cauldron also began to fracture, and outside, the entire Desolate Ancient Ruins similarly split with spiderweb cracks.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three more punches.
The Seal was now completely shattered, yet it hadn't broken apart. The Seal remained so, the Giant Cauldron was the same, and even the space of the entire Desolate Ancient Ruins was no different!
"Open for me!"
Standing beside the Magical Treasure Eye, Gu Qingfeng was like a War God, his aura soaring to the heavens, his might shaking the earth, his power shaking the eight directions. He raised his arms, his ten fingers tightly clenched together as if grasping a heaven-cleaving, earth-sundering axe, and brought it crashing down upon the Seal.
BOOM!
—The profoundly mysterious Seal enveloping the Magical Treasure Eye was smashed open by his sheer brute force, vanishing like foam. As the Seal disintegrated, Ancestor Lin Chi, not far away, also disintegrated. The Giant Cauldron disintegrated. The entire Desolate Ancient Ruins disintegrated at that very moment.
Just as everything vanished into thin air, Gu Qingfeng suddenly felt as if he were falling into a turbulent current again.
He had thought that since even the Desolate Ancient Ruins had collapsed, logically, he should have returned to the Desolate Ancient Black Hole, right?
But what Gu Qingfeng never expected was that as he fell into the current, the moment he regained his senses, he inexplicably began plummeting downward.
Stabilizing his body, he stood suspended in mid-air. Looking up, he saw a massive whirlwind spinning in the sky, churning with rolling Chaotic Currents. Looking down, there was the endless desert.
Scanning the horizon, a mountain range resembling a dragon's skeleton lay sprawled across the desert.
Gu Qingfeng wondered if he was seeing things or experiencing some kind of illusion. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. The Chaotic Current whirlwind in the sky was still spinning. The dragon-skeleton-like mountain range still lay across the desert. This space had no origin, no laws, no structure.
This damn place was still those Desolate Ancient Ruins!
What the hell is going on!
Jumping into the Magical Treasure Eye and returning to the Desolate Ancient Ruins was one thing.
But how the hell, even after the Seal collapsed, the Giant Cauldron collapsed, and the entire Desolate Ancient Ruins collapsed... how was he still back here?
What the hell is happening!
Could it be that I'm not trapped in a single Space-Time Turbulence, but a damn endless cycle of Space-Time Turbulences?
Gu Qingfeng stood there in mid-air, staring blankly for a long, long time, as if only then accepting this harsh reality.
"We're in trouble. This time, we're really in trouble."
If before this, Gu Qingfeng had held onto a sliver of hope of leaving, then with the collapse of the Desolate Ancient Ruins and his subsequent return here, that last remaining shred of hope had also vanished into thin air.
"It's over. This time, it's completely over."
A bitter, helpless smile touched the corner of Gu Qingfeng's mouth. He returned to the peak of the dragon-skeleton-like mountain and continued drinking his melancholy wine.
In the past, he had fallen into the Endless Sea Beyond the Outer Heaven three times, trapped in turbulent spatial currents for long, long periods. In the end, he managed to leave the first time by sheer luck when the turbulent space manifested in the Great Wastelands. The second time, he committed suicide and was reborn in the Great Wastelands' extinction. The third time, he suffered a mental collapse, went mad, lost consciousness, and had no idea how he returned to the Great Wastelands.
Now, on his first entry into the Endless Sea Beyond the Outer Heaven, as expected, he was trapped here once again.
And damn it, it's in the mysterious and bizarre Desolate Ancient Black Hole, and damn it, he's trapped in an unheard-of Space-Time Turbulence.
It could be said that this time, being trapped was even more terrifying than the previous three times!
This experience truly and deeply taught him an old saying: power is not omnipotent.
Take these Desolate Ancient Ruins, for example. What does it matter how powerful your strength is?
What does it matter if you destroy the entire Desolate Ancient Ruins?
Aren't you still trapped here all the same?