It was an indescribable, complicated feeling.
Gu Qingfeng seemed to have glimpsed something within the painting, yet it was blurry, illusory, and ephemeral—like sensing a light with closed eyes but finding nothing upon opening them.
He stared at the Stillness-and-Forgetting Self Scroll. The barren mountain depicted on it gradually grew more indistinct, more ethereal and faint. The longer he looked, the blurrier and more intangible it became.
Suddenly.
Gu Qingfeng’s consciousness seemed to plunge into a mysterious and bizarre world.
The sky was not sky, the earth was not earth. Sun and moon were not sun and moon, the world was not the world. The sky resembled both sky and earth, the heavens and earth seemed to interweave, the sun and moon appeared to merge, and the world felt as though it were wildly overlapping…
Everything was like primordial chaos.
Judgment!
Endless Judgment!
The source of Judgment filled the sky!
Divine light, which governed all, flickered!
Buddhist light, which transcended all, flickered!
Demonic light, which annihilated all, flickered!
Immortal light, which purified all, flickered!
Monstrous light, ghostly light…
The sky was filled with them…
Gu Qingfeng didn’t understand what was happening.
In an instant!
With a deafening boom, Heaven and Earth exploded, the world disintegrated, and then, everything fell silent.
Darkness.
Endless darkness.
Nothing.
There was absolutely nothing.
Everything was submerged in boundless darkness. Only countless fragments drifted in the void after the explosion, swirling like snowflakes in the dark.
Gu Qingfeng’s consciousness also seemed to sink into that infinite darkness, floating along with the fragments.
There was no time within the darkness, no space…
Nothing at all.
His wisp of consciousness drifted on and on, as if lost. His thoughts grew slower and slower, increasingly blank…
*Not good!*
At the critical moment, Gu Qingfeng snapped to awareness. Acting decisively, he severed that strand of consciousness.
In an instant.
His consciousness returned to himself.
Gu Qingfeng’s face was slightly pale, his breathing heavy, and a faint cold sweat beaded his forehead. He inwardly noted how perilous that had been. If he hadn’t reacted quickly and his consciousness had become lost there, whether his mind could have awakened again was unknown.
He stared intently at the Stillness-and-Forgetting Self Scroll in his hand.
The painting remained unchanged; it still depicted that desolate Wudao Mountain.
Nothing had changed.
As for why he had been inexplicably drawn into that bizarre world, Gu Qingfeng couldn’t fathom it for the moment.
He dared not probe any deeper.
He feared being pulled into it again without warning.
He carefully recalled the fleeting explosion from moments ago, sinking into deep contemplation.
The barren mountain in this painting was Wudao Mountain, and Wudao Mountain belonged to the Mysterious Era. Could that fleeting explosion have been an event from the Mysterious Era?
He didn’t know.
Since everything about the Mysterious Era was shrouded in the unknown, Gu Qingfeng dared not jump to conclusions. He only felt that the momentary explosion was terrifyingly horrifying—a true cataclysm of Heaven and Earth. For him, though only his consciousness had been immersed, it felt as vivid and searing as a personal experience.
The disappearance of the Mysterious Era…
Could it truly have been due to an explosion?
Gu Qingfeng pondered carefully. It wasn’t impossible.
Heaven and Earth could be reborn after an explosion, but after such a rebirth, all things in the universe would need to be nurtured anew. Ancient records stated that history began from that point—the dawn of the Primordial Era: the Human Ancestor, the Human Emperor, Nüwa mending the heavens…
That was the true Primordial Beginning.
However, what puzzled Gu Qingfeng was this: if Heaven and Earth in the Mysterious Era had truly undergone a great explosion, what was the endless darkness that followed?
Could it be the legendary Beyond-the-Heavens?
It was said that beyond Heaven and Earth lay endless darkness—a place without time, without space, without anything at all.
Gu Qingfeng had only heard of the Beyond-the-Heavens; he had never witnessed it.
Nor did he know if the legends were true.
“Chaos fragments…
Endless darkness…” Gu Qingfeng murmured, lost in recollection. Then he retrieved a crystal from his storage pouch—a murky, turbid crystal whose interior seemed to churn with inverted yin and yang, evolving unpredictably.
This Turbid Crystal was something he had found in Yun Nichang’s cave abode. When he probed it with his Divine Sense, he could enter a mysterious, unknown secret realm.
As for what this object was, Gu Qingfeng had never been sure.
Until now. He finally understood.
This object was most likely a fragment of chaos from the Mysterious Era, and the space within was likely a remnant space left behind after the explosion of that era.
The more Gu Qingfeng thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. He immediately extended his Divine Sense, entering the space through this chaos fragment.
In this world.
Whether it be cave abodes, secret realms, illusionary realms, minor worlds, major worlds, and so on…
Any space, regardless of size, existed within Heaven and Earth.
Because space itself relied on the laws of Heaven and Earth for its existence and was bound to obey those laws.
What were the laws of Heaven and Earth?
The renewal of sun and moon, the interplay of yin and yang.
These were the most fundamental and distinctive features of the Heaven-and-Earth Laws.
However, the space within this chaos fragment…
Had no sky above.
Had no earth below.
There was neither renewal of sun and moon nor interplay of yin and yang.
There was only endless darkness, boundless silence, and nothing else.
This place clearly existed outside the laws of Heaven and Earth.
What further confirmed this for Gu Qingfeng was that he had once witnessed Judgment Penalty Thunder here—and an endless Judgment at that.
The appearance of Judgment within a spatial secret realm was not particularly strange; Gu Qingfeng himself had experienced it too many times. When the Heavenly Dao had delivered Judgment upon him in the past, he had repeatedly hidden within spatial secret realms, yet without exception, the Judgment had always followed.
After all, all spatial secret realms existed within the laws of Heaven and Earth. If the Heavenly Dao intended to Judge you, no matter which space you hid in, you could not escape its Judgment.
However.
If the Heavenly Dao intended to Judge you, the source of Judgment would inevitably manifest within that space.
And Gu Qingfeng remembered clearly: during that endless Judgment here, there had been no source of Judgment whatsoever—not even a single strand.
At the time, Gu Qingfeng couldn’t understand why.
Now he knew. This place was simply not within the laws of Heaven and Earth, so the source of Judgment naturally could not manifest here.
No!
This place was still within Heaven and Earth—just not the current Heaven and Earth, but the exploded Heaven and Earth of the Mysterious Era.
This damn thing wasn’t some spatial secret realm at all.
It was a fragmented remnant of Heaven and Earth after the explosion of the Mysterious Era!
It was just that these fragments, lacking the sustaining power of the world’s origin, no longer possessed any laws—they were pure fragments of Heaven and Earth.
*Incredible!*
Having sorted out his thoughts, Gu Qingfeng felt a surge of excitement. He didn’t even know why he was excited—perhaps it was the thrill of uncovering a secret of the Mysterious Era.
Gu Qingfeng extended his Divine Sense, carefully probing the space.
His Divine Sense was immensely powerful; spanning tens of thousands of miles in a single thought was effortless.
However, this fragmented piece of Heaven and Earth was virtually boundless. No matter how far Gu Qingfeng’s Divine Sense reached, it could not find an end.
Moreover, there was truly nothing here.
After probing a while longer and finding nothing, Gu Qingfeng was about to withdraw when he suddenly sensed another Divine Sense approaching his location.