Chapter 4729: All Rule Lifeforms
In the Primordial Stone's narration, a very special world unfolded before Lin Moyu's eyes.
It did not simply explain in words; it also sketched that world's scenes vivid and lifelike, all things it had personally witnessed in the past.
That was a world formed by the five great rules of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
Other rules existed, but none were as powerful as those five.
After countless ages of evolution, the Five Element rules constantly generated and reinforced one another, growing stronger and stronger.
They devoured and strangled all other rules, until only they remained; in that world, even time, space, fate, and causality were suppressed to their absolute limits almost indistinguishable from not existing at all.
Eventually the Five Element rules reached their limit and could no longer grow stronger.
At the same time, they achieved a strange state of balance.
From this balance, the Five Element rules began to evolve into a rule lifeform.
This lifeform possessed the mutual generation characteristics of the Five Elements and was extremely powerful.
But at the same time, it also embodied the mutual restraint aspect of the Five Elements, so while strong, its nature was violently unstable.
Not a single living being in that world escaped; all were slaughtered by it.
In the end, only it remained alive within that heaven and earth.
At that point, its strength had reached an extreme, no weaker than any peak powerhouse.
By slaughtering uncounted living beings, it gained wisdom.
Then it began to peer into other worlds.
As a rule lifeform, it made the same choice as many other peak powerhouses: it started to search for new worlds to invade.
Because it was a being born from rules themselves, it held a tremendous advantage over other peak cultivators.
It could merge into the rules of foreign worlds, then hide, remodel, and assimilate them.
In this way, it occupied more than a dozen world remnants and killed many expedition teams.
At last, it was discovered by peak powerhouses.
Several such powerhouses joined forces and managed only to wound it, forcing it to retreat to its own world.
That was all they could do; none of them dared to enter its home world, and so it continued living there right up to the end.
"That world was only a Fifth Cycle world," the Primordial Stone said.
"But that Five Element rule lifeform's combat power rivaled some peak powerhouses from Sixth Cycle worlds."
Lin Moyu understood what it was trying to say.
"If this Dark World is an Eighth Cycle world, and the entire world is made of rule lifeforms, then it would be incredibly powerful and extremely dangerous."
"If it is Eighth Cycle, Master will definitely be able to handle it," the stone replied.
"What worries me is if it is Ninth Cycle; Ninth Cycle worlds are far stronger than Eighth Cycle ones. Master must be cautious if it looks bad, just choose another target."
"How many times is this you've told me to give up?" Lin asked with a smile.
"Safety first," the Primordial Stone said.
"Even if you retreat, that is still advancing by withdrawing not a real failure."
This fellow was getting more and more silver tongued.
Even knowing it was flattery, Lin had to admit it sounded pleasant.
"I will be careful," Lin said.
"We have already wasted a lot of time. It is about time to go in and see."
The Power of Death coiled around his body, forming armor.
He gripped the Calamity Scepter in one hand, while the Elemental Stone shone with a faint light.
The Elemental Stone could manipulate all elements, and the rules of heaven and earth counted as a special type of element as well, so it could affect them too.
With these two layers of defense, Lin felt that his safety should not be a problem.
He stepped out of the spatial passage and formally entered the Dark World.
At once, shrill screams echoed in his ears.
It was as if some thing was being burned to death, crying out in the instant before it perished.
Lin clearly sensed that his Power of Death was constantly corroding the Dark World's rules, and those screams were the sound of those rules.
Ordinary rules would never scream; they were not living beings, but a special type of existence.
Even if they evolved into a rule lifeform, they did not necessarily cry out in pain.
Only when a rule lifeform evolved to a certain level, gained some measure of wisdom, and understood what pain was would it scream.
From the way the rules reacted, Lin could roughly judge that the rules here had indeed evolved into rule lifeforms.
Whether the entire world had become such a lifeform was still unclear.
The Dark World's rules were boiling over, filled with hostility toward this outsider.
Masses of rules surged toward Lin, and he could faintly feel pressure.
The Primordial Stone was at that moment looking all around, trying to locate the world's core.
The Dark World was actively obstructing it, making the search quite difficult.
Obviously annoyed, the stone muttered, "Daring to stop me, are you? Outside, I might not be able to do much, but here just watch how I deal with you."
"Xiao Yuanyuan, get to work!" it yelled, jabbing a finger toward the Elemental Stone.
The Elemental Stone flared, forcibly seizing control of the world's rules.
Its power was rarely exercised to this extent, but this time it could finally cut loose.
Its light spread out like an invisible giant hand, clutching the surrounding rules of this world.
Rules that normally devoured all light began to change under the Elemental Stone's influence.
Their very nature shifted; they themselves started to shine, turning into uncountable motes of light.
"Go!"
With a low shout, those light motes streaked into the darkness and brought light to the Dark World.
This might have been the first time in countless years that this world had seen the slightest glimmer of light.
The unnumbered motes lit up a portion of the world, but darkness rapidly swallowed them, so the light could not last.
Yet even as that light was devoured, something subtle and strange was happening.
Lin saw innumerable black filaments weaving together into strands, battling against those points of light.
The two sides looked like rival species at war, locked in a life and death struggle.
The Primordial Stone stared wide eyed into the brief, flickering light, searching for the world's core, while still chattering away.
"Xiao Yuanyuan has a special power," it said.
"It can invert the rules of a world and forcibly reverse the Dark World's rules into their opposite."
"Unfortunately, with no true master wielding it right now, the range of rules it can invert is limited.
"If you ascend to peak powerhouse, Master, Xiao Yuanyuan will grow far stronger, and a mere Dark World would be nothing."
Lin did not reply.
He was studying those rules whose nature had been inverted by the Elemental Stone as they clashed with the Dark World's native rules.
Screams filled the soul; he could see light and shadow intertwining everywhere, but not what lay within them in any detail.
He understood that the battle was fierce, but everything happening was simply too small to distinguish.
Then a thought flashed through his mind.
"If I cannot see it," he wondered, "what if I use soul particles as my eyes?"
Soul particles were small enough that their perspective differed completely from ordinary vision.
They observed the world from an unimaginably tiny scale.
Countless soul particles flew out, and Lin borrowed their sight to watch the battle.
"As expected!"
Viewed through the soul particles, the scene changed entirely, and for a moment his scalp tingled.
In his field of vision, there were endless worms far thinner than hair countless millions of times thinner.
One kind was pure black, even able to swallow light; the other kind, whose nature had been altered by the Elemental Stone, glowed all over.
They fought with desperate ferocity, staking everything, refusing to stop until one side died.
Farther away, black threads filled the entire world.
Every one of them was made of these microscopic worms that no naked eye could see.
"So they really are rule lifeforms," Lin murmured.
Unlike the Five Element rule world the Primordial Stone had described, this world's rule lifeform was not a single being, but countless ones.
This Dark World was a world composed entirely of rule lifeforms.