Chapter 217: Chapter 49 Remnants of the Nine Realms

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Continuously voyaging forward, in the blink of an eye Laine had no idea how far he had traveled, yet in the void outside this world, it felt as though he was treading in place.

Without a point of reference, he couldn’t ascertain how far he had moved. Only the ever-diminishing river ring behind him bore witness to Laine’s progression.

Gradually, Laine’s divine body began to blur, and he had to summon more power from the Spirit Realm to maintain “stability.” However, even the connection with the Spirit Realm was becoming somewhat unclear here.

This wasn’t due to the environment being particularly hostile or any force obstructing, in fact, it was simply because Chaos’s “presence” was growing weaker here.

A divine body, or the various laws for that matter, are in fact all products based on the world itself. As the world’s “presence” weakens, everything established under the world’s laws naturally becomes unstable.

However, Laine unexpectedly found that the power of the Spirit Realm seemed to smooth out this instability with relative ease.

More specifically, it came from that strand of Temporal Divinity that Laine had invested at the inception of the Spirit Realm.

“Time and space… I still don’t know how I arrived here in the first place,”

Even now, regarding his own “crossing” experience, Laine was still largely in the dark. Tens of thousands of years ago, when he awoke, he was already the first deity of Chaos.

Even the fact that the world had once tried to completely kill him was something Laine learned only after pioneering Samsara. Anything earlier, he could only speculate.

Regardless, the outcome was always good.

Moving forward, Laine continually approached the location he had previously sensed. At one moment, Chaos’s “presence” in the surrounding void stopped decreasing and instead began to rise slowly.

Laine’s spirits lifted, but he became cautious. According to what the original water goddess had said, the world’s laws had locked these unexpectedly arrived fragments, and the current developments undoubtedly proved this point.

Chaos’s power extended over, and Its “presence” here naturally strengthened. However, this also meant that the Lord of Darkness was likely nearby.

“We’re here,”

After a while, the chains of law were faintly visible. At the edge of his vision, Laine could clearly see twinkling dots of various sizes buoyed in the void.

Chains of “law” bound them, as the world’s power continuously flowed out, eroding the barriers on the surface of these dots. Nearby, a familiar figure stood, quietly observing everything in front.

The Dark Overlord Erebus; Laine had prepared himself for the possibility that Erebus would use his divine authority to turn himself into a “secret,” hidden on the side. However, to his surprise, the other party was just openly waiting here.

Noticing the newcomer, Erebus turned his head. He looked toward Laine approaching from afar, showing no intention of making a move.

“Laine, long time no see. The last face-to-face conversation we had was in the millennia past.”

Wearing a smile, the Dark Overlord appeared polite and courteous, not at all like someone who had fought Laine without any reservation a hundred years before.

“Indeed, it’s been a while, but I thought you would ‘welcome’ my arrival with more ‘enthusiasm,’”

Stopping not far from Erebus, Laine remained composed, yet his vigilance never lessened.

Meanwhile, he slowly surveyed his surroundings. The ‘dots’ were within reach, but Laine had already discerned that in actuality, they ranged from a thousand miles in size to immeasurably large realm fragments. Only under the dual actions of the void and the chains of the Laws of Chaos, size had lost its meaning.

Only a few among them could be vaguely distinguished as ‘larger’ than the others, likely because those fragments seemed to be part of the main body and thus appeared somewhat special.

“When we fought before, it was because Chaos was only so big. You had already taken so many steps ahead of me; as a successor, I naturally had to slow down your progress. But the situation with these is different.”

“I have to choose one to enter, and cannot be locked in confrontation with you indefinitely. Once I leave, you will still be able to enter. Needless conflict, naturally, has no point in proceeding,”

Erebus said directly, looking at the specks of fragments before him.

If there was meaning in taking action, he would not hesitate. But if it was meaningless, he obviously wouldn’t bother.

On the side, Laine nodded in agreement with the words of the Lord of Darkness. He respected Erebus’s perspective.

To be strict, just like the results of their battle at the turn of the era, Laine’s strength was still somewhat inferior to his opponent. This was not the difficult-to-repair level of impairment like Gaia’s, but rather an imperfection in divine power.

If the complete Great Divine Power’s lower limit was considered level 21, the personified avatars of other Great ones consisted of divine power infinitely close to that realm, plus the base level of their original being.

In this aspect, the level of the Spirit Realm was no less than the other’s, yet the gap in divine power still existed. In Laine’s original plan, there were no such suddenly appearing realm fragments, so like the past millennia, he continued to enhance his divine power steadily and unhurriedly.

But just as the other had said, if there were only one realm fragment, then they might have had to fight over it. Yet since there were more than one, there was no need for conflict.

Moreover, most crucially, these fragments were likely not just laid out for them to take as they pleased. Nobody knew what was inside; one side’s destroyed world was obscured whether due to external or internal causes, or whether it still existed here. On the other hand, Chaos was also continuously wearing down their resistance.