Jie Ming was in no hurry to begin the investigation. Instead, he first had Jack lead the way to the plane ruin where he had first encountered the black-robed figure.
The two of them took a teleportation array to the plane nearest this region, and soon afterward entered the outer area of the plane cluster.
A plane of considerable size should once have existed here, but after the fierce fighting, the whole plane was by now thoroughly shattered.
Vast numbers of continental fragments drifted in the endless chaotic void, and elemental turbulence kept sweeping past them, grinding away bit by bit at matter that was already broken.
Even some of the larger fragments were covered in cracks on the surface.
Although not much time had passed, there was not much of the plane’s wreckage left.
Jie Ming looked out and found that most of the fragments had already vanished; only a few pieces still kept their basic shape, and those were steadily shrinking.
“This is the place?”
“That’s right.”
Jack felt about for a moment, then pointed at one of the larger continental fragments.
“This is where I found the ruin back then. I was fighting a behemoth at the time, and its attack smashed the nearby rock strata, which accidentally exposed the buildings underneath.”
Jie Ming nodded. Looking at this continental fragment, riddled with holes where the elemental turbulence of the endless chaotic void had eaten into it, he could not help frowning:
“By the look of it, I’m afraid the ruin inside has suffered rather serious damage.”
Jack, however, laughed proudly. “Don’t worry, Mentor. When I came to explore it before, I found this place was being eroded by the chaotic void the whole time. I was afraid the ruin would be destroyed completely too, so I made a point of setting up protective arrays nearby to slow the fragments’ disappearance as much as possible.”
Jie Ming nodded. “Not bad. You really did think it through.”
Ordinary protective arrays could not completely hold off the erosion of the chaotic void, but as long as they could slow the loss of matter, that was enough to buy time for a follow-up investigation.
Following their sense of the arrays, the two of them soon arrived near that continental fragment.
Jack activated the arrays he had laid down in advance. Several rings of light rose from the broken rock strata at the continent’s center and linked together, forming a thin protective barrier.
Under Jack’s control, the protective barrier expanded rapidly and soon enveloped the entire continental fragment.
The elemental turbulence that had been scouring the continent’s surface was at once held off outside, and the surroundings grew considerably more stable as a result.
Then the two of them entered the ruin.
Just as Jack had said, there was not much left here worth studying.
Most of the original buildings had been destroyed, leaving only some damaged stone structures and scattered remains of arrays.
The stone tablets Jack had brought back earlier had presumably been collected from around here.
Jie Ming opened his True-False Void-Piercing Pupil and went over the entire ruin carefully.
“No new written records, and no complete array structure either.”
He casually pushed aside a rock that was in the way and examined the already-broken patterns beneath it.
“This stone is actually a decent material in itself, but after the ravages of time it’s just about ruined too. It seems there really isn’t much left.”
“I checked a few times before as well,” Jack said. “Apart from those tablets, there’s basically been nothing else of value to find.”
Jie Ming nodded at that, but his gaze stayed on the depths of the ruin.
On the surface, this area was no different from anywhere else, but under the observation of the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil, there was one quite obvious anomaly.
The malice here was more active.
It was the same black mist that spread everywhere around, but in this small patch the “mist” was clearly denser, and it moved more frequently too.
Unlike elsewhere, where it was merely a passive structure left behind in the environment, here it made certain subtle adjustments of its own accord.
If one had to describe it, the active state of this mist was somewhat like that of a living thing after death, when certain nerve-dense nodes in its body still retain part of their capacity for activity.
Although the main body was dead, some of the structures were still running according to their original patterns.
“Interesting.” Jie Ming withdrew the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil and turned to look at Jack. “You go on back first.”
Jack was taken aback. “Mentor?”
“You were right; there are no other clues here for now. But I intend to keep investigating along the direction where the malice is more active, and you wouldn’t be much help following me.”
Jie Ming explained, “Besides, this investigation may involve some special forces. If you stayed here, you might be affected by them instead.”
Jack was somewhat reluctant, but he did not insist.
The ease with which Jie Ming had subdued that mass of the conceptual entity of malice just now was proof enough of the gap between them in this field.
If he kept following, it would only add unnecessary risk. “Then I’ll head back to base first. If you find anything, Mentor, contact me anytime.”
“Mm.” Jie Ming nodded.
After Jack had left, he opened the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil once more and observed carefully along the active black mist.
Before long, a faintly visible connection surfaced in his perception.
Just as Jie Ming had hypothesized earlier, the black mist that was still active was more like some kind of “muscle organ,” while the black veins that appeared and vanished within the black mist were the real “nervous system.”
In the black mist of this region, the black veins representing the concept of malice were far denser than in the areas he had probed before.
What was more, those veins of malice were not entirely independent.
Although they were distributed across different regions, some subtle connection existed between them.
The ruin Jack had found was only one node among them; the reason a new conceptual entity of malice with spirituality could be born here was that these special structures existed here.
Jie Ming thought for a moment, then opened the Fate Law, and threads of fate appeared one after another before his eyes.
Jie Ming quickly found the fate line he wanted, then followed these connections, tracking them onward.
A moment later, he turned his gaze toward the void farther away.
“So there are other places after all.”
Without hesitation, he cast the Great Void Step and moved off in that direction.
…
…
The exploration that followed did not go smoothly.
The environment of the endless chaotic void was extremely complex, with masses of spatial turbulence constantly altering the spatial structure around him.
Many times, even with the Fate Law locked onto a target, when he actually went there he would find the distance he had to cover far exceeded expectations.
And very often, what accompanied the malice were regions of extreme danger.
Perhaps because it was itself an aggregate of the concept of malice, it was full of malice toward everything else from outside as well?
Jie Ming had no choice but to track while steering clear of the dangerous regions.
Still, with the first node as a reference, the search afterward became much easier.
Jie Ming gradually grasped the patterns of activity of these still-active nodes, and began following the faint connections between them in search of the next anomalous region.
Most of the nodes, though, were simply regions that were comparatively more active, with nothing especially unusual about them.
At last, after passing through a sizable stretch of spatial turbulence, he found a new clue.