Chương 351: The strange orb

Long Feng's weakened consciousness began to stir slightly. His eye lashes constantly fluttered while many strands of his long hair fell over his face and obstructed some of his face. As he gained more and more awareness, he began to subconsciously sense his surroundings even before he fully regained consciousness. A sudden panic gripped his heart as a sensation of weightlessness impacted him. His body seemed to be suspended in a place with restricted gravity.

His semi conscious mind was overwhelmed with instinctive caution which hastened the speed of his awakening consciousness. Seconds later, he fully regained his senses. His entire body was sore and numb, almost feeling foreign to him for a moment. He couldn't even open his eyes immediately he woke up due to that feeling. The numbness was surely due to the extreme pain he went through before he fell unconscious. While the pain appeared to have ceased, it still left it's mark on his body.

He wasn't able to fully keep his calm under the strange feeling of weightlessness which he was sensing from his body, so he sent out a strand of his soul power. The moment the strand of soul power left his body, he was able to directly sense what was going on around him. And the first thing he sensed was a terrifying feeling of being watched! That single feeling was enough to jumpstart Long Feng's entire body. His eyes parted open and he flipped over his back to float on his feet immediately.

Looking around, he swallowed blankly.

"Where the hell am I?" His previous feeling of being suspended in a restricted gravity space actually wasn't wrong. He was currently floating in a dark space that felt completely wrong. There was nothing here, no light, no land, no air, and Long Feng most certainly couldn't sense the concept of time here. That didn't mean time was affected, but in this dark space, he couldn't estimate what the time would be. The silence was deafening. The place was so very silent that it caused a sense of unease to fill his heart.

He could hear his heartbeat so clearly that anyone standing within a few meters of him would hear it beating steadily. There didn't seem to be an end to this space, nor was there a beginning. The entire space gave off a wrong feeling, as though it was incomplete, or it was decaying.

"The strange aura is so dense in here... but it's not suppressing my energy anymore?" Long Feng was quick to notice this anomaly. It only made him to increase his caution. Everything about this place was off. He had clearly fallen unconscious in the seemingly endless hallway. How had he ended up here? Was this a dream? It didn't seem like one though. Long Feng looked around, unable to make head or tail of where he was and how he got here. There was absolutely nothing around him, only prevailing darkness.

Suddenly, his pupils froze. He slowly turned his head to look behind him and his breathing increased a bit. He pushed himself several meters away and stared ahead cautiously while his hand reached out to grab his sword sheath by his waist. But his hand didn't grab anything solid. He lowered his head in alarm and finally noticed that his sword wasn't tied to his waist where it always was. He looked back up and changed his stance, staring at the orb of blue light that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

The orb of light was roughly the size of a heart, and it was pulsing gently. Every pulse released an invisible wave of energy that vanished silently into the space. A transcendent aura surrounded the orb, causing an instinctive feeling of inferiority and awe to rise in Long Feng's heart even with his best efforts to suppress it. Long Feng's own confusion only increased. This thing had a consciousness that was unlike anything he had ever come across. It was nothing like a human's consciousness.

Instead, it appeared to be formed by disorder and every other chaotic emotion mashed together. As for why he could sense panic from it, Long Feng didn't know. He didn't even know if this thing was living and sentient. What he did know was that he had many questions.

"What are you?!" He roared as he struggled to keep those strange emotions filling his heart under control. There was no response. Instead, a faint sense spread from the orb, filled with a strange panic and confusion. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. The panic was sudden. It was like the orb was genuinely panicking. The calm aura in this space suddenly began to surge violently.

Long Feng's mind instantly went on full alert as he prepared to unleash his energy at any moment. His eyes and soul were focused completely on the strange orb for any signs that it was going to attack. Long Feng was already deducing several ways he could try to resist before he had a detailed understanding of it's power. But the 'attack' was different from his expectations.

"It's not attacking..." when he noticed, it was too fast for him to prepare. The density of the strange aura rapidly increased in the blink of an eye and before Long Feng could react, he was completely suppressed once again. His cultivation was sealed and he once again returned to being similar to a mortal, only that he had a strong body. His expression changed greatly, but it was too late for him to react. He was no longer able to release his aura and make any move.

"Damn it! This thing can control this strange aura? What the hell is it?!" He borrowed the restricted gravity to retreat even more and stare at the orb cautiously. The panic he could sense from the strange orb didn't decrease. If anything, it actually increased. The strange aura that permeated this space was already shockingly dense and was approaching the level of density that nearly killed him.

Long Feng's heartbeat slowly went out of control as he realized that if he didn't do anything, he would end up in the same life and death situation as back then. And he wasn't delusional enough to think he would luckily survive once again. But what could he do? His cultivation was basically useless here unless he could deal with the suppression of this aura. As the density of the aura rose, Long Feng's body began to feel some discomfort.

It was slight at first, but within seconds, his inner energy circulation began to be affected. It became harder to circulate his energy no matter how hard he tried until a minute later, his energy circulated froze again. By now, Long Feng was sure of one thing. This orb had absolute control over this strange aura! As for what the aura itself was and what the orb was, he still didn't know. As he gritted his teeth, the aura swept into his body once again.

Even though he had gone through the pain earlier, it was still just as unbearable as before, and it was slowly getting much worse. Back then, the density of the aura wasn't increasing. It was constant, but right now, the aura was slowly getting thicker at a ridiculous rate. Merely seconds after the tearing pain filled his body, it completely surpassed the pain he felt back then. Long Feng was so overwhelmed with the pain that a hoarse roar escaped his mouth as he writhed in pain.

Blood poured out of his seven facial apertures as every cell in his body began to break apart. The pain was simply inhumane. It was exactly as if he was being refined alive, broken down to his cellular state. All the pain he had ever endured in his life combined still couldn't compare to this, and it was still worsening! In just a single minute, Long Feng had screamed until his throat began to rip apart as well. He could no longer make a sound at all as he endured the excruciating pain.

He wanted to rip himself apart, tear off his own skin to counter the extreme pain with another pain just for a split second of relief. He forcefully scratched at his arms and chest with his fingers, causing fresh blood to flow. But he couldn't even feel an itch compared to the pain of his body decomposing. That was what was happening. He was slowly breaking apart, decomposing just like a herb in a furnace. The difference was that he was a human.

A faint blue light flashed before Long Feng's eyes and the orb that was tens of meters away suddenly appeared before his face without warning. Even if there was warning though, he wouldn't notice. In his current situation, his consciousness was extremely unstable. He has already fallen unconscious several times in these few minutes that felt like an eternity to him, but he would always be forced awake by the pain. This cycle meant that the pain was no longer just physical.

It shattered his mental fortitude slowly, gradually and began to affect his soul. He himself wasn't aware that it wasn't just his body that was crumbling but his soul at a fundamental level. That was why the pain was so inhumane. Physical pain had a certain limit. It could be adapted to or one could be numb to physical pain. But the soul was a different thing entirely. A single needle prick to the body might not even be noticeable, but that same prick in the soul would be equal to being diced up physically.

Soul pain was easily ten times and even more that of physical pain, and one could never get used to it as it was constantly worsening. The orb of light pulsed like a heartbeat and released a gentle glow to surround Long Feng. One mustn't be deceived though. It only looked gentle, but as for what it could do, only the orb would know. After the flow submerged Long Feng, the orb shot forward at an astounding speed and pressed against Long Feng's chest.

It slowly melted into an extremely dense blue aura that seeped into his body, pushing the torturous pain to new heights. Long Feng's last hints of consciousness began flickering, hanging on the edge of extinction. Forget having a broken thought, he wouldn't even know who he was at this moment. The pain had completely broken his mind and in a short time, Long Feng's soul would cease to exist. Surviving through luck was hardly a possibility. But something unexpected happened.

This state he was in, balancing above an invisible line caused fragments of his memories to randomly fill his mind. This was an insignificant matter which almost everyone faced. At the moment where the soul was losing itself to death, random memories usually replayed instinctively. Normally, none of those memories should matter. But...

'Solitary Sword... ruthless indifference at heart...

'Sovereign of Myriad Weapons, overlooking heaven and earth...

'With an Unyielding Will... peerless across all realms... This random memory crossed his mind and caused an astonishing change. A faint ray of light emerged from his chest. It was extremely faint, yet it directly shone through his skin from within his body, even penetrating through the gentle blue glow of the orb that surrounded him.

'With an unyielding will... Peerless across all realms... This exact thought floated in his mind, containing the most perfect insights regarding the unyielding will. Long Feng only memorized the words, he never fully understood what they meant. What better way was there to comprehend a transcendent law other than at the edge of death?

"My will isn't boundless... It isn't vast nor blazing. But It won't bend before anyone. I won't back down to anyone and I most certainly won't accept defeat from anyone." This was Long Feng's previous understanding of an unyielding will. He wouldn't bend his will to anyone, nor would he accept loss from anyone. That did count as understanding, but it was a very shallow understanding of an unyielding will. He was focused on opponents back then. He thought he could only reveal his unyielding will to other people.

Now he knew... Not just people. He must be unyielding even before death! If death stared you in the eye, you stared back without blinking. You reveal your overwhelming will, force death to blink and think twice. That was a deeper level of this law than he previously comprehended. He was slowly dying, and he didn't know what exactly was causing it. He lost himself in pain, allowing death to inch closer to him untill it was literally staring at him in the eye. Anyone would be unable to resist.

Countless peak Imperials and deities had been here. When death stared at them in the form of the strange orb, they couldn't resist. They completely lost themselves to the pain while the flames of their will died out and their souls followed. Resistance here didn't mean simply having unreconciled thoughts before death. That was a wrong understanding. Real resistance was to have a ninety percent chance of dying and still fighting for that ten percent chance. Holding on to life until death could not longer stare.

An unyielding will wouldn't just resist bending. It would resist against certain death, and It would succeed. Even if it did lose, it would lose proudly against overwhelming odds. Long Feng's mind cleared slightly, just enough for his willpower to breakthrough the shackles of pain. As previously stated, no mental thoughts or defenses could burn while the soul was breaking. True soul disorder meant even recognizing oneself was impossible. How then would one form a thought?

Only his willpower could desperately buy him these few seconds of clarity before the torture continues. His soul slowly stabilized briefly, giving him a few seconds of relief and consciousness. The sudden change from extreme pain to relieve was nearly just as overwhelming as the pain itself. Long Feng's mind remained blank for a second before he regained his clarity.

He sensed the slow decomposition of his body, the glow surrounding him as well as the presence of the orb within his body and everything suddenly struck him at once. Many missing pieces of the puzzle fixed themselves in place and a terrifying thought formed in his heart, making him feel cold all over.

"It's trying to refine and assimilate me into itself!"