I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 890: The Core

Several days later, the five of them reassembled on a temporary floating platform at the Wonder’s outer edge.

The platform was pieced together from several arrays Ed had built on the spot out of runes, and hung there in the chaos like a small shard of gray-white mirror.

Jie Ming was the first to report. “The spatial structure around the Wonder is entirely normal. I have found nothing anomalous.”

“No anomalies in the temporal fluctuations either. The chaos index is essentially identical to that of the void outside,” Tori said next.

“The elemental distribution shows nothing but a tendency to converge on the Wonder. Beyond that I could find nothing of value.” Chloe shook her head, her grass-green robe stirring slowly in the void.

Alma’s voice was rather low. “The fate lines show no obvious break or convergence either. This place is far too ordinary. So ordinary, even, that it verges on abnormal.”

They exchanged a glance, and every one of them had reached the same judgment.

Since nothing could be turned up from outside, there was nothing for it but to enter the sphere.

“If we are going inside, then we will have to trouble Ed.” Tori looked toward the rune wizard in the gray-blue robe.

Ed nodded, produced a silver-gray array disc he had engraved well in advance, and held it flat on his palm.

The disc rotated slowly, and countless tiny runes flowed out of it like quicksilver, traveling along some intricate trajectory around the five of them before settling onto the edges of their Law Solidification Domains.

“This array can temporarily integrate the power of all five of our domains into a single net, each of us bracing the others, with a further layer of external reinforcement stacked on every one. So long as we do not run into anything too outrageous, it should hold,” he said.

Their preparations complete, the party set out again.

They were in fact still a very long way from the Wonder; by their estimate it would take another month or two of flight to reach it.

The closer they drew to the Wonder, the more terrifying the elemental density around them became.

By the time they actually stood before that blurred boundary layer, all five had compressed their Law Solidification Domains to the limit, clinging to the surface of their bodies alone so as to push their protective strength to its highest.

Jie Ming went further, unfurling the Return to Ruins Armor and fitting it directly over the outside of his domain.

The elements pressing ceaselessly in from without churned against the silver-gray runes Ed had layered over them, their collisions throwing off dense swarms of light-points.

Chloe led the way in front as before. Several thousand vine-like elemental feelers spread from the edge of her domain, beating and probing ceaselessly at the boundary ahead in search of the most suitable angle of entry.

“Ready yourselves. We are going in,” she said in a low voice.

Jie Ming drew a deep breath and crossed the boundary line along with the rest.

The instant he was through, Jie Ming felt his body abruptly crushed by an immense pressure.

His domain sank sharply; a string of ripples burst across the Return to Ruins Armor outside it, but in the end it was not crushed.

Ed’s array shuttled power back and forth among the five of them, steadying afresh every local point on the verge of collapse.

“Everyone in?” Ed asked.

“In,” Jie Ming answered through gritted teeth.

The others confirmed one after another.

Once inside the Wonder, every one of them wore an unusually grave expression.

They could feel clearly just how preposterous the degree of inertness of the elements outside was.

It could even be said that in here the combat strength of every one of the wizards had dropped by a considerable margin.

Ed remained tolerably composed. Sustaining the array with one part of his mind, he ran a rapid estimate with the other. “The crushing pressure of the high-density elements alone is already the equivalent of a seventh-level wizard’s attack landing on you at every instant. It is fortunate that it is us who came.”

Tori brushed at his sleeve, as though beating off dust nobody could see. “Which is to say that an ordinary seventh level from outside would be coming in here to die.”

At this point their eyes all fell, as if by common consent, on Jie Ming once more.

Ed in particular studied Jie Ming a while longer, by way of the feedback from the linked domains.

To tell the truth, Ed’s reason for choosing to raise their defensive power by linking everyone’s Law Solidification Domains together had been Jie Ming.

It was a way of sparing the young man’s dignity while indirectly joining with the others to protect him.

But the result had far exceeded his expectations. Judging from the feedback through the linked domains, this lad was plainly no more than sixth level, and yet his protective capacity was no weaker than their own.

This was nothing like his earlier feat of rapid movement. Protective capacity of that order was a far better measure of a wizard’s direct combat strength.

“Let us move. There is a long road ahead of us yet. Keep going, do not stop.” Ed cut across everyone’s thoughts.

The five began moving slowly inward, with Chloe leading the way as before.

The other four all brought their own methods to bear as well, watching for changes in the conditions around them, alert at every moment.

The deeper they went, the quieter the chaos around them grew.

Elemental currents still existed, yet they all seemed to surge slowly in one and the same direction.

Jie Ming stopped abruptly, his brows knitting slightly.

“What is it?” Tori asked.

“The spatial structure is still chaotic, but…” Jie Ming put out a hand and slid along the distortion of a patch of warped space beside him, off in a particular direction. “These patches of distorted space all seem to be flowing one way.”

“Flowing?” Alma opened her half-lidded eyes.

“That is right. There is still a good deal of other chaotic space, granted, but one can clearly feel that more and more of the spatial distortions are oriented toward that point. By this stage the peculiarity has already met the statistical standard.” Having said it, Jie Ming looked to the others.

They exchanged a glance and nodded almost in the same instant.

“Let us go and look,” Tori said.

Jie Ming held nothing back from that moment on. He drove out the Great Void Step directly in the form of a Law Solidification Domain, then, by way of the domain linkage Ed had already established, layered the Great Void Step onto the other four as well.

The five moved as one, following the current of the spatial distortion like fish swimming downstream, advancing without pause through one short-range spatial jump after another.

As they went, Tori could not help turning a look on Jie Ming as though he were seeing a ghost.

He had witnessed it before, true, but that had at least been Jie Ming moving alone.

Now he was carrying five people through spatial jumps together, riding the momentum of the void itself…

A maneuver like that was rare enough even in an elite seventh-level wizard of the spatial discipline, and Jie Ming, a mere sixth level, performed it as naturally as breathing.

“Come on.” Jie Ming paid their stares no mind and went on leading the way.

On the strength of the spatial jumps, in a very short time they had advanced some ten light-years and more.

Just as Jie Ming was preparing yet another jump, Tori spoke up suddenly. “Wait. The time here is wrong.”

At that everyone stopped at once, sensing warily at the conditions around them.

Tori sensed with his eyes closed for a while, his face gradually darkening. “The flow of time is slowing. The longer we stay in here, the faster time outside runs. At this rate the degree to which the flow of time slows is going to be quite preposterous.”

Chloe’s expression was none too good either. “If the time differential grows too great, the Noren Workshop’s plane cluster could run headlong into this cursed thing before we have even finished investigating it.”

The others’ expressions turned very serious as well.

This was no laughing matter.

Even without knowing what in the world the core was, the crushing pressure of these high-density elements at the outer edge alone would be enough to do enormous damage to the Noren Workshop’s plane cluster.

Tori did not hesitate. He wove several runes with his hands and applied them to every one of them through the domain linkage.

“I have adjusted our temporal perception and the flow of time within our bodies to align as far as possible with the Noren Workshop’s baseline,” he said. “So long as time in here is decelerating, well and good; but if the flow of time here should suddenly accelerate, this layer of enhancement of mine will turn into a burden. It would amount to our deliberately lengthening the time we spend taking damage. So if any of you feels something is off later on, call a halt at once.”

They all nodded.

Preparations made, the five went on closing in.

The elemental density around them climbed higher and higher, and the damage it inflicted grew stronger with it.

Fortunately, thanks to the adaptation afforded by the Body Forging Method, Jie Ming’s Law Solidification Domain actually expanded outward a little instead.

After a long while more, they finally caught sight of the core.

If the Wonder’s outer region was marked off from the chaotic void by a boundary because its elemental density was too high,

then the core before them was likewise plainly distinguishable, because the difference in elemental density between it and every other region was too great.

Countless frenzied elements were being throttled in from every direction by some invisible power, forcibly compressed and fused together.

In the end even the last thread of light had been ground out of existence, forming an enormous outer shell congealed from the elements themselves.

“What is that?” Jie Ming stared at that mass of absolute darkness and asked in a low voice.

But none of the others answered at once; clearly they were no more certain of this thing’s “identity” than he was.

Only Alma’s lips moved, her face going ashen in an instant:

“This goddamn thing is… a singularity?!”