Covering the Sky: The Years I Was the Empress's Strictest Master

He immediately focused his mind, and the source seal formed by the hands of his primordial spirit suddenly changed, becoming primarily for exploration.

However, just to be on the safe side, he activated the [Barrier of All Causes] again. With the double barrier in place, he could rest easy even if there were any strange occurrences here.

Swish!

At this moment, all the vast source techniques accumulated over three lifetimes were mobilized.

Tan Lin rapidly deduced and analyzed the pattern and origin of that ripple.

His Origin Technique realm was already above that of later Origin Masters. When he used it now, it was as if the center of the entire small world had shifted to him, with the Xuanhuang Qi swirling around him and great divine phenomena arising.

Time passed slowly, and the secret place remained silent.

"Here..."

Suddenly, Tan Lin's remnant soul slightly lifted its eyelids.

He had already pinpointed a seemingly ordinary location within the secret realm.

It was a steep cliff, not the most spiritually rich, and with no particularly remarkable features, making it the easiest place to overlook.

The core node of the restriction that resonates with the dragon vein is hidden behind that stone wall, thus forming a near-natural shielding effect by taking advantage of the terrain of the entire secret place.

Seeing this, Tan Lin did not hesitate at all. His primordial spirit pointed his fingers like a sword, and he used his divine sense to manipulate a trace of the subtle divine power of the source technique, pointing out from a distance.

Whoosh!

This gesture was not a forced breach of the restriction.

The moment the source rune touched the stone wall, it transformed into a key that was perfectly suited to the restriction. Following the resonant ripples, it gently imprinted itself on a spot on the stone wall where the stone runes were interwoven, a spot invisible to the naked eye.

hum...

next interest.

An invisible ripple spread across the surface of the stone wall, which then silently caved inward, revealing a narrow, deep opening.

In an instant, an aura far purer than that of the secret realm outside, mixed with the ancient essence accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years, and possessing a graceful and exotic fragrance, rushed towards Tan Lin outside the cave.

At this moment, as the cave entrance opened wide, under the [Reverse·All Causes Vision], Tan Lin noticed that two brand-new causal lines had suddenly sprouted on the Soul Pearl barrier.

One of them instantly branched into many lines, while the other one felt vaguely familiar to Tan Lin.

He frowned slightly, thinking it must be an illusion, and didn't think about it further for the time being.

All the doubts will be clear once he enters the cave.

Of course, his remnant soul wouldn't enter the cave himself. He immediately separated the fragmented primordial spirit residing in the soul pearl and used a thought to guide it into the cave to investigate.

At this moment, that invisible, faint fluctuation suddenly became clear.

The primordial spirit flew into the cave and traveled along the way.

The cave was deeper than Tan Lin had imagined, with a hidden world inside. It meandered for over a thousand miles like a sheep's intestine, almost exceeding the limits of his current remote control capabilities.

The path inside the cave wasn't carved out by human hands; rather, it looked as if it had been gnawed out by many unknown creatures.

wow...

After traveling more than seventy miles, the primordial spirit meandered downwards and entered an underground cave.

The cave is like an independent little space, a secret place almost isolated from the outside world, a world within a world.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit looked around and saw that the cave walls were covered with countless colorful source blocks.

This is like a mineral vein, containing the most common ordinary sources as well as all sorts of strange and unusual sources, and deep within, there are also many divine sources radiating dazzling divine light.

The light refracted by these crystals illuminated the entire cave in a bizarre and fantastical way.

But that alone was not enough to shake Tan Lin's heart.

What truly astonished him was that countless silkworms crawled all over the inside and outside of those source blocks.

……

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Ancient Princess is Dead, So Who Was She? (3.1K)

The silkworms inside and outside the source block are all different shapes and sizes.

The small ones are as small as a grain of rice, while the large ones are as thick as a baby's arm.

Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, gold, white...

In terms of color, it seems to be much more dazzling than the source blocks, almost encompassing all the colors in the world, and some are even completely transparent, containing a glow within.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit remained silent as he continued deeper into the depths.

Scattered divine source blocks began to appear inside. The silkworms on the divine source blocks were naturally different, with different patterns such as stars, fiery clouds, birds and beasts appearing on their bodies.

These silkworms don't need to comprehend the Qi mechanism; they all look very advanced.

Below the source block, there are countless silkworm molts and cocoons.

In the field of vision, apart from the silkworms in the source, the other silkworms are not motionless and are by no means dead.

They lay quietly on the source block, occasionally wriggling, inhaling and exhaling the pure spiritual energy emanating from the source block in the cave.

……

Tan Lin's primordial spirit went several miles deeper into the cave. The space inside the cave became more and more spacious, no longer narrow, but there was still no sound.

However, the environment here is not desolate; the surrounding air seems peaceful, and there is a kind of mysterious Taoist charm permeating it.

"From here onwards, all the remaining species of Shencan Ridge are here. There are too many... Did they come here in this era to usurp our territory, or did they have interactions with Tianling in ancient times?"

Tan Lin's primordial spirit walked and stopped, taking in everything that passed by, and his heart was filled with turmoil.

A series of doubtful thoughts intertwined in my mind.

However, he wasn't too surprised.

The ancient era ended, but the descendants of the Divine Silkworm Ridge bloodline did not disappear in the outside world. Not only were they extracted from the stone, but some have also survived outside and have been fortunate enough to reproduce to this day.

After all, only a minority, the elite, are qualified to use the Divine Source Liquid.

Even among the remnants, not every silkworm is a divine silkworm; it must possess the blood of the progenitor, and be concentrated to a certain degree.

Tan Lin could tell that the silkworms from before were probably remnants of divine silkworms that had broken free from their original source by some accident, and had been propagated generation after generation over many years. The ancestral blood in them was quite thin.

To this day, the original species that broke free of the seal have all perished.

Those on the outermost edge of the cave are, in fact, not much different from ordinary silkworms.

But from the area where divine source blocks begin to appear, things are completely different; there isn't even a single silkworm attached to the surface of the source blocks.

The deeper he went, the stronger the life essence became, and he saw the true remnants of the Divine Silkworm Ridge.

For example, there were several silkworms whose bodies were like cast gold, with a pair of transparent thin wings growing from their backs, and a snow-white silkworm king that exuded a hazy Taoist aura.

Of course, this is merely a remnant species with ancestral blood, not a divine silkworm.

Even so, these silkworms were more noble than some ancient royal families and descendants.

Even after arriving here, the cave still hadn't reached the bottom.

Tan Lin had already guessed that there must be a real divine silkworm in the deepest part of this place.

And there may be two, corresponding to the two causal lines that have grown on the barrier of his soul pearl.

That means this realm within a realm must have appeared in the ancient times...

So, this is not some secret place of the Tianxuan Ancient Clan at all.

It's practically the ancestral home of Shencan Ridge!

For a fleeting moment, Tan Lin vaguely wondered if her memory was playing tricks on her.

His ancient beauty, Tian Ling, was truly born into the Tianxuan Ancient Clan, and not another great royal clan, Shencanling.

"When I perished in the Primordial Era, there were at least three or four hundred thousand years remaining until the end of the Primordial Era. In such a long period of time, it seems that many things must have deviated from the original timeline..."

Tan Lin was deep in thought.

Finally, after a short while, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

At the end of the cave is a spacious underground cavern with countless stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The dripping stalactites are not water droplets, but dragon marrow.

In the center of the cave is a small pool of dragon marrow that has accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years.

In addition, two enormous divine sources, seemingly rooted in the cave over countless years, have become one with the cave floor, soaked in the dragon marrow, with only a very small part of them showing.

The two portions of divine source submerged in the dragon marrow were each about ten feet tall, containing divine brilliance and crystal clear throughout.

Tan Lin's primordial spirit gazed through the dragon marrow, directly at the two divine sources.

Suddenly, two exquisitely beautiful figures, each sealed within the divine source, came into his view.

"This...how is this possible?!"

In the blink of an eye, Tan Lin's emotions, which had been as calm as a still well, experienced a rare and intense fluctuation.

His gaze was fixed on the divine source on the left.

The person in the divine source was a woman with flowing purple hair and wearing a magnificent purple palace dress.

Her face was stunningly beautiful, with skin as white as ice and bones as smooth as jade. Her eyes were closed like a painting, and her long, curled eyelashes cast a faint shadow in the halo of divine source and dragon marrow.

That face...

No, it wasn't just his face; every detail of his body was exactly like a carbon copy of the woman he remembered from his past life!

Whether it's her exquisite features, the noble expression between her brows, or her overall demeanor, even every inch of her skin and every single hair is identical.

At this moment, Tan Lin's vision blurred slightly, and his mind was shaken.

"Tianling?!"

Upon recognizing the woman's identity within the divine source, a name almost slipped out.

But the tempering of his mind over countless ages gradually calmed him down, and he remained silent and composed.

However, the doubts that lingered deep in my mind became even more intense at this moment.

More than half a year ago, when he first woke up, he used the [Perspective of All Causes] to check and found that he had no causal connection to Tianling.

In ancient times, although the Soul Bead did not have the miraculous ability to check the movement of the anchor point at the end of the causal line at any time, he was certain that there must have been a causal line between him and Tianling back then.

If the line no longer exists, this can only mean that the line has broken, or that the person at the anchor point has passed away.

At least Tan Lin has never encountered a phenomenon where the cause-and-effect line is hidden.

"What exactly is going on...?"

Tan Lin's primordial spirit hovered in front of the Dragon Marrow Pool, motionless like a clay or wooden sculpture.

His remnant soul outside the cave wall was now scrutinizing the two new causal lines that had appeared on the Soul Pearl barrier earlier, his brows furrowed in deep thought.

One of the lines, the moment it sprouted, seemed strangely familiar to him. At first, he thought it was just his imagination, but now it seems that things are not so simple.

"It's just a vague sense of familiarity, it might not really be her? But why does she look so alike?"

"A similar flower? No... impossible. Even if it were a similar flower, how could it bloom in another race?"

Amidst a cloud of doubt, countless deductions and speculations raced through his mind.

"Could it be... a possession by the primordial spirit? Or... one of the Nine Transformations of the Divine Silkworm, mimicking her appearance?"

As his thoughts drifted, Tan Lin's primordial spirit within the cave suddenly stirred, gazing intently at the perfect body within his divine source. He then formed hand seals and chanted incantations.

Then, suddenly, two beams of divine light shot out from the eyes of the primordial spirit figure and entered the divine source that sealed Tian Ling.

Immediately afterwards, the primordial spirit revealed a knowing look:

"Empty... The altar is empty. This should be Tianling's physical body, but her primordial spirit has vanished... She is dead after all..."

However, another thought soon popped into his remnant soul's mind.

The fact that Sendai is empty does not mean that the other party's primordial spirit has truly vanished.

Sealing the fragile primordial spirit into Dao artifacts, divine sources, or other objects can still allow it to survive into future generations. Moreover, if one possesses extraordinary talent and fortuitous circumstances, one can even sever the old body and be reborn, or possess another's body...

In short, there are just too many possibilities.

The most crucial point of doubt is that if Tianling's primordial spirit really disappeared, then what is the point of sealing her physical body?

And that familiar thread of cause and effect always made him feel that perhaps Tianling had not really died.