Chapter 206 — The Great Void of the Shadow Realm

After being ejected from the threshold state of the Shadow Realm, Amber tried several more times, refusing to believe it, but each attempt ended the same way—the moment she entered the threshold state, she was flung back into the material world without fail.

By the fourth attempt, the dizziness had become too much for her to bear.

Gao Yang was also left dazed by the situation (though it may well have been the repeated threshold shifts that truly addled him), and he blurted out instinctively: "What's going on? Did your cheat code expire?"

"Cheat code? What's a cheat code?" Amber didn't understand what Gao Yang was saying, but from his expression she guessed it was hardly a compliment, so she pursed her lips in annoyance. "It's definitely something wrong with the environment here! Hang on—let me down half a catty of shadow potion and try again. I refuse to believe my shadow affinity—"

"Stop, stop, stop. Don't get carried away. Calm down and analyze the situation," Gao Yang waved his hand to stop the half-elf's suicidal impulse. "Sense the shadow environment here carefully, then try a regular Shadow Step or stealth technique and see if those work."

Calmed by Gao Yang's reminder, Amber took a breath, and her figure gradually faded in the air.

After several tests, she dispelled her shadow state: "Regular Shadow Step and stealth techniques are fine. Skills like Shadow Mist work smoothly too. It seems the only problem is when entering the Shadow Realm—something like an interference affects it, and I get ejected instantly."

"The Shadow Realm... so the problem lies on 'the other side,' then..." Gao Yang murmured, then looked thoughtfully at the ring-shaped device in the center of the room that appeared to be a magic door. His brow furrowed as an idea struck him. "Isn't the Shadow Realm essentially a kind of mapping of the material world? Try entering the Shadow Realm from outside this room, then come over from 'the other side' to see what happens."

"I'll try!" Amber agreed, and dragged Gao Yang toward the door. "Come along and be my eye-shield..."

Was this one treating him like some kind of eye-shield barrage, specifically meant to block the Old Gods' faces...

Gao Yang followed helplessly behind Amber. Once they had put some distance between themselves and the circular room, the two of them indeed entered the Shadow Realm without difficulty.

Seeing the familiar black-and-white vision emerge before his eyes, and watching Amber's form shift into that shape unique to the Shadow Realm—like some kind of elemental banshee—Gao Yang let out a breath of relief: "You scared me. I thought your cheat code really had expired..."

"The way you talk is so strange. I can't understand a word of it." Amber muttered, then grabbed Gao Yang's arm and headed toward the circular hall in the Shadow Realm.

They stepped through that ancient door, but after crossing the threshold, all they saw was an unremarkable circular hall.

No divine flesh, no hidden research facilities, not even any extra doors, windows, or passages. There was nothing here at all.

Amber looked around curiously: "Strange... it's just an ordinary hall. Why would there be interference... And the interference is so ridiculous—you can get in just by taking a slight detour..."

Yet after scanning the surrounding environment, Gao Yang immediately sensed something amiss: "No. We probably didn't manage to go around it at all."

He raised his hand and pointed to the center of the hall: "The ring device is gone. There are residual tear marks on the floor."

In the material world's hall, the most striking feature was the ring device at the center of the room. But here, that ring—three or four meters tall—had vanished, replaced by a shattered patch on the ground and a large section of flooring that had been excavated wholesale. There was no doubt something had once been there.

"Apart from that laboratory where we encountered the divine flesh, the Shadow Realm and the material world have maintained a one-to-one mapping correspondence. And judging by the residual marks on the floor here, there should have been a corresponding ring at this spot—but now it's gone." Gao Yang frowned and walked over to the excavated section of floor. "Look at the dimensions here. They match the ring's base."

"Someone went into the Shadow Realm and stole this side's door?" Amber's reasoning took a fantastical turn. "That's a pretty impressive technique..."

"No one would steal a magic door just for the hell of it," Gao Yang glanced at Amber. "I think some kind of force tore through this place and 'transferred' what should have been here to somewhere else. If we enter the Shadow Realm from the material world's circular hall, we should arrive beside the corresponding ring. But entering the Shadow Realm from the corridor outside the room only brings us to this empty 'inner hall.' It's a kind of displaced mapping..."

Amber had no idea how Gao Yang had drawn these connections, but since she had zero ideas of her own, she followed his line of reasoning: "So what is that 'interference' force for?"

Gao Yang furrowed his brow and let his thoughts wander freely: "Perhaps it's meant to prevent unauthorized people from bypassing the 'magic door' to reach a certain place... Only through a correctly paired 'magic door' can one arrive at the correct location. Otherwise, you either can't enter the Shadow Realm at all, or you can only enter this empty hall. The Gondorian mages of old often used this method to encrypt important vaults."

"So if we want to figure out where the correct corresponding location is, the only way is to repair that ring in the material world?" Amber raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's squarely in my blind spot..."

"Not just your blind spot. I'm afraid no one in the territory could decipher such a complex ancient magical device." Gao Yang shook his head regretfully. That ring "outside" was no simple magic circle—it was a complex magical apparatus combining magic circles, ancient composite materials, and Gondorian magic door technology. A thing of that caliber was far beyond what the territory's current level of spellcasters could handle.

Amber stuck out her tongue, feeling utterly useless in this regard, then wandered idly around the circular hall.

She looked this way and that, occasionally pulling out her little dagger to scratch at the runes on the walls or floor. But when she circled around to the opposite side of the hall, she suddenly stopped.

She noticed a pitch-black crack on the curved wall here. The crack wasn't very wide, but it branched out into numerous fissures, and dense web-like fractures covered the entire wall surface within her view.

Curiously, she reached out a finger and brushed it against the crack.

Gao Yang was examining the residual rune marks on the hall's floor when he suddenly heard a continuous series of cracking sounds from not far away. He looked up in shock, and what he saw left him aghast:

The side of the hall farthest from the entrance was rapidly disintegrating and collapsing. The once seamless curved wall was now covered in vast swathes of black cracks, and the sturdy ancient concrete was falling away chunk by chunk, as though an endless abyss outside the hall were devouring the structure!

And Amber, standing before the wall, seemed frozen in terror by the sight. The floor beneath her feet had already begun to crack slightly, yet she stood there motionless, utterly unaware!

"Watch out!"

In that critical instant, Gao Yang shouted and charged forward, yanking the stunned Amber back. The two of them retreated all the way to the hall's entrance before stopping, and only then did Amber cry out: "Oh my god, I poked the wall down with one finger!"