Chapter 163: Chapter 25: The Cage of Immortality
 

“If you have any questions, you may ask them now.”

“May I ask, Your Majesty, where is this place?”

“You may call me Lord Zhunmang,” the man in white said gently, “This sea is known as the ‘Great Gorge,’ which is the end of all waters under heaven.”

“The waters of the Eight Extremities and Nine Territories, the flow of the Celestial River, they converge from west to east into the East Sea, Southern Sea, and finally all come here to this Great Gorge.”

“Deep within the Great Gorge, lies this travelling palace, known as ‘Gui Xu.'”

Luo Yan silently noted his words, then asked:

“For what purpose did Lord Zhunmang bring the two of us here?”

“Naturally, it was to save you,” Lord Zhunmang blinked.

Luo Yan: ………

Damn, there’s no way to argue that.

“The depths of the Great Gorge have no end,” Lord Zhunmang continued, “If you had continued sinking and missed Gui Xu, you would have fallen into eternal oblivion, unable to extricate yourselves.”

“Thank you, Lord Zhunmang, for your rescue,” Luo Yan could only bow his thanks.

“You’re welcome,” Lord Zhunmang said gently, “In saving you, I also had some self-interest.”

Now this was the crux of the matter! Luo Yan and Shi Liuli immediately pricked up their ears, curious about what price this member of the Dragon Clan would demand.

“If you say that the Great Gorge is the end of all spaces, then Gui Xu would be the closest observation point to the Great Gorge,” Lord Zhunmang said with a smile, “I don’t know who the builder was, but they must be from a time even more ancient than our Dragon Clan’s.

“Within Gui Xu, there are many historical records left by the ancestors of the Dragon Clan. According to the current research, the essence of the Great Gorge is actually a kind of Formation.”

“Formation?” Luo Yan was amazed.

“Yes, a Formation,” Lord Zhunmang said leisurely, “What do you think a Formation is?”

Shi Liuli remained silent, carefully hiding behind Luo Yan.

Luo Yan thought for a moment and then replied:

“A Formation is a special and orderly state of matter and energy.”

“Oh?” Lord Zhunmang’s eyes flashed with a different light, “Have you studied Formations?”

“I wouldn’t dare say studied, but I’ve learned about them,” Luo Yan said modestly.

“That’s wonderful!” Lord Zhunmang clapped his hands and laughed, “After such a long time, finally, another cultivator who understands Formations has come! Human, what is your name?”

Shi Liuli was about to speak, but Luo Yan had already replied:

“Responding to Lord Zhunmang, my name is Luo Yan.”

“Luo Yan… Very well, Luo Yan,” Lord Zhunmang nodded, committing the name to memory, “Luo Yan, you said that a Formation is a special and orderly distribution of matter and energy, so let me ask you: Isn’t the world we live in an orderly distribution of matter and energy?”

Luo Yan’s mouth opened slightly, feeling a certain enlightenment rising from the depths of his heart.

“Why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Why do all things fall to the ground? Why does water turn into vapor when heated?” Lord Zhunmang spread his hands as if chanting, “Our world operates under a series of woven rules and systems.”

“This world is a gigantic Formation. Or to put it another way, our understanding of ‘Formation’ is actually the study of the fundamental mechanisms of this world.”

“The Great Gorge is one of the most important formation points in this world.”

Luo Yan patiently listened to him finish before asking,

“Forgive my frankness, but what does this have to do with a ‘prison’?”

“Because located deep within the Great Gorge, Gui Xu has a very special rate of time flow,” Lord Zhen Mang smiled, “Time here passes extremely slowly.”

“In here, for every year your perception experiences, your body has only aged three days, and the outside world has also merely passed three days.”

Time flows at different rates? Luo Yan was momentarily stunned by the words, and then slowly, he understood, “Doesn’t that mean…”

“That’s right,” Lord Zhen Mang said candidly, “after discovering this characteristic of Gui Xu, the Dragon Clan started using this place as a prison to banish their prisoners.”

“A prison of time, where the prisoners are almost immortal. But more torturous than immortality is the nearly eternal boredom, along with the unstoppable desire to escape from this prison.”

He stood up, gesturing for the two to follow him.

The three of them passed through the main hall and entered a side hall.

In the side hall, shelves filled with books stretched as far as the eye could see, like walls of a maze, fragmenting the hall.

The shelves were densely packed with thread-bound paper books, and even more books were piled directly on the ground, forming small mounds.

Many cultivators stood in front of the bookshelves or piles of books, some immersed in reading, while others furiously penned their thoughts at the desks, their expressions fervent.

Among them were human cultivators and Great Demons of the Dragon Clan; some wore simple clothes never seen before, and others wore robes from the Ancient Times.

Their commonality was particularly manic expressions.

“They are all cultivators who, like you, unfortunately fell into the Great Gorge before you and were saved by me to Gui Xu,” Lord Zhen Mang explained indifferently, “Inside the Great Gorge, there is an extremely strong sealing power. Cultivators are unable to mobilize True Yuan and can only sink slowly in the deep sea.”

“But only within Gui Xu do cultivators not face such restrictions.”

“Which means, you want to study the mechanism of this Gui Xu,” Luo Yan suddenly realized, summarizing, “and find a way to resist the seal of the Great Gorge from within so you can escape from here!”

“Exactly,” Lord Zhen Mang nodded, “This Gui Xu is formed by a Grand Formation.”

“Before this place was used as an exile prison, there were many Dragon Clan ancestors who entered here by mistake and couldn’t escape from the Great Gorge, so they could only research the Formation here, hoping to find a way to escape.”

“And later, as your human race began to rise, human cultivators also started arriving here.”

“What you see now, all the books in this entire hall—there are probably just over a hundred thousand volumes by now—are their research findings.”

Luo Yan: ……….

Shi Liuli: ……….

“Immortality, what a boring term,” Lord Zhen Mang remarked, “All cultivators who came here had initially indulged in pleasures, engaged in strenuous cultivation, or did nothing at all… but in the end, they all concentrated their efforts on researching the Gui Xu Grand Formation.”

“After all, once you have infinite time, you will find that those hobbies that once obsessed you mean nothing under the merciless passage of time—you will grow tired of them someday.”

Luo Yan feigned a sympathetic expression, but inwardly, he disagreed:

Without smartphones and the internet, of course it’s like this. With both, I could loiter until the end of the world, okay?

Of course, this was ultimately an impractical fantasy, so Luo Yan gently patted the trembling Miss Shi beside him and asked,

“Then, when can we start researching the Gui Xu Grand Formation?”

“Anytime,” Lord Zhen Mang said with a smile, “But I suggest you stay here for a few days first, get accustomed to it for a while, and adjust your mindset and condition.”

“After all, what we have in abundance here is time.”