Chapter 998: The Third and Fourth Realms

From the distance, the Bridge of Forgetfulness looked to be just a small stone bridge erected in the dusky depths of the void. But when Lu Yun tried to approach it, he realized that it was so many times bigger that he’d imagined.

It seemed as large as a world.

The corpseflies that’d been three meters long to the couple before turned into mammoth creatures five hundred kilometers long.

There was no frame of reference in the darkness, so Lu Yun had no idea how far away he was from the bridge.

The Bridge of Forgetfulness was different from the Gates of the Abyss fragment in Zhao Qing’s tomb. The gates were broken and the main body in Lu Yun’s hands, hence it was easy for him to subdue the fragment he found.

The bridge in front of him was whole and complete with no sign of damage. If it wasn’t for the Stone of Three Lives in his hands, he probably wouldn’t be able to sense that it was here at all.

It grew bigger the further in he walked, as did the corpseflies buzzing over it. More terrifying was that he still had no idea of how far away he was from the bridge!

The boundless darkness was too pure in this unknown world and unknown realm. There was nothing else in front of him apart from the Bridge of Forgetfulness.

Clenching his teeth, Lu Yun deployed the Boundless Step and strode ten steps of five hundred thousand kilometers each, covering five million kilometers total. The bridge grew larger in his field of view, but he was still very far away from it.

He had no idea how big it was even now, but the corpseflies on it were as large as a planet in his eyes now. Their bodies rose and fell in deep slumber.

Qing Yu reached his side with a few leaps and bounds.

“How far away are we from this bridge?” she murmured as she looked at Lu Yun, feeling a bit numb at how nonsensical things were.

“I don’t know… but look at the corpseflies on the bridge. They’re as big as a main world in the lower realms, so why is it can we see the bridge in its full glory?” Lu Yun calmed down,

If the corpse flies were already as big as a main world and the bridge was even bigger than them, logic dictated that they would be only able to see part of the bridge. However, the entire Bridge of Forgetfulness was in front of them and appearing in its fullest glory.

It was bigger than the entire world of immortals by now.

“Wait a second.” Qing Yu took in a deep breath and sat down crosslegged, operating formula dao to deduce the truth of the situation here.

Lu Yun took out the Tome of Life and Death to safeguard her. This bridge was too uncanny, so forcing formula dao on it might very easily lead to a backlash.

Indeed, a surge of tremendous force surged from the bridge and slapped down on Qing Yu the moment the book’s light enveloped her.

Boom!

The light curtain from the Tome of Life and Death trembled violently, then crushed the force as if it’d been rudely challenged. It didn’t strike back after that, just remained hovering over Qing Yu’s head to protect her.

That surge of strength had threatened her life, and if it wasn’t for the book standing guard, Qing Yu would’ve already died to the attack.

With Lu Yun as her protector, no further worries nagged at Qing Yu’s mind. She concentrated fully on operating formula dao and tried to get the truth of the matter regarding the bridge.

Crystalline glyphs sparkled around her and continuously transformed into different shapes. At the same time, terrible surges of force erupted from the bridge and blasted down at Qing Yu. The light from the Tome of Life and Death shook and trembled, dispersing the attacks.

The backlash wasn’t an active attack from the Bridge of Forgetfulness, but a natural recoil from Qing Yu’s use of formula dao. Some great personages in the world permitted no blasphemy against them. Even saying their name out loud would result in attacks from their enemies, to stay nothing of deducing their true nature.

Plainly, the bridge was an entity at this level.

Qing Yu’s eyes shot open after an indeterminate period of time and she looked at the stone bridge with great shock.

“What is it?” Instead of putting his treasure away, Lu Yun quickly followed up on his beloved’s expression.

“It’s alive!” Incredulity crossed Qing Yu’s face. “The Bridge of Forgetfulness is alive, it’s a living being! It’s not a dead thing!”

“What?!” Lu Yun didn’t quite understand. “Alive? The bridge is alive?”

The Bridge of Forgetfulness was an ultimate treasure born from the hell of human dao. It was the same kind of treasure as the Stone of Three Lives and the Yellow Spring. But… it was alive?

“This is a special kind of existence caught in a plane between our world and the chaos, but it’s abnormally spacious. I think we could call it… the third realm.” [1]

If the chaos was viewed as one realm of existence and their multiverse another, then where they were was the third realm.

“No, wait, I shouldn’t say that it’s caught in a plane between us. If my deductions are right, this third realm is older than ours. It exists between every world that is born and the chaos.” Qing Yu gave the notion careful thought. “Our worlds are never truly destroyed. Whenever the chaos creatures destroy a lower world, a second is immediately born in the chaos. This chain of life has never been broken, which makes whatever lives in the chaos the true poison of everything.”

“The third realm, huh?” Lu Yun looked around at the nearly completely empty void. So this was a plane of existence on par with theirs and the chaos.

“So our worlds are on the same footing as the chaos. I’d always thought the chaos was bigger than all of us combined and more sophisticated.” Lu Yun scratched his head. “How far away are we from it?”

He pointed at the bridge that looked so close, but was plainly very far away.

“Extremely far!” Qing Yu made an estimation. “At least a hundred billion kilometers away…”

“A hundred billion?! How big is this third realm??”

A hundred billion rivaled the entire cosmos of the cosmos over the world of immortals, yet this was only the distance between them and the Bridge of Forgetfulness!

Qing Yu frowned slightly. “I don’t know how big this realm is… but something feels off. I feel like there should be another realm apart from the third. Or rather, we’re in the fourth realm now and the plane of existence we haven’t seen yet is the third.”

She squatted on the ground and started drawing various diagrams. “That’s right, we’re in the fourth realm and there’s an unknown third realm we haven’t reached yet!”

1. The ten realms, sometimes referred to as the ten worlds, are part of some Buddhism beliefs that there are 240 conditions of life that sentient beings are subject to and in which they experience from moment to moment. The ten realms are part of Buddhist cosmology and consist of four higher realms and six lower realms derived from the Indian concept of the six realms of rebirth. For NECRO, think of these as different planes of existence. I almost did refer to them as planes.

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