Chapter 206 — The Great Void of the Shadow Realm

Gao Yang gripped Amber's arm tightly, watching the collapse. He was ready to evacuate at any moment, but soon discovered that the collapse had only spread to a quarter of the hall before stopping. Despite the tremendous spectacle, it ended with surprising speed.

Yet the sight revealed after the wall and ceiling collapsed made him furrow his brow deeply, and a sense of eerie strangeness welled up in his heart.

Beyond was pitch-black darkness—a darkness as though the world had vanished and the universe had been extinguished.

"What... is that..." Amber's voice trembled with tension, and what alarmed her even more was watching Gao Yang walk toward the collapsed area. "Hey! Be careful!"

Gao Yang was indeed careful. He cautiously approached the boundary of the collapse and gazed out at the space beyond the wall.

Behind the wall should have been the deep, heavy rock and soil layers of the Dark Mountains. Yet in Gao Yang's vision there was only darkness and void—utter pitch-blackness filled his sight, as though all things in the world simply ceased beyond that boundary.

But he narrowed his eyes and observed carefully, and finally discerned some extremely distant, extremely faint things within that darkness.

He saw at the far extremity of the dark space undulating contours like "land on the opposite shore." Far above, he could see a faint thread of light—like the light of sky. And even within the void of darkness, he could vaguely make out floating things: massive boulders and islands that seemed to have lost gravity, drifting and tumbling in midair.

Gao Yang finally understood what the darkness before him was: this was no end of all things in the world, but an unprecedentedly vast "void."

The void was so immense that it exceeded the limits of what the human eye could accept as light, which was why it gave the illusion of "all things vanishing." But the Shadow Realm's peculiar "lighting environment" also meant there could be no absolute pitch-blackness here, which was why Gao Yang could faintly discern the things within the void.

He casually fished out a magic crystal, channeled his mana into it to activate the stone, then hurled it with all his strength into the distance.

The crystal, glowing with bright light, flew from his hand and sailed forward. It could have illuminated a spacious room, yet the instant it entered that vast cavity it shrank to a single insignificant spark—for with no reflective surfaces around it, its radiance seemed pitifully small, not worth a mention.

This confirmed Gao Song's conjecture.

"Is this... a cave?" Amber, too, mustered her courage and followed after him. She stared in astonishment at the sight before her, and noticed the sliver of sky light far, far above. "It seems to lead straight up to the surface? Just how... how big is this cavity?!"

"Never mind how big it is—Sir Byron spent so long burrowing through the Dark Mountains, and the corridors he explored include the region corresponding to this very cavity. In other words, there is absolutely no such cavity in the Dark Mountains of the real world," Gao Yang said, his voice thick with shock. "This cavity exists only in the Shadow Realm... If it wasn't formed naturally, then it could only be the work of some power beyond mortal imagination..."

At last Amber caught on. "So the reason I couldn't enter the Shadow Realm before wasn't interference from some magic door, but because this region... doesn't correspond to the real world at all? The dislocation here is too severe?"

"...I don't know," Gao Yang admitted frankly, himself utterly baffled now. "I only know we probably can't unravel the mystery of this place... Unless that ring device outside can be repaired, no one will ever figure out what the ancient Gondorian mages were doing here."

Amber rubbed her arms as goosebumps began to rise. "Ugh... Anyway, I can't stand being here any longer. This place is too eerie. I think the only sensible thing is to get out of here as fast as we can."

Gao Yang let out a breath. "For once, I quite agree with you."