"You will only have this one chance. Make sure you seize it," Ji Hongdao said in an exceptionally solemn tone.
The trainees understood that such an opportunity might only come once in a lifetime. No matter how composed their usual mindsets were, they could not help feeling nervous and expectant.
Ahead of them, Ji Hongdao pulled out a communication talisman, seemingly contacting someone. After a moment, he gave a nod and ended the transmission. He then retrieved a Lesser Heavenly Profound Mirror from his storage ring.
With a toss, he suspended it high above everyone's heads. Next, he produced a silver jade slip and crushed it gently. In an instant, countless chaotic characters swarmed out from the slip.
Ji Hongdao formed a hand seal, and those characters flew toward the Lesser Heavenly Profound Mirror in the air, arranged in a specific sequence.
Li Fan narrowed his eyes. He saw lines of text flash across the mirror's surface in rapid succession.
The characters constantly shifted. Once the mirror absorbed the script from the jade slip, this otherwise ordinary Lesser Heavenly Profound Mirror underwent a bizarre transformation.
Its frame emitted a faint glow before dissolving away. Free of constraints, the mirror surface began expanding rapidly in every direction.
In the blink of an eye, a palm-sized mirror turned into a massive gateway a hundred zhang high and thirty zhang wide.
On the broad, towering mirror surface, the surrounding scenery was nowhere to be seen; only streams of silver radiance flowed and swirled.
While the crowd watched this transformation in awe, Ji Hongdao flew to the front of the mirror and cast an incantation.
A silver beam of light shot out from the surface, enveloping him. A string of characters flashed onto the mirror and vanished just as quickly.
Seemingly having verified Ji Hongdao's identity, the beam faded. Immediately afterward, a patch of black emerged from the center of the mirror.
In an instant, the blackness spread across the entire mirror surface, and a rectangular spatial passageway appeared before everyone.
"Is this...?"
"Any mirror creation derived from the Heavenly Profound Mirror can serve as a node to open a spatial transit?"
"And it seemingly requires dual verification through a cipher and personnel confirmation," Li Fan secretly deduced from what had just unfolded.
"Follow behind me. You may enter the passageway only after the Heavenly Profound Mirror verifies your identities." With that, Ji Hongdao flew in first. Filled with excitement, the trainees eagerly followed close behind.
Whenever someone approached the passage, a silver beam descended from above, locking onto them.
So long as nothing amiss occurred, the beam quickly disappeared, signifying that verification had passed.
"This seems to share an underlying principle with the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation," Li Fan mused as he followed the crowd into the spatial passageway.
A sudden wave of dizziness hit him.
It felt remarkably similar to long-distance teleportation—as if time and space themselves were being stretched out, warping his perception.
The next instant, as though tearing through a thin membrane that clung to his entire body, Li Fan tumbled out into a bizarre space. All color vanished in an instant; everything in sight was gray and white.
Black lines whistled in from the distant reaches, brushing past people's bodies—some even passing straight through them—before hurtling toward the endless distance.
White lines also shot forth, whether from overhead or from the abyss beneath their feet, advancing endlessly in the opposite direction.
Occasionally, black and white lines collided, their two colors tangling until they formed a tiny point of nothingness.
These points of nothingness lasted for varying spans.
Some lingered for only a moment, while others remained after several breaths. In the end, however, every one of them was utterly annihilated.
Just as everyone stood transfixed by this surreal, fantastical spectacle, a dizzying sensation struck their heads, and their perspective suddenly rose to boundless heights. They saw that within this nearly borderless, immense world, the black and white lines moved at blinding speed, seemingly random yet somehow adhering to some underlying law. They collided, moved, and blended. One after another, points of nothingness flickered into existence and extinguished.
Their minds drifted within this magnificent spectacle, and only after a long time did they recover their senses.
"It is said that all the secrets of the world are hidden within this black and white. Regrettably, my aptitude is dull, and I cannot fathom it," Ji Hongdao's lament, tinged with regret, sounded in everyone's ears.
"Let us go. The newborn mirror surfaces are just ahead."
Ji Hongdao reached out and caught a passing black line. In an instant, his figure followed the line and vanished from everyone's sight.
Seeing this, the trainees followed suit, catching the black lines passing beside them.
As if fusing with the black line, the high-speed gray world suddenly slowed to an absolute crawl in Li Fan's eyes.
Moving continually toward the distant destination, whenever he encountered white lines traveling up or down along the way, those white lines seemed to possess a will of their own, actively dodging out of the way.
Hitching a ride on the line, Li Fan marveled at the sights along the journey.
After an unknown period, they arrived at the edge of this gray-and-white world. The black lines faded and disappeared, and the trainees regained their original forms one by one. Ahead lay a rainbow halo utterly out of place with the gray-and-white world.
Perhaps because they had remained in this world for so long without seeing any color, an inexplicable sense of nausea and disgust welled up in Li Fan's heart when he saw that churning, twisting mass of colors not far away.
The gray-white and the colors clashed and ground against each other.
Though not a sound was made, Li Fan could feel two formidable forces vying against one another, causing space itself to tremble.
In the clash, a portion of the iridescent mass seemed to be severed by the gray.
Having lost their original hues, these severed pieces turned dull and lifeless, drifting quietly at the edge of the space. After a long while, a faint glimmer seemed to ignite across them all at once.
Originally gray and white, they began slowly turning translucent and crystalline.
Ji Hongdao said nothing, but the trainees already understood: what lay before them was the birth of the Heavenly Profound Mirror's newborn mirror surfaces.
Everyone focused their minds, carefully contemplating the process.
Li Fan, however, froze slightly. He first surveyed his surroundings, then sensed his own body, involuntarily sinking into deep thought. Time seemed to accelerate.
Lights flickered continuously, and all the gray vanished. One newborn mirror surface after another came into being.
Some remained where they were after forming, while others vanished abruptly to destinations unknown. On the whole, however, the vast majority drifted along the edge of the gray world.
The number of mirror surfaces grew greater and greater. Finally, at a certain moment...
Endless fine black and white threads surged from the gray world toward the newborn mirror surfaces.
Black and white intertwined like the most exquisite loom, swiftly weaving garments for these newborns. Once a mirror surface was completely enveloped by the woven black and white threads, the black and white instantly fused into one. A sphere with an incomparably smooth surface, swirling chaotically with black and white, abruptly materialized.
"This is the array hub of the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation," Ji Hongdao's voice rang out at the perfect moment.
"Did you see it clearly?"
His voice drifted away in an instant. All the surrounding scenery froze in place.
Then, it shattered entirely.
Chapter 301