This was a vast grassland.
Lush green grass stretched across the land beneath a sky of blue and white clouds.
There was no sun overhead, yet the light was bright.
Wildflowers bloomed everywhere in vibrant profusion, their colors dazzling and complex.
A rich floral fragrance drifted through the air as a gentle breeze brushed against Fang Yuan's face.
Fang Yuan stared blankly.
"So this is the eighth layer of the Crazed Demon Cave?" He couldn't help but feel a twinge of surprise.
According to the Three Freaks of Crazed Demon's calculations, the last three layers of the Crazed Demon Cave should all resemble the seventh layer, with Dao Marks stacked everywhere. The scale of Dao Marks in the eighth layer would necessarily be even greater than the seventh. And in the ninth layer, there was the Immortal Formation laid down by Limitless Demon Venerable, whose core was the legendary Ninth Transformation Immortal Gu — Derivation!
But after entering the eighth layer, Fang Yuan found that it was actually a small world.
"Could I have entered a blessed land?" The thought surfaced in his mind.
But he immediately dismissed the conjecture.
He employed his detection methods, and a subtle expression surfaced on his face: "This world seems unusual — it's not a normal blessed land or grotto-heaven. This world is somewhat… thin."
While Fang Yuan was pondering, a thunderous crack rang out.
An enormous rift split down from the sky like lightning, cleaving across the entire land below.
In that instant, every hair on Fang Yuan's body stood on end, and alarm bells thundered in his mind!
This colossal rift radiated an overwhelming sense of danger. He was absolutely certain that if he were caught in it, he would perish body and soul. Even if he could deploy the Reverse Flow Protective Seal in time, it probably wouldn't hold for more than a few breaths.
Fortunately, though the rift moved with extreme speed, it was not headed toward him.
Fang Yuan dodged it successfully, only to hear crackling sounds echoing from all around.
"This is the death wail of this small world! It's collapsing — on the verge of destruction." Fang Yuan's gaze was cold as he regarded everything with detached indifference.
The enormous rift continued to expand and spread. The small world was being cleaved in two, and soon the halves had completely separated.
The blue sky, white clouds, verdant grass, and blooming flowers were all swallowed by the rift!
Yet there was nothing inside the rift — only an eternally ravenous, ferocious beast of primordial hunger.
Fang Yuan's pupils contracted: "This is the power of Void Path — a rift of nothingness!"
Recognizing this, he quickly deployed measures to conceal himself.
The rift bore down toward him, but rather than fleeing, Fang Yuan threw himself directly into it.
He passed into the rift successfully without suffering any devastating blow.
The initial beam of the nothingness rift had been extraordinarily dangerous, but once its power had dispersed, it was just barely tolerable for Fang Yuan to occupy.
The small world shrank smaller and smaller, while the rift of nothingness in the middle grew ever larger.
Fang Yuan soared upward along the rift and quickly broke free of the small world's bounds, arriving at the outside.
"This is—" The sight before him shook him to his very core.
He was like a water insect that had suddenly stumbled into a boundless ocean. This ocean was nothingness itself!
Nothingness was vast, immense and without known limits. Fang Yuan, suspended within it, was infinitesimally small.
But he was not alone.
Countless worlds accompanied him!
These worlds were like multicolored bubbles — some still forming, some growing strong, and some in the process of annihilation.
The very small world Fang Yuan had just occupied was among those being destroyed. In a mere handful of moments, only two crescent-shaped fragments remained.
The shock left Fang Yuan momentarily speechless, his mouth slightly agape!
He suddenly grasped it — this was the true face of the eighth layer.
The seventh layer had been an ocean of Dao Marks, while the eighth layer was infinite nothingness, within which thousands upon thousands of worlds were born and destroyed at every moment!
"Hm? What is that!" Fang Yuan caught a flash of something unusual at the edge of his vision.
The small world he had just occupied had been completely destroyed, but a single long white thread remained.
This thread — even nothingness could not annihilate it. It was extraordinarily resilient.
It was a Dao Mark!
Though it was only a single Dao Mark, it was far from ordinary, shimmering with the distinctive halo of a Dao Mark.
"What kind of Dao Mark is this?" Fang Yuan had never encountered one like it before, and he couldn't help but study it with rapt attention.
Clearly, this Dao Mark was extraordinary.
Because in the previous small world, where there was heaven and earth there had to be Space Dao, where there was the movement of all things there had to be Time Dao, where there were flowers and grasses there had to be Wood Dao, where there was grassland there had to be Earth Dao, and where there were white clouds there had to be Cloud Dao.
But none of those Dao Marks remained — they had all been annihilated by nothingness, leaving behind only this semi-transparent, white thread of a Dao Mark.
From this single Dao Mark, Fang Yuan perceived Space Dao, detected Time Dao, tasted Wood Dao, and sensed Cloud Dao.
"What Path's Dao Mark is this? It actually possesses the capacity to encompass all things?" A wave of astonishment swept through him, and then his thoughts suddenly turned — arriving at the answer.
"I understand. This is Heavenly Dao!"
"The Dao Mark of Heavenly Dao!!"
When he had been traversing the seventh layer, he had wondered: he had witnessed all manner of Dao Marks, including Dream Path and other entirely novel ones. Yet two kinds were conspicuously absent.
One was Human Dao, and the other was Heavenly Dao.
Fang Yuan had seen Human Dao's marks before, but this was his first time witnessing the marks of Heavenly Dao.
"All other Dao Marks have vanished and been destroyed, leaving only the mark of Heavenly Dao… what does this portend?" Fang Yuan's eyes locked intently upon the Heavenly Dao Mark.
The thread-like mark drifted as if caught in a wind, radiating a gentle, luminous white glow. Its ethereal posture held Fang Yuan's gaze completely.
Fang Yuan was cautious. He did not attempt to make a move against the mark.
He followed it, drifting along for some time, when suddenly the void ahead underwent a strange transformation.