Core of a world.

Moonset city was shrouded by a festive atmosphere that formed a stark contrast to the gloomy, almost despairing air that had descended upon it before he left. People were already taking down the barricades they had put up around their houses, the streets flooded with people rushing for the market plaza closest to the city entrance.

Liang Chen was a fair bit away from the plaza but he could still see a large pike erected in it, the head and body of the Stone-Soul King placed at the top so that everyone could see that there was nothing more to fear. The outside force that was the Stone-Soul King was constant pressure on the minds of the people living there, every trip outside of the city could result in their deaths at the hands of someone from this Divine Beast's horde.

Of course, while most were happy that the Stone-Soul King had been dealt with, not everyone was looking at it in the same optimistic light. Outside pressure was sometimes the only thing keeping a structure stable, its disappearance might cause everything to crumble on its own. There was no telling if the Tien and Enlai families would take this chance to duke it out for supremacy of the city, something that might kill just as many people as the Stone-Soul King had.

But that was just a possibility, not a certainty, so Liang Chen didn't think too much about it. He didn't regret his decision to kill the Stone-Soul King, innocent people were about to die, so he intervened, that was all there was to it. And should the Tien and Enlai families actually start a war that cost as many innocent lives as the Stone-Soul King had taken, then it just meant that Liang Chen would have to appear here again. He was the Scourge King, and the fewer people that had to experience why he had that name, the better.

Liang Chen had no interest in heading for the festive plaza, turning away from the main road and heading for the simple five-room house that stood all on its lonesome. Shen Fei was following him closely in a nonchalant manner, the people who recognized either of them making sure to give them wide berth. After all, both of them vanished for a bit, only for one of them to return with the shrivelled up corpse of a powerful Divine Beast shortly after, they were clearly exceedingly terrifying.

He wasn't moving at someone else's pace this time so it didn't take long for Liang Chen to reach the barren stretch of land that surrounded the lonesome house. Liang Chen tapped Yumao on the head a few times to make him fly down from his head, the Qi needed to increase the flow of time would rise drastically if Yumao was within range of the sped up time.

Yumao was clear on this fact, and even though he could enter to resist the pressure while keeping a slight distance from Liang Chen, the safest option was still for him to remain just outside the range of the pressure. After all, he would need to use a bit of his focus and energy to resist the pressure, something that would inevitably slow him should they get ambushed.

Shen Fei also didn't enter the pressure, pulling a table and chair out from his interspatial ring so that he could sit down and drink something from a gourd. Liang Chen didn't pay any mind to their actions and removed a Spirit Stone from his interspatial ring, placing it in his mouth and crushing it between his teeth. The fragments were hard and sharp as they slid down his throat, but this was the best way to absorb the energy from a Spirit Stone, it ensured that there was no waste of energy.

With his energy rapidly replenishing thanks to the Spirit Stone, Liang Chen stepped into the pressure and walked up to the 55th step where he cultivated previously. He drew upon the surrounding pressure, which was best described as extremely dense Qi, and used it to fuel his law of time. Before his breakthrough, he had been able to use the pressure here to push the speed of time to 24 times faster, but now he could push it directly to 30 times faster than normal.

And now that he had an abundance of time, he took out the green orb that Ren Shuren and Ren Yazhu had given him, the one that contained the Sebettu's gathered knowledge about domains. The reason he took out this item before the scale containing a treasure trove of information about the Heaven Devouring Dragon's various laws was quite simple, it contained less information.

It should be much faster for him to go through the information gathered within this orb, allowing him to later put all his focus on the information about the laws. And if he learned how to form his own domain thanks to this orb then he could keep that information in mind while looking through the laws later, using it to form a theoretical outline for his domain, or domains as it would be for him.

He sank his mind into the wood-like orb, a rush of information flooding his mind for nearly three hours before it subsided. A domain was something you could only form after entering the Primordial Immortal realm, but with how long the Sebettu had been around, they hadn't lacked for Primordial Immortals in their ranks. Thanks to that, they had a vast sea of information about domains and how they worked.

When it came to domains, the most important factor was understanding exactly what they were. They weren't just a small boost to a cultivators power, they were a gorge separating lower-ranked cultivators from those above them. It was no exaggeration to say that you would be unable to advance past the Primordial Immortal realm if you failed to create a domain.

A domain was you imposing your laws on the surroundings, forcing the world around you to alter based on your laws. As you got stronger, this alteration would also grow stronger and stronger, and this was a strengthening that would continue all the way until your domain became a real world.

The later stages of cultivation all required you to form your own heaven inside you, even forming your own universe at the final stages. And the domain was the core of all this, it would be the Origin Heart from which your universe grew and drew strength from. So a domain was not only important in combat but also in cultivation, infusing it with your understanding of your laws was how you made it grow ever closer to a real world.

When he finished organizing all the information about domains, Liang Chen ended up letting out a long breath. This was the difference between having a strong backing and not having one. He had gone through the entire library of the Storm Wolf sect, but the information they had about domains was a far cry from what the Sebettu had. For example, the Storm Wolf sect's library hadn't mentioned a single thing about the domain being the core used to create your own heaven and universe in the later stages of cultivation.

He put away the green orb and gave a light wave of his hand, lightning and misty poison starting to fill the air around him, fully shrouding his figure. Only when he was fully concealed did he bring out the palm-sized scale he had been given, an item like this was a bit too precious to just be taken out in plain sight. Even if it weren't for the information stored within it, just the fact that it was a scale from an Origin Beast was enough to make many people go mad with greed.

He sank his mind into the scale, and his mind instantly went blank. If the gathered knowledge about domains could be called a sea of information, then the knowledge about the laws that the Heaven Devouring Dragon had passed down could only be called a bottomless abyss.

The speed at which an item like this could transfer information was exceedingly fast, growing faster based on how strong the recipient's soul was. Liang Chen's soul was one of his strongest aspects so the speed at which the information embedded itself in his brain was quite fast, that was why it had only taken a few hours for the information about domains to sink into his mind.

But even so, it took a full week before the rush of information about the laws ended. Liang Chen had underestimated exactly how much information the Sebettu had gathered over their existence, practically every descendant born to the Heaven Devouring Dragon adding on a small bit of information.

And Rahu, the Heaven Devouring Dragon, truly lived up to his name. He had devoured, acquired, and passed down so many laws that Liang Chen failed to count them all, he didn't even recognize or know about several hundreds of them. But with so much new information swimming around in his mind, Liang Chen was experiencing a splitting headache, a bloating and nauseating sensation assaulting him and causing his vision to spin.

"Let's... Let's sit down for a moment."

He muttered the words practically in a haze, his spear appearing in his grasp. He raised the weapon high and gathered all his might in it, the speartip vibrating faintly and causing the surroundings to release a soft droning sound that resembled two metal plates grinding against each other.

He then brought the spear down and unleashed the law of time, utilizing a technique he had used once in the past. The speartip created two different flows of time, one that was sped up and one that was slowed down. The two differing flows acted on the pressure and air directly in front of him, the unharmonious flows of time splitting the pressure in half as the Qi that made it up became unable to maintain its stability.

Liang Chen staggered through the path he had created, waving his hand behind him so that Yumao didn't follow him. Yumao could only flap his wings somewhat worriedly, but Shen Fei's pupils contracted violently. He was quite familiar with this pressure around the building, even someone at the very peak of the Primordial Immortal realm had only been able to walk up to the 70th step.

And the law of time that Liang Chen had unleashed in this attack was far sharper and more peculiar than the attack he used against the Stone-Soul King. Clearly, he wasn't as inexperienced with the law as he first appeared, he had trained at least a bit with this exalted law. But this only made him all the more excited for their future battle, Liang Chen was practically a treasure trove just waiting to be unpacked in a good fight.

Liang Chen didn't care about Shen Fei's thoughts, the headache made his temples thump as if hammers were being smashed against them. He quickly reached the door of the lone house, pushing it open and entering a faintly warm room shrouded in darkness. He closed the door behind him and quickly sat down with his legs crossed, focusing 100% of his consciousness on organizing and going through the seemingly endless information.

He allowed his instincts to control his Qi, his body automatically increases the flow of time around him to the highest level it could steadily maintain. He shut out the entire surrounding world and dove into an endless world of information, only one man and one beast aware that someone had just casually broken one of Moonset city's oldest legends and stepped into hallowed ground.