123: Chapter 123 The Cage of Reincarnation? It's nothing more than my cultivation ground!
The void crack closed.
Following the coordinates of the "Pangu Origin Core Profound Meaning Scroll," Jiang Feng stepped across the dimensional barrier.
The surroundings were deathly silent, filled entirely with grey-white chaotic currents.
Just as he stepped into the center of the coordinates, an invisible barrier abruptly cut off his path forward.
The grey-white currents rolled back to both sides, and space was savagely torn into black and white halves.
Old Man Ming, dressed in black robes, stood directly in his path, stepping on a black cloud.
His high and mighty gaze looked at Jiang Feng as if he were appraising a handy, top-tier weapon.
"Kid, you freeloaded off my Semi-Ancestor Origin, and now you want to run off to grind the Ninth-Turn mission without even saying thank you?" Old Man Ming's tone was filled with the natural arrogance of a superior.
Jiang Feng stopped, hands in his pockets, not even deigning to look at him directly.
"I swallowed all the benefits, and all your underhanded tricks have been reflected back!" Jiang Feng didn't even lift his eyelids. "This scheme you delivered to my door is too weak. Speak your mind, don't block the way, I'm in a hurry!"
Old Man Ming's eye twitched violently as he forcefully suppressed his anger.
"Got personality, I like it." Old Man Ming snorted coldly, too lazy to beat around the bush, and laid his cards on the table. "You can't walk Pangu's Ninth-Turn path on your own."
He raised a hand and pointed into the depths of the void.
"Above the Hongmeng Realm, there is a Taihuang Battlefield; that is the true chessboard where Venerable Xuan and I play our game."
"As long as you nod, go in and act as a cleaner for me, and wipe out all of Old Man Xuan's white pieces. Once it's done, I guarantee you will condense the Primordial Dao Fruit. I can even share this supreme position of the Myriad Realms with you, letting you be my second-in-command."
Old Man Ming tilted his chin slightly. In his view, such immense wealth and such a grand, heaven-reaching promise would make any being from the lower realms kneel and weep with gratitude on the spot.
Jiang Feng looked at him, his gaze like he was looking at someone whose brain wasn't working quite right.
"Second-in-command?"
Jiang Feng laughed and used his little finger to pick his ear. "My old man spent his whole life screwing bolts in a factory and never had to put up with this kind of crap. Who do you think you are, asking me to be your high-class lackey?"
He lowered his hand, his dark golden eyes instantly turning as cold as knife blades.
"Sooner or later, I'll go up to that crappy chessboard of yours and smash it to pieces. Now, get lost."
Old Man Ming's face visibly turned as black as the bottom of a pot.
Having lived for countless eras and trampled upon the great beings of the heavens like ants, he was actually being insulted to his face by a brat from the lower realms today?
"You don't know what's good for you!" Old Man Ming's gaze was as cold and hard as iron. "Do you really think you can flip the table just because you used some dog-shit luck to stack your panel stats?"
"Today, I will teach you what the rules of the high dimensions are!"
Old Man Ming didn't mobilize his full pressure; he simply extended his right hand slowly. He didn't even use half his power, merely mobilizing twenty percent of the high-dimensional laws.
"Profound Meaning: Samsara Endless Prison."
As soon as these seven words were spoken, Jiang Feng finally raised an eyebrow.
It had nothing to do with divine abilities or laws; this was a supreme profound meaning that transcended all Daos, and all other powers were far inferior to this.
The surrounding grey-white chaos instantly froze.
Jiang Feng felt the terrifying 12-Jian attributes within his body suddenly plummet, as if they had been pulled out of the time axis. Immediately after, his body began to regress completely out of control.
It was like being forcibly dragged into the garbled code of a rewinding progress bar. Rewind, reset.
In the blink of an eye, he had returned to the moment he first stepped out of the void crack.
Before him, Old Man Ming was still standing with his hands behind his back, his eyes cruel.
"This is causality, this is time." Old Man Ming sneered. "In this profound meaning, the difficulty of your Ninth-Turn is infinitely locked by me. You will never escape this three-second loop."
Jiang Feng didn't say much and casually threw a punch.
But no matter how monstrous the power of this punch was, the terrifying gravity field capable of shattering all things was forcibly reduced to nothing by the power of time the moment it touched the void boundary.
The surrounding scene reset once again.
In the blink of an eye, he had returned to the exit of this spatial crack for the third time.
"You can just slowly endure it here." Old Man Ming turned around, preparing to vanish into the void.
"Venerable Ming, please show mercy."
A cold, clear female voice drifted over from the other side of the void.
Xuanji, dressed in blue-gold dharma robes, arrived, stepping on light. She bowed slightly to Old Man Ming.
"He is merely a mortal body from the lower realms and does not understand the rules of the high dimensions. If you truly lock him in an infinite time prison, I fear it will directly destroy this excellent sapling."
Even Xuanji herself felt it was absurd; the strange karmic mark in the dark was actually forcing her to stand up and protect this unruly powerhouse from the lower realms.
Old Man Ming glanced sideways at Xuanji, clearly seeing through that she was a scout sent by Old Man Xuan, but he couldn't be bothered to expose her.
"He hasn't suffered enough yet."
Old Man Ming flicked his sleeves, leaving behind an indisputable verdict.
"Jiang Feng, I will give you three days to consider. Once your bones are softened in the loop, come and beg me. After three days, this profound meaning will naturally unravel!"
As his voice fell, Old Man Ming turned into black smoke and completely dissipated.
Inside the Samsara Endless Prison, only Jiang Feng and Xuanji, who was not far away, remained.
Time reset again, and Jiang Feng returned to the starting point for the fourth time.
He wasn't in a rush to smash the wall; instead, he stood quietly in place, closed his eyes, and felt the rules of the loop that had been forcibly imposed upon him.
Xuanji hovered in mid-air, neither too far nor too close.
She didn't speak, didn't exert pressure, and didn't reveal any hostility. She was just like a cold, clear shadow that appeared punctually a few dozen meters away from where Jiang Feng reset each time, maintaining a mysterious distance of probing.
The hundredth cycle.
Jiang Feng opened his eyes and glanced at Xuanji in the distance.
"Does your Old Man Xuan have nothing better to do, sending you here to act as a supervisor?" Jiang Feng's tone was so relaxed it didn't sound like he was in prison, but rather like he was strolling through his own backyard.
Xuanji's expression remained unmoved as she coldly replied, "It's not too late to submit to Venerable Ming now."
"Submit?" Jiang Feng stretched his neck, his joints cracking like popping beans.
The 12-Jian basic attributes within his body didn't drop offline due to the time loop; instead, under the high-pressure squeezing of the constant resets, they became increasingly solid and pure.
Venerable Ming dared to spout madness and trap me for three days, nothing more than calculating that I possess an undying foundation and cannot possibly fall or die.
Jiang Feng thought quickly in his heart.
These high-dimensional chess players indeed have extraordinary means, and this supreme profound meaning that transcends all things is extremely domineering. But the fact that the opponent never dares to deliver a killing blow is enough to show that, for their chess game, I still have an irreplaceable use.
Since there is no danger to my life, this predicament has actually become interesting.
"You want to trap me in a Samsara cage? All shackles and profound meanings in the world are inherently countered by me."
A playful, cold light flashed in the depths of Jiang Feng's eyes.
Here, time and space eternally backtrack, forming an unsolvable closed-loop predicament. This supreme profound meaning that transcends all Daos is ancient and unsolvable in Xuanji's cognition; once a powerhouse enters, they sink into the Samsara forever, and even if Venerable Xuan were to arrive in person, it would be extremely tricky to deal with.
She had originally thought that Jiang Feng would eventually exhaust his mental energy and bow his head in submission.
Who would have known that Jiang Feng, relying solely on his supreme intelligence and terrifying mental foundation that far exceeded the beings of the heavens, without brute force or exploding, merely moved his mind to directly lock onto the Samsara origin node and shake the entire set of time shackles.
The endless Samsara cracked open on the spot.
He sat cross-legged calmly, unfolded the Pangu Profound Meaning Scroll, and borrowed the Dao rhyme leaking from the Samsara to polish himself and deduce his foundation.
The prison that Venerable Ming used to confine and wear him down was instantly utilized in reverse by him, turning into a supreme cultivation opportunity.
In the distance, Xuanji's pupils suddenly contracted, her cold, clear face completely collapsed, and her mind was greatly shaken.
How could this be...
The Samsara Endless Prison is a supreme profound meaning that overrides all Daos, unbreakable by anyone. He didn't rely on brute force, but merely leveraged his spirit and intelligence to pry open the Samsara origin, and even took the opportunity to plunder the chance in reverse?