Chapter Three: On the Path to Immortality, Formidable Barriers Arise Amid Sudden Suppression

(1/3)
(Day 1)
This is a vast world of cultivation.
For endless eons, countless beings have absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, refining themselves in pursuit of immortality.
In a remote corner of this new world...
A cubical obsidian frame suddenly materialized on the earth, within which a layer of white translucent light shimmered, continuously inhaling and exhaling white particles from the surroundings.
Suddenly! A block-shaped figure burst forth from the light veil!
Accompanied by the familiar yet strange white distortion of a hell portal, the prisoner trapped for years in this pixelated block world stepped into a brand-new realm!
Passing through this unprecedented white hell gate, the blocky figure named Fang Zheng, with a simple and dull face, trembled with a mortal mind locked in captivity, turning his head excitedly to survey this entirely new world.
He looked down at the ground stained dark brown with blood.
This place was not made of blocks and pixels but had detailed physical matter like Earth.
He struggled to speak: "I... I..."
Looking up, he hesitated. "Hmm?"
Fang Zheng felt uncertain. "This... the art style here seems a bit off?"
The intense excitement gradually cooled, making Fang Zheng realize something was wrong.
Looking up, a magnificent fortress towered on the horizon.
What a grand existence it was!
So vast, it seemed as if all the stars, planets, and mass-energy of an entire universe had converged and forged it.
As far as the eye could see, a structure resembling a city wall stood between heaven and earth, stretching endlessly to the left and right, and above it, the sky was equally profound and boundless.
A grey mist permeated with white and rainbow glimmers cloaked the sky and horizon, yet the colossal fortress remained unshaken.
Fang Zheng could only see, at a distant horizon, a majestic city wall bearing huge scars like cuts from axes and punches, along with equally enormous gates.
"What? Where is this place? Why is it so vast?"
"And what are those glowing dots?"
Fang Zheng noticed clusters of shining points dotting the fortress walls, densely scattered like pearls floating above.
Puzzled, he took a telescope from his inventory and magnified his view as much as possible.
"Hmm?!"
Fang Zheng looked again carefully.
"Those are... stars?!"
On the walls of this colossal fortress, too enormous to be explained by ordinary physics or seen in full, the scattered glowing dots, when magnified, resembled stars strikingly.
He even saw a glow on one dot resembling a solar corona.
"Roar!"
"Chirp!"
Before Fang Zheng could ponder further, distant beast roars and bird calls echoed from the far horizon.
Still marveling, he thought, "If those really are stars, this city is outrageously huge!"
"Could this be a world of immortals and martial arts?"
Suddenly, from the distant fortress, accompanied by the beast roars and bird calls, a slender white streak and a tiny spark of crimson fire fell from the towering wall, running and flying across the vast earth.
Before Fang Zheng could think or calculate their speed, a flame phoenix as large as a small asteroid and a snow-white giant tiger, even larger and seemingly carved from neutron star matter, charged before him.
Their speed was so astonishing that Fang Zheng could hardly react.
"Roar!"

(2/3)
The white giant tiger came crashing like a white supergiant star.
Although Fang Zheng couldn’t understand how this giant tiger seemed to surpass light speed and yet was still visible to him,
Within seconds, the white tiger rapidly approached from the fortress, growing boundlessly until it enveloped the sky like a white celestial canopy.
Only when it was about to reach him, under the oppressive white sky, did Fang Zheng realize even the short fur between its paw pads was many times larger than Mount Everest on Earth.
Unable to react, the blocky figure standing in the void was swatted down by the tiger’s massive paw.
Theoretically, an object this enormous, even moving at incredible speed, should appear extremely slow at a microscopic perspective due to relative velocity.
Yet the tiger’s claw struck with terrifying speed, completely unrestrained by its supergiant size, moving with the frequency of a normal tiger.
This unleashed a speed theoretically far exceeding the speed of light by an incalculable factor!
Fang Zheng had no idea how many times the tiger’s golden claws struck him,
Nor how many times the tiger’s enormous teeth, each tip like a landmass, bit into him.
All he knew was that when he fully reacted, only a dazzling golden shockwave filled his vision.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
The roaring thunder echoed in his ears but caused no pain to his blocky body and could not drown out other faint sounds.
The claw strikes and bites, capable of shattering spacetime and obliterating several supergalactic clusters at superluminal speeds, brought no harm to Fang Zheng, who stood stunned at the gateway to immortality.
His invincible body, immortal in creative mode, seemed equally effective in this new world that resembled a realm of immortal cultivation.
Amid the endless golden shockwave, accompanied by a shrill bird call, the fiery phoenix, though far smaller than the tiger, was still as huge as the moon and launched its attack.
A blood-red viscous flame gushed at terrifying speed from its massive beak, like a quasar eruption but surpassing it by several magnitudes, scorching the block man wrapped in the golden shockwave.
Years ago, soon after suspecting he had crossed over, Fang Zheng had already estimated his abilities through various means.
He knew clearly that his blocky body and the three-dimensional refresh rate of his Minecraft world was capped at 120 frames per second, like the tablet he usually played on.
In the Minecraft block world, everything operated within this refresh rate, which only limited how fast he could place blocks but was otherwise unproblematic.
In this new, seemingly immortal cultivation world, the phoenix and white tiger rushing from the distant giant city moved far faster than Fang Zheng’s visual refresh rate.
Thus, when the phoenix and tiger attacked, Fang Zheng couldn’t see them at all; not a single frame appeared in his vision.
Only after 8.33 milliseconds, when the first frame refreshed in his sight, did he begin to realize,
“I’m under attack!”
Amid the golden shockwave entwined with blood-red divine flames, Fang Zheng was still in a daze.
“Has space... been shattered?”
He could clearly see the space around him, ravaged by the attack, no longer intangible but like wrinkled silk with countless prism-like fractures.
Amid the unceasing roar, Fang Zheng heard a low metallic scraping, as dense golden-red and pitch-black patterns appeared around his block body like spiderwebs.
The golden-red lines resembled chains, firmly embedding into the black patterns, binding and sealing them.
Fang Zheng was amazed to see that the brightness around him was overwhelming, yet his vision remained unaffected, unlike humans who would be blinded by excessive brightness and lose detail.
He could distinctly see that within the viscous shockwave, the brighter blood-red and golden patterns formed countless abstract symbols resembling birds flying and beasts fighting, constantly twisting and changing like living creatures, enveloping him.
Runes containing supreme laws intertwined into chains of laws, forcibly suppressing the space-time of this area while thickening the space itself into something like solidifying divine iron or molten gem.
At this moment, the law shadows of the Vermilion Bird and White Tiger guarding the gateway to immortality, after suppressing the audacious intruder, seemed truly alive.
The colossal white tiger, as huge as the supergiant star Betelgeuse, lazily lay on the ground grooming its fur,
While the moon-sized Vermilion Bird stood like a bacterium on one tiger hair, preening its feathers.
As ancient true immortals who guarded the immortal realm’s fortress in a bygone era, their law shadows were inscribed on the immortal world’s barrier.
Though the immortal realm had long since shattered in war, the fortress guarding its boundary was erased, and the true immortals slain,
Their law shadows remained, guarding the ruined immortal fortress and defending against intruders beyond the fragmented immortal world barrier.
On this boundless continent shadow spanning several light-years, constructed not of matter but laws, stood countless majestic ancient god mountain shadows—achievements from their lifetime.

(3/3)
Beneath each ancient god mountain, a powerful or mysterious being had been sealed, impossible to kill directly.
“What on earth are these things?”
“Could those just now be the Vermilion Bird and White Tiger common in immortal tales? Are the Azure Dragon and Black Tortoise here too?”
Fang Zheng, a blocky pixel man who had just crossed over and was baffled by the sudden suppression, turned to glance at the white light veil hell gate that should have been beside him.
In creative mode, he could clearly perceive that despite being attacked by those astronomical-scale white tiger and flame phoenix, he had suffered no damage or displacement.
Therefore, if that was the case, the white hell gate beside him, also made of obsidian blocks from the Minecraft world, should likewise be immovable.
“If this white hell gate is gone, maybe it was shattered by that attack?”
“Can I no longer return to the Minecraft world?”
Fang Zheng didn’t mind; if he couldn’t go back, so be it.
He definitely didn’t want to return to that blocky pixel place!
Looking at his inventory, he muttered, “Anyway, it seems I still have creative mode powers, so it doesn’t matter.”
“No matter how bad this place is, it’s better than that Minecraft hellhole.”
Fang Zheng was excited. “If this is some kind of fantasy cultivation world, I should be able to communicate with them.”
“I’m sick of villagers who only grunt and those dumb animals!”
After a few neurotic murmurs, Fang Zheng refocused. “Right, this thing must be some kind of formation or seal.”
“What if I really can’t get out?”
“In immortal worlds, seals last thousands or tens of thousands of years—might as well be dead!”
His mind, which had nearly collapsed, regained some clarity thanks to the stimulation of this unfamiliar white hell gate.
He stared at the completely solidified mass beside him—woven from golden-red crystals and rune chains—and tried to use creative mode’s levitation.
However, as in Minecraft, any block other than liquid obstructed flight mode.
Fang Zheng tried to raise his hand; even bound by this gem-like restraint, his block arm moved as if passing through sand in Minecraft, unaffected by the binding.
With rapid swings of his blocky hand, the countless law chains in this suppression zone shattered without resistance, forming a block-sized gap identical to Minecraft blocks.
Watching the tiny gem shards vanish into thin air during the breakage, Fang Zheng’s anxiety eased slightly, allowing him some peace of mind.
The blocky pixel body he had hated so much in the Minecraft world now brought him an indescribable sense of security in this new realm.
He pondered, “Does creative mode’s block-breaking ability work here too?”
“Good, then I’m relieved.”
“Roar!”
“Chirp!”
As Fang Zheng rapidly punched block-sized gaps into the solidified gem, the countless runes in the giant golden-red gem mountain, which had slowed to a near halt, suddenly flared wildly to life, and the outside Vermilion Bird’s cry and White Tiger’s roar grew deafening.
The Vermilion Bird’s divine flames, capable of burning the void and extinguishing all heavens and paths, and the White Tiger’s murderous aura, radiating endless destructive power like a divine executioner’s blade, instantly fused as one.
Entwined by the chains of laws, the White Tiger and Vermilion Bird shadows outside, attempting to return to the city, poured their supreme oppressive divine power into the mountain.
In an instant, all the law chains flowing within the golden-red gem mountain erupted into a violent frenzy.
These chains continuously rearranged, combined, and transformed, eventually forming a fragmented Four Symbols killing array.
This formation, like a giant hydraulic press composed of levers and gears, compressed the full power of the White Tiger and Vermilion Bird shadows into a terrifying assault capable of suppressing top human cultivators.
Immediately, this dreadful force surged toward Fang Zheng, who was still digging a path through the gem, aiming to annihilate him utterly with the combined might of the Vermilion Bird’s divine flame and the White Tiger’s killing power, leaving no trace behind!