Tang Jie quickly made up his mind and began to turn toward the west. This was the location of the Open Gate, the key to the formation. Only here could he control the formation and find more traces of the past master of this place.
As he sprinted there, he was assailed by countless insects, but Tang Jie ignored them, punching his way through and crushing all these bugs.
But as he advanced, more and more insects came his way, recklessly hurling themselves at him as if he was some rare and precious food.
Tang Jie was delighted rather than worried, as this meant that he was drawing closer and closer to his objective, forcing the formation to protect itself.
In the middle of his mad rush, a green mass appeared ahead: a pack of mantises flying toward him at a low altitude.
The blades of the mantises seemed suitable for cleaving apart the skies, and Tang Jie felt an inexplicable sense of peril as they swung toward him. They were even more difficult to deal with than the ants, forcing Tang Jie to use the Combat Emperor Catalog to destroy them all.
Once the mantises were dead, Tang Jie charged forward again, and this time, he ran into a toad.
Although he knew that this was just an ordinary toad, while he was miniaturized, the toad was an enormous being. It was so huge that Tang Jie had to lean back to look up at it, as if he was gazing at some sky-obscuring behemoth.
The toad opened its mouth, a crimson tongue shooting out like a bolt of lightning. Tang Jie roared and punched, but he found that his punch didn’t really do anything. Thwarted, the toad pulled back its tongue and then hopped over, trying to squash Tang Jie.
Tang Jie tumbled through the air before crashing to the ground in a plume of dust, smashing a crater in the ground. But Tang Jie knew that while this crater seemed large, if he were at his original size, it probably wouldn’t even be deep enough to fit his fingertip.
Yet given that this was a small world, his original body, which was on par with an ant, was already a giant, his every movement shaking the world.
Tang Jie couldn’t help but think that “heaven-shaking” was all relative. If he were viewing this battle from a higher perspective, he would think that it was just two ants fighting.
He had actually understood this principle long ago, but there was a clear difference between that surface-level understanding and the profound realization he had reached just now.
Tang Jie felt like he had comprehended something, viewing the flowers, grass, and breeze before him in a whole new light.
But he couldn’t put this comprehension into words.
The toad continued its pursuit, opening its mouth and shooting out its tongue.
Tang Jie reached out and grabbed it.
He looked at the toad and said, “No matter how big you are, you’re still just a toad.”
With a light wave of his hand, he cut open that previously tenacious tongue.
The toad leaped up in pain, but it no longer posed a threat to Tang Jie, who ignored it and kept going.
He felt like he had comprehended something, but it felt different from comprehending a Dao.
It was difficult to describe this strange and exotic feeling.
It felt like a Dao, yet not a Dao.
Unable to figure out what it was, he could only go with the flow, immersing himself in the experience as he slowly walked along.
His speed was much slower than before, but with each step, he covered as much distance as the stride of an ordinary person. At that moment, it seemed that he was completely unaffected by his miniaturized form.
After walking for some distance, Tang Jie finally saw a large cave up ahead.
He called it large, but from a normal person’s perspective, it was only about the size of a fist.
Tang Jie suddenly understood why he hadn’t been able to find the hidden estate of the Five Origins Estate. It had been here all along, but it was just so small that nobody would pay it any attention or believe that it was the size of a fist.
This was the location of the Miniaturization Formation’s Open Gate.
Tang Jie moved to enter the cave, but just as he was about to go in, two giant snakes emerged from the left and right.
These were the biggest creatures Tang Jie had run into here, appearing like dragons swimming out of the clouds. Their triangular, scaled heads emerged from the clouds, revealing their house-sized eyes and rainbow-sized tongues.
Even real dragons wouldn’t give off this aura, would they?
For two such massive creatures to appear would make anyone feel helpless.
But Tang Jie simply muttered, “In a miniature world, snakes are like dragons. Then in the Stellar Net Chiliocosm, could there be an even higher level of existence? From the perspective of that world, would dragons appear like snakes?”
As Tang Jie muttered, a strange feeling welled up in his heart.
He sensed that this formation’s real goal wasn’t to stop intruders, but to tell something to those who came after.
The two snakes prevented him from continuing on this line of thought, slithering over and opening their jaws.
Tang Jie looked at the giant snakes and said, “I’m someone from a higher plane who has descended to the lower plane. Do you beasts really think you can bully me?”
He thrust out a finger.
Rather than his impressive physical strength, he used a spell art with this finger.
The Star Finger, a Mortal Shedding spell art.
As a body cultivator, Tang Jie was stuck at Cognitive Creation, which meant that he couldn’t use any powerful spells. While he could still use spell arts of the Cognitive Creation Tier and below, spell arts of this level were nothing compared to a punch, so he basically didn’t use them.
But now, he did.
In normal circumstances, while miniaturized, this level of spell art would have had no effect against this sort of “big snake”. Now, however, those two stars flying from his finger instantly punched bloody holes through the snakes, causing them to hiss in pain.
Tang Jie frowned, unsatisfied.
In his normal state, his Star Finger would have utterly slain an ordinary snake.
But the finger strike just now had only transcended the limits of his body, not restored him to his original state.
Though Tang Jie was dissatisfied, he simply threw a few punches to kill the two snakes and then stepped into the cave.