Chapter 589: Obtaining the Eye of Truth

North America, the entrance to the extremely dangerous Weird Domain.

Lu Yu stood before that chaotic frontier, behind him the Federation had set up three isolation zones and over a dozen fully armed special police.

No one spoke to him.

No one dared to speak to him.

Not long ago, the fact that he had almost devoured the entire containment zone was known to everyone present.

Lu Yu lifted his foot and stepped inside.

His foot found nothing beneath it.

No ground. No gravity. No direction.

His body floated in some indescribable force for 0.3 seconds, then——all his senses were cut off simultaneously.

Vision disappeared.

Hearing disappeared.

Even pain disappeared.

Lu Yu's brain, in an extremely short time, judged: this was not weightlessness, but a deprivation at the level of rules. This Weird Domain was denying his existence.

Consciousness returned faster than his body.

He forcibly activated the Taotie Core; the black markings on his chest exploded, and the Devouring Rule spread outward, barely allowing him to carve out a small space of his own from that 'nothing'.

Finally, he felt substance under his feet.

But it was not the ground.

It was bone.

A dense carpet of white bone fragments covered everything within his sight; there were no gaps between the bones, as if they had been compacted for millions of years into a single solid slab.

Lu Yu lowered his head and glanced at his hand.

His uniform sleeve was torn; three wounds had appeared on his arm, deep enough to see bone, the edges blackened.

When did he get hurt?

He didn't know.

The moment he entered, his body had already been torn apart once.

Lu Yu raised his head.

In the distance. Far in the distance. There was the outline of a building.

That was the place he needed to go.

He took his first step.

As his foot touched the ground, the white bones beneath began to vibrate.

Lu Yu stopped.

From beneath the bone layer, from the depths he could not see, something was welling up.

The first thing to emerge was a hand.

A pallid, nail-less hand with joints bent backward, squeezed out from between two bone fragments.

Then a second. A third. A tenth.

Guardians.

Number undetermined. No head, no five senses, only a twisted humanoid shell driven by rules.

Their ability is simple—deprivation.

They deprive invaders of defense, strength, and perception until they are reduced to an empty husk.

The first wave that surged upward numbered over thirty.

Lu Yu did not retreat.

He didn't even deploy a domain.

The leading Guardian lunged at him, its pallid palm striking his shoulder.

Lu Yu felt a pulling sensation; the Taotie black markings on his shoulder were forcibly stripped away a layer, flesh turning over, blood spurting out.

Pain.

Very painful.

Lu Yu raised his left hand, fingers splayed, and seized the Guardian's throat.

His fingers tightened.

The Guardian's body did not shatter; some kind of rule force within it resisted the Taotie's devouring.

Lu Yu increased the force.

He choked it for three seconds.

The Guardian's shell finally cracked; rule fragments leaked from the cracks, which Lu Yu's Taotie Core swallowed clean.

First one, dealt with.

A second Guardian had already reached his back.

Its palm pressed against Lu Yu's back; the deprivation rule exploded. His back's defensive layer shattered entirely, the spine's sides torn open, blood trickling down from the hem of his clothes.

Lu Yu reached back and grabbed.

He yanked the second Guardian over and pressed it into the white bone layer on the ground.

Devour.

Rule fragments entered his body.

Third. Fourth. Fifth.

They won't stop; they keep welling up from an underground source.

Lu Yu's body was covered in wounds.

His left arm was torn in two places. His right rib exposed bone. Blood flowed from his brow, obscuring half his vision.

He was calculating.

The devouring speed of the Taotie Core, and the speed at which the gatekeepers surge forth— which is faster?

The answer is——currently even.

Not enough.

The building in the distance is still far. At this consumption rate, he can't reach it.

Lu Yu spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged breath.

Then he laughed.

That smile was utterly different from the gentle facade he usually put on. The corners of his mouth turned up, his teeth stained with his own blood, and the depths of his eyes were icy-cold madness.

"Alright."

He spoke. His voice was hoarse, choked by his own blood and off-key.

"Then don't hold back."

The Taotie Core ran at full power.

The black markings on his chest were no longer just wandering; they exploded.

Black power poured out from within Lu Yu, forming an ever-expanding domain around him.

Subdue Demon·Punishing Heaven.

The moment the S Ji domain unfolded, the white bone layer within a hundred-meter radius shattered completely.

Those gatekeepers surging up from underground hadn't even fully emerged before the devouring force at the domain's edge tore them into fragments, and the rule remnants were absorbed by the Taotie Core.

Lu Yu stepped forward.

Not walking.

But charging.

Wrapped in his own domain, he sprinted toward the distant building.

The number of gatekeepers kept increasing. Fifty. One hundred. Two hundred.

They came from all directions. Some from underground, some from above—here there was no gravity, so they could appear from any angle.

Lu Yu's domain was devouring them. But the cost was immense.

For each gatekeeper devoured, his Taotie Core had to digest the deprivation rules they carried. Those rules ran rampant inside him, tearing at the Taotie power.

His stomach churned. Not his stomach—his core. The Taotie Core was suffering indigestion.

He'd eaten too much.

Lu Yu clenched his back teeth.

A gatekeeper broke through the domain's boundary and pressed against his back.

The deprivation rules surged in.

Lu Yu's domain developed a gap. Immediately, a second and third gatekeeper surged in through the breach.

Their palms covered Lu Yu's body.

Six hands released deprivation simultaneously.

Lu Yu felt his blood flowing outward. Not just from his wounds, but his inner power was being drained.

A very familiar feeling.

In his past life, when that "god" toyed with him in the palm of its hand, it felt the same.

Being deprived. Being controlled. Being used as a pawn.

Lu Yu's eyes turned red.

Not loss of control.

It was anger.

"Although it's quite a strain......"

He spoke softly.

"But, it's enough!"

The domain suddenly contracted.

Not a collapse. It was active compression. All devouring force was compressed to within three centimeters of his body's surface, increasing density dozens of times.

The six gatekeepers clinging to his body didn't even have time to struggle before being ground into powder.

Lu Yu spat out a mouthful of blood.

Run.

Keep running.

The white bone beneath his feet shattered as he went. The building ahead drew nearer.

That wasn't a complete building. It was a temple mostly collapsed. Pillars broken. Dome cracked. Only a framework remained standing there.

But Lu Yu could see it.

In the deepest part of that temple, at the center of the ruins, stood a statue.

The statue's form is indescribable. Not because one doesn't want to describe it, but because human cognition cannot process that shape.

Lu Yu's gaze swept over the layers of rubble and locked onto the statue's brow.

There was light there.

White, soft, non-glaring light.

Eye of Truth.

There were still 300 meters to go.

The gatekeepers kept surging. Their number had already surpassed what he could count. The Weird Domain's exclusion mechanism operated at full force, hurling all mobilizable power at this uninvited guest.

Lu Yu's speed was decreasing.

There were too many wounds. Each leg had four or five lacerations, the left ankle bone was already exposed. The three fingers on his right hand had been corroded black by the deprivation rule, unable to bend.

150 meters.

An individual conspicuously larger than the other gatekeepers rose from the wreckage straight ahead.

It had two heads—both were empty. Above the neck was a smooth cross-section, with nothing there.

But its size was three times that of an ordinary gatekeeper.

When the palm came down, Lu Yu's domain was directly dented.

The strength of the deprivation rule was also threefold.

Lu Yu's right arm defense layer peeled off entirely. Skin and muscle rolled up, tendons snapped, white bone exposed.

He did not stop.

His left hand reached out, gripping the wrist of the massive gatekeeper.

Devour.

The Taotie Core spun wildly.

The rules inside the massive gatekeeper were resisting. Very strong. Stronger than any before.

Lu Yu's nose began to bleed. His ears were bleeding too.

He thrust his right hand, now nothing but white bone, straight into the massive gatekeeper's chest cavity.

Devouring from within.

Three seconds.

The massive gatekeeper shattered.

Lu Yu's body swayed.

50 meters.

He saw the temple's entrance.

Between the two broken stone pillars lay a spatial bulwark, visibly twisted. That bulwark was covered with rule patterns of the same origin as the gatekeepers.

Lu Yu ran to the bulwark.

He raised his right hand.

That could no longer be called a hand. The flesh had completely corroded away, leaving only five white bones and scattered remnants of fascia.

He clenched his fist.

He slammed it down.

The bulwark did not break.

Cracks appeared on Lu Yu's bony hand.

He threw another punch.

The cracks widened. Not the bulwark's cracks—his bone's cracks.

Third punch.

Finally, a fine crack appeared on the bulwark.

Lu Yu inserted his right hand, already half‑broken, into the crack.

Then—tear.

The bulwark was torn open by his bare hands.

Behind him, countless gatekeepers were closing in.

Lu Yu did not look back.

He turned sideways, squeezed through the opening, and fell into the temple's interior.

The spatial bulwark sealed shut behind him, keeping the gatekeepers outside.

The temple's interior was very quiet.

Quiet to an abnormal degree.

Lu Yu lay on the ground, panting for several seconds.

Blood seeped from his wounds all over his body. The stone floor was stained red in patches.

He pushed himself up from the ground into a sitting position.

A statue stood right ahead.

10 meters.

Lu Yu stood up. His left leg couldn't bear weight, so he dragged himself forward.

5 meters.

3 meters.

1 meter.

He stood before the statue.

He raised his right hand, now nothing but white bone.

On the statue's brow, the white‑glowing sphere sat peacefully embedded.

Lu Yu's fingertips touched its surface.

It was warm.

About the same as human body temperature.

His fingers hooked into the seam at the edge of the sphere.

Then he exerted force.

The Eye of Truth detached from the statue.

It fell into his palm.

At that moment, Lu Yu felt nothing.

Then all sensations surged in together.

Power poured out from that white sphere, flowing along his arm into his whole body. It was not a gentle infusion, but a flood-breaking impact.

Lu Yu's blood vessels were swelling. His muscles were reorganizing. Those wounds that had been stripped away and corroded were healing at a visible speed.

On the white bone of his right hand, tendons grew back. Then muscle. Then skin.

Lu Yu lowered his head to look at his recovering palm.

He clenched. Released. Then clenched again.

Power was abundant. More abundant than ever before.

The Taotie Core and the Eye of Truth resonated within his body, producing a certain wonderful balance.