The man observed Yue Ya for a moment and then placed a hand on his chest and offered a slow bow. “If I startled you, I truly apologize. I am here hoping that you will do me the courtesy of returning my belongings to me.”
Yue Ya continually retreated while remaining intently focused on the unknown man. “Exactly who are you?”
The man revealed a bit of frustration. “It’s inconvenient for me to say, and I am also unable to explain. After all, you have not yet reached that level.
“If you must have a name, you may call me Che.”
Yue Ya failed to make sense of what “that level” meant. He had succeeded in becoming one of the Lesser Sancti, meaning that he was just one step away from breaking through to become an Immortal. Could this man possibly be an Immortal?
“Are you an Immortal?”
Che just smiled and placed a hand on his chest before offering another bow. “I still must ask you to do me the courtesy of returning my belongings to me.”
“What belongings?” Yue Ya stopped questioning the man’s power. Yue Ya just wanted to get away from Che.
“The fragment of my Starforged Sword,” Che slowly stated.
Yue Ya was shaken. The Starforged Sword. It had taken him and the people of Ruler Garden tremendous effort to shatter that sword. Yue Ya had assumed that the sword was a living creature, but no, it was merely this Che’s weapon.
Without any hesitation, Yue Ya flung the shard of the sword that he had picked up at Che. Yue Ya’s first and only priority was to transform his manifested thought, and thus he cared about nothing else for the time being.
Che caught the fragment and smiled at Yue Ya. “Thank you.”
The man then stepped back, gradually vanishing from sight.
Yue Ya remained lost in a daze until well after the man had disappeared.
Was Che really an Immortal? If so, where had he come from? Why had he been so polite? Multiple questions filled Yue Ya’s mind as he turned to stare in the direction o fthe Nine Odysseys Megaverse.
While both the Greater Sancti and Lesser Sancti embodied the will of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, the two titles were completely different.
The positions of the Lesser Sancti were constantly being fought over. Even someone from a lesser megaverse like the Spirit Nidus could be given the position of a Lesser Sancte. No matter how one looked at things, the Lesser Sancti existed to maintain balance between the different megaverses.
On the other hand, the Greater Sancti were almost never seen. Forget other people—even the Lesser Sancti found it difficult to meet with the Immortals.
Similarly, while many people and organizations were qualified to report to the Greater Sancti, did that mean that the Greater Sancti responded to every submitted report? Not even close. If the Greater Sancti decided to respond once out of every ten submitted reports, it would be considered remarkable.
This was even true for the Lesser Sancti’s reports.
The Greater Sancti had always been untouchable. The Immortals were truly above the mortals and were inaccessible.
Yet the Nine Odysseys Megaverse was of a limited size. Under its banner lay not only the Spirit Nidus, the Consciousness, and the Tianyuan megaverses, but also more remote ones. Those places shared the Spirit Nidus’s fate, having been harvested and dominated. It was clear at a glance that those megaverses had no future. In that case, why did the Greater Sancti remain so mysterious?
The more mysterious they were, the more everyone would clamor after the Greater Sancti. Who did not wish to achieve Immortality? Who did not want to rise up and become a Greater Sancte? It looked like it was rising to an entirely new level of existence.
Over the course of countless years, only the four Greater Sancti had ever risen to power. Their positions had remained forever unchanged. Even when one of the Immortals died, their vacant seat had been fought over, despite no one being confident that they could ascend to the Immortal realm.
If the Lesser Sancti were considered emperors among mortals, then the Greater Sancti truly reigned above all as gods.
If Che was truly an Immortal, then only the Greater Sancti might possibly know his origins.
After all, the common understanding was that the only Immortals around were the three Greater Sancti and Master Qing Cao.
Far away, Che stepped out before the High Seraph, and as the man stared on in astonishment, Che smiled and asked, “Is it you? No, it’s not you. You’re only one of them.
“Could you please return my belongings to me?”
The High Seraph’s eye twitched. “What belongings?”
“The fragments of the Starforged Sword.”
Gleaming shards appeared, and the High Seraph immediately returned them to Che.
Che nodded. “Thank you.”
He then stepped back, and slowly vanished from sight.
When he next appeared, he was quite close to Boundless. “There are two fragments left; one is here, but the other...”
He looked toward the megaverse’s boundary, his gaze seemingly piercing the megaverse and even the Aevum Inch to see a figure who was rapidly moving along with the assistance of a springboard. “There it is. No matter, I can catch up.
“Hmm? Is this person cultivating? It would be inconvenient for them to be disturbed, so I’ll just wait a bit.”
He took a step forward and boarded Boundless. No one noticed Che’s arrival, even as his second step delivered him behind Lu Yin and Old Chief. The man then slowly leaned against a wall and smiled as he watched.
Not only did no one aboard Boundless notice Che’s arrival, but Lu Yin himself also remained unaware.
He once again Possessed Old Chief in order to experience the conscient’s memories.
It was incredibly difficult to alter the conscient’s memories to simulate the pressure from the palace. Lu Yin continuously experimented, constantly choosing new approaches. In the blink of an eye, months passed.
The more deeply that Lu Yin understood the vastness of Old Chief’s memories, the more powerless he felt. While the pressure resembled the pressure from the palace in the Willbound Spire: illusory, ethereal, and yet strong, there was nowhere to apply the pressure to. Lu Yin could not invert the pressure or form a memory string. But he needed to form a memory string to connect the two sensations and thereby invert them.
He could not forget Gui Shaoqing’s case either. If Lu Yin’s own memory string snapped, and he briefly entered a vegetative state, then the pressure from the palace’s memories would disappear. That also seemed like a viable path.
Lu Yin spent some time exploring this alternate route and attempted to snap a string of memories while retaining control of himself.
He still could not find any clues, nor could he achieve any sort of breakthrough.
Months of trials had resulted in a direction forward, but he encountered one wall after another. How long would he need to overcome them all? It would be an incredible length of time.
Old Chief suffered this entire time. He was certain that he was being repeatedly Possessed and having his memories scoured. It was torture. Not only was Old Chief’s life in Lu Yin’s hands, but not even the conscient’s memories were safe from the human.
It was agonizing to simply wait for death.
Che was also waiting. He had observed Lu Yin attempt every possible method to manipulate memory, only to fail at every attempt. Che shook his head in resignation; he could not wait any longer. If he delayed any further, the other person would slip away. There was still one more fragment of his Starforged Sword that needed to be recovered. He could not allow his loyal weapon that had accompanied him through so many life or death battles to remain incomplete.
With that thought, Che softly commented, “By changing form, one can change the function.”