“Your perseverance is laughable in the face of time itself.”
The others stared at Huo Chong with conflicted expressions. Civilization, purpose... was it all nothing more than a joke?
“Life is nothing more than the pursuit of your own desires, nothing more.” Huo Chong shook his head. Those bleak words were the last he left behind before turning to walk towards the gate.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate stood by the gate, watching his every step. “You’re not wrong. It is just a process.”
Huo Chong froze and looked up at the woman.
The others also turned to look at her.
She spoke slowly. “But in this process, I can choose to live in mediocrity, or I can choose to live brilliantly. I can choose destruction, or I can choose to protect. When you die, that is not true death. True death comes only when no one in the cosmos remembers you.”
“Are you trying to lecture me?” Huo Chong scoffed, his tone dripping with disdain, as though he had already seen through all of reality.
Awe Gate’s voice was calm. “There is a life called Huo Chong, and there is a life called Lu Yin. Which will you choose?”
Huo Chong trembled. He stared ahead, his eyes blank. He looked like he had just suffered a crushing blow that left him paralyzed.
Qin Wudi and the others exchanged glances, their expressions showing their conflicted feelings. If life really was meaningless, wouldn’t there be no difference?
But who would not choose to be Lu Yin? Even Huo Chong himself would rather be Lu Yin.
A single question had shattered his delusions.
Master Xian stared intensely at Greater Sancte Awe Gate. So this is why she could become an Immortal.
She can see farther than any of us.
...
Soon, another half year flashed by. During this time, any time Lu Yin Possessed a Netherfiend, he had immediately used Greater Sancte Awe Gate’s ability to send them within five meters of his own body so that he could extract the red energy.
From Hua Wuzui, Lu Yin had managed to understand the method behind fusing multiple spirit seeds. With that knowledge, he was able to better restrain the red energy, slowing the melting process for captured Netherfiends. That allowed him to siphon off even more energy.
Still, he was incapable of preventing the Netherfiends from melting away.
He had come to understand that what was actually melting the Netherfiends cultivators was not the energy inside of them, but rather the mysterious red line.
That red line which was invisible even to Greater Sancte Awe Gate.
The operations taking place throughout the Nine Odysseys Megaverse had forced the Netherfiends to go deeper into hiding. The moment that the Huo family and others had been captured, the Netherfiends had ceased all activity.
But even those efforts were useless. They were still unable to escape discovery, nor were they able to prevent Lu Yin from Possessing them.
...
In a mortal city, Yong Heng quietly enjoyed a bit of wine with a vacant expression.
Outside the city, two cultivators were engaged in a fierce battle, which kept the ordinary humans inside of the city too frightened to step foot outside.
The two cultivators had only just reached the level where they were able to freely move about the universe, which meant that they were creatures whom Yong Heng could snuff out with a glance. Despite that, he watched their fight with great interest.
He never looked away until the match was decided.
Recently, more and more Netherfiends had been found and captured. Yong Heng had assumed long ago that Lu Yin was Possessing the Netherfiends with the help of his mirebound artifact.
Without something like Yong Heng’s own mirebound artifact to counter Lu Yin’s ability, so long as Lu Yin could wield the Netherfiends’ power, they would not be able to escape from him anywhere in the same megaverse.
Yong Heng shook his head. It was a pity, but the Netherfiends were no longer reliable.
Obscura had already set their sights on the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, which meant that Yong Heng could only do his absolute best to uncover Silent Death.
Would Lu Yin become arrogant enough to try to use divine energy with his mirebound artifact to seek Yong Heng out? The man found himself rather looking forward to that possibility.
...
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Black droplets fell to the ground with soft splashes.
Looking upwards, the drops could be traced to a black branch of what looked like withered wood. It did not hang straight down but was instead coiled around a floating coffin in multiple layers.
It was a dark, shadowed place that looked like the ravine of a mountain. Faint beams of sunlight shone down, reflecting off of the falling droplets to produce a soft glow.
The floating coffin was bound in place by the branches. Within the coffin lay a desiccated body.
Suddenly, the eyes of that withered body opened. Within the red slitted eyes flickered the faintest ripple of emotion.
Where is this? A floating coffin?
It was Lu Yin looking through those eyes. He had Possessed this withered body.
Memories began to surge; there was numbness, monotony, and an endless waiting. Emotions started to overlap. The owner of the body had been gone for an unimaginably long time, which meant that his memories related to the outside world were only of the distant past.
He was in this coffin to participate in the Netherfiends’ experiments on fusing with multiple spirit seeds.
Excitement blossomed in Lu Yin’s heart. He had finally found the place.
Fusing with multiple spirit seeds was not a natural extension of cultivating spirit seeds. It was a technique that had been researched and developed. Lu Yin had Possessed so many Netherfiends, but only a rare few had been capable of fusing with multiple spirit seeds. Each one had been a name to remember. What of the rest? Had they never even attempted such a fusion, or had they failed?
Failure had to be the answer.
According to the memories of those who had failed, Lu Yin had managed to identify several experimental sites, but all of them had been moved. It had appeared that the experiments had been discontinued long ago.
It also seemed possible that they had never stopped, but regardless of whether the experiments had succeeded or failed, none had been released. As a result, Lu Yin had been unable to locate the current location of the Netherfiends’ experiments on fusing multiple spirit seeds.
Until now.
He was Possessing someone inside a floating coffin. There were multiple coffins around him, each of which had the black branches of a towering tree wrapped around it, and each of which contained a Netherfiend that was being used as a test subject for multiple spirit seed fusion. Two had succeeded, but just as Lu Yin suspected, they had not been allowed to leave the place yet.
The one presiding over the location was an old crone named Wu Er.
None of the memories revealed the old woman’s background, and Lu Yin had never heard of her name in the outside world either.
Still, Wu Er had lived for an unfathomably long time. Her image was the same as the figure that Lu Yin had seen in Hua Wuzui’s memories. She was the one who had experimented on him and enabled him to fuse with multiple spirit seeds.