Lu Yin stared at the empty space as he memorized the coordinates. Just now, he had really wanted to ask Hong Xia if he had ever heard of the Hymn of Death and if he had seen a group of white skeletons dancing around a corpse.
But he had refrained from asking. Even if Hong Xia had seen it, so what? Would he care? He was a traitor who, even after his betrayal, had wanted to utterly destroy his own civilization.
“That location... it would be best if you do not go there,” Jiu Wen called out.
Lu Yin looked over. “Senior, do you know where it is?”
Jiu Wen shook his head. “Hong Xia doesn’t do useless things.”
Lu Yin let out a helpless sigh. “If I want to get a clear picture of the members of Obscura, I have to go. There’s no other choice.”
As Jiu Wen looked at Lu Yin, his expression fell. “I’m sorry. We old men are useless, forcing a child like you to charge into the fray.”
Lu Yin smiled. “Senior, don’t say that. I’ll be going now, but no matter what, since I can teleport, escaping won’t be a problem.”
Jiu Wen watched as Lu Yin vanished, his eyes peering into the megaverse and the countless people within it. For the sake of scheming against Hong Xia, Jiu Wen had paid far, far too much. But ultimately, the final step still had to be taken by someone else.
Lu Yin, no matter the outcome, live well.
***
The coordinates that Hong Xia had given were extremely far away from both the Crimson Starshade Megaverse and the Human Trio. Lu Yin needed to teleport nearly 100 times just to get close. Even with the ability to teleport, it was still a vast distance.
After all, the maximum range that he could go with each teleportation was as far as what an average Immortal could travel in twenty years. That meant that even an Immortal might take over 1,000 years to reach these locations.
Even the Crimson Starshade Megaverse and the Trio were only 300 years’ travel apart.
The Seven-Treasure Anuras, the Seal-Eater Civilization, and others suddenly seemed very, very close to the Trio.
Despite that, even these “close” distances were difficult for the Immortals of the Trio to see clearly across. Being able to affect something with an attack was one thing, while being able to see it was something else entirely.
Cultivators were wary of peering across vast distances. Green Lotus and the others would not look into distant points of the cosmos without reason, lest something unexpected occur.
Civilizations did not communicate with each other, nor did they stare each other down.
Even this vast distance was tiny when compared to the Aevum Inch as a whole. At the very least, Lu Yin still could not see any hint of an end.
He was also grateful to Ba Se for something that they had once said: to Obscura, there is no cosmic ecosystem.
If Obscura had a specific territory and the coordinates from Hong Xia were for a location within that territory, then Obscura’s region of the cosmos would be absurdly vast. Other territories would need to be similarly vast, which would mean that the Aevum Inch was far more infinite than he imagined.
For any civilization, an Immortal was already a peak existence. For such beings to struggle to even reach one another, such distances actually made sense. Otherwise, Immortals would constantly encounter each other, and the cosmos as a whole would have long since fallen into chaos.
In such a situation, even fishing civilizations would have no need to fish; they would simply stumble onto prey wherever they went.
The bigger the Aevum Inch was, the more reasonable this theory became.
Lu Yin stood in the middle of nowhere and peered into the distance. His eyes widened little by little as he stared in near disbelief. What... is that?
By using his Mirrorlight Art, he could just barely make out a place up ahead. There, a giant was cooking.
Lu Yin rubbed his eyes. Yes, he was seeing a sky-high giant... cooking?
He watched as the giant skillfully created a stir-fry on a huge stove. The creature occasionally used a spatula and other tools to mix things around. Lu Yin felt that the entire situation was utterly absurd.
To begin with, why a giant? The giant had the form of a human, but why a giant? It was a green giant whose face was blurred, as though someone had smeared paste over it. There were no distinct features, yet the creature was undeniably humanoid.
The bizarre and absurd scene stunned Lu Yin into complete shock.
Just what was going on? This was the location indicated by the coordinates that Hong Xia had given him... could this be a human who had received a part of the Nine Ramparts’ legacy?
Lu Yin stared for a long while before returning to his senses. Regardless of the situation, since this creature had a human form, he needed to communicate with it.
A single teleportation delivered him near the stove. The flame was a mirebound artifact that boiled the void, endlessly incinerating the nearby cosmos. The temperature was hot enough to turn even a Dukkhan to ash.
The spatula kept stir-frying, though the ingredients were a Mother Tree.
Lu Yin stared at the chopped up Mother Tree atop the stove. It really was a Mother Tree. Is a Mother Tree being cooked?
Compared to the giant, Lu Yin was smaller than an ant. He stepped onto the stove. The flames consumed almost all of the visible sky, completely blocking his vision as the endless sound of food being stir-fried rang like thunder in his ears.
There was a fragrant scent. It was incredibly delightful, to an eerie extent.
How could a Mother Tree be cooked as food?
Lu Yin teleported to the chopped up Mother Tree and placed a hand against it. A moment later, motes of green light surged into his body.
He had been gathering these green motes of light from Mother Trees for some time, though he could not bear to harm ones which were growing healthily. This one had already been uprooted and chopped up, so he would let dust return to dust and earth return to earth.
When the motes of green light were absorbed, the remains of the Mother Tree gradually turned to ash.
At this moment, a hand fell from high above Lu Yin, looking like it was reaching for the Mother Tree. It grabbed a few times, and then the giant looked down. Where is the tree? The tree’s gone.
The giant was clearly stunned as they stared down at the stove. Eyes seemed to appear on the featureless face.
Lu Yin continued to stand on the stove as he looked up at the giant. The two locked gazes.
“A human?” the giant roared. They pulled the spatula out from the pan and viciously slammed it down, as if swatting a fly.
Lu Yin’s pupils shrank. That voice!
He immediately teleported away. The giant swung the spatula in a sweeping arc, quickly finding Lu Yin again, only for him to teleport away again. The spatula missed, and the giant exclaimed in shock, “Teleportation?”
“Furball?” Lu Yin blurted, staring at the giant in a daze.
It had spoken with Furball’s voice.
The giant gaped at Lu Yin. “You?”