Lu Yin took a sip of tea. As a species, humans cared about face. In many situations, right or wrong were not what mattered; what mattered was having an excuse. Even a ridiculous or laughable excuse was acceptable, so long as it justified the action.
In the end, everything still came down to the strong reigning supreme.
Shui Su’s experience was tragic, but it was certainly not unique. Through merging with the will of the megaverse, Lu Yin had witnessed the lives of countless cultivators in the Tianyuan Megaverse. Many had suffered even more than Shui Su. Everyone had their own unique journey.
Ordinary people possessed dreams that were impossible for even Immortals to achieve. Cultivators could similarly live lives that other cultivators either envied or pitied.
Immortals might be able to live eternally, but they needed to resonate with the laws of the cosmos. However, the cosmos did not belong to a single individual, but rather to all beings. If an individual could not resonate with those cosmic laws, then what about two people? Twenty? 20,000? 2 million? 200 million?
If a single person’s experience was insufficient to comprehend the Immortal realm, then what about 100? 10,000? 1 million? 100 million?
Lu Yin stared at the tea in his cup. He had cultivated for a very short amount of time. If he followed conventional paths, comprehending Immortality and overcoming Dukkha would have taken him at least 10,000 years. But from the very beginning of his journey, every step that he took had been different. Others’ paths simply did not apply to Lu Yin at all. Since that had always been the case, forging a new path to the Immortal realm might not be impossible.
Dukkha was something that had to be endured, whether through a megaverse reset or one’s own breakthrough. This trial was difficult to avoid, nor did one wish to avoid it. Yet through the experiences of countless individuals, one could forge a towering wall of hardship for oneself. Everyone has their own Dukkha. Dukkha was not a realm of cultivation, but a path of the heart, a process of life itself.
If every person’s individual struggles were built into a singular wall, then overcoming even a single struggle might allow Lu Yin to break into the Immortal realm.
Lu Yin did not know if his thoughts were accurate, but even if he was wrong, understanding others’ experiences would be helpful for overcoming his own Dukkha.
As he thought, he looked up at the sky. As he did so, the universe itself changed. He slowly raised a hand and reached for Shui Su.
She stared at him blankly, not daring to even move despite not knowing what Lu Yin was about to do.
She also did not think too deeply about what Lu Yin might do. Despite being confident in her appearance, he was Lu Yin, the same man who did not care about even the Seven Fairies. What kind of woman could he not have?
Lu Yin’s hand moved past Shui Su to touch the sky behind her. A brick appeared there. It looked so familiar. He remembered dismantling the karmic wall, brick by brick. This time, when constructing a wall of the heart, it would once again be brick by brick.
He truly seemed fated to have a connection with bricks.
Once, he had torn them down. This time, he was building them up. Interesting.
The wall of the heart began with its first brick: Shui Su. She had endured the struggles of being an independent cultivator, only to gain the fortune of joining a family, but then suffered the pain of displacement and the sorrow of parting with her loved ones. She was also an old acquaintance of Lu Yin’s. No one could be more suitable.
One day, when his wall of the heart was complete, would he be able to overcome it and enter the Immortal realm?
Lu Yin did not know, yet he knew that this path of the heart was one he would have to walk sooner or later. Shui Su was the perfect catalyst.
Several days later, Lu Yin looked farther downstream. “The river’s changed.”
The day before, Shui Su had tried to bid Lu Yin farewell, but he had not allowed her to leave. He wanted to meet Lin Jie.
The reason why Lin Jie had warmly invited Shui Su to stay with the Linlushan family was because he believed that she had a close relationship with Lu Yin. While the man had later learned that this was not the case, he had already formed a bond like that of father and daughter with Shui Su, and he could not sever it.
Lu Yin’s idea to construct a wall of the heart had originated from Shui Su. She had inspired him, and so he intended to repay that favor.
“That is the Fifteen-Family Alliance!” Shui Su exclaimed.
Lu Yin was surprised. “The Fifteen-Family Alliance?”
Shui Su nodded, her expression turning grave. “To survive the civilizational wars and the arrival of cultivators from the Tianyuan, fifteen cultivator families united. I’d almost forgotten about them, but they shifted the river so that it now runs straight through the Fifteen-Family Alliance’s territory. Lord Lu, we...”
She was with Lu Yin. Who was qualified to make him alter his path?
Let alone the Fifteen-Family Alliance—even the strongest faction in the East Domain, the Dream Dominion, was not qualified to do so.
“Drink your tea,” Lu Yin said with a hint of a smile.
Shui Su let out a breath as she nodded. Looking back at the territory belonging to the monstrous Fifteen-Family Alliance in the distance, an unprecedented sense of security enveloped her. She had never imagined that she would one day pass straight through such a colossal faction.
No one could stop them. So long as she was with this man, whatever he said would become reality.
In the distance, Lord Feng and the others were still watching. “They actually went in.”
“Lord Feng, is that person really going to challenge the Fifteen-Family Alliance?”
“Let’s go. We’ll first visit the Dong family to see what they do from there.”
“What if this person isn’t too powerful?” Geng Zi asked.
Lord Feng’s eyes grew cold. “We’ll decide after seeing what happens.”
It was not so easy to take what belonged to him. Otherwise, how could he continue to survive in Wuyang City?
The bamboo raft soon approached the Fifteen-Family Alliance’s strongholds. Each family had their own massive structure that resembled a mountain fortress, all of which was encircled by a sourcebox array. A glance was enough for Lu Yin to see that the formation was quite decent and had likely been arranged with the help of an Array Grandmaster.
The Fifteen-Family Alliance? There were a great many gathered together.
From the time he had started cultivating, Lu Yin had never seen so many families form an alliance without fear of internal conflict. The only possibility was that one of the families in the alliance was exceptionally powerful and completely suppressed all the others.
As the small raft drew closer, a loud shout rang out from afar, “This is the Fifteen-Family Alliance! Outsiders are not permitted to enter. Stop!”
“Stop!”
“Stop...”
Shout after shout echoed across the distance, the voices purposely sounding intimidating.
Shui Su’s previously tense expression had already relaxed. Without Lu Yin, she would not even have dared to so much as glance at this place, let alone draw near it. Instead, the feeling of relying on the power of another felt remarkably good.
Lu Yin was unbothered by the challenges, and he instead simply examined the fortress with open interest. It looked like a bandit stronghold. Fifteen families uniting together led to an imposing appearance, and in the eyes of many minor figures, they formed a major faction. However, the alliance was greatly lacking when compared to a true faction, and it could not be considered to even exist on the same level.
Even if the overall number of experts was similar, numbers were ultimately useless.
A true faction possessed a legacy that could be passed down, whereas the Fifteen-Family Alliance could not put together a full inheritance. This was their greatest flaw.
The raft continued downstream. The distant aura of intimidation grew stronger, and some attacks were even launched, but none of them were able to even approach the small raft. All of the attacks simply vanished, leaving the members of the Fifteen-Family Alliance dumbfounded.
The raft even passed right through their sourcebox array.