Chapter 4329: That Eye |
Vestigium was silent. No one spoke again.
Lu Yin waited for a while, but still, no one spoke. Ba Se knew that Lu Yin was present, yet they remained silent.
Several more days passed without anyone in Vestigium speaking, so Lu Yin left.
He pushed the lid of his coffin open and scanned his surroundings. After a moment, he peered across the distance to look at the forest of Mother Trees.
Huh? Where’s the Mother Tree forest? Lu Yin’s eyes bulged. It’s gone?
A single teleport brought him to where the forest had once stood, and then he used the Mirrorlight Art to peer into the distance. He scanned every direction but still found nothing. Had Furball taken the forest away?
Lu Yin felt irritated. If only he had absorbed the motes of green light before. What a waste; there had been so many Mother Trees.
Unwilling to accept this outcome, he surveyed his surroundings again and then shook his head helplessly. He had miscalculated. Furball really had moved quickly, but they could not run forever. Next time he found them, he would make sure to absorb the Mother Trees’ green light first.
He would definitely find them again.
“Have you heard?” Lu Yin stared at Hong Xia. “That last location is now meaningless. I still want to keep looking for Furball.”
Hong Xia gave him three more coordinates.
“Why not give me more?”
“The more there are, the lower the odds are that you’ll find it. Aren’t you afraid I’ll cause your death?”
Lu Yin laughed. “I’m still rather confident in myself. If you really have so many places that can kill me, I’ll surrender.”
If Hong Xia wanted to eliminate Lu Yin, he might have prepared one or two death traps or given him the locations of powerful civilizations, but it could not be many. Lu Yin was able to teleport, which meant that anything capable of dealing with him either needed to be a three-law Immortal, some creature capable of ignoring distance, or one with an exotic ability.
How many such existences could there be?
The Soft Megaverse could be counted as one, so at best, Hong Xia might have one other place that could threaten Lu Yin.
Hong Xia did not give Lu Yin any additional coordinates. As Lu Yin had said, where would so many come from? Giving out random locations was meaningless, as the ability to teleport meant that Lu Yin was not really wasting any time traveling.
Besides that, Hong Xia wanted Lu Yin to stir up more trouble in order to force out the hidden mastermind.
That was why Lu Yin was certain that Hong Xia would help him find Furball, though it was also possible that Hong Xia was still trying to see if he could get Lu Yin killed.
“Let me remind you of something,” Hong Xia said, “I told you that Green’s location is definitely among the coordinates I gave you, but I never said that only one of the locations was correct.”
Lu Yin smiled. “There’s still one left from the four that you gave me before. That’s what you’re hinting at, isn’t it? You want me to go search that last one? Impossible. No matter what, I’m not going to that location.”
“As you wish.” With that, Hong Xia left.
Lu Yin checked the three new sets of coordinates. One could say that these represented the knowledge of the Aevum Inch that Hong Xia had accumulated over countless years. Little by little, Lu Yin was seeing through the man.
He once again scrambled the coordinates, picked one at random, and then teleported away.
Again, he found nothing at the location. Lu Yin was left speechless. He was now completely sure that Hong Xia had not left Crimson Starshade for a very, very long time. If he had, the locations that he provided should not all lead to nothing.
As he stared at the megaverse before him, Lu Yin felt a faint chill of dread. This megaverse had just been reset. The stars were continuously collapsing into spatial rifts, making it obvious.
However, the dread that he felt did not come from the reset itself, but rather from an aura that lingered within the megaverse. It was not Stillness, and yet it still terrified Lu Yin. It had to be a power that belonged to a fishing civilization.
Was it a native fishing civilization, or had a foreign civilization attacked this megaverse?
Lu Yin traveled through the megaverse, and after half a month, he was able to confirm that this entire megaverse had belonged to a fishing civilization. This was because he could sense that same dread-inducing power from many remote corners, indicating that the energy had permeated the megaverse due to the presence of a civilization over an immense span of time. A foreign civilization could not have blanketed an entire megaverse in such a manner.
A fishing civilization had been destroyed. Who had attacked them? It was a chilling thought.
This had been a native fishing civilization. Obscura and the Death Megaverse were also both fishing civilizations, but there could be a vast difference in the strength of fishing civilizations. Compared to the Immortal Plume Civilization or Obscura, the Blacklight Civilization had been pathetically weak.
Even so, the Blacklight Civilization had been qualified to be considered a fishing civilization. Their legacies included their Darksky Seal and Life Overreach, which allowed them to produce an endless line of Aberrants and Immortals. If not for Ancestor Shan simply being too powerful as an Immortal who had resonated with three cosmic laws, not all of the Blacklight Civilization’s Immortals would have been slaughtered, and their civilization would not have suffered such a tragic fate.
Even so, they had still managed to rise back to power. If his human civilization had not intervened, the Seven-Treasure Anuras would have been the ones to be finished.
The Blacklight Civilization had been stronger than the Seven-Treasure Anuras, and that was something that not even Ancestor Shan, a supreme powerhouse, had been able to change. That was what it meant to be a fishing civilization.
Another civilization of that level had been completely destroyed, and the destruction was so thorough that their megaverse itself had been reset.
The Aevum Inch was vast beyond measure, and its endlessness was terrifying.
How many fishing civilizations had appeared so far? It seemed like a great many, but aside from the Blacklight Civilization, Lu Yin had not truly seen any of their full powers. Even if they did not feel distant from his home, that was only because he could teleport.
Without teleportation and specific coordinates, even if Lu Yin became an Immortal, it would be incredibly difficult for him to find this megaverse across the endless ages. According to his previous understanding of the cosmos, this was an entirely different ecological territory, and it was possible that there were other territories between it and Obscura’s.
He returned to Crimson Starshade and then proceeded on to the next location.
As before, he repeatedly teleported and stopped to look ahead before the last jump. He was still a distance of twenty years’ travel away, which would normally be a perfectly safe distance.
The Mirrorlight Art revealed no megaverse in the distance.
Hm? Lu Yin was surprised, and he looked again. After a moment, a gray silhouette entered his vision. He focused on it. Is that… a crow?
He was looking at an enormous crow. It was entirely gray, as if it had been carved from stone. Only the eyes on its forehead showed any appearance of life, looking fully animated. However, why were there so many eyes? Lu Yin was able to see three eyes, and there were also seven hollow sockets on the crow’s head. Those sockets had clearly once held eyes, but all of them had been gouged out.
A gigantic stone-like crow drifted in the emptiness of the Aevum Inch, with only three remaining eyes left. No matter how one looked at it, it was disturbing.
Furthermore, Lu Yin kept feeling like the crow was looking at him. The instant he saw the crow, the crow had looked back. It was looking at him, right? Look… look… look…
Puff!
He was suddenly unable to move. Lu Yin had been just about to teleport closer, only to discover that he was completely unable to move at all. His body had locked up, his eyes still fixed upon the crow. He simply could not move.
He poured his full strength into trying to move but was unable to budge even a single muscle. His body had been pinned in place. He could not even teleport. Physical strength was useless. He released his inner universe and tried to use Lightstream to escape, but not even the power of time could allow him to move.
A bead of sweat slid down his forehead. How was it impossible for him to move? He could not even move his eyes, and they were forced to maintain contact with the crow.
Right, eye contact. It’s that crow. The instant Lu Yin had seen the crow, it had also seen him, and its gaze prevented him from moving.
What was that thing?
There was a spike of helplessness in his chest. Ever since gaining the ability to teleport, his sense of security had exploded. He dared to believe that he could escape even from someone like Hong Xia. Even so, at this moment, he could not move at all.
Was this Hong Xia’s trap? What exactly was this crow?
Lu Yin kept trying to escape. In his vision, the crow’s eyes grew larger and larger, to the point where they seemed to overshadow the cosmos. He felt like he was about to be swallowed, like his body was being pulled in, or his mind and spirit were being sucked away. He had not felt such powerlessness in a very long time. Even when Hong Xia had tried to kill him, Lu Yin had at least been able to put up some sort of resistance.
Move. Move. Move!
Any power, anything at all, just move first!
He even tried to use his Tri-Azure Sword Intent to cut himself. He would happily take an injury if it meant he could move. It all failed.
Gradually, black lines appeared around him. Some were long, while others were short. They all seemed to extend towards him from the direction of the crow, crossing space and enveloping everything within a certain range. He was well within that range.
From a distance, it looked like a wall of black lines stretching across the cosmos, reaching from the crow to Lu Yin. It spanned a distance that an average Immortal could traverse in twenty years, which was simply an absurd distance. It only took a year to travel from the Nine Odysseys Megaverse to the Tianyuan, after all.
Lu Yin was within those lines. He did not feel any immediate danger, but he was still unable to move at all. All he could see, all he could think about, were the eyes of the crow.
Suddenly, one finger managed to twitch. Lu Yin’s eyes bulged. It was because of the motes of green light. The green lights that he had absorbed from the Mother Trees had just brushed against his finger, and it had moved.
Lu Yin quickly spread the green lights from his inner universe to cover his entire body.
The moment that was done, his body burst free, escaping from the range of the lines. When he looked back, the lines had vanished in an instant. He peered into the distance, but he did not use the Mirrorlight Art again. This meant that he was unable to see the crow, but he did not dare look at it. Given the distance, if he could see the crow, then the crow’s eyes could see him too.
Those eyes were why he had been paralyzed, unable to move.
Lu Yin quickly teleported away. When he reappeared, he was far away.
Gasping, he wondered what that thing might be. It had rendered him utterly powerless. If not for the motes of green light, he believed that he would have never been able to move again. Not even his physical strength or karma had been able to so much as budge him. Only the green lights had done anything.
Was this Hong Xia’s trap? To fix Lu Yin in place forever, unable to ever move? However, there had been no danger at all, aside from being completely immobilized. If that was really a trap intended to kill him, there should have been an attack while he had been incapacitated.
However, it could not be easy for Hong Xia to reach the same location that Lu Yin had just been in. It was too far away from Crimson Starshade.
The one who should have attacked was that crow, but aside from immobilizing him, it had done nothing. Why not?
Lu Yin stared into the distance and slowly steadied his breathing.
After thinking for a moment, he used Mirrorlight Art again after shifting to another location. He looked back again.
He saw the crow again, and as he looked at the crow, its eyes saw him as well.
Once more, Lu Yin was unable to move. His expression changed as he quickly shrouded his body with the green lights. As soon as he broke free, he teleported away, going elsewhere.
However, no matter where he moved, aside from moving directly behind the crow’s head and into its blind spot, any time he looked at the crow, its eyes would look back at him. It felt as if all of his movements were entirely within the crow’s field of vision.
That was not impossible. If the crow could see farther than Lu Yin could, then it made sense for it to monitor his movements.
However, why did the crow not attack?
If the crow had not immobilized him while never striking even during the first time that Lu Yin had looked at it, he would have never dared to continue probing it.
Was it possible that the crow was not a living creature?
He teleported back behind the crow, into its blind spot. He could not see its eye, and the eyes could not see him either.
Lu Yin stared at the crow’s gray form in the distance. It had no aura at all. Was it really just a stone statue?
He really wanted to approach and investigate further, but if it was not just a dead object, he would be in true danger.
OMA's Thoughts
Translated By: OMA
Edited By: Neshi/Nyxnox
TLC'ed By: OMA