Chapter 2076 - 2076. Shards
It was hard to describe the scenes reflected on the shattered transparent piece of sky. Words were unsuitable for worlds, let alone for everything that came after them.
The area was a mess of blackness and destruction disrupted only by the old rulers' orange glow and the random lights released by the privileged cultivators. The situation announced the need to run away with everything it featured, but Noah couldn't move.
Noah had merely gazed at the reflections on the transparent sky. Those shards continued to work while the explosion pushed them toward the void, so he could see the currents of energy that they had initially inspected.
The meanings carried by that energy were different, and most of them weren't even close to suiting his existence. However, Noah didn't need to learn from them. He only had to understand what lay beyond the ninth rank, and that mere glance was enough to reveal a lot.
Everything in the universe worked according to different laws. Some were vast or deep enough to become worlds, and they expressed that superior power through a denser and purer form of energy.
Still, that was only one side of the system. The universe worked like the worlds and followed a path that cultivators wouldn't normally approach. There was a lack of wills in the laws that ruled the void and the matter immersed inside it. Everything functioned because that was its nature. It was possible to see traces of an actual personality and character only when an external force tried to override those innate purposes.
Noah could gaze at forms of energy that went beyond his understanding. He felt unable to study them due to the lack of time, distance, and limitations that his current rank brought. Yet, their interactions with the void revealed part of their secrets, and that was more than enough for him since he could draw conclusions on his own afterward.
The cultivators didn't respect the rules of that system. The worlds and the universe featured a series of laws and true meanings fused to give birth to specific features. Still, those natures were never obtained randomly or developed through training and similar efforts.
The universe knew how it was supposed to work, and the same went for the worlds inside it. Everything was a complicated array that featured shallow forms of energy and laws so deep that even Noah struggled to recognize them. Together, they created what existed and non in a balanced environment that kept expanding.
The deeper powers didn't claim massive amounts of energy. They definitely appeared mighty and scary, but those features didn't come from what they contained.
'It's not what they have,' Noah realized. 'Their power comes from their ability to shape the world according to their features. The void is supposed to be empty, so deep laws that involve meanings close to the non-existence have control of its space-time array.'
Noah immediately corrected himself. Those deep laws didn't have control of the void. That piece of the universe had become the void he knew because specific meanings had shaped it like that.
That influence went beyond what the cultivators' worlds could do. Those deep laws had no interest in gaining more power, and they didn't even affect their surroundings on purpose. However, the environment changed and replicated their features simply because they existed.
Noah tried to compare and translate those effects to apply his findings to the cultivation journey. The ninth rank featured personal worlds with special features. Some were simple, while others were highly complicated. Still, they had a common aspect. They were all unique and impossible to replicate.
Even powerhouses like Heaven and Earth couldn't copy an existing world. The cultivators were simply creators of new laws that didn't naturally exist in the universe. Their sole existence expanded the scope of all creation and granted a constant flow of different meanings.
The universe grew thanks to the cultivators, and that process wasn't a mere expansion. Everything learnt from those experts improved its understanding of the balance that it naturally tried to achieve.
The universe actually felt alive, but Noah felt able to refuse those thoughts. The cosmos had innate purposes but no wills. It simply existed and strived to preserve the balance.
The cultivators' role in that immense and seemingly welcoming environment was to bring their worlds to the point when they could shape their surroundings. They couldn't just infect the matter around them. The change had to be far deeper. The very rules of the universe had to change because of the experts' power.
'How can anyone ever reach that point?' Noah wondered. 'This goes beyond the power of influence. Our worlds would need to become proper rules of the universe to touch that level.'
His thoughts contained the answer he needed, but they didn't tell him how to reach it. Noah knew how to grow stronger inside the ninth rank, but the tenth wanted more from him. He would basically need to accept to be a part of the universe, which sounded wrong after spending countless years improving his individual power.
'What about the arrays then?' Noah wondered. 'Are they mere catalogs that keep track of all the laws that appear in the universe? It would make sense, but there also has to be a corresponding level for cultivators, unless no one has ever reached it.'
Worlds and cultivators followed different paths, but they shared similar features. Moreover, they had the same checkpoints when it came to their power.
Noah felt that he would be as powerful as the entire higher plane once he reached the peak of the ninth rank. Of course, he wasn't considering Heaven and Earth in that comparison, but they were a variable that other worlds probably didn't have.
Noah could see himself as a force that continuously modified the universe in the higher ranks. He had seen waves of energy achieving that, so the cultivators had to get somewhere close to that. The issue came after those in-between levels. If the arrays were the apex of the journey past the ninth rank, what was the corresponding level for experts like him?
A few explanations appeared in his mind. One saw cultivators transforming into arrays and helping the universe in its pursuit of balance. That made a lot of sense. There had to be a limit to what those structures could calculate after experiencing the birth of many new meanings.
Noah didn't really like that hypothesis. He didn't work so hard only to become an overseer of the universe's balance. He guessed that there had to be other paths available, with one of them being the possibility of creating an entirely new environment that didn't follow the rules set by the existing arrays.
The waves of thoughts that had filled Noah's mind had made the single and short glance at the images reflected the transparent shards feel like an eternity. Less than a second had passed since the old rulers had opened a path for the other side of the explosion, but he still experienced everything as if he had the chance to let his mind wander for entire centuries.
Noah noticed that his potential had empowered his mind on its own to deal with the massive amount of information, but that thinking speed remained unusual. He couldn't help but blame the scene for that strange phenomenon, but the old rulers eventually put an end to it.
A series of runes came out of the old rulers' body and enveloped the two figures before activating a teleport. Noah's glimpse on the future path vanished in no time, and it took him a while to decide to snap back to reality.
The old rulers had brought them above the orange city, which quickly left the sky and allowed it to close. The mission had been short but worth it. Noah had gained a new perspective about the cultivation journey.. Part of him even wanted to start testing ways to achieve the same deep influence witnessed in the transparent shards.