Star Odyssey

Chapter 3846: Strange Phenomenon

The dark-gold cloud churned so violently that it was almost burning, which caught Lu Yin off guard. Yue Ya’s reaction to being imprisoned in the Champions' Stage Purgatory was unlike anyone else’s, but after a moment’s thought, Lu Yin understood why.

Normally, people were forced to relive their past while they were imprisoned in the Champions' Stage Purgatory, which would reopen old emotional wounds. Only conscients were able to disregard such torment.

However, Yue Ya was not even a living creature; he was pure manifested thought. Manifested thought had no history, and it existed solely in the present.

What Yue Ya had endured in the Champions’ Stage Purgatory had not been physical agony, but relentless thought. His manifested thoughts had churned until they had almost combusted. Lu Yin could not tell if Yue Ya had been tormented, numb, or utterly indifferent. Just imagine: what kind of torture would it be to have your mind forced to think non‑stop for more than ten days, as though your head might explode?

Lu Yin was unconcerned with how Yue Ya felt. The dark-gold cloud was enveloped by Lu Yin’s inner universe. With both Verdant Eternity and consciousness, the manifested thought was easily suppressed. Yue Ya suddenly shouted, “This time I’m being honest, Lu Yin! What do you want? I can help you become a Lesser Sancte! I can help the Tianyuan avoid being reset. You can’t kill me!”

A massive hand slammed down on the dark-gold cloud. A terrifying force scattered the cloud into streams that sprayed out in all directions. Unfortunately, no matter where they went, they could not escape from Lu Yin’s inner universe.

At the same time, the Nine Heavens collapsed behind Lu Yin. He had deliberately ended the technique, eliminating all of his released consciousness so that he could use it to search and capture the dark-gold manifested thought.

The moment he started doing that, a strange phenomenon unfolded in his inner universe.

The stars started to spin. The stars of divine energy and consciousness drove countless more stars to start quickly moving. The astral river shot upwards as a storm picked up the tricolored dirt and swept it across the landmass. Green sprouts filled the air, carried by the wind. In outer space, Infinity flowed about unseen. High above all else, the Wordless Heavenly Book hung, while the Investiture of the Gods radiated a golden light. Throughout the entire universe, dark-gold streams of light shot about, looking like a meteor shower covering the starry sky.

As the dark-gold streams radiated out, dark waves of consciousness also moved, tangling and colliding with the manifested thought, creating sparks that erupted across the expanse.

Dark-gold and black powers repeatedly clashed with each other, landing upon one star after another in a dazzling spectacle.

Lu Yin’s expression fell. What’s going on? Why can’t I capture them?

Both the Origin Progenitor and Yue Ya had said that Lu Yin’s physical strength was insufficient for him to merge with the manifested thought. The power of Word Manifestation was a path that Yue Ya could walk, but not Lu Yin.

However, Che had mentioned to Lu Yin that, by altering the form of something, the function would also change.

That had led Lu Yin to consider dispersing his memories into clouds of consciousness so that he could approach the palace in the Willbound Spire without suffering from the memory pressure.

More recently, he had thought of dispersing Yue Ya’s manifested thought; he could capture portions with threads of consciousness and then slowly fuse the two. There was no need for the process to be completed all at once. Each successful fusion would grant him a bit of the power that would be produced by merging consciousness and manifested thought.

This insight had been inspired by Immortal matter.

There was no need to integrate with all of Yue Ya’s manifested thought at once. As long as Lu Yin could restrain the manifested thought and gradually merge it with his consciousness over time, he would eventually obtain the exact power that Yue Ya had dreamed of.

Lu Yin did not know precisely how powerful Word Manifestation would be, but it had to be extraordinary. There was no other reason for Yue Ya to have been so obsessed with it.

In fact, it had never been Yue Ya himself who was obsessed with Word Manifestation, but rather the true source of his manifested thought, and that being had been a powerful Immortal.

Additionally, not even Greater Sancte Green Lotus had denied that Yue Ya would have obtained the power of Word Manifestation if he had successfully devoured Lu Yin’s consciousness. All that Green Lotus had said was that he had refused to allow Yue Ya to succeed.

Even a Greater Sancte did not want to see Yue Ya succeed; instead, they wanted to prevent the return of a dead Immortal. The terrifying potential of Word Manifestation could only be imagined.

Despite that, Lu Yin was failing at the very first step. He could not capture the manifested thought.

The streams of manifested thought continued to scatter about the inner universe, each one acting as if it was an independent lifeform. While the various threads of consciousness that Lu Yin controlled were almost all stronger than the streams of manifested thought that they pursued, the dark-gold streams seemed to be toying with the pursuing consciousness—not a single one was captured.

It was like watching a dumb brute trying to catch a clever but skinny monkey.

This led to sparks constantly erupting throughout Lu Yin’s inner universe, producing an unprecedented display of fireworks.

“Lu Yin, you’ve failed, hahahahaha!” a spiteful and mocking voice rang out from one of the dark-gold streams. It was quickly followed by more ridiculing voices. “Who do you think you are? You think you’re worthy of Word Manifestation?”

“Ridiculous!

“You deserve to die!

“I curse you to die a miserable death, hahahaha...”

Countless voices echoed across the universe. Each dark-gold stream was Yue Ya, and every last voice was filled with hatred and rage as they freely unleashed curses and insults at Lu Yin.

He watched calmly as the manifested thought and consciousness repeatedly clashed. While it was possible to forcibly seize the manifested thought with pure strength, what was the point of that? Ultimately, the consciousness needed to fuse with the manifested thought, so if his consciousness could not capture the dark-gold streams, Lu Yin’s attempt was indeed a failure.

“Come on! Try to catch me! Can you?

“Is this the essence of your power? You’re finished! I’ll destroy you! You’re dead!

“Lu Yin, I’ll make your life worse than death...”

One dark-gold stream after another started to crash into the stars, particularly aiming for the star of divine energy and the primary landmass.

However, as Infinity swept through, all of the dark-gold streams were pushed back. Some ended up crashing into ordinary stars, but all of the stars had been born from Lu Yin’s Cosmic Art, and as long as the technique was active, the streams would be promptly swept up and flung away.

Yue Ya was already a defeated foe. His power was continuously fragmenting into more and more streams of manifested thought. If Lu Yin wanted to erase the manifested thought, it would not take any effort on his part.

But doing so would be such a shame.

How could he capture the manifested thought and fuse with it?

Yue Ya’s cursing and insults echoed across the universe. Lu Yin clasped his hands behind his back, closed his eyes, and quietly listened.

Cursing was all that Yue Ya was capable of doing at this point. His cursing was a sign of his helplessness.

As time passed, Yue Ya’s insults grew nastier, and they became laced with dirty language. Compared to this, even Emperor Slayer’s verbal assault on the High Seraph had sounded like praise. However, Lu Yin heard something different from pure insults: Yue Ya’s manifested thought was changing.

Throughout the universe, the dark-gold streams dispersed more and more. The more scattered they became, the harder it became to control the dispersed manifested thought.

Lu Yin’s eyes snapped open. “You should’ve died long ago.”

“Hahahaha, you finally can’t resist insulting me back, huh? Does it help? All you can do is curse me! Try erasing my manifested thought, if you dare. Lu Yin, you won’t do it! You won’t, hahahaha!”

Lu Yin’s voice dropped low. “Your death has nothing to do with me, but rather is a decree from the Greater Sancti. You’ve been on their must-die list for a long time.”

“You’re lying! I am Yue Ya, a Lesser Sancte! Who but the Greater Sancti can do anything to me in the Nine Odysseys Megaverse?”

“If that’s true, why are you here with me right now?” Lu Yin shouted in a harsh tone. He waved his hand, and tore a dark-gold stream into more than ten streams.

Yue Ya roared, “That’s because of Greater Sancte Green Lotus! He helped you! Without him, you would have never stood a chance against me! It was all him!”

“Then why did you lose your title of Lesser Sancte?”

“That was Greater Sancte Blood Tower! He framed me!”

“Greater Sancte Green Lotus captured you and handed you over to me. Did Greater Sancte Blood Tower stop that from happening? Did Greater Sancti Awe Gate intervene? No, they didn’t. All of them wanted you dead.” As Lu Yin finished speaking, he waved his hand again, tearing apart several more dark-gold streams.

“No, that’s a lie! Why would they want to harm me? Why would they want me dead?”

“Because you’re useless. I baited you and lured you into a trap. You’ve disgraced the entire Nine Odysseys Megaverse.”

“No! You were despicable! You teamed up with that traitor! How could I not have been pulled in? How could you have fought back? You were never supposed to resist!” Yue Ya’s words grew increasingly insane and irrational. He sounded like a child throwing a tantrum.

Lu Yin continued to tear the dark-gold streams apart. He understood that, while Yue Ya still controlled all of the manifested thought, he was quickly losing his rationality.

The manifested thought had given birth to Yue Ya, and it could also erase him.

If no one did anything to this manifested thought, then at some distant point in the future, a new being of manifested thought would eventually be born. They might even call themselves Yue Ya, or perhaps they would adopt a different name.

Lu Yin was erasing Yue Ya from the manifested thought. “I’m about to succeed. I will definitely fuse this manifested thought with my consciousness.”

“Impossible! You’ll never pull it off! Manifested thought is the method, and consciousness is the compass! How can you ever discover the method by relying on the compass?” Yue Ya howled.

At that moment, Lu Yin’s mind snapped. He honed in on the dark‑gold currents within his inner universe. So that’s it... of course... that’s how it works.

Yue Ya’s right: thought is the journey, consciousness its destination. You can only reach a destination by traveling the journey, never the other way around.

Process is the cause; result is the effect. Cause always comes before effect.

That was why Progenitor Ku had been sealed in the Mirari Realm; he had tried to invert cause and effect, and the forbidden region had refused to allow it.

It was also why Lu Yin was so intrigued with Qing Yun; her body was also inverting cause and effect.

Yue Ya was able to merge with Lu Yin’s consciousness to achieve the power of Word Manifestation because he was a being of manifested thought: he was the cause, while Lu Yin was the result. It was impossible to reverse that and merge manifested thought into consciousness, as doing so was equivalent to inverting karma.

The Origin Progenitor had only mentioned to Lu Yin that his body was unable to endure the power of Manifested Thought, but he had never commented on the karmic relationship between manifested thought and consciousness.

This was no fault of the Origin Progenitor’s. He had never comprehended karma, and neither had he cultivated manifested thought nor consciousness. It was only natural that the man had not considered such a thing.

If Yue Ya had not happened to point this out, Lu Yin also would not have seen it.

He stared intently at the dark-gold streams, all the while listening to Yue Ya’s curses. If Yue Ya was in his normal state, he would have never said anything that might offer Lu Yin a bit of enlightenment. He knew that Lu Yin had already comprehended the power of karma and would figure things out from even the smallest hint. Even if Yue Ya did not believe that Lu Yin could invert karma, he would have never taken such a risk.

However, at this moment, Yue Ya was like an insane child, and he would say just about anything. The more the dark-gold streams dispersed, the further Yue Ya’s will deteriorated.

Upon understanding the reason for his failure, Lu Yin realized that he needed to change the karmic relationship.

Changing one’s karma was deceptively simple, yet only Lu Yin or Greater Sancte Green Lotus can actually do it. The original course of an event was taken, as well as its outcome, and then an extra outcome was appended that looped back to the very course. In practice, the original course was simply the process leading to a result.

When a karmic loop was established, it changed to the process leading to a result, followed by a new result. It was just that the new result simply triggered the original Process to reoccur.

By replaying the event from the past exactly how it had originally unfolded, with every detail intact, the karmic bond was reinforced. This was not about inventing the future, but about re‑manifesting what had already happened. However, knowing the theory was not enough, wielding the power of karma itself was also necessary, as there was no other way to produce the added outcome.

That extra outcome was not some future act, but a replay of a past event.

Lu Yin’s eyes swept the starry expanse of his inner universe, seeking those dark‑gold streams of light. Above him, the Investiture of the Gods chart flared to life, its radiance joining Wordless Heavenly Book. He pressed his hand down and intoned,

“Manifest.”

Moments later, the past event flickered back into being, and the new link was sealed into his karmic loop.