Chapter 4003: Obscura
Chapter 4003: Obscura
What felt like the power of a god surged out, kicking up winds that swept away all the clouds. The appearance of the single character brought about a change in the entire universe, causing everyone’s hearts to drop, pressed down by an irresistible oppression.
Lu Yin was badly startled. This character?
A white hand swept by his side. There was a certain darkness at the center of the palm that flickered and collapsed, producing a rumbling sound that produced fifteen successive echoes. That darkness pressed down upon the Heaven (天) character, shattering it.
At the moment the character shattered, Zhi’s mouth opened wide, and red power spread out from it. His entire body was engulfed, and he melted away.
Lu Yin ignored that matter and simply pressed a hand against Zhi’s body while forcibly seizing the red energy and releasing his inner universe. He forced the energy to enter his universe.
The star of divine energy spun wildly, and the red energy swept over it, creating a misty ring around it. Lu Yin pulled in as much of the red power as possible, but there was simply not enough time. Zhi’s body had completely melted away, and most of the red energy had dissipated. Lu Yin only managed to absorb a trace of what had been left behind.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate stared at Lu Yin. The Greater Sancti had already known that the young man cultivated the same power as the Netherfiends, and she had always wanted to ask about that matter, though there had never been an opportunity to do so.
Lu Yin pulled in all of the red energy that he could. Nothing remained on the floor of the Frightened Sparrow Terrace aside from the charred outline of a human.
He stood up and looked over at Greater Sancte Awe Gate, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, the Immortal’s expression changed drastically. “Not good!”
With that, she vanished.
Back where Lu Yin had just fought a fierce battle against Zhi, unseen among the distortions of the melted void, a gate had appeared. It was engraved with strange patterns and formed from the figures of countless different creatures.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate appeared there with her hand upraised. Once again, she unleashed the same unstable darkness from her palm, attacking the gate.
The darkness had succeeded in shattering the Heaven (天) character, but it failed to instantly destroy the gate.
The gate had survived a blow from Greater Sancte Awe Gate.
At the same moment, a long, blue sword suddenly appeared near the Allsense Megaverse. Held by tentacles, the blade flared with a dazzling light as the tentacles were absorbed. Once they disappeared, new patterns appeared on the blade. “Found it.”
The sword’s tip pointed at the Nine Odysseys Megaverse and then thrust forward.
A distance of 100 meters was not far to humans, but it was an impossible distance to ants.
In the scope of the entire Aevum Inch, the distance between the sword and its target was short, and yet it was an unfathomable distance to cultivators.
What was an inch?
It was a distance that only existed in relative terms.
A shadow of the blue sword sliced through the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm and instantly pierced the Nine Odysseys Megaverse.
At that moment, Lu Yin’s face grew pale as he looked up past the stars. He could feel it; an uninvited guest had entered the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm. The intruder was an Immortal, without a shadow of a doubt.
An Immortal was trespassing into the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm.
Is this what it feels like when the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm clashes against an Immortal? But clearly, Lu Yin had not released his Karmic Dao.
Not only that, but the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm had also been sliced open. The intruder had released a sword shadow that was cutting straight through the Nine Odysseys Megaverse.
Lu Yin finally released his Karmic Dao, merging it with the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm. As soon as he did so, he saw the blue sword shadow. But even the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm only allowed Lu Yin to catch a glimpse of the attack’s passage. His consciousness simply could not keep up with its speed.
By the time he managed to see the blue sword shadow, it had already stabbed into the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, aiming straight for Greater Sancte Awe Gate and the gate.
The Immortal was unsurprised. She attacked the door again, cracking it just as the blue sword attack arrived.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate gently pointed a finger, causing an Awe Gate to appear. It spread out, forming a path that was connected through countless gates.
The blue sword stab pierced one gate after another. There was neither any change in the void, nor in the air. Nothing changed at all, aside from the Awe Gates that were stabbed and the blue sword attack that faded.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate turned a delicate hand, causing an Awe Gate that had devoured the blue sword shadow to appear in the Frightened Sparrow Terrace. The attack passed through and shot towards the massive gate in the Frightened Sparrow Terrace that rose into the sky.
As that happened, Lu Yin’s body was dragged through an Awe Gate, completely outside of his control.
“Stop the sword!”
Lu Yin was puzzled. Wasn’t the blue sword already sent to the Frightened Sparrow Terrace?
There was no time for him to think any further. His body passed through the Awe Gate and returned to where he had fought against Zhi. There, he saw the gate that was covered in cracks. Suddenly, a second blue sword appeared in the air.
It was much dimmer than the first blue sword shadow that had appeared, and it looked more like a shadow of time as it stabbed at the gate.
Lu Yin did not know what would happen if the sword attack struck the gate. All he knew was that it had to be stopped.
When he looked at the door, he was choked by a feeling of overwhelming sorrow.
He did not dare to give it a second look. Lifeforce surged as it shrouded his body while he merged with Immortal matter. His flesh withered as he turned to the blue sword shadow and charged at it.
He could not directly contest an Immortal’s attack. Instead, he used Lightstream to reverse time by a single second and then moved at the speed of time to get behind the sword shadow, where he grabbed hold of the hilt and pulled back on it.
The blue sword shadow was unimaginably sharp, far exceeding even Broken Time’s first mark’s frozen line and Zhi’s blazing power. The instant Lu Yin made contact with the sword shadow’s hilt, his Immortal matter was consumed wildly. His Lifeforce suppressed it, but his body was rapidly recovering.
It’s too strong! This sword is far too strong! How is this possible?
Lu Yin had believed that he had gained enough power to fight against an Immortal head on. Even if victory was impossible, there should not have been this great a power gap.
He had previous experience, having once been hunted by an Immortal monster.
He had even exchanged moves with Master Qing Cao.
Through the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm, he had been able to sense the strength of Greater Sancte Awe Gate and Master Qing Cao.
And yet, Lu Yin had never felt anything this powerful.
He was only facing a sword shadow, so just how strong was the one who had unleashed it?
Infinity ran through his body, enabling Lu Yin to unleash his full strength. His Lifeforce was endlessly consumed, and as his body completely recovered, the power that Extremes Must Be Reversed had absorbed was released all at once. “Get back here!”
The blue sword shadow stopped, was yanked back by Lu Yin’s overpowering strength, and then was flung into the distance.
At the same time, a deafening crash rocked the Nine Odysseys Megaverse. It was the sound of the first blue sword shadow slamming into the enormous Awe Gate.
That sound caused countless people to faint.
The shock nearly caused Qing Xing to fall from the branch, and he turned to look up in horror. What is happening?
No one had any idea of what had just happened.
As for the dim blue sword shadow that Lu Yin had flung away, it was shattered in mid-flight by Greater Sancte Awe Gate.
Outside of the Allsense Megaverse, a voice muttered, “So that’s it. Qi Xu’s power was scattered. Is she dead? This human civilization is quite clever. They killed Qi Xu and then dispersed her power in order to confuse us. Heh... but now I know. Next, I’ll be the one to play with you.”
...
In the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, Lu Yin stood without moving as he stared at the cracked gate. It was completely covered with carvings of countless different creatures, most of which he had never seen before. However, there were also humans among the images.
Human forms had been carved on the gate.
Sorrow. As Lu Yin stared at the gate, all he felt was sorrow. Why sorrow? He did not know.
It was as though the carved creatures were weeping.
Greater Sancte Awe Gate stepped out from behind him. Her hand rose and then struck at the gate.
Instinctively, Lu Yin wanted to stop her. “Senior!”
Greater Sancte Awe Gate did not hesitate. This was her third time attacking the gate, and this time, it shattered.
Lu Yin stared in a daze, unable to describe his feelings. He had far too many questions at this moment.
The Immortal turned to face him. “Since the ancient eras, humanity has always had a nemesis. It is known as Obscura.”
Lu Yin’s eyes flickered. Obscura?
“Obscura is the name that we gave our enemy, simply because we do not even know what they truly are. There were other human civilizations before ours. During your Origin realm breakthrough, when you regressed up the River of Aeons, you saw those people. How long ago they lived, we have no idea.
“The connection between humanity and Obscura is something passed down from ages long gone. Qi Xu was part of Obscura.”
Lu Yin was astonished. “Is Obscura made up entirely of Immortals?”
Greater Sancte Awe Gate spoke slowly, “We don’t know. What we do know is that Obscura is what we consider a fishing civilization, and they have been entangled with us to this day.”
Lu Yin’s eyes narrowed. Fishing civilizations were a very heavy subject.
All megaverses struggled just to survive in the Aevum Inch. Just what kind of a civilization could guarantee their absolute safety? None had dared to reveal themselves to the cosmos. Even when the Nine Odysseys Megaverse had once had four Immortals, humanity still had not dared to expose themselves.
But in comparison, there were civilizations with the courage to fish for others. What kind of confidence did that take?
The Nest civilization could be considered an aggressive, warlike civilization, but it was certainly not a fishing civilization. If it were, then when a Nest had first appeared in the Nine Odysseys Megaverse after being released from a spirit treasure, the megaverse’s coordinates would have been exposed. That had not happened.
The Nest civilization was not qualified to be considered a fishing civilization, though whether the bugs believed that to be true or not was anyone’s guess.
What was a fishing civilization?
The Death Megaverse that had threatened to bring a calamity upon the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, forcing humans to sacrifice the Spirit Nidus’s Mother Tree in order to simply survive, was a fishing civilization.
The civilization that had created the springboards that were scattered all across the cosmos was another fishing civilization.
Lu Yin was learning of yet another fishing civilization, and this one was already an enemy of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse.
He suddenly turned to look at where the gate had just been destroyed. “Was that gate bait?”
Greater Sancte Awe Gate nodded. “Obscura places those gates inside any civilization that they wish to destroy. When it is time for destruction, they trigger the gate, forming a connection between the targeted civilization and another one that Obscura believes can annihilate it.
“They do not even bother taking action themselves when destroying a civilization. When two completely different civilizations encounter each other, the possibility of peace is extremely remote. This is a law of the cosmos.
“We cannot know how outsiders perceive us, but there is a human saying: one does not allow another to sleep soundly in one’s own bed.”
Lu Yin’s fingers trembled. Humanity could never allow another species to slumber at their side, just as how an ordinary human would never allow a wolf to sleep beside them.
It might not even be a wolf, but a harmless ant. Even then, if a bug buzzed by one’s ear, it would still be swatted dead.
That was the nature of living creatures.
So, Obscura doesn’t attack openly and directly, but rather places gates that eliminate the distance between civilizations? That’s even more despicable and terrifying than the Nest civilization.
If it was possible for Obscura to bring civilizations close together, then it meant that they were aware of far more than just one or two civilizations. This indicated an extensive knowledge of the Aevum Inch.
The Nine Odysseys Megaverse did not understand the Aevum Inch, which was why it was not a fishing civilization.
Fishing civilizations were ones that understood the Aevum Inch.
Lu Yin’s heart grew heavy. “Then what just happened?”
Greater Sancte Awe Gate blamed herself. “This was my fault. I failed to immediately destroy that gate, which granted them a chance to sense it. That blue sword shadow also came from Obscura. Who sent it, I do not know. We don’t know anything about Obscura, while they know us.”