Star Odyssey

Chapter 4399: Disappearance

On this matter, no one had more authority to speak than the Great Master. She looked at Lu Yin. "Aside from the difficulty of completely destroying a megaverse, the greater danger is being pulled into the main River of Aeons."

After a pause, she continued to explain, "The branches of the River of Aeons all originate from the main stream. If you attempt to pull a branch away from that main stream, you will have to fight the resistance of the entire river. You can think of it as a counterattack, and it is very easy to be swept away."

"So you’re saying that it’s perfectly normal for this mission to be classified as three stars."

"The more powerful a being is, the more wary they are of being dragged into the main stream of the River of Aeons. Once swept away, they may simply vanish."

Blood Tower felt a chill. "Then why did you not warn me back then?"

The Great Master replied, "My original megaverse had already been completely destroyed. Taking me away would not cause much of a disturbance, as the branch had already returned to the main stream. I am merely a ferryman, and given the countless ferrymen in the Aevum Inch, no one would notice just me disappearing."

Lu Yin understood now. No wonder the mission was rated at three stars. It had nothing to do with the strength of a civilization, but rather with the main stream of the River of Aeons and the complete destruction of an entire megaverse.

"How does one completely destroy a megaverse?" Lu Yin asked.

Blood Tower spoke solemnly, "Back then, I accidentally witnessed a megaverse being completely destroyed. The sight was both magnificent and tragic."

The Great Master explained, "Extend the sequence strings without end, spreading them outward until they merge with the Aevum Inch. Doing this causes the entire megaverse to seemingly melt away, with all matter inside fading and disappearing. For the living beings within, it feels like being devoured by an enormous mouth far greater and deeper than themselves. There is no escape."

Lu Yin's face darkened. This sounded simple, and he could even do it, but for the creatures of whatever megaverse he chose, it would be unbearably cruel. Even resetting a megaverse would be kinder than destroying it.

It was clear that recalling the past weighed heavily on the Great Master's mind. Although the ferrymen of the River of Aeons were not limited to any single species and witnessed countless megaverses being reset with new life being born within them again and again, that megaverse had still been her home. Not even the Great Master could fully let go.

It was no wonder why she had been so certain that Blood Tower had not destroyed her home megaverse. It was possible for Immortals to endlessly extend a megaverse’s sequence strings until they merged with the Aevum Inch. In fact, the higher one's cultivation, the easier this was to do. However, Blood Tower's cultivation was not nearly high enough for him to conceal such actions from the Great Master. If he had attempted to destroy her megaverse, he would have spent a considerable amount of time to do so.

Lu Yin was certain that he could not accept this mission.

Blood Tower hesitated. "If Obscura is capturing branches of the River of Aeons, then the one who completely destroyed that megaverse back then..."

"It was not Obscura. If it were, I would not still be here," the Great Master replied.

Blood Tower nodded. That made sense. If Obscura had done it, that branch of the River of Aeons would not have been able to merge back into the main stream.

But who else could it have been? And why would anyone do such a thing?

Although megaverses in the Aevum Inch were as numerous as the number of stars in a universe, the fact that Blood Tower had been able to find the Great Master's megaverse meant that it could not have been far from the Human Trio. That raised an important question: who had completely destroyed that megaverse? On top of that, did they pose a future threat to their human civilization?

Still, that did not really matter. Even the Plume Immortals had been repelled, let alone other civilizations.

That being was certainly stronger than Blood Tower, though just how much stronger remained unclear. The Trio had already survived through Obscura, the Death Megaverse, and the Plume Immortals. It felt as though there was little left that they could not endure.

Lu Yin sent his consciousness into Vestigium, found Ba Se, and directly refused the mission.

"This mission to capture a tributary of the River of Aeons cannot be refused," Ba Se said.

Lu Yin was startled. "I never agreed to accept this mission."

"This is a mandatory mission."

"Missions can be mandatory? Then why did you offer me a choice earlier?"

"There is more than one type of mandatory mission," Ba Se said.

Lu Yin did not believe that. "Ba Se, are you targeting me? The Plume Immortals were defeated, but not exterminated. Obscura still needs me."

"Every member of Obscura must now accept a mandatory mission. There are no exceptions," Ba Se said.

"Is that so?" Lu Yin remained suspicious and called out for the Immortal Lord.

The Immortal Lord was undoubtedly within Vestigium. They did not dare to go anywhere else, for fear that the Plume Immortals might suddenly awaken and seek revenge. Although the Plume Immortals’ tracking method hidden within their body had been removed, the Immortal Lord still stayed inside of Vestigium for a while due to their extreme sense of caution.

"What mission did you receive?" Lu Yin spoke privately with the Immortal Lord.

The Immortal Lord did not conceal anything. "A two-star mission: map a star chart. With a specific set of coordinates as the center, search a radius equal to twenty years of travel for an ordinary Immortal."

Twenty years’ travel might not seem far. For an Immortal, such a span of time was practically negligible. However, this was only referring to the radius of the star chart. To thoroughly explore a sphere with that radius would take at least a thousand years, perhaps more.

After all, that entire region of the cosmos needed to be fully explored.

Lu Yin had not expected Obscura to be mapping star charts. This was also only a two-star mission, which meant that even higher-level star chart missions had been handed out.

"Is that a mandatory mission?" Lu Yin asked.

"I do not know," the Immortal Lord replied.

"Ask Ba Se."

"Alright."

As their conversation was theoretically private, Ba Se should not be able to hear their discussion but Lu Yin did not believe that for a second. Still, even if Ba Se was eavesdropping, there was nothing that they could do so long as Ba Se simply refused to admit it.

Soon the Immortal Lord responded, "Mandatory mission."

Lu Yin's eyes flickered. Mandatory missions? Capturing branches of the River of Aeons and mapping star charts... It felt as though Obscura was preparing for something on a grand scale.

Right. Obscura had recently been eager to recruit new members; could that to complete these mandatory missions? But even if they were mandatory missions, Obscura had not specified any sort of time limit. If that was the case, could he not simply avoid doing it?

Lu Yin could not understand it. If the missions were mandatory, it meant that Obscura wanted them completed urgently, but there were no time limits in place, just like before. The contradiction was too obvious.

He needed to ask someone who knew more. He called for Furball, Old Man Hehe, and Che, but none of them were present.

Helpless, Lu Yin could only wait to ask them later. In any case, whatever Obscura wanted done, he would simply avoid doing the task, and he would even act in the complete opposite direction. That way, he would not lose out.

It was a pity that Lan Meng had died. They would have known everything. Sometimes, seniority truly mattered. At the very least, it meant having more knowledge.

"There is another matter." Lu Yin pondered briefly as he looked into the deep darkness of Vestigium and spoke to the Immortal Lord. "Back when the Nest civilization attacked the Lost Clan, the Third Rampart, what exactly happened?"

The Third Rampart and the Lost Clan were things that Lu Yin had never forgotten. Over the years, he had occasionally taken out the Shan Barrens card to examine it. What puzzled him the most was that he could not find the megaverse where the Lost Clan had once lived.

Shan Barrens was an extremely powerful card, being a treasure that had nearly reached the level of an Immortal, but it should not surpass a true Immortal. After all, it was only a card. The fact that it had managed to carry the Lost Clan’s Great Elder Shan Gu and others in their escape to the Tianyuan was already remarkable, but it should not have been able to take them very far.

However, over the years, Lu Yin had repeatedly explored the surrounding areas of the Trio, but he had yet to find the Third Rampart’s megaverse. It was as if that megaverse was not nearby at all.

But if it was not nearby, then how could the Shan Barrens card have brought Great Elder Shan Gu and the others to the Tianyuan? That simply made no sense. Either the Third Rampart’s megaverse lay somewhere near the Trio, or the Shan Barrens card possessed some method similar to teleportation that allowed it to move an immense distance in an instant. The third and final possibility was that the Third Rampart’s megaverse had been completely destroyed.

Great Elder Shan Gu and the others did not know what the final outcome of the war was. When they fled, the bugs had still been infesting their megaverse.

That was why Lu Yin asked the Immortal Lord. They replied, "That was not a megaverse at all."

Lu Yin was puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"The megaverse where the Lost Clan lived truly did wage war with us, and that war lasted quite a long time. At first, I did not intervene, and I noticed nothing unusual. It was only after that card carried a group of people away that I realized that something was wrong. Of course, the Immortal Verdant Sage also played a role; it was the first to notice the anomaly.

"The so-called Third Rampart’s megaverse vanished the moment the card disappeared, like an illusion reflected on water."

Lu Yin was astonished. "Vanished?"

The Immortal Lord spoke solemnly. "Yes, vanished. It did not merge into Aevum Inch through destruction, nor did it move elsewhere. It simply disappeared, as if it had never existed.

"But the battles between my Nest civilization and that civilization were real, and they continued for many years. Throughout all that time, it definitely appeared to be a true megaverse.

"I have some fragmentary knowledge concerning human civilization. From the records of other megaverses that have been destroyed, there are accounts of humanity's former brilliance. Those records did not use the word human, but rather described your exact form."

The Immortal Lord had shared this information with Lu Yin before, back when he had planted his Dao Sword inside of them. However, all of the memories of that time had been erased, so the Immortal Lord repeated their explanation again.

Back then, Lu Yin had asked why the Immortal Lord had regarded humanity differently from other species. This time, they brought the matter up of their own accord.

"Human civilization is very special. I already knew that back then. It is why I did not directly intervene in the war with the Lost Clan; I wanted a Verdant Sage to be born and to grant my Nest civilization a new direction of evolution. I never expected the Lost Clan to lose, only to then escape with that card, let alone for their megaverse to also disappear. It vanished without a trace.

"I told no one about this. The only ones who know are that Verdant Sage and myself. No one else, not even my Insect Lords, ever knew. When we publicly claimed to be searching for the Lost Clan and that card, we were actually searching for the secret behind that megaverse’s disappearance."

Lu Yin understood now. When Shan Lie, a subordinate to Insect Lord Shan Xiao, had first encountered Lu Yin outside the Consciousness Megaverse, he had mentioned searching for a card. At that time, Lu Yin had believed a card with the power of an Immortal to be extremely valuable, but after truly gaining some understanding of the Aevum Inch, he had come to realize that such a card would not make the Immortal Lord obsess over it on its own.

Now, he had finally learned the real reason. What the Immortal Lord had sought was the secret behind that megaverse’s disappearance.

Megaverses could move, reset, or even be destroyed, but no one had ever heard of one simply vanishing outright.

"What are the former coordinates of that megaverse?" Lu Yin asked.

The Immortal Lord readily shared the coordinates.

Lu Yin memorized them and then curiously asked, "Why tell me all this? If you had remained silent, I would have never known. Since you are now a member of Obscura, I can’t even break the rules to deal with you."

The Immortal Lord spoke in a low voice. "This is a matter beyond my reach. The more I learn about human civilization, the more I realize that the only ones who can truly contend with you are those top-tier fishing civilizations, rather than beings like me. If I meddle recklessly, I will only die.

"Also, after all these years of searching countless times, I have yet to find any trace of the Third Rampart. Since that is the case, I might as well tell you. Consider this my repayment for the favor you did when you used your reward to have Obscura remove the hidden danger from within my body."