Chapter 4429: Eye Contact
Chapter 4429: Eye Contact
Lu Yin’s Tri-Azure Sword Intent completely sliced through the white magma, turned around, and then slashed at it again.
"Stop, or else I will erase you completely," Lu Yin warned.
The white magma did not react at all. The sliced off sections simply fused back together, instantly recovered, and then spread back towards Lu Yin.
He frowned. Can it really not communicate?
He opened Heaven's Sight and stared at the white magma, but the white magma continued to rush straight at him. It could not be immobilized as it had no line of sight.
Purple sight power burst forth: Pressure Over All Living Beings.
The white magma was pressed down by the sight power, and it struggled to even squirm.
Manifestation Beyond the Pupil. Sight power transformed into the Darksky Seal, trapping the white magma within it.
The white magma kept crashing against the seal, but it could not break free of Manifestation Beyond the Pupil. His sight power had grown stronger as Lu Yin had grown stronger, to the point that it was able to imprison an ordinary Immortal. The white magma's defenses were indeed formidable, but its attack power was mediocre. It was nowhere near powerful enough to break free.
Far away, Lu Feiyang was stunned. Ancestor is too powerful!
He had seen with his own eyes how the white magma had rendered the technological civilization’s vessel helpless, forcefully dragging it along, and how that fierce, giant fish had been forced to shed its scales in order to escape. Both had been capable of unleashing powerful, Immortal-level attacks, and yet neither had managed to harm the white magma in the slightest.
Even so, when Lu Feiyang’s ancestor took action, the strange Immortal was dealt with in just a few moves.
This was the strength of Ancestor Lu Yin, the powerhouse who stood at the pinnacle of humanity.
Ancestor is simply too powerful...
Lu Yin watched the white magma continue to crash against Manifestation Beyond the Pupil. A spiral of karma appeared in his hand and shot at the white magma. He wanted to see what this thing actually was.
While doing this, Lu Yin had Lu Feiyang continue watching the fish while the Immortal stone monster stood guard.
Since the fish was an Immortal, there was no reason to ignore it.
The spiral of karma pierced through the white magma. It did not even try to dodge as it continued to mindlessly slam against the Darksky Seal formed from Manifestation Beyond the Pupil.
This was an Immortal without self-awareness, yet it was still capable of making basic decisions when it came to its actions.
Karma drew its past out, and Lu Yin peered into the thing’s history. He saw a universe and the stars, he saw civilizations that it had passed through, and he also saw how it had remained motionless for ages. He saw it act against Immortals.
Aside from the Immortals that Lu Yin already knew about, this white magma had dealt with more than one Immortal.
Suddenly, Lu Yin's eyes narrowed. Bone Script?
He stared into the white magma's past and saw how it had attached itself to an Immortal and wrapped around the creature. The Immortal’s bones had then pierced through its skin. The white magma had clearly used Bone Script.
How could this thing know Bone Script? He had not sensed any Stillness in it at all.
Lu Yin's breathing quickened. He developed a vague suspicion as he continued watching.
Half a year passed in the blink of an eye. During that time, Lu Yin saw two instances in the white magma’s past when it had targeted other Immortals. One, Lu Yin found by chance, while the other, he found by tracing karma to the end. He started by investigating the past related to the death of the Immortal from the Seal-Eater Megaverse and thus saw the entire process clearly. This granted him an understanding of why the white magma was deliberately attacking Immortals.
It was capturing them.
That was right—the white magma was capturing Immortals, just like how Lu Yin had captured a branch of the River of Aeons.
Its method was quite simple; it wrapped around an Immortal and then used Bone Script to grant life to the creature’s bones, causing those bones to pierce through the creature’s body. This process did not count as killing the Immortal, as the creature still continued existing in an alternate form; thus, the white magma avoided increasing its karmic chain in this manner. On top of that, the bones etched with Bone Script would naturally obey the commands of the Death Megaverse.
This was the purpose of the white magma's existence; it was increasing the number of the Death Megaverse’s Immortals.
Lu Yin recalled all the battles that he had fought or witnessed which involved Bone Script, and he remembered the words spoken by Cheng Hongyuan when death had filled the man’s eyes. "Enter my death. Grant death, becoming undying and eternal. I shall exist forever."
The Death Megaverse could grant life to a living creature’s bones, but for creatures of flesh and bone, their life was singular. This meant that the Death Megaverse transferred those creatures’ lives from their flesh into their bones. Their life remained the same life; the creatures did not die, and they even maintained the same consciousness and awareness. All that had changed was the form of life. When phrased in the most chilling terms, it was simply a change of clothes.
Once he saw this truth clearly, Lu Yin's scalp went numb. He should have realized this long ago. Since the Death Megaverse could control someone as strong as Cheng Hongyuan, then it was not impossible for an Immortal from the Death Megaverse to control other Immortals with Bone Script.
At this moment, that Immortal from the Seal-Eater Megaverse had already been turned into an Immortal skeleton and become a member of the Death Megaverse.
Then over the countless years, just how many Immortal skeletons had the Death Megaverse brought under its control? Not only that, but this white magma was not a skeleton, which meant that the Death Megaverse did not merely control skeletons. They also had creatures like this thing.
Lu Yin felt a chill sweep over him. He had already believed Obscura and the Plume Immortals to be extremely powerful fishing civilizations, but it now appeared that the Death Megaverse might be even more unfathomable.
Even if the Immortal skeletons that fell under their control were weak and had lost much of their power in the process of losing their flesh, once the numbers grew large enough, such a civilization would still be terrifying. This was especially true since any Immortal who killed these skeletons would have to bear the corresponding increase in their karmic chain. This was clearly another kind of Aberrant tactic.
If the Mudwater Dominion had used karmic designation as an Aberrant tactic, then the Death Megaverse acted as an Aberrant through death itself.
Lu Yin's eyes flickered as he stared at the white magma. He felt as if he were watching an abyss of death drawing near. This was why Green Lotus had once gone to every length possible to lure the Death Megaverse away. If he had failed, there would be no Human Trio in the present.
The clearer the truth became, the more awe Lu Yin felt in regards to the Aevum Inch. What else might exist in the cosmos?
He continued to send out more and more spirals of karma as he focused on examining the rest of the white magma's past. Since this thing belonged to the Death Megaverse, it likely had no connection to Obscura’s White.
There were many powers that arrived at the same end by different roads.
Right now, Lu Yin wanted to use the white magma to catch a glimpse of the Death Megaverse. He was wary that the civilization might detect his use of karma, but his desire to see clearly was too strong. He wanted to understand the Death Megaverse. He wanted to see everything hiding in that abyss of death.
The passage of time was no longer worth paying attention to. More than another year passed in the blink of an eye, but Lu Feiyang and the Immortal stone monster were still keeping an eye on Ba Rong, and the fish could not detect the two due to the distance between them being too great. Not only that, but it was also impossible for Ba Rong to have gone far in such a short amount of time.
As for the technological civilization, it was no longer of any concern. After what that king vessel had encountered, they would not dare to return lightly. If they did return, the Trio would be able to sense them from a distance of several hundred years' travel, which would give them enough time to take action.
Lu Yin's expression grew heavy as he stared at the white magma. Its past revealed by karma had shown him the white magma's kin, all of which had originated from the same enormous white magma. Lu Yin looked again and again, studying the past over and over, until the moment came that he saw a familiar silhouette. At that moment, he understood what this white magma was: the Soft Megaverse.
That was right. This white magma was a creature of the Soft Megaverse. Hong Xia had once given Lu Yin a list of coordinates to search through. One of the locations had been Furball’s location, and Lu Yin had found the Soft Megaverse among the false coordinates. It was one of the traps that Hong Xia had set for Lu Yin.
When Lu Yin had visited the Soft Megaverse, he had discovered that there was nothing there at all. The megaverse had already been reset, yet traces of the power of Stillness had lingered. At the time, he had suspected that there was some connection between the Soft Megaverse and the Death Megaverse. Later, he had learned that Obscura had assigned the Soft Megaverse as Hong Xia’s mission. Despite the fact that the creature that occupied that megaverse had disappeared, Hong Xia’s mission had never been declared as complete. That meant that the creature had not died.
Lu Yin had just seen it. This white magma, or more precisely, the largest white magma from which the others had split off, was the creature of the Soft Megaverse.
No wonder Hong Xia had wanted to use the Soft Megaverse as a trap to counter Lu Yin’s ability to teleport.
While the white magma did not seem particularly powerful, it was still capable of dealing with ordinary Immortals. One could only imagine how formidable the largest white magma must be. That was the true creature. As Hong Xia had once said, it was a lifeform that approached the level of a fishing civilization.
That observation made sense; it was a powerful creature that was capable of endlessly splitting off Immortal-level fragments. Who could say just how many could eventually be produced?
But why had the creature of the Soft Megaverse joined the Death Megaverse? Or had the creature belonged to the Death Megaverse all along?
If the latter was true, then things grew far more interesting. Obscura had assigned Hong Xia the mission of killing the creature of the Soft Megaverse, which essentially meant pitting Hong Xia against the Death Megaverse.
What did that entail? Were they killing him with a borrowed knife?
Lu Yin's thoughts churned as he considered every possibility while continuing to examine the creature’s past with karma.
This was only one split-off fragment of the Soft Megaverse. He did not know whether he could use it to find the Soft Megaverse's main body, but if he could, that would be ideal.
Karma revealed more and more scenes of the past. Suddenly, a massive castle appeared among the images. It was shrouded in gloom, and the whole structure shook and trembled.
What is this place? A battlefield?
Suddenly, a pair of eyes appeared within the karmic projection, set in a skull-like face, hidden behind dark glasses wrapped with colored cords. Through the past itself, they met Lu Yin’s gaze.
Violent, thunderous music exploded in his ears and then rang through every cell of his body. In that instant, Lu Yin felt as though his entire body was being torn apart. It was karmic backlash. He had experienced such backlash more than once before. His attempt to read the white magma’s past through karma had been discovered.
In the past, this sort of karmic backlash would have left Lu Yin gravely injured, but things had changed. He stared into the gaze of the skeleton in the image of the past, right at the ridiculous sunglasses. If that thing wanted to wound him badly via karma, it first needed to see if it even possessed such an ability.
It was clearly a skeleton, though not only was it wearing sunglasses, but it also had a bright green hat on top of its skull. There were strange designs painted across its bones, and it swayed rhythmically, as if attempting to provoke Lu Yin.
The connection felt long, yet it lasted for a mere instant. A moment later, the image revealed by karma vanished.
Lu Yin looked back at the white magma, the image of that skeleton still crystal clear in his mind. The fact that it could trigger karmic backlash proved that the skeleton was extremely powerful. However, the fact that he had resisted the backlash in turn proved that it was not a being with absolute strength capable of simply crushing him. He estimated that it should be as powerful as a peak two-law Immortal, roughly equal to Hong Xia.
Also, the fact that it had sensed Lu Yin karmic probing proved that it was not too far from his current location.
The white magma belonged to the Death Megaverse, so it was perfectly normal for the skeleton to be nearby as well.
Lu Yin started another karmic probe, this time specifically searching for the skeleton.
Suddenly, the white magma went completely still. Then, its body collapsed, scattering into motes of white light.
Lu Yin's expression instantly changed, and he brought out his Champions' Stage Purgatory, intending to throw the white magma in to increase his karma. Unfortunately, the white magma had already completely transformed into countless motes of white light. It was gone.
Aside from the light, the only thing that lingered was an abyss that looked like a dark streak painted across the endless black of the Aevum Inch. It was somehow darker than darkness itself, and it floated in place like a black cloud. It was the power of Stillness.
Stillness had been completely fused into the white magma. It was no wonder why Lu Yin had failed to sense it.