Star Odyssey

Chapter 4554: Butterfly Burial

A chill approached from Lu Yin’s side, and mottled white blotches appeared around him. Was this an unseen world?

Suddenly, his vision blurred, and an indescribable sense of exhaustion left him gasping. His spiritual force was now being absorbed by two flower marks at the same time.

Another Butterfly Bloom mark appeared on his leg. From his leg and back, he was struck by three attacks. Fortunately, Lu Yin was already prepared and on guard against Bloomdance Transfer.

His body trembled. Aside from the tenth Lepid, the other nine were hardly able to even wound him by attacking through Bloomdance Transfer. At most, their attacks could only throw off his rhythm.

Lu Yin threw out more Yan Gate's First Needles.

Three needles shot at three different Lepids at the same time. He deliberately used the Myriad Metal Qi so that the Lepids could see the attacks.

All three Lepids dodged.

Stars appeared and revolved around Lu Yin as the Cosmic Art spread across the entire region. It’s time for a big one.

BOOM!

Stillness spread across the sky, the landmass, and outer space. This one explosion instantly consumed all of the Stillness in his Cosmic Art. The Lepidarch Continent was dyed black.

This was the only way that Lu Yin could escape.

After the Stillness dispersed, the six colorful Lepids could only soar through outer space, but they were unable to find Lu Yin.

"He has already discovered the truth of Butterfly Burial. He cannot leave alive."

"He cannot hide. The ancestor has already blocked him from escaping and is on the verge of awakening. It simply does not want to waste effort on him, but it can guide us to find him. He is dead for sure."

"We will leave him with no escape, neither in the sky nor in the earth."

Elsewhere, Lu Yin had hidden himself and was looking into the distance. There were three more marks on his body from Butterfly Blooms. The flowers looked extremely conspicuous.

This method was truly disgusting, and it also allowed numbers to impact a top-level fight. For true powerhouses, numbers typically meant little, but this technique was different.

Lu Yin could not leave, but if he stayed, he could not kill the Lepids. Or could he perhaps completely reduce their bodies to ash? That did not seem easy. The Immortal Lepids reinforced each other too quickly, and they were also all moving in pairs.

He could not let himself remain trapped forever until his strength was completely worn down.

While killing the Lepids might not be possible, he should at least be able to trap them.

Lu Yin thought for a moment. If he could trap all six Immortal Lepids, he could try to race away from the Lepidarch Continent. Even if the Lepidarch awakened, it was not as if his strength gave him no chance to fight back. He might still have a chance to escape.

Just where in the world had Thousand Machinations gotten the confidence to send Lu Yin to destroy this fishing civilization? Lu Yin believed that this mission would be impossible for even Withered Requiem.

Taking a deep breath, he considered how he could go about trapping the Lepids. The best option was the Grand Clarity sourcebox array.

Lu Yin simulated setting up the sourcebox array. Although he still did not fully understand it, restoring it would not be a problem. However, simply reproducing it would not recreate the true sourcebox array. Even if he poured Stillness into such a thing, it would be useless. He could only create a mere model.

He could only use a model to research and develop a sourcebox array that could trap the Lepids.

The true sourcebox array had many variations, but he did not need them all. Just one was enough.

Lu Yin decided to focus a great deal of his time studying this sourcebox array, but before long, he noticed that something was wrong; the Lepids were clearly approaching him.

The six Lepids had changed how they were searching. It was unclear if it was intentional or coincidental, but all of them were moving closer and closer to him.

He thought of how the Lepidarch had stopped him from leaving. Was it possible that the Lepidarch had already awakened? Could it locate him?

At that thought, he immediately moved to another location.

The six Lepids moved about in three different regions. Lu Yin fled towards one pair, and the Lepids immediately attacked him, but fortunately, he had been keeping an eye on them all along, which allowed him to immediately move away and avoid being surrounded.

Following that, he was constantly cornered by the Lepids. While each incident took some time, it never took long. He would be found after no more than a year and no less than half a year.

This caused him endless frustrations. It had to be the Lepidarch finding him. After all, the entire Lepidarch Continent was the Lepidarch’s back, and no one could find something better than the creature itself.

Lu Yin had wanted to fully immerse himself in studying the sourcebox array, but he could not do that. He could only study it in small bursts, which would cost him even more time and effort. In particular, he needed to constantly keep an eye on the Lepids, which prevented him from calming his mind.

He avoided them again and again `while continuing his research. During this time, he was embroiled in a few fierce battles. Lu Yin had no choice but to restrain himself, even when there were opportunities to eliminate another Lepid. He never took those openings.

This caused the Lepids to become even more brazen in their actions, and they stopped moving in pairs.

They did not want to die, which was why they had started moving in pairs, but after they realized that Lu Yin had discovered the truth behind the Butterfly Burial, they knew that they would not be killed. The more of them that were killed, the more terrifying that Lu Yin’s final opponent would become.

He endured in this manner for more than a century before he barely managed to gain some level of understanding of Grand Clarity's sourcebox array. With his own mastery of sourcebox arrays as a foundation, he felt that he had enough to focus his Stillness to briefly trap the Immortal Lepids.

Naturally, a sourcebox array was ideally prepared with sourceboxes, using danger fields to form the array. But once someone reached Lu Yin’s level of mastery, any power could be used to form an array.

From that perspective, it seemed that what he was doing had already left the scope of sourcebox arrays.

The Grand Clarity Civilization had completely separated lockbreaking from sourcebox arrays, and it was not without reason that the civilization had focused primarily on lockbreaking.

What others believed to be a return to simplicity might, in some sense, instead be going against what was considered the correct path.

Lu Yin proceeded to set up sourcebox arrays at various points across the Lepidarch Continent. Just like when he had set up Six Ancient Spirit Array sourcebox arrays to release Stillness at fixed intervals, he was now using Stillness to power the sourcebox array from Grand Clarity.

He spent a full five years moving across the entire continent and the sky above it, setting up more than 100 sourcebox arrays.

During these five years, the Lepids never managed to find a single trace of him. He never stayed in any one place for more than three months at a time.

Even if the Lepidarch wanted to find Lu Yin, it needed at least half a year to do so.

Five years later, Lu Yin stared across the continent, watching the six Lepids flying about. The hunt was about to begin.

For more than 100 years, these Lepids had disturbed his focus and prevented him from having any peace at all. He had spent far more time than he should have to gain some level of understanding of the sourcebox array. Even so, he had not been idle during these years. He had been constantly searching for a pattern in the Lepids’ movements while they were searching for him. Wang Wen had once mentioned that every civilization had cultivational and cultural characteristics that were distinct to themselves.

When Lu Yin had first wanted to grow the innate gift of teleportation, he had not understood just how incredibly difficult it was for creatures to alter the essence of their lives. At that time, he had thought that, as long as one broke through to the Immortal realm, their essence could be changed at will. Facts proved that, even then, it remained exceptionally difficult.

Or rather, it could be done if one actively wanted to change their essence, but most living beings would not do so. Immortality was an elevation of a lifeform’s essence, not a transformation.

These colorful Lepids had cultivational and cultural characteristics unique to their civilization as well as their own fundamental essence. Their actions therefore had to follow certain patterns.

For example, roughly every twenty years, the Lepids would move away from one another, as though there were a period of time that belonged to each of them individually.

This was a biological trait of the Lepids. Lu Yin did not need to understand the principle behind it; he just needed to recognize the behavior itself.

There was less than a year left before they would distance themselves from one another in their twenty-year cycle. The timing perfectly coincided with when he would finish setting up the sourcebox arrays.

Of course, because of the existence of a powerful foreign enemy, even if the Lepids moved apart, they would not move too far away from each other. At most, they would only go a distance of one breath away from each other.

However, that was enough.

A year later, the six Lepids started to move away from one another, and a distance of one breath opened up between them. Lu Yin watched. His greatest advantage at this moment was that he could constantly track the Lepids' movements.

There it is.

At that moment, one Lepid happened to move over one of the sourcebox arrays that had been planted. Lu Yin hurried over: Yan Gate's First Needle.

If he used Lifeforce to form the First Needle, it would not be detected, but an Immortal like the Lepid could still sense an approaching danger, and it instinctively dodged. Unfortunately, it was already too late.

The Yan Gate's First Needle was ideal for sneak attacks. The needle struck, and the Lepid froze in place. Lu Yin instantly appeared above it, and the Duality Seal pressed it down. With a boom, black and white swept filled the area, shaking space.

The other five Lepids were startled, and they hurried over to support the one being attacked.

The nearest Lepid immediately targeted Lu Yin with Butterfly Bloom, and the mark of a flower appeared on his body.

The Duality Seal forced the Lepid down to the ground. Lu Yin released the Cosmic Art, and the stars of Stillness formed dark torrents of power that poured into the sourcebox array, activating it.

The Lepid slammed into the ground with a bang. Only then was it able to react. The flower mark of Butterfly Bloom attached to Lu Yin's body as the Lepid prepared to counterattack.

Lu Yin simply left the sourcebox array.

Stillness shot into the sky, trapping the Lepid in place.

Lu Yin did not deliver a killing blow. He watched the creature struggle within the sourcebox array, trying to escape. He looked up. Another Lepid was on its way.

He casually waved a hand, and Stillness flooded the area again. Beside the first sourcebox array was another, and Stillness shot into the sky once more.

The approaching Lepid hurriedly retreated, having been nearly trapped.

Lu Yin raised a hand and unleashed Endless Recall. The Lepid dodged once again, but a First Needle immediately followed the palm strike.

With two waves of similar attacks, the Lepid only managed to avoid the first, but Lu Yin knew that it would struggle to avoid the second. Before, it had been the same with the other Lepids.

The needle shot through the sky, and the Lepid froze.

Lu Yin pressed it down with a palm strike. Stillness churned through the void like black clouds as it fell, pressing the Lepid to the ground.

Suddenly, Lu Yin’s surroundings were filled with Myriad Metal Qi. Two more Lepids had already arrived.

Everything had only taken a few breaths of time. Every one of Lu Yin's moves had been carefully calculated. The arrival of the two Lepids indicated that he had already run out of time at this location. He released the Cosmic Art, and stars revolved.

The Lepids were horrified. Again? How can he have so much of this power?

Each time Lu Yin was surrounded, he was forced to pay a price in erupting with all of the Stillness in the Cosmic Art in order to escape. He had already done this multiple times. Each instance released a burst of Stillness that was able to fill the entire Lepidarch Continent and block out the sun. This was beyond a shocking amount of energy for a creature to possess. After all, how much energy did it take for a creature to instantly escape from several Immortals? That was why the Lepids had initially believed that Lu Yin must have depleted his entire reserves of Stillness or only retained a very small bit.

But Lu Yin had shattered their understanding again and again. Every time he escaped, he released a burst of a vast and terrifying power. To them, it was beyond unreasonable. To the Lepids, the depths of Lu Yin’s strength was unfathomable.

Boom!

The stars exploded. Darkness enveloped the entire landmass. The light filling the sky lost its color.

Lu Yin disappeared once again. He could not do this many more times. His Three Death Arts only had enough Stillness for a few more bursts. After all, he had to keep some in reserve to face off against the Lepidarch, just in case. He did not want to release another burst of Stillness.

At the place where he had just been, three more Lepids appeared, quickly followed by two more.

The five Lepids simultaneously released Myriad Metal Qi to shatter the sourcebox array.

However, the sourcebox array was powered by Stillness, and as long as that power lingered, the array would persist. They could not break through the sourcebox array itself.