Star Odyssey

Lu Yin eventually looked away. “I won’t force you if you aren’t willing to say. You can go back.”

“You have my thanks, Your Highness. Xiaoxiao will be going with Your Highness.

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“Forgive my audacity, but would you be willing to take her to where our father is, Your Highness?” Huo Xiaoling asked earnestly as she offered a deep bow.

“Huo Xiaoxiao? Isn’t that your sister?” Lu Yin asked

Huo Xiaoling nodded.

Lu Yin replied, “Got it. I’ll take care of that.”

“You have my eternal gratitude, Your Highness. This one shall take her leave.” Huo Xiaoling bowed once more and turned to leave. Halfway through leaving, she hesitated and glanced back at Lu Yin, clearly considering something.

Lu Yin asked, “Is there anything else?”

Conflicting emotions flashed across Huo Xiaoling’s face, and she eventually decided to tell him. “Do you still remember Jenny Auna, Your Highness?”

Lu Yin arched a brow. “What about her?”

Huo Xiaoling remained extremely respectful as she continued to say, “She would also like to return to Zenyu Star. This one hopes that you can approve her request as well, Your Highness.”

Lu Yin found this a bit strange. “Both of you?”

Huo Xiaoling replied, “We’ve known each other since childhood, and while we had our differences when we were younger, that’s all in the past now. She wanted to ask you about this herself, Your Highness, but eventually chose not to.”

Lu Yin nodded. “You can take her with you.”

“Many thanks, Your Highness.” Huo Xiaoling smiled as she turned and left.

Lu Yin gazed at Huo Xiaoling’s retreating figure. Twenty-odd years had passed by in a flash.

Twenty years ago, he had just started cultivating on Earth. Huo Xiaoling, Jenny Auna, Silver, Xia Luo, Lulu Mavis, and many others had all been a part of that initial journey. They had been in such high spirits as they left together at that time. Since then, everyone had gone their own separate ways, walking down their own unique paths of cultivation. Where would everyone be the next time they met?

It was possible that they would be killed by Aeternus or transformed into corpse kings.

Lu Yin had no right to choose people’s future for them. Since these people wanted to stay, he would let them do as they wished. He had no desire to demand any sort of explanation, and he understood everyone that deserved the right to choose how they lived.

It was possible that this would be their last goodbye.

After Lu Yin had become a cultivator, he had met and parted with too many people to even count, some of whom he had been too late to say a final goodbye to.

The pirate who had been overseeing Chaosgod Mountain for Lu Yin, Thousand Eyes, had gone completely silent. He was most likely dead.

There was also An Shaohua, Linley, Xi Yue, and many others. Lu Yin had no idea if those people were dead or alive, as he had not attempted to take them with him. He did not have the ability to do so.

On a more positive note, he had managed to confirm the safety of Wendy Yushan, Zhuo Daynight, Ku Wei, and Ling Que.

That line of thought led him to look at his cosmic ring with a trace of tenderness in his eyes. Yan’er was also safe with him.

…

Ancestor Tortoise entered a solar system.

All the planets in this solar system that were occupied by humans, including Earth, started bubbling with excitement.

Everyone stared at Ancestor Tortoise’s gargantuan figure with expressions of shock and awe. Once again, the creature’s size pushed the boundaries of what people believed possible. No one had even imagined that the Neoverse held creatures of such size.

The ordinary humans in this solar system had been blissfully unaware of the bloody battles that had been fought in the Innerverse.

Everyone was watching Ancestor Tortoise, wondering if it could extinguish the sun with a single sneeze.

If Lu Yin had not had the foresight to warn Earth of their impending visit ahead of time, these same people would have been panicking instead of cheering with excitement

There were three droplets of the strange liquid in the Outerverse that were devouring stellular energy. One was in the Morrow Weave, and it had been put in place by Forgotten Ruins God herself.

According to Aeternus’s plan, another droplet was supposed to have been placed in the central weaves. However, that black crystal had been preemptively discovered in the Autumnfrost family’s territory. Fortunately, Lu Yin had foiled the plan, which had saved the Outerverse from suffering the same fate as the Neoverse where the rate of absorption was absolutely horrifying.

Even so, it was still very difficult to recover stellular energy in the Outerverse.

The closer one moved to the central weaves, the easier it became to recover stellular energy. However, the Sixth Mainland had already occupied the entire central region.

Ancestor Tortoise stopped in an area not too far from Earth. Members of the Great Eastern Alliance did not make their way to Earth, remaining on its back

Lu Yin alone went to visit Earth. There were people there he wanted to take with him, namely Zhou Shan and a few others.

“You almost gave me a heart attack! Where in the universe did you find such a huge tortoise?” Zhou Shan exclaimed as he stared up at the magnificent creature in outer space. Despite the astronomical distance between them, Ancestor Tortoise was still as dazzling and eye-catching as a star. It was bigger than any ordinary star, and it looked as large as the sun.

Lu Yin shrugged. “There’s no shortage of strange creatures in the Neoverse.”

“Uncle Lu!” Zhou Xixi excitedly ran up to Lu Yin.

Lu Yin smiled when the girl appeared. “Why aren’t you at school?”

Zhou Xixi grinned. “I’m currently out gaining some real-world experience. I’ve been sent to visit Ironblood Weave for a month.”

At this time, Ironblood Weaved was in a completely different state from before. The Astral Beast Domain had been successfully repelled after suffering disastrous losses during their invasion that had lasted half a year. It was now rare for fighting to break out in Ironblood Weave.

The first time Lu Yin had visited Ironblood Weave, battles had been fought multiple times every day. Whether or not anyone was able to survive such an experience depended mostly on luck.

Luck played a huge role in determining who survived on battlefields of that scale. Only Enlighters had been strong enough to ensure their own survival in the old battles of Ironblood Weave, and in the most recent battle in the Starfall Sea, only Envoys had been able to confidently protect themselves.

“Don’t go just now. Stick around for a bit,” Lu Yin instructed.

Zhou Shan felt confused.

Lu Yin then proceeded to explain that Aeternus had invaded, as well as how the battle with them had ultimately turned out. He was not sure when he would leave, so he gave Zhou Shan and his daughter advanced notice so that they could prepare for their own departure.

Zhou Shan had not expected to hear such catastrophic news. Had the entire Human Domain fallen to the enemy?

His view of the Human Domain was that it was an incredibly vast and wondrous place in the universe. The distance between Earth and the Neoverse was so vast that he believed that he would never see that place in his entire life. But he had never imagined that this entire region would fall into enemy hands.

A long time passed before Zhou Shan was able to accept Lu Yin’s words.

“Uncle Lu, is that really true?” Zhou Xixi simply could not believe what she had just heard. She had a much better understanding of the Human Domain than her father, and thus she could not understand how so many powerful experts had failed to hold off Aeternus.

Lu Yin turned to the girl. “Don’t worry, uncle can take you somewhere else where you can start a new life.”

The magnitude of the situation started to overwhelm Zhou Xixi, and she started to get anxious. A thought suddenly occurred to her. “What about my teachers? Where did the mentors from Astral-10 go? I haven’t been able to reach them for several days.”

“The Astral Combat Academy also took part in the battle. Astral-10 might not have been on the main battlefield, but they probably fought the Neohuman Alliance’s corpse kings somewhere else. Don’t worry, they should still be fine,” Lu Yin replied.

Zhou Shan spoke up in a heavy voice. “Xixi, leave us for a bit. I need to speak to Uncle Lu privately for a moment.”

Zhou Xixi wanted to argue, but she reluctantly left while dragging her feet after receiving a stern glare from her father.

Lu Yin was puzzled. “What’s wrong? Why don’t you want Xixi to hear this?”

Zhou Shan’s expression grew unnaturally serious. “Help me see if there’s anyone else nearby. I need you to be absolutely sure that there’s no one eavesdropping on us.”

Lu Yin grew even more curious. With Zhou Shan’s status and cultivation level, the man should not have anything this important to discuss with Lu Yin. Still, since he had been asked, Lu Yin released his domain and checked their surroundings. “It’s safe for you to speak.”

Zhou Shan raised a hand and tapped his gadget. A video started to play in the air.

Lu Yin saw a forest at night. The moon was bright, and there were only a few stars visible in the night sky. Viaducts and neon lights could be seen lighting up a city in the distant sky.

The video moved forward. There was nothing noticeable or off to be seen. It looked like a simple recording that someone had taken.

However, the silence was broken by a strange noise. The video froze for a moment before the person recording resumed moving forward, this time advancing cautiously. Two still figures appeared in the video. Suddenly, one of the two fell to the ground, and a sphere of light emerged from his forehead.

Lu Yin’s eyes widened. Undying Yushan?

There was no mistake. That was an orb of spiritual force. The person who had absorbed the ball of light was either Undying Yushan himself or another one of his puppets, like the man that Lu Yin had found in Gaia’s Swamp.

In the video, the person absorbing the ball of spiritual force abruptly spun around and glared straight at Lu Yin and Zhou Shan. No, he glared at the person who had been recording the video. Then, the video suddenly went dark.

Lu Yin turned to look at Zhou Shan. He was waiting for an explanation.

Zhou Shan began, “What you just saw wasn’t a video, but rather a scene that was recorded onto an eyeball. I was able to process it to retrieve that video.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Lu Yin felt confused.

Zhou Shan exhaled. “That video just now came from a man named Li Zhong. He was a Sentinel, and he was also my disciple. He might not have been very talented, but he possessed an innate gift called Image Inscription. What you just saw was precisely what he saw himself. Anything that he saw would be recorded into his own eye, and I was able to retrieve it from there. His innate gift was why I sent him out to patrol Jinlin. Unfortunately, it’s also what killed him.”

Lu Yin finally understood. There had been another cultivator with an innate gift. While it unfortunately had not been of much help in a fight, that innate gift had still allowed the man to become Zhou Shan’s disciple.

Zhou Shan was the person with the greatest status on Earth. He was Earth’s liaison to the outside universe and a larger world. Because of his relationship with Lu Yin, there was a long line of cultivators eager for Zhou Shan to accept them as his disciples, as they all hoped to get closer to Lu Yin. There were even Explorers and more powerful cultivators among those hopeful people.

Li Zhong had managed to be accepted as a disciple both because of his identity as an Earthling and his innate gift.

“His body was found a day after he died. I immediately retrieved the last things that he had seen from his eyes, and I found this particular scene. The man in that video is who killed him. He must not have thought that Li Zhong would have an innate gift like this,” Zhou Shan explained.

“After that, I kept an eye on the man without alerting him. His actions have been truly bizarre.”

Lu Yin asked, “You’ve been watching him? And he hasn’t suspected anything?”

Zhou Shan explained, “Of course not. I’m not able to do something like that. There are surveillance and monitoring devices in every nook and cranny on Earth, and I’m even able to monitor what happens beneath the surface. I didn’t specifically watch him, but instead gathered all of the recordings that were incidentally taken of him. Even if he moved outside of our surveillance range, there was no need for me to look for him. After all, I get reports on anyone who wants to leave Earth.

“As long as he remains on Earth, I have ways to keep track of him. However, I don’t single him out as a target. Instead, I act as though he’s just a normal person that I’m checking on.”

Lu Yin let out a sigh of relief. Zhou Shan had handled this matter quite well. Powerful cultivators were extremely sensitive to being watched by others. Forget Zhou Shan—even getting an Envoy to follow Undying Yushan was rather unrealistic. However, monitoring the man as if he was a normal citizen would be fine. Most surveillance equipment replayed videos instead of providing a live feed for one to observe.

Zhou Shan continued, saying, “While monitoring the man, I noticed that his activities were extremely odd. He keeps using that orb of light to control other people, and he seems to be searching for something. Apart from him, there are actually many other people with unknown origins or unverified backgrounds on Earth right now. I believe that there are even people from the Neohuman Alliance among them, and they all seem to be looking for something.”

Lu Yin found this rather odd. Earth was just a small, ordinary planet. The only thing of any possible interest to these people was most likely the Hidden Earth Society. Just what was Undying Yushan trying to find on Earth?

“Apart from these people, there’s something else affecting Earthlings. There’s a group that calls itself the Hidden Earth Society. I’m guessing that you’ve already heard of them.” Zhou Shan looked at Lu Yin.

Lu Yin did not find it strange that Zhou Shan had learned of the Hidden Earth Society. After all, the man’s status was second only to Lu Yin’s on Earth.