Star Odyssey

Outer space returned to its previous state.

Marquis Green Bamboo felt frustrated. Ancient God had ordered the Semi-Progenitors to move out in teams and to kill everyone who had come from that ancient era, but Marquis Green Bamboo’s team had been wiped on their very first encounter. It was humiliating.

This was the strength of a powerhouse from the Heavens Sect’s era, which was also humanity’s golden era. This woman had been the master of one of the Twelve Heavenly Gates, and her strength was terrifying.

Ancient God had wanted to eliminate those ancient powerhouses individually before they joined together, but he had overestimated his subordinates’ strength.

Even Marquis Green Bamboo had been pushed to the point where he could only hope to survive when faced with a gate master from Heavens Sect.

***

Elsewhere, Lu Yin was planning on rolling his die in hopes of Possessing someone from the ancient era so that he could access their memories of that time.

The Fifth Mainland was truly vast, so it might not be possible for him to purposefully seek out those ancient powerhouses. If they were as powerful as he suspected, then Lu Yin hoped that he would be able to get in contact with them in order to work together to deal with the Aeternals.

Only people at the Semi-Progenitor level could actually decide the fate of the Fifth Mainland. At the moment, all of humanity’s Semi-Progenitors had gathered at various different strongholds, and the Human Domain’s network had also been destroyed. At this time, it was very difficult to share and receive information with other locations, so Possession was the only option that Lu Yin could think of.

While he did not have much hope, he at least needed to make an attempt.

Rolling his die always depended on luck, but it had been several months since Lu Yin had last rolled his die, so he felt like he had a relatively good chance of rolling six pips.

After a moment’s thought, Lu Yin tapped the die, and it started slowly spinning. Finally, it stopped on three pips.

He had nothing to Enhance, and even if he did, Lu Yin lacked the funds. He only had a bit more than 70 billion star essence left, which was not enough to upgrade anything relevant.

Again. This time, the die stopped on four pips: Timestop.

After entering the Timestop Space, Lu Yin’s top priority was to continue training in the Cosmic Art.

However, unlike before, this time, he took out a Root of Intelligence. He was not far from fully mastering the fifth level of the Cosmic Art.

In the past, when Lu Yin had practiced the Cosmic Art while reciting the Origin Progenitor’s Sutra, he had only been able to simulate fewer than 4,000 stars a year. But this time, while Lu Yin did not know if it was simply because he drank the tea brewed from a Root of Intelligence, developed a deeper understanding of the Cosmic Art, or was simply stronger, but he had managed to simulate a total of 75,000 stars. At this moment, he was not far off from the 99,000 stars that signified complete mastery of the fifth level of the Cosmic Art.

He lifted his hand and brought out his die again to tap it with a finger.

This time, the die stopped at five pips. Lu Yin pursed his lips, as this was a useless roll.

Wait. Lu Yin suddenly remembered something. Isn’t Kui Luo outside?

Lu Yin instantly left his seclusion.

He had gone into seclusion in Jinlin, and Kui Luo was also in the city, as Lu Yin had asked the old man to protect him. At this time, Kui Luo was the only person who was aware of Lu Yin’s innate gift of the die, but Lu Yin had refrained from sharing any specifics with the old man.

The moment he emerged from seclusion, Lu Yin’s domain swept across Jinlin, and he instantly found Kui Luo sitting in a restaurant that served roast duck.

The old man looked up blankly after Lu Yin had suddenly appeared. Kui Luo was still chewing on a duck leg.

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Lu Yin patted the old man’s shoulder with a hand and somberly said, "Eat slowly."

With that said, Lu Yin instantly left again.

Kui Luo was in a daze the entire time Lu Yin was present. The old man even wondered if he had been hallucinating. He remained uncertain until someone nearby mentioned the incident. That Lu kid really had just shown up out of nowhere and patted him on the shoulder. What was that about?

Lu Yin returned to where he had entered seclusion, feeling rather depressed. It turned out that Kui Luo did not have an innate gift, which explained why Lu Yin had never seen the old man use one. Lu Yin’s efforts had been nothing more than a waste of energy.

He needed to roll the die again.

Lu Yin raised his hand, and his die reappeared. He tapped it and stared as the die slowed and stopped. Four pips again: Timestop.

He had no intention of using a Root of Intelligence this time, as there was only one left. It was better to save it for an emergency.

When Lu Yin emerged from the Timestop Space again, he had managed to simulate 80,000 stars. If he rolled Timestop a few more times and practiced the Cosmic Art, the fifth level of the cultivation art would be mastered.

"Boy, what was that all about?" Kui Luo’s voice appeared.

Lu Yin felt rather puzzled. "What was what about?"

"I’m an old man enjoying a roast duck. Why did you come and pat my shoulder?" Kui Luo asked. He was an old monster who had managed to survive despite being chased by the Perennial World’s four ruling powers and thus was an exceptionally wary individual. If anyone other than Lu Yin had approached him, Kui Luo would have slapped them away, even Ni Huang. This was why Kui Luo found Lu Yin’s actions so odd. The stranger the behavior, the more suspicious it was. This was the belief that Kui Luo lived by.

Lu Yin had actually forgotten about the little interaction with Kui Luo. Even though only a few seconds had passed, for Lu Yin, it had already been almost a year.

"I just wanted to remind you to eat slowly," Lu Yin replied.

Kui Luo fell silent for a moment. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Eat slowly. Don't choke."

"Boy, have you gone crazy?"

"Finish your food."

Still in the restaurant, Kui Lou was staring at the duck leg he held. He could not make himself eat more no matter what.

Lu Yin took a deep breath. What happened with Kui Luo did not matter; Lu Yin needed to roll his die again.

Suddenly, an earth-shattering roar was heard, and Lu Yin’s expression changed. He immediately stepped into outer space.

Throughout Earth’s solar system, countless cultivators turned to look south.

In that direction, a massive astral beast shrieked in space, and it was possible to see a person sitting on the creature’s back. That person shouted, "Beast, you dare to fight back? Hold still!"

The creature let out another shriek and spat out blood. The astral beast’s vicious and frightening eyes grew dim.

Lu Yin’s eyes narrowed. That person was Wang Si. He had no idea where the old bitch had found the astral beast, but unless Lu Yin was seeing things wrong, the creature was from the same era as Hen Xin. Wang Si was clearly hoping to gain more information about that ancient time from the beast.

After a short while, Wang Si succeeded in subduing the astral beast.

Lu Yin's eyes blazed, as he also wanted the astral beast. The entire reason why he had been rolling his die was to Possess an ancient cultivator and scan their memories. Unexpectedly, Wang Si had already managed to capture an ancient astral beast. The creature likely knew a great many things.

"Senior, go listen in," Lu Yin said to Kui Luo, who had just arrived next to Lu Yin.

The old man just rolled his eyes. "I’m old and don't want to get beaten."

"Don't you want to find out more about the ancient era? Back then, humans lived under what was known as the Heavens Sect, and they even looked down on the Aeternals. How did things change so drastically, leaving us in our current plight? What's a Dao Monarch, the Twelve Heavenly Gates, and everything else that we heard about? Don’t you want to know?" Lu Yin tried to tempt Kui Luo, as the old man loved gossip more than anything.

However, Kui Luo just sneered. "You need to be a lot more subtle if you want to trick me. Let me tell you—the more you want to know something, the slower you need to move. You need to take your time."

The old man then gave Lu Yin a strange smile before looking back at Wang Si and the others.

Lu Yin understood that Kui Luo had already targeted Wang Si.

Lu Yin returned to his place of seclusion, and after resting for ten days, he rolled his die again.

This time he was quite lucky, as his first roll was six pips.

Excitedly, Lu Yin's consciousness appeared in the dark space. He was a little surprised to see that there were several bright orbs of light nearby. Was he really that lucky?

He only considered the matter for a moment before randomly selecting a ball and merging with it.

He was greeted by a terrible roar that blasted his ears as soon as he regained consciousness. Before Lu Yin could even react, an enormous black figure appeared next to him, and it smacked him flying. He could vaguely hear various people shouting.

Lu Yin slammed into the ground and let out a few coughs. He suppressed the pain that racked his body and looked up, where his eyes were met with a familiar sky. When he looked back, he saw the towering Mother Tree connecting the earth and sky. Was he on the rear battlefield?

"Colonel Chun, are you alright?" someone shouted.

"Colonel Chun?"

Lu Yin was momentarily confused, but memories quickly started flooding in. His expression changed, as he immediately realized that he had Possessed the commander of the second array base: Colonel Chun.

Lu Yin remembered this man, as they had met before. When Lu Yin had been at the second array base, Colonel Chun was the person who had held back one of the massive corpse kings, preventing the creature from completely destroying a defensive sourcebox array. The man was a four-tribulation Envoy, so it made sense why Lu Yin had Possessed the man.

"Colonel Chun, you need to be careful!" someone shouted.

Lu Yin looked up and saw a huge corpse king falling down from above, dropping towards him with a vicious stomp.

Lu Yin quickly evaded, and the ground shook from the impact. The enormous corpse king slapped out with a palm strike, and the overwhelming power behind it caused space itself to twist.

Lu Yin kept dodging as he looked around. He was back at the second array base, but where was the defensive sourcebox array?

Memories continued to pour in, and Lu Yin focused on checking the most recent one. His expression changed yet again. When had the fighting in the Perennial World gotten so extreme?

About three months before, an unusually fierce fight had broken out on the rear battlefield. From the Dominion Realm, all the way down to the New World, fighting had erupted absolutely everywhere, and it had continued for a full month without abating.

Shockingly, the humans had actually initiated this fierce fight. Publicly, they were fighting to take control of the New World, and that was all that Colonel Chun had heard. However, Lu Yin knew that the truth of the matter was that the Perennial World was trying to hold back Aeternus.

This explained why, in the two months since the decisive battle in the Fifth Mainland, the Aeternals had remained so quiet: they would not receive any reinforcements. The Perennial World had launched a frenzied attack, but almost no progress had been made from the second array base’s assault. From Colonel Chun’s memories, the All-Dao family’s ancestor had been sent to spearhead and lead the Forsaken Soldiers to break through Xiang City’s blockade, and they had moved to attack the heart of the New World.

Every so often, shockwaves would descend from the Progenitors’ battle high above in the Dominion Realm. Ever since this fierce battle had started, all five of the colonels, as well as the hidden sixth colonel, had been fighting. Three of them had already died despite them being four or even five-tribulation Envoys.

The other array bases had seen equally heavy casualties.

Colonel Chun had no idea when the current battle would end.

Lu Yin controlled the man’s body and kept retreating before eventually ending the Possession. It was clear that if Lu Yin maintained the Possession, Colonel Chun would die.

After his consciousness returned to his own body, Lu Yin quickly left seclusion and went to find Highsage Grandmaster.

Lu Yin had already guessed that, when something happened to the Fifth Mainland, the Perennial World would move to restrain Aeternus and prevent humanity’s enemy from sending more experts to the Fifth Mainland. However, that had only been a guess on Lu Yin’s part. There had been no foundation for such thoughts.

However, his guess had been verified, and Lu Yin knew of the situation in the Perennial World. Aeternus did not have any room to spare more experts to assist in their invasion of the Fifth Mainland, so Lu Yin needed to take advantage of this time to cooperate with the ancient powerhouses who had appeared. They needed to quickly drive the Aeternals out, or else they would lose this rare opportunity.

On the rear battlefield in the Perennial World, humanity had always been on the defensive. At this moment, the humans had been able to overpower the Aeternals because so many of Aeternus’s Semi-Progenitors had been sent to the Fifth Mainland. However, this situation would not last for long.

As soon as the Aeternals were able to push back the humans in the Perennial World, they would send more powerhouses to deal with the Fifth Mainland, and the situation would become completely hopeless once more.

"Senior, what happened to the sourcebox array you set up?" Lu Yin asked. Only Highsage Grandmaster was able to set up the super long-range teleportation array which had transported Arch-Elder Zen and the others to the Neoverse.

The old man replied, "It's still there, but it can only send people one way. I simply did not have the time to arrange a more complete sourcebox array, so if you go to the Neoverse, you’ll have to travel back yourself if you want to return here."

Lu Yin nodded. He then looked towards the part of the solar system where the Wen family had settled.