Chapter 1486: Ceaseless Impetus

With the gemspring water in his eyes, Lu Yin looked at the masked man.

The masked man frowned. "If you want to seek death, then I’ll oblige you."

After saying that, he opened his hand and bent his fingers into claws. The void shattered, and a bizarre, eagle-like creature shot out of the void and raced towards Lu Yin.

Lu Yin raised a hand and released a 350 Stacks Vacuum Palm.

Bang bang bang…

The void ruptured, and shockwaves spread out in all directions, strong enough to distort space and tear the void open.

The masked man was completely shocked; how was this possible? A mere Enlighter had just blocked his battle technique!

Lu Yin lowered his hand. This was no good. This opponent was too difficult. Long Qi should not be strong enough to go toe to toe against an Envoy.

With this thought, Lu Yin stepped back, pulled out the giant mechanical arm, and put it on. He looked completely bizarre as he charged the masked man. "Die, traitor!"

The masked man frowned. He could not understand why, but he felt danger surrounding him from all directions. It felt like a terrifying powerhouse was attacking him, but his opponent was just an Enlighter. When the man recalled that this Enlighter had just blocked his battle technique with some sort of stockpiling palm technique, he became even more nervous. No, first he had to destroy the power supply of the sourcebox array to prevent those people from giving the array any more stellular energy.

There was an explosion as Lu Yin smashed the giant arm into the ground. The ground shattered, and the violent shockwave blew Luo Fan and the others away.

Lan Gui was also blasted away, and he cursed this freak of an Enlighter as he uncontrollably flew through the air and vomited up another mouthful of blood. He was nearly done in by this attack.

Beneath the ground, the masked man secretly cursed Lu Yin as well. The giant right arm had a strength that matched a power level of 500,000, which was the power level of an Envoy. Normally, this would not pose any threat to the masked man, but this Enlighter was already able to block his attacks with a palm, and now, the Enlighter was using a powerful weapon. Things had just become quite troublesome.

Lu Yin took advantage of the moment when the others were being swept away by the shockwave of his attack and the masked man was focused on dodging the attack; an astral chessboard appeared beneath Lu Yin’s feet, and he moved.

The masked man simply fell back. He wanted to get around Lu Yin in order to attack the square platform. Suddenly, his back turned cold. He whipped around and saw a raised hand. There was no star energy to be sensed, but there was golden battle force twined around a hand as it struck out with another Vacuum Palm.

The masked man's pupils instantly shrank to dots at the sight of the golden battle force. He reflexively dodged the attack. He believed that he had dodged, but he had never dreamed that Lu Yin would suddenly shift locations.

The Vacuum Palm went in the same direction as before, but Lu Yin’s body had changed locations. He had shifted himself to be directly behind the masked man with the Teleportation Formation. There were no obstacles as the Vacuum Palm struck the man’s back, and he spat out blood. This was unbelievable; an Envoy had just been injured by an Enlighter.

Severe pain spread through his body, and the masked man could feel that the bones in his back had cracked. He could not stay in this place any longer.

Lu Yin was momentarily stunned, as he had not expected an Envoy to be so willing to run away.

An astral chessboard appeared beneath Lu Yin’s feet once more as he shifted himself. He intended to keep the masked man from escaping.

Suddenly, the five triangles far to the south that were rotating like gears sped up. The terrifying slitted scarlet eyes blinked and then shattered. The Higher Realm itself trembled, and countless people turned to look.

The sky soon returned to normal. The scarlet eyes had disappeared, as had the five triangles. Only the dim sky could be seen now.

Lu Yin made a mistake with the Ce Secret Art. By the time he was able to pursue the masked man once more, the man had already fled.

Lu Yin felt some regret, but he was also rather excited. This was the first time that he had fought against a full strength Envoy. Even with the natural suppression that stellular energy had over star energy, Lu Yin found that he was able to deal with ordinary envoys with his golden battle force and his improved Vacuum Palms.

Luo Fan and the others had not been able to clearly see Lu Yin’s battle, but Lan Gui had.

Lan Gui struggled to rise due to his limbs being twisted into unnatural shapes. It was clear that he had nearly been completely crushed to death by the masked man.

Lu Yin stared off into the distance as the sky recovered. He then looked down at the square platform. Qing Chen opened his eyes, but he did not move. It was not an easy process to feed stellular energy into the sourcebox array.

Eventually, Lu Yin looked over at Lan Gui.

Lan Gui's expression instantly changed. He pursed his lips, "About that, this sen-"

He had been about to refer to himself as a senior, but then, the scene of Lu Yin’s attack against the Envoy suddenly flashed into his mind, and Lan Gui lost his boldness. He felt that this youth had to be someone from one of the four ruling powers, so Lan Gui changed what he had been about to say. “I'm leaving now. Thank you for saving me."

Lu Yin quietly watched as Lan Gui left and made no attempt to stop the man from leaving. While Lan Gui might pose a terrible challenge to others, Lu Yin had a very simple solution: one Vacuum Palm.

People had been scattered in all directions from the shockwave of Lu Yin’s attack, and there were many injuries among them, some of them quite serious. Luo Fan had received a scratch on her arm, and she struggled to stand up. She saw Lu Yin standing some distance away with a dignified appearance. Had he just forced an Envoy to retreat?

Everything had already returned to normal, and the sky off in the distance had grown dim. The only sources of lights were those from the four ruling powers’ territories.

Lu Yin descended to the ground close to the platform, and Luo Fan approached him. "Where's the last attacker?"

"Lan Gui fought him off," Lu Yin said.

Luo Fan was surprised. Had Lan Gui really fought that last attacker off? But she had clearly seen Lan Gui spit out a mouthful of blood and then be smashed into the ground. She gave Lu Yin a careful, appraising look, but she did not press the issue.

𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

It was not long before Qing Chen rose up from the platform. Lu Yin immediately approached the old man. “Supervisor, traitors indeed attacked, but all of them were forced back."

Qing Chen replied, "I know. You’ve worked hard."

He then stared off into the distance. There was still a solemn expression on his face, and it was clear that not all of his concerns had been alleviated.

The Envoys left the platform one after another, and after they all moved away, Qing Chen took action to force the platform back down into the earth and restore the ground on top of it.

"So it was Senior Qing Chen with us. Mu Yu greets senior."

"We greet senior."

All of the Envoys quickly bowed to Qing Chen.

Qing Chen spoke in a low voice, "I would also like to thank all of you for supporting the array."

"We protected this place, as we should," the old man stated.

The beautiful woman turned to look at Lu Yin. "Senior, who is that?"

Qing Chen then introduced the Envoys to Lu Yin. They had not expected to meet a member of the White Dragon Clan in this place.

Even though these powerhouses had all been focused on sending stellular energy into the sourcebox array and had been unable to make any moves, all of them had been able to observe everything that had happened nearby. The strength that Lu Yin had shown over the last few days had been truly surprising to all of them.

In particular, even though they had seen Long Qi use a power vessel, he had still defeated an Envoy. On top of that, they had also seen that he had mastered a secret technique, which was not an easy accomplishment.

Mu Yu smiled at Lu Yin. "Little brother, if you ever have a chance to visit Misty Rain Pavilions, I will make sure that you enjoy your visit."

Luo Fan stood behind her master, and the younger woman blushed and hung her head, though she said nothing.

Even though there were several Envoys present, they did not all know each other. After all, there were a great number of Envoys in the Perennial World, and there were certain groups who were very wary of each other.

Before long, Lu Yin’s journey to Dragon Mountain with Qing Chen resumed.

"Supervisor, what happened back there?" Lu Yin asked.

Qing Chen answered in a deep voice, "The situation of the battlefield at the back of the Mother Tree is not going well, and the Progenitors of the Perennial World failed to block all of the enemy Progenitors’ attacks, causing a crack to appear in the Perennial World."

"They weren’t able to stop a Progenitor?" Lu Yin felt incredibly concerned.

Qing Chen continued, "For a long time, our world has been at a disadvantage in the battle against those monsters. Whenever they fully dedicate themselves to an assault, it’s difficult for us to defend against them all. This is why, a long time ago, a massive sourcebox array was set up behind the Mother Tree: Ceaseless Impetus. The base of the array is five massive triangular continents.

"If those monsters want to destroy the array, they have to climb up the triangular continents from the bottom. For us, we have an easy time defending the triangles against the ordinary monsters, but there are those with power that exceeds that of Envoys, and even those as strong as Semi-Progenitors. As for their Progenitors, either our own Progenitors will take action, or the array formed from the five triangular bases will work together to block the attack.

"The array probably failed to block this attack because the nodes are missing."

Lu Yin felt surprised at this. "The array’s nodes? What are those?"

Qing Chen’s face twisted as he answered, "People."

Lu Yin was shocked.

"The array master and the nodes form the most important parts of the sourcebox array. Each one of them is a Semi-Progenitor, but if even one of them is missing, the array’s defensive capabilities become greatly reduced, or even disappear," explained Qing Chen.

Lu Yin's expression suddenly and drastically changed—Semi-Progenitors? Could it be?

"The Semi-Progenitors who went up to the Dominion Realm to rescue the Junior Progenitors, are they the nodes?" Lu Yin blurted out.

Qing Chen nodded. "Nice thinking."

Lu Yin suddenly understood why the monsters had trapped the Junior Progenitors instead of simply killing them. This was the reason.

Semi-Progenitors would have to be sent out to rescue the Junior Progenitors, but no matter how many Semi-Progenitors there were in the Perennial World, ten were needed to maintain the defensive sourcebox array, so how many more could there still be? Additionally, it was impossible for any of the four ruling powers to trust a Semi-Progenitor from another ruling power to rescue their own Junior Progenitor, which further complicated the matter. A choice had been put before the four ruling powers: abandon the Junior Progenitors or leave the sourcebox array unattended in order to rescue the four youths.

It was clear that the four ruling powers saw the lives of their Junior Progenitors as more important than maintaining a fully operational defensive sourcebox array.

"Many years have passed without any incidents affecting the sourcebox array, but the war behind the Mother Tree has also never been as intense as it is now. This is a recent change, and the four ruling powers did not expect the nodes’ absence to trigger such an issue. All that can be said is that the enemy planned well." Qing Chen frowned.

Lu Yin felt a chill grip his heart. Starting with the map of the Dominion Realm that Long Xian had leaked, to trapping the Junior Progenitors, to the most recent attack on the Perennial World’s defensive sourcebox array—this plot had shaken the entire Perennial World. Each step of the enemy’s plan was intricately linked to the next, and not once had humanity taken a step that strayed from their enemy’s expectations. This level of scheming and deep understanding of humanity was absolutely terrifying.

On top of that, this was just one active plot. The presence of other traitors and Redbacks had caused people to panic and had forced the Perennial World to gather many powerhouses to form Humility’s Gate. This further occupied the Perennial World’s powerhouses and divided them. The most horrifying part of this scheme was that no one could be sure who was a Redback.

Lu Yin looked to the south. All of a sudden, he had a feeling that the entire Perennial Word was held in place by a massive hand, just like how Lan Gui had been seized by the masked man, unable to break free, as death inched closer and closer.

"Are the Progenitors of this universe weaker than those monsters’ Progenitors?" Lu Yin suddenly asked.

Qing Chen stiffened from shock. "Of course not! My Perennial World has its own Progenitors, as do the four ruling powers. Which of them is not an invincible powerhouse? We have had more than just one or two peerless experts who rose up in the past, and the original Nine Mountains and Eight Seas were overwhelmingly brilliant."

At this point, Qing Chen fell silent, and he stopped talking. After all, he was referring to the original Nine Mountains and Eight Seas.

Back then, there had been Progenitor Chen, Progenitor Hui, and the Rune Progenitor. According to what Lu Yin knew, each one of them had been a peerless powerhouse who had dominated the entire universe, and the Sixth Mainland had even denied their existence. Progenitor Hui had even been able to make plans that spanned countless years. Could the Perennial World’s current Progenitors even come close to comparing to the Progenitors of that era?

Lu Yin suspected that the Progenitors of the Perennial World likely possessed a similar level of strength as the Sixth Mainland’s three Progenitors. However, all three of them together might not be capable of defeating even a single one of Progenitor Chen’s clones.

Humanity is regressing. Lu Yin had this sudden thought.