Chapter 3697: Hard To Breathe

"Just who are you?" Shuangdao roared again. His consciousness formed a blade that sliced at the tall cliff.

Gui Shaoqing and Xi Wen both attacked as well. Xi Wen was particularly notable, given that her Middle Heaven’s Blade was faster than Shuangdao’s attack. However, while the blade reached within a finger’s breadth of the cliff, it might as well have been past the horizon. No matter how the conscients attacked, none of them could touch the cliff with their consciousness.

It was all for naught, which was precisely the High Seraph’s aim.

Luminary Lan Huifeng muttered to himself while staring at the steep cliff, "It's all fake..."

Old Chief was still staring at the people at the top of the cliff. Their eyes looked down with laughter, derision, and ridicule, treating all of the conscients below them as nothing more than mere ants. Had it really all been for nothing? Everything that they tried, every single time, had failed. They had never been able to touch the cliff or reach its top. It might as well be the distant heavens. While it looked far away, the truth was that the distance was irrelevant.

How had the High Seraph succeeded?

The young people at the top of the cliff laughed. "Look at those conscients! What fools! How could they ever touch this place?"

"Do not underestimate them. If not for where you and I are standing, you would be utterly incapable of resisting them. A single burst of consciousness from any one of them would leave you senseless."

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Sooner or later, we will surpass them."

"We are not in the same category as them..."

The woman at the front of the group was still staring downwards. She suddenly turned around and strode toward the palace, saying, "Follow me."

A group of young people laughed at those at the bottom of the cliff again before quickly following the woman.

Across the cliff was another group of young people that had become visible to Old Chief and the other Luminaries. Like the group led by the woman, the second group also looked down upon the conscients. In their eyes was pure condescension.

"Even if we were exposed, it was still fun, wasn't it?" one woman said with a laugh. Her voice was dripping with arrogance.

Someone nearby retorted, "I really want to catch a few to take back. We could also cultivate consciousness like them."

"Cultivating consciousness is not easy. I would suggest that you don’t underestimate those conscients. You don’t even know who they were up against."

"Oh? Who?"

“The High Seraph.” The voice of the man leading the group echoed across the face of the cliff.

Most of the youths in the group were astonished. “The High Seraph? Is that the one from the Spirit Nidus who was given the title of Lesser Sancte?”

“So that’s him? No wonder he was able to hit the cliff.”

“I told you that he looked familiar! I’ve seen statues of the Lesser Sancti before.”

“Since he’s a Lesser Sancte, even if he was given the title, he should be considered a subject of our Nine Odysseys Megaverse. So why did he attack the cliff? The High Seraph is truly as unruly as the rumors claim. I've even heard that Lesser Sancte Yue Ya has been frustrated with the High Seraph for a long time.”

“It’s not just Lesser Sancte Yue Ya. Even the Greater Sancti are unhappy.”

“It’d be best if he disappeared. He spoiled our fun.”

The man leading the group frowned. Even if the High Seraph had been given his title, he was still an incredible expert who had defeated Ru Shi, another Lesser Sancte. The Ru family had been forced to offer up Ru Shi’s Wayfinder Sutra to gain protection. Such a powerful being was not easy to deal with, not unless a Greater Sancte intervened.

Why was that person in the Willbound Spire? How did he know its secret? No one from the Spirit Nidus should know about this information, and yet the High Seraph had even managed to touch the cliff, which had led to both groups being exposed.

As the man’s thoughts progressed, he looked across the face of the cliff at where the woman was walking towards the palace. She was staring straight back at the man.

The two exchanged glances, each seeing the unease in the other’s eyes.

Like the youths following them, the two had also once looked down upon outsiders. Even when their cultivation was weak, they had felt contempt for those of the Spirit Nidus or the Consciousness Megaverse. However, as an individual’s cultivation progressed, they would come to realize that becoming exalted was not something that happened naturally or could be determined by status. Rather, it was entirely dependent on an individual’s own power.

For example, the High Seraph. Despite the fact that he had been standing at the bottom of the cliff and looking upwards, his eyes had still looked down upon those at the top.

One could only hope that nothing unexpected occurred.

The top and the bottom of that cliff were two different worlds.

No matter the questions and demands that Shuangdao and the others hurled up from below, no one atop the cliff answered them. No matter what the conscients did, they would never be able to touch the cliff.

The Luminaries could only watch as the two groups atop the cliff walked towards the palace, entering the place where the Consciousness Megaverse had yearned to reach for countless years.

They had believed themselves to stand at the top of the two megaverses, second only to Immortals and the High Seraph. But in only a few moments, the understanding shared by Old Chief and the other Luminaries had been utterly shattered.

In addition to Old Chief, the Luminaries, and the High Seraph, another person also witnessed the events that had unfolded: Lu Yin.

After he returned to the Willbound Spire with Emperor Slayer, Lu Yin had not dared to release his consciousness, out of fear of being ambushed at the bottom of the cliff by Old Chief and the rest of the Luminaries. He needed to find another way out.

First, he tried using his physical strength, which led to him witnessing numerous memories related to brute strength. He felt that the memories in this place was similar to fishing in the River of Aeons, which led him to increasingly question if the River of Aeons was the power of time, or actually a river of memories.

While releasing his physical strength, Lu Yin was able to see memories related to Stillstorm.

However, he only managed to catch a glimpse of Stillstorm’s shadow in the distance before the creature faded away. It was unclear whether the keepers of the Willbound Spire’s memories found Stillstorm uninteresting, or if the memories related to the astral beast had vanished.

There were also memories of the Primordial Skyflame Beast, though Lu Yin was unable to discern which megaverse the beast originated from. Stillstorm’s era was dramatically different from the current Tianyuan Megaverse. Before humanity had altered the megaverse and fought a nearly endless war against Aeternus, there had been an entirely different history in their megaverse.

During that era, the Tianyuan Megaverse had been a desolate place, much like the Astral Beast Domain, only magnified countless times over.

By releasing his physical strength, Lu Yin was able to observe many memories. After that, he tried using other powers to see if additional memories could be revealed. When Lightstream was released, he happened to see what was happening at the bottom of the cliff. He had watched Everlasting Will appear and had followed it upwards, eventually seeing the two groups of people at the top of the cliff as well.

He was not observing a memory, but rather what was happening in real time. Lu Yin had not expected to be able to witness the present by using a power like time.

He never saw the High Seraph, given that Lu Yin’s perspective only allowed him to look in the direction in which Everlasting Will had been unleashed. Still, he was able to recognize the ability.

After all, Lu Yin had also stood at the bottom of that cliff once.

He had never considered the possibility that there were actual people atop the steep cliff. Those people had to be from the Nine Odysseys Megaverse. Sure enough, the Nine Odysseys Megaverse controlled both the Spirit Nidus and the Consciousness Megaverse, all the while remaining hidden from the people of both megaverses, veiled by a layer of secrecy. The High Seraph had ripped off that veil, completely shattering everything that the conscients had understood to be true.

The Nine Odysseys Megaverse had direct access to the Willbound Spire. Did the Willbound Spire’s secret still exist?

Lu Yin felt quite frustrated. The power of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse was so overbearing that it left everyone else gasping to even breathe.

Lu Yin also saw the same sneering, mocking expressions that Old Chief and the Luminaries had seen. Those eyes did not only look down upon the conscients, but also upon everyone in both the Spirit Nidus and the Tianyuan Megaverse.

The Nine Odysseys Megaverse lay behind the other three megaverses. Yong Heng had Feng Bo as a subordinate, which meant that Aeternus’s rise and Yong Heng’s actions against the Heavens Sect had not only been supported by the Spirit Nidus, but also the Nine Odysseys Megaverse. In the Spirit Nidus, liquified spirit seeds were harvested by the Nine Odysseys Megaverse. As for the Consciousness Megaverse, their greatest secret, the Willbound Spire, was treated as nothing more than a joke.

The hand of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse was always behind everything.

All of this might be tolerable, provided that one did not see the truth. However, as soon as the truth was revealed, it would take one’s breath away.

How should I put it?

Lu Yin suddenly felt very grateful to Aeternus.

He had once believed that he had reached the peak of the megaverse, only to be shown the six Scourges. That event had shattered all he knew about the balance of power, and yet he had not given up at that moment. Because of that experience, Lu Yin had not given up or surrendered when confronted with the Spirit Nidus’s overwhelming power, and he also would not step back after seeing the true nature of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse.

The human heart could be tempered again and again, growing stronger after each trial. While Lu Yin had not been born fearless and intrepid, he could become exactly that kind of person.

His greatest desire at this moment was to keep a close watch on the High Seraph and wait to watch Everlasting Will be unleashed again. With Everlasting Will, it might be possible to climb up the cliff. That ability might be the only way to reach the palace at the top.

It would not be easy. How could Lu Yin keep an eye on the High Seraph?

The only option was to continuously release Lightstream so that the moment Everlasting Will reappeared, Lu Yin could immediately arrive at the bottom of the cliff. That was the only way he would have any chance at all.

Any such opportunity would vanish in an instant.

If Lu Yin appeared a moment too soon, he would be attacked by Old Chief and his group. If he appeared a moment too late, everything would already be over.

Lu Yin could not be careless. He continuously released Lightstream, while also hoping that he would not be overburdened by seeing too many memories that wasted his time.

...

At the boundary of the Consciousness Megaverse, the massive gate had closed after the seven battleships passed through. When it next opened, the Consciousness Megaverse might be completely defeated, or it might be a prelude to a much longer campaign. No one knew.

On the other side of the gate was the Aevum Inch. In that endless darkness that had no visible end, only a dim light flickered. It drew closer and closer, and once it was close enough, it revealed itself to be a meteorite. It hurtled straight at the gate at a speed comparable to a battleship that had been launched from a springboard.

“What is that? Watch out!” One of the cultivators from the Spirit Nidus who was waiting outside the gate made a move. He was an Ortuser, and he stabbed his spear at the meteorite as sequence particles covered his entire body.

Boom!

A massive shockwave ripped through space as the meteorite smashed right through the gate, blasting a hole in it and plunging into the depths of the Consciousness Megaverse, quickly vanishing.

As for the Ortuser who had tried to stop the meteorite, nothing remained. Both his body and his weapon had completely vanished into the void.

The Dukkhan who was with the cultivators outside the gate stared at the broken gate in shock. "What was that?"

On the other side of the gate, within the Consciousness Megaverse: while the meteorite had shattered the gate, doing so had substantially slowed the meteorite. Within it, an eye opened. It was filled with madness and rage, and it spun around, scanning the nearby region.

...

Time rolled on as Lu Yin witnessed more and more memories. Given that they were all related to the power of Lightstream, which was the power of time, Lu Yin eventually lost track of how much time had passed in the memories that he observed; it might have been multiple eons or a mere instant.

Even the memories themselves imparted a rather vague sense of the passing of time.

In order to avoid missing any opportunity, Lu Yin switched to another one of his powers: the Nine Heavens Transformation. It was a power that the High Seraph also possessed, and Lu Yin felt that releasing it might reveal something, or at the very least, allow him to witness a memory of when the High Seraph had used it.

Lu Yin’s consciousness surged forth. He had forgotten that his Nine Heavens was not formed from splitting his Progenitor’s world or inner universe, but was rather instead an extension of his consciousness. As soon as the Nine Heavens appeared, Lu Yin was instantly transported to the bottom of the cliff.

He looked up at the palace that intermittently appeared through the haze. At the top of the cliff, the two groups of people were still walking towards the palace. While they looked to be close to it, they were actually still a great distance away.

"Eh? Someone else has shown up," someone atop the cliff remarked, drawing the others’ attention to Lu Yin. The youths in the two groups had no idea how long it would take them to reach the palace. The truth was that the palace was unreachable, but it was necessary for people to try it at least once. It was a tedious process. In the past, people had entertained themselves by watching the conscients down below try to approach the cliff. After being exposed, they were experiencing a different form of entertainment.

Dozens of people on both sides of the cliff looked down. Each one was young, and their eyes were filled with anticipation. One of them shouted, "Don't let us down! Make it spectacular!"