Chapter 3931: Lifeforce

Lu Yin exhaled before approaching the transparent moth again. He stared into its compound eyes. “Let’s make you a little more useful first.”

With that, he released his inner universe, and his Champions' Stage Purgatory also appeared. The transparent moth was immediately tossed inside.

No matter if it was a human or some other kind of creature, as long as they existed in the cosmos, they possessed karma.

Even a stone had its own karma.

The moment the transparent moth entered his Champions' Stage Purgatory, Lu Yin was thrilled to see his Karmic Dao suddenly exhibit a sharp spike in power.

This much?

The transparent moth must have lived for an incredibly long time, given how much it was strengthening Lu Yin’s Karmic Dao. The only two individuals who had surpassed the moth were Yue Ya and the meteorite.

It had to be acknowledged that Yue Ya’s karma came from the manifested thought that had given birth to him, which had originally come from a dead Immortal.

As for the meteorite, it had granted Lu Yin the karma of an entire civilization.

The transparent moth’s karma was comparable, which demonstrated its immense age.

Lu Yin’s Karmic Dao instantly increased by a full third, which was a tremendous increase.

Then, his expression suddenly darkened.

He was looking at the transparent moth’s karma.

He saw how it had extinguished countless lifeforms throughout various megaverses, using its Allsenses to explore and destroy all living beings in its path. The moth was brutal and cruel.

Entire civilizations had been destroyed in an instant. The Allsenses were like locusts that roamed the cosmos.

Lu Yin also realized that its white energy was what the Allsenses harvested from the flowers. He had already known that it enabled the transparent moth to fuse with Immortal matter. Bit by bit, it had accumulated that energy. That white energy came from the dead creatures that the Allsenses had killed. It was extracted by feeding corpses to the flowers to serve as nutrients, and then it was collected by other Allsenses and finally delivered to the transparent moth. This was the moth’s ecosystem, as well as the reason why it continued to grow more powerful.

The deaths of countless creatures had all been fed to a single transparent moth.

Humans were among those creatures.

Liu Li, Cong Gu, and one cultivator after another—all of their deaths had benefited the moth.

Those seemingly beautiful flowers were, in actuality, hell.

The transparent moth had destroyed every lifeform in the Allsense Megaverse. It treated the megaverse as a garden, and it constantly fertilized the field in order to grow stronger.

Within that immense karma, Lu Yin saw Liu Li, as well as the despair that had appeared on the faces of countless cultivators before they had died.

He also saw an even more terrifying truth: the transparent moth could still evolve further.

Yes, just like the Allsenses, the moth could evolve.

The creature’s karma showed Lu Yin how the transparent moth had evolved, transforming from one form to another, again and again, until it finally achieved its current form.

Lu Yin stared at the Champions' Stage Purgatory, his bloodlust rising.

Earlier, he had considered using the transparent moth to produce Allsenses that could fight against the Nest civilization, but the moth had crossed a line.

Of particular concern was its uncontrollable evolution. No one could guess what power it might gain with its next metamorphosis. If it managed to become an Immortal, it would become a catastrophe on the cosmic scale.

The transparent moth was trying to evolve into an Immortal, and it was much closer than Venerable Lan Ye had ever gotten. Its evolutionary direction was clearly laid out, which was a biological advantage.

Lu Yin did not want to eliminate the Nest civilization only to give rise to an even more terrifying threat.

Given enough time, the transparent moth could transform every planet in an entire megaverse into a spawning ground for Allsenses. It was the nemesis of all life, which made it much too terrifying.

Once his Karmic Dao finished gathering all of the moth’s karma, Lu Yin released the transparent moth from his Champions’ Stage Purgatory.

At that moment, the transparent moth was very quiet. Its wings were only barely fluttering, though there was a sense that it yearned for some sort of communication.

“You wish to submit to me,” Lu Yin probed.

The transparent moth’s compound eyes instantly locked onto Lu Yin before the creature gently lowered its head.

Lu Yin stared at it. “You are strong and could also be quite useful to me. Tell me, what is that white energy?”

For a creature like the moth, there was no communication barrier.

The transparent moth stared at Lu Yin for a while, before speaking with a faint voice, "Life... Force."

"Lifeforce?" Lu Yin was puzzled.

"Mighty one, that energy is Lifeforce. At the birth of every living creature, the cosmos grants them Lifeforce, though the beings themselves are unaware of it. Some creatures die, and regardless of how powerful another might be, they cannot save them. That is because their Lifeforce is gone."

Lu Yin frowned. Lifeforce? When Yan’er was gravely injured, he had not been able to save her, and Mister Mu had said that it was because her vitality had been severed. Could that vitality be Lifeforce? No, if that were the case, Lu Yin would still be incapable of saving Yan’er.

Yan’er had not lost her Lifeforce. Mister Mu’s explanation sounded similar, but the two were not the same.

This must be a power that only Immortals could wield.

"Lifeforce... can only Immortals control it?"

"Immortals?"

"Those stronger than me."

"Those mighty ones who are eternal? Immortals... an apt name. Yes, only Immortals can control Lifeforce. When one can sense an unending font of Lifeforce within themselves, it marks their entry into the Immortal realm. Before that, regardless of whether one manages to comprehend, extract, or even merge Lifeforce with Immortal matter, they still won’t be able to enter the Immortal realm.

"Only when one can generate endless Lifeforce on their own do they truly enter the Immortal realm."

Lu Yin understood. Venerable Lan Ye and the others had used the backlash of gathering too much Immortal matter to repeatedly experience the cycle of destruction and rebirth in their bodies, seeking Lifeforce. With the insights of a megaverse’s reset, provided that one could also raise their cultivation, they would be able to sense the unending stream of Lifeforce. This was the truth behind becoming an Immortal through resetting a megaverse.

It sounded simple, and yet it was extremely difficult in actual practice.

First, a person needed to be able to see Immortal matter and seize it. That meant becoming a peak Dukkhan. After that, the person needed to endure the cycle of destruction and rebirth with their body without dying. Finally, their cultivation realm needed to keep up with everything else. It was not enough to find Lifeforce; only when an individual’s body naturally and endlessly produced Lifeforce did they truly enter the Immortal realm.

Not a single step could be skipped.

Finally, the prerequisite to everything was the reset of a megaverse. Without that, even a peak Dukkhan would not be able to see or capture Immortal matter, let alone comprehend the mysteries of a reset and resonate with it, transferring the rules of a megaverse to their own existence.

Given this understanding, it would be impressive if even one in 10,000 peak Dukkhans succeeded in reaching the Immortal realm.

"Do you intend to break into the Immortal realm by plundering Lifeforce and using Immortal matter?"

"Mighty one, I can sense your indifference. Are you indifferent to the creature that I have taken Lifeforce from, or to my method itself?"

Lu Yin calmly stared at the transparent moth. Its massive compound eyes tried to look gentle, and the voice that reached him sounded like a child’s.

Admittedly, such a voice could easily evoke sympathy, but unfortunately for the moth, it could only assume that Lu Yin had failed to understand it.

Lu Yin understood the creature far too well. What he had observed from its karma had only served to confirm the moth’s cruel nature. It had deliberately chosen its voice to elicit compassion from Lu Yin.

The fact that it understood how to evoke compassion from a human through its voice alone was terrifying. Things only grew worse when one considered that the moth had purposefully hidden the Allsense Megaverse’s Mother Tree and not sown its own flowers in the megaverse’s main universe, only exposing the Allsenses.

The transparent moth was extraordinarily intelligent.

If not for Devourer perfectly countering the Allsenses, the moth would have never been discovered.

"This is how the cosmos functions. Lifeforms are nothing more than vessels for recycling a megaverse’s Lifeforce. Immortals transcend that cycle and thus are above all lower lifeforms. To truly exist in the omniverse, it’s imperative to become an Immortal. Mighty one, you are very, very close. You can try my method. Surely you’ll soon become an Immortal."

Lu Yin asked, "You seem to know a great deal about the omniverse."

The transparent moth gently fluttered its wings. "I simply know the rules for surviving in the cosmos. Remaining hidden is the only reason to exist. Exposed, even an Immortal may die. I once witnessed the death of an Immortal creature. Seeing that frightened me so much that I no longer dare to make contact with any other creatures from any megaverse, no matter how insignificant they may appear to be."

Lu Yin’s voice turned cold. "Then explain this megaverse. Why did you slaughter all life here?"

The moth grew uneasy. "Do you pity them?

"Mighty one, pity is a short path to death. Only by being indifferent can one become stronger. If I hadn’t done this, the Lifeforce here would have become too scattered. Discovery makes survival nearly impossible. The only way to continue surviving is to grow stronger, stronger, and even stronger. The most fundamental rule of the omniverse is avoidance. No one can truly know what kind of beings they might encounter.

"Only Immortals can ignore that rule."

"I want to know how much you know about the omniverse." Lu Yin pressed.

The moth replied, "I’ve stayed in this megaverse for far too long. Before I arrived here, I was not even a tenth as strong as I am now, and I couldn’t possibly understand the cosmos. Still, I do know that there are creatures who deliberately allow themselves to be discovered. If you encounter such beings, run! Flee as far as you can. There are civilizations which specialize in hunting other civilizations, and they will use every means imaginable..."

Lu Yin silently listened. The moth shared its understanding of the Aevum Inch, speaking of civilizations that not even the Nine Odysseys Megaverse knew about. However, according to the moth, any civilization that it saw was already close to death.

"Mighty one, you came to this megaverse to prevent it from being exposed in order to stay hidden yourselves, didn’t you? You must have a basic understanding of the omniverse. Perhaps you belong to one of the powerful civilizations of the cosmos, one which is qualified to hunt other civilizations. May I join you?" the moth pleaded.

Hunt. The word weighed heavily on Lu Yin’s heart.

The first time he had traveled with a Night Pillar, he had accompanied the Seventh Night Pillar to the Orchid Megaverse. During the trip, he had considered the possibility that civilizations might be fishing in the Aevum Inch, but the moth was describing something far crueler. There were civilizations that specialized in hunting down and annihilating others.

The Nine Odysseys Megaverse was not really such a civilization, as they only destroyed megaverses that entered a dangerous range. They did not actively seek out foreign megaverses to destroy.

If there were civilizations that deliberately hunted, or fished, other civilizations, it meant that they were extremely confident and also possessed an incredible desire for destruction. That was an extraordinarily dangerous combination.

Much as Lu Yin had already come to understand, the original springboard was a tool that an unknown civilization had released in order to search for others. According to the transparent moth, the civilization behind the springboard had to be immensely powerful. As it traveled from one megaverse to another, it had stumbled upon springboards again and again. That civilization had spread its springboards across a vast, seemingly infinite region of the Aevum Inch.