Chapter 4085: No Longer Exists

Beside Lu Yin, the Great Master looked at him in confusion.

Was that just an illusion? It seemed like, for a moment, the sorrow induced by this gate actually vanished.

In Zhan Ming’s eyes, Lu Yin’s silhouette suddenly seemed to grow. It was as if the man was overshadowing the gate itself.

Soon, Lu Yin and the Great Master left the Arcanum Domain. Zhan Ming led the Zhan family to offer them a respectful send-off.

Only after the two were gone did the Zhan family breathe a true sigh of relief. The pressure that they had been under had been immense.

Almost all of the Spirit Nidus’s top experts had left, which placed the Zhan family at the peak of the megaverse for the moment, which put enormous pressure on Zhan Ming.

He very much wanted to use the Terminus Cycle to seal the Arcanum Domain again.

Elsewhere, Lu Yin and the Great Master strolled through outer space.

“Thanks for your help during that last battle,” the Great Master said.

Lu Yin offered a small smile. “There’s no need for such formalities between us.”

The Great Master glanced sideways at him. “Do you talk this casually with every woman?”

“?”

“No wonder that girl said what she did,” the Great Master remarked.

“Who? What do you mean?”

“Xiang Siyu. She said that you speak oddly.”

Lu Yin was left speechless. She was the one who spoke oddly! Half of the time, Lu Yin had not even known how to reply to the woman.

“By the way, what do you think of Hong’er?”

“What does she have to do with me?”

“Don’t forget, you still have one more task, which is for Hong’er to decide.”

Lu Yin then remembered that he had only fulfilled six of the Seven Fairies’ tasks, and there was still one last one. If he completed them all, he could request one thing from Greater Sancte Green Lotus.

In the past, he had wanted to ask the Greater Sancte to protect the Tianyuan from being reset, but Lu Yin had since obtained the strength to protect his home on his own. At least, unless Greater Sancte Green Lotus and the Greater Sancti became his enemies.

Still, fulfilling the Seven Fairies’ tasks and receiving a favor from Greater Sancte Green Lotus was quite tempting.

Lu Yin already enjoyed a good relationship with Greater Sancte Green Lotus, but there were certain things that could not be casually requested.

Having a legitimate reason for those things was better.

“What does she want me to do?” Lu Yin asked.

The Great Master shook her head. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her yourself, or have Seventh Sister ask.

“Before, Hong’er and I kept Seventh Sister and the others from being in contact with us in order to hide our identities, but that’s no longer necessary.”

Lu Yin nodded thoughtfully.

“One more thing.” The Great Master looked pointedly at Lu Yin. “Back then, the one you touched... it wasn’t me.”

Lu Yin blankly stared at the woman, uncertain of how he should respond.

Is that still not over?

She chuckled. “Believe it or not, but I know who you touched. I’m not on the same level as Seventh Sister and the others.”

Lu Yin looked away without saying anything.

“Don’t you want to know?”

“It’s in the past.”

“For a woman, such a thing will never be in the past, unless she belongs to you.”

Lu Yin sighed. “Where did Senior Blood Tower go?”

The Great Master then looked away. “If you don’t want to know, then just forget it. You’ll find out eventually. As for Blood Tower, I don’t know.”

“I have a question,” Lu Yin said.

“Ask.”

“Since you’re a Ferryman of the River of Aeons, you shouldn’t belong to just human civilization, right?”

“Of course. I came from another megaverse. Blood Tower brought me here after passing by.”

“How did you get free of the River of Aeons?”

She looked at him. “What? Does your civilization’s ferryman want to quit?”

Lu Yin did not deny that. Wei Nu had certainly wanted to break free, though he did not know if Zhao Ran wished to continue on in her role.

The Great Master stared straight ahead. “A ferryman’s duty is to prevent anyone from meddling with time. Without a ferryman, a megaverse’s timeline will fall into complete chaos.

“However, safeguarding a megaverse’s time is pure torment for the ferryman.

“A ferryman needs to remain on the River of Aeons for ages upon ages, living lives comparable to those of Immortals. However, while Immortals are free to leave, a ferryman cannot.

“I once thought to leave, but doing so caused the megaverse to fall into turmoil. The past and present inverted, history was reversed, and everything became chaotic. It’s not something that you would ever want to see.”

Lu Yin was reminded of Wei Nu’s contest with Destiny. Destiny was not a ferryman of the River of Aeons, and yet she had still manipulated Wei Nu through the river and made it possible to reverse time just once.

That single reversal had changed countless people’s fates and even altered the destiny of humanity as a whole.

Without that temporal reversal, things might not have developed as they had. Lu Yin’s relationship with both the Spirit Nidus and the Nine Odysseys Megaverse would be very different.

And yet, that had only been one temporal reversal.

If several had taken place, what would have become of human civilization?

And yet Greater Sancte Green Lotus and the other Immortals had allowed that temporal reversion to take place.

“I was able to leave my River of Aeons because that river... no longer exists,” the Great Master murmured softly. Her comment was something that Lu Yin failed to immediately understand.

Lu Yin was at a loss. “What do you mean, ‘no longer exists?’”

Her eyes grew wistful. “A River of Aeons exists for a megaverse’s civilization. If that megaverse is gone, then its time is also gone. You could say that it returns to the main stream.”

“How could a megaverse be gone?” Lu Yin asked, bewildered.

She looked over and smiled. “If a megaverse can appear, then it can also disappear. What’s so strange about that?”

“Can’t they only be reset?”

“They can also vanish entirely.”

“How?”

“How would I know? Ask Greater Sancte Green Lotus or one of the others. I’m not an Immortal.”

Her eyes then grew cold with bloodlust. “In retrospect, it was those hateful scavengers. If I ever get the chance, I’ll throw them into the River of Aeons to suffer a fate worse than death.”

Lu Yin looked at her.

Scavengers?

The woman’s gaze shifted. “Civilizations struggle against each other in the Aevum Inch, but there are also powerful wanderers who travel about. They hunt for civilizations and determine their coordinates, which they then sell for resources or even a path to Immortality.

“The coordinates of my original megaverse were sold by such scum, which led to my megaverse disappearing and its time vanishing back into the main stream. Blood Tower happened to arrive at that time, and I came here with him.”

Lu Yin understood. “So when you say scavengers, are you referring to those who sell other civilizations’ coordinates?”

The Great Master silently nodded.

“Have you ever considered...” Lu Yin hesitated.

“That Blood Tower did it?” she finished for him.

Lu Yin stayed silent. It was a glaring coincidence: a megaverse vanished just before Blood Tower arrived, and the man was also an Immortal.

She met his gaze. “It wasn’t Blood Tower. He doesn’t have such strength.”

“The strength to completely destroy a megaverse?”

She shook her head. “The power to erase a megaverse without me even noticing. I was the ferryman of the River of Aeons for that civilization. Hiding such a thing from me couldn’t have been easy, even for an Immortal.”

Lu Yin thought of Zhao Ran. When the Nest civilization had attacked the Tianyuan, she had been able to stall the Immortal bug for quite some time.

She had managed to stall an Immortal, let alone merely perceive one.

If an Immortal wanted to destroy the Tianyuan, they would not be able to hide their actions from the ferryman of the River of Aeons. The power of time permeated every corner of a megaverse.

“Aside from its River of Aeons being taken back, is there some other way for a ferryman to leave, even temporarily?” Lu Yin asked.

The Great Master gave him an odd look. “Don’t tell me that your wife is the ferryman of the Tianyuan.”

“Of course not!” Lu Yin said, surprised by the sudden leap in logic.

She did not appear to be convinced. “Listen, a ferryman’s form reflects the megaverse’s current civilization. She might not even actually be a human. Don’t give your heart to the wrong creature.”

Lu Yin was left speechless. “She’s really not. She’s just a friend, or rather, family.”

“Is that so? That’s good. I just wanted to be kind enough to warn you. Deny it if you like, but just don’t fall any further. That said, you refused even us Seven Fairies, so your wife must be truly extraordinary.”

“Do you actually have a way to allow a ferryman to leave their River of Aeons?”

“Yes, but I won’t tell you.”

“?”

“This isn’t because of you. Every path has rules, and ferrymen also must follow specific rules. Finding a way out on your own is doing so with your own ability. If another ferryman helps, that changes the nature of the task. Don’t forget—you, me, and even Greater Sancte Green Lotus—all that we see are branches of the true River of Aeons. Above what we see is the main River of Aeons that flows through the entire cosmos.” After a pause, the Great Master continued to say, “No one’s ever heard of drawing down that river, as that river governs the laws of time for the entire omniverse. It is completely different from its branches.”

Lu Yin frowned. “Are you saying that the main River of Aeons also has a ferryman?”

“‘Ferryman’ is just a term. They might be the guardian for insects, other creatures, or whatever, but don’t ever think of disrupting their system, or else calamity will strike.” The Great Master was solemn.

Lu Yin’s eyes narrowed. “Is that your understanding of things?”

“It’s what I suspect.”

“Just suspect?”

“Aren’t suspicions enough? The most unsettling thing in the cosmos is the unknown. If you can make a guess about something, you’ve already halved your fear.”

Lu Yin nodded. That certainly made sense, much like the concept of self-awareness.

To survive in the cosmos, it was necessary to possess awareness of one’s own self while forming conjectures about the rest of the cosmos. If one was unable to even make guesses, they would be lost in the abyss.

What was tragic was that most civilizations could not even speculate about what truly existed in the cosmos.

Speculation could not be baseless imaginings. Any real conjecture had to come from some sort of inner sense or anticipation, which indicated that one was already close to the truth. That was the meaning of conjecture.

If one guessed blindly, there was no difference from doing nothing at all.

The Great Master was able to speculate about the main stream of the River of Aeons only because she herself was a ferryman of the River of Aeons. For anyone else, it was nearly impossible to form any conjectures.

“It’s best to not talk about the ferrymen, unless the day comes when you can form conjectures regarding the main stream,” the Great Master said.

Lu Yin stared up at the stars. “The more I think I understand the cosmos, the further I realize I am from the truth.

“Can an Immortal speculate about the River of Aeons’ main stream?”

“How would I know? You should ask one. You humans are the most deceptive species I’ve ever seen. Outwardly, you act all refined and polite, paying your respects here and there, but when it comes to a fight, there are none fiercer.”

The Great Master subconsciously looked up at the Mother Tree’s canopy. “I truly never expected Greater Sancte Awe Gate to be capable of fighting two Immortals at the same time. I always believed her to be far weaker than Greater Sancte Blood Tower.”

“I don’t find it surprising. After all, Awe Gate once fought against the entire megaverse. If she hadn’t stepped into the Immortal realm, she would have been similar to me.”

“That’s not the same. Victory in battle depends not only on strength, but also on will. Greater Sancte Awe Gate’s will is exceptionally strong, though she usually keeps it completely hidden.” The woman looked back at Lu Yin. “You must understand, any creature that manages to become an Immortal will have their natural disposition ground away beneath the restrictions that they endure. No one is exempt from that.

“Even so, Greater Sancte Awe Gate was able to release such a blazing explosion of battle intent. She truly wants to fight.”