Chapter 415 - 412: The Other End of the Line

Chapter 415: Chapter 412: The Other End of the Line

Mo Ling was lost in the balloon’s words, his mind reeling.

’Hostility from thirty-five hundred years in the future... No wonder it’s so thin and hard to detect.’

"It’s surprising, isn’t it? An event so far in the future was actually decided long ago. A current in the sea developed hostility toward a mass of magma inside the Volcano. They are fated to meet in thirty-five hundred years."

"This thread will grow thicker and draw closer, finally snapping when one of them is destroyed."

Mo Ling was stunned. He never imagined hostility could manifest to such a degree.

And now, he could easily change what would happen thirty-five hundred years from now, simply by snapping this fragile thread.

Mo Ling dazedly reached out, only to let his hand fall.

He didn’t dare to pluck the strings of fate, even though this might all just be a simulation within the Sea of Creation.

A gentle sea breeze blew. The shore was perfectly calm, and the countless threads in the air hung motionless.

They stretched from one unknown end to another, forming a great net that enveloped everything.

Standing beneath this web of hostility, Mo Ling felt like he was being crushed, unable to breathe.

"Are you okay?" the balloon asked with concern.

"I’m fine." Mo Ling’s body was stiff. He worried that a single small movement might disturb the surrounding threads and affect events hundreds, or even thousands, of years in the future.

"Relax. As long as you don’t disturb them on purpose, you won’t affect the threads. They’re quite sturdy."

The balloon quietly floated to one side, waiting for Mo Ling.

The sea breeze gently brushed against Mo Ling’s sponge body, but the threads sprawling in every direction remained perfectly still.

After a long while, Mo Ling finally relaxed.

"Sorry, I was just too tense."

"It’s fine. When I first fully understood these threads, I was just as nervous as you. I didn’t even adapt as quickly. I didn’t move for months, terrified of disturbing the threads around me," the balloon said, its tone self-deprecating.

"Is this what has you perplexed?"

"No, this isn’t what perplexes me. I can still understand everything up to this point."

The balloon looked at Mo Ling. "How are you doing? Can you keep going?"

"Of course."

"Then keep up." The balloon toyed with the nearly invisible thread using a sponge tendril and floated out toward the sea. "Let’s go take a look in the water."

Just like that, Mo Ling followed the balloon and dove into the deep sea.

The thin thread stretched ever onward, leading into the unknown distance through the dark, deep blue water.

The web of hostility within the seawater was even more chaotic. Threads of unknown origin sprawled in every direction. Some reached for the surface, others plunged into the depths, and a few were in constant motion.

"Those are from sea creatures," the balloon explained.

"Life is special. Living beings can freely control the creation of hostility, bringing vitality to this otherwise static web."

As the balloon spoke, one of the moving threads suddenly vanished.

"Looks like it met with an accident..."

Threads vanished, and new ones appeared.

The tranquil deep sea, surprisingly, teemed with life thanks to those erratically moving threads.

"After I came to fully understand these threads, I fell into despair. I felt that everything was fated, that only I could change the paths of these threads. An invisible pressure settled upon me without my realizing."

"But then I discovered that any living creature has the power to change the threads, they just don’t know it. This world is dynamic and ever-changing. All living things bring it vitality."

"We’re just a little more special, that’s all..."

Listening to the balloon’s fragmented story, Mo Ling’s heart relaxed considerably.

"The world’s capacity to endure is much greater than I imagined. I once tried severing all the threads in a single area, but nothing happened. The activity of living things creates new threads, getting this stagnant water moving again."

In the silent depths of the sea, the balloon slowly recounted its story. It too had experienced much confusion and doubt, but with the passage of time, those feelings had slowly faded away.

In the process of exploring this world, it was also adapting to its truths, compromising with those incomprehensible unknowns.

"It seems our luck is poor. This thread goes a long, long way."

The balloon led Mo Ling onward for a long time, but they still couldn’t see the thread’s end.

But one thing was certain: the thread led into a deep ocean trench.

Following the trench downward, they finally found the end of the thread next to the trench’s pitch-black wall.

It was an ordinary mass of seawater.

The end of the thin thread was coiled into a knot, floating quietly in the center of the mass.

But another thin thread was coiled around this mass of seawater.

"This is hostility from something else towards it," the balloon explained.

"What is it?"

"Let’s keep going and see."

Following that thread, the balloon once again led Mo Ling upward.

Up and up they went, all the way to the surface of the sea.

The thread stretched up into the sky, heading toward the sun.

"Eighty years from now, that mass of seawater will be evaporated by the sun’s intense heat and turn into water vapor in the clouds. It won’t be destroyed; it will continue to cycle, falling into rivers and flowing back into the sea..."

"That is the sun’s hostility."

The ball of light in the sky was entwined with terrifying threads of hostility. Sunlight spread wantonly across the entire surface of the sea, indiscriminately showering all things with its enmity.

Due to its rotation and orbit, the threads writhed like worms on the sun’s surface, wrapping the sun up until it looked like a ball of yarn.

"It seems we can’t go any further," the balloon said, looking at the thread that shot up to the heavens, a note of disappointment in its voice. "We’ll have to find another way."

The balloon slowly floated to Mo Ling’s side.

"Grab on to me." It extended a sponge tendril.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mo Ling reached out and grabbed the balloon.

"Don’t resist."

As the balloon spoke, Mo Ling felt himself lift from the sea’s surface and suddenly fly toward the sky.

"We are flying to the sun."

"Flying to the sun?" Mo Ling asked in disbelief, watching the sea recede farther and farther below.

"Yes. We’re following the hostility to the sun."

Hearing the balloon’s words, Mo Ling realized they were following that very thread, ascending continuously.

Their speed of ascent grew ever faster. Mo Ling felt the scenery around him blur, and then he found himself in a void.

Then, with another blur of motion, by the time Mo Ling could fully process it, the sun—resembling a ball of yarn—was hanging silently before him.

Countless threads were wrapped around it as the sun emotionlessly radiated hostility into the cosmos.

At the same time, innumerable threads of hostility from other things bound the sun in turn.

"That’s a meteorite from one day in the future..."

"That’s a meteorite from thirty million years in the future..."

"And that’s another star, one million four hundred thousand years from now..."