Star Odyssey

Chapter 4117: Old Fourth

Kang Tian sighed. “I don’t know. Just like their civilization’s name, everything about Obscura is hidden. Still, they are able to suppress the Seven-Treasure Anuras, which makes Obscura beyond terrifying. If I hadn’t been aware of that much, I would have never agreed to cooperate with Lan Meng.

“The fact that I lured the Seven-Treasure Anuras here means that Old Fourth is definitely on the way.”

“Old Fourth?” Lu Yin asked in confusion.

Greater Sancte Awe Gate and Ku Deng also gave the snail curious looks.

Its tone grew heavy. “One of the Seven-Treasure Anuras calls itself Old Fourth. I don’t know its name, just that it claims to be Old Fourth. It’s a shameless, horrible toad.

“Its mouth is crooked, and its eyes are crossed, but it considers itself the epitome of ‘grace’ within their species. It’s absolutely hideous to look at, sickening even, and is utterly vicious. Given the chance, I’d flay its skin and break its bones.”

Kang Tian clearly held a tremendous grudge against Old Fourth. Almost all the insults that the snail had thrown at the Seven-Treasure Anuras were used to condemn that one toad.

It seemed that much of Kang Tian’s hatred for the toads stemmed from Old Fourth.

“How strong is this Old Fourth?” Greater Sancte Awe Gate asked.

Her question caused Kang Tian’s tone to immediately turn bitter and helpless. “I can’t beat it.”

“What a joke,” Greater Sancte Awe Gate bluntly mocked, “How does its strength compare to Lan Meng’s?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen Lan Meng’s full strength, and I’ve also never seen Old Fourth’s.”

“So you’re not even qualified to make either of them go all out. How pathetic,” Greater Sancte Awe Gate grumbled irritatedly.

Kang Tian was also not happy about the situation, but if it was strong enough to actually fight against Lan Meng or Old Fourth, it would have never been trapped inside of human civilization. Still, trying to compare Old Fourth to Lan Meng on the basis of Kang Tian’s strength was wrong. It did not possess a powerful offense, and even before Awe Gate had fully integrated with her Seed Transfusion, she had not needed to go all out against the snail.

“How did you reach our human civilization?” Ku Deng asked an important question. The answer was something that Lu Yin and the others were also curious about.

Kang Tian replied, “Lan Meng gave us a direction. Without taking any detours, we took what you humans would consider to be about seventeen years to make the journey.”

Seventeen years was not a long time for cultivators, but the distance traveled in that amount of time depended entirely on who was traveling.

Even if Kang Tian was not fast, it was still an Immortal. There was no chance that it would move slower than a green lotus leaf.

Those lotus leaves could match the speed of an average Immortal, such as Master Qing Cao.

Naturally, Greater Sancte Green Lotus himself could travel even faster, though Lu Yin did not know how much faster.

The distance that an ordinary Immortal could travel in seventeen years, if they moved in a perfectly straight line, was seventeen times farther than the distance between the Tianyuan and the Nine Odysseys Megaverse. That was an astronomical distance.

Compared to the diameter of the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm, it was roughly eight times further.

It was important to note that all of the megaverses that the Nine Odysseys Megaverse had invaded with the Night Pillars, such as the Allsense Megaverse and the Mindscape Megaverse, were within the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm. Greater Sancte Green Lotus and the other human Immortals did not interfere with anything outside of that range.

The Tricolor Skyborne's home megaverse was about eight Heavenly Karmic Macrocosms away from the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, which was an incredible distance. It would take eons for a Dukkhan to cross such a distance.

“What about the Seven-Treasure Anuras?”

“They don’t have a fixed home. When we left, they were roughly thirty years’ travel from my kind’s civilization. If they head this way, then by my estimate, you humans should have about twenty more years to prepare. You’re lucky that the toads were in the direct opposite direction. If they had been between our megaverse and yours, then-”

“Then you would have never reached this place at all,” Greater Sancte Awe Gate interjected in a cold voice.

Kang Tian thought for a moment, only to realize that it was an accurate assessment. How could the Tricolor Skyborne have ever gotten past the Seven-Treasure Anuras, if the toads had been blocking the way?

“No, it could still have been possible,” Ku Deng objected, glancing at Greater Sancte Awe Gate. “A gate.”

Awe Gate’s brow rose. That was true, Obscura had their own gates. She had nearly forgotten that detail.

If Obscura had sent the Tricolor Skyborne through one of their gates and then later on shared the snails’ coordinates with the Seven-Treasure Anura, the toads would have still been able to give chase.

Lu Yin’s mood grew heavy. Talking about these things changed nothing. Twenty years was not very long.

Kang Tian estimated that the Seven-Treasure Anuras were about nineteen Heavenly Karmic Macrocosms away from human civilization. Without precise coordinates, the toads would struggle to find humanity, but with a fixed direction, it would not be difficult at all.

Because the toads were constantly moving, even if Obscura did not provide them with the coordinates of humanity’s megaverses, there was still a chance that they would eventually stumble upon the human megaverses even without the Tricolor Skyborne serving as bait.

This made the Tricolor Skyborne's arrival look more like Lan Meng had been using the giant snails and cooperating with the Nest civilization to act against humanity.

This was also only the first probe. The Tricolor Skyborne had been used, and the Nest civilization had also attacked humanity. Win or lose, humanity would suffer, and Lan Meng had believed that there was a chance of a human Immortal falling.

With that, whenever the Seven-Treasure Anuras arrived, humanity would be exterminated without issue.

From start to finish, the destruction of humanity would be easy for Lan Meng.

They did not need to do much at all.

However, Lan Meng had not anticipated the fact that Lu Yin could deal with the two Verdant Sage Immortals, which had then freed him to move on to handle the Tricolor Skyborne. That single miscalculation had shifted the entire balance.

Even so, there was one detail that had never changed at all: the Seven-Treasure Anuras would come.

Lu Yin frowned. Were humanity’s repeated victories truly victories?

If he compared their situation now to before the Tricolor Skyborne arrived, there was not much of a difference.

Two Immortal Verdant Sages had been eliminated, only to be replaced by the Immortal Kang Tian. Worse yet, the Immortal Lord had personally made an appearance, and Lan Meng had also taken action. Overall, it was essentially a wash.

What Lu Yin most wanted more than anything at the moment was to eliminate Luo Chan.

With that bug gone, the Immortal Lord would lose the initiative in the war against humanity.

The possibility of a fishing civilization standing behind the Nest civilization remained the most unsettling uncertainty.

Lu Yin’s eyes flickered. The potential civilization behind the Nest civilization, the Seven-Treasure Anuras, Obscura, the Death Megaverse—fishing civilizations were appearing one after another, and humanity was being smothered by the inescapable pressure. They were in far too passive a position.

One such opponent might doom humanity, but when several appeared at the same time, that might not necessarily be the case.

If all else failed, they would have to gamble.

“By the way, while traveling here from your home megaverse, did you encounter any others?” Lu Yin asked.

Kang Tian said, “Yes, one. They believed themselves to be well hidden, but without an Immortal, no hiding can help.”

“Where was this? What kind of civilization is it? Is there a Mother Tree?” Lu Yin’s eyes lit up.

Kang Tian said, “There is a Mother Tree. Why ask about that? Most megaverses have one. As for the civilization itself, I don’t know anything about them other than that they have no Immortals.”

“Is Lan Meng aware of it?”

“That I don’t know. Some distances might seem short, but without getting close enough, you simply cannot see. All civilizations do their best to stay hidden, by any means available.”

Lu Yin understood. Even a relatively short distance between megaverses could take months or even years for an Immortal to cross.

This even applied to the perspective of an ordinary human. When they traveled for months or years, how much could they truly see while traveling, especially if everything was trying to stay hidden?

That was why civilizations were able to hide in the Aevum Inch.

If not even an Immortal could see everything at a glance, then no one could.

Only by spreading his Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm out to envelop the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, the Tianyuan, and the Spirit Nidus was Greater Sancte Green Lotus able to observe them all, and even then, it took time. Without the Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm, such surveillance would be impossible.

“Give me the coordinates of that civilization,” Lu Yin said. He was concerned about Mother Trees. The more he could obtain, the more specks of green light that he would have. His conflict was if it was necessary to destroy a Mother Tree to obtain those green lights. If it was, he would struggle to do so. Something so full of life should not be destroyed for personal gain.

He needed another way.

...

In the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, things had grown lively over the course of the year since the arrival of the Tianyuan and the Spirit Nidus cultivators.

The eight battleships had delivered an enormous number of cultivators, having transported the elites of two megaverses. Individually, neither group could compare to the Nine Odysseys cultivators, but combined, their numbers were truly significant. On top of that, the Nine Odysseys Megaverse had recently suffered severe casualties in the various wars against the Nest civilization.

A year had been enough for the Nine Odysseys Megaverse to accept the new arrivals. They had had been no problem with the Tianyuan cultivators. It had been easy enough to welcome them, given Lu Yin’s almost peerless reputation. Anyone wanting to cause trouble needed to first get past Deathmound. On top of that, all of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse’s top experts were friendly with Lu Yin.

It was the Spirit Nidus cultivators who were looked down upon. They had no powerhouse to stand up for them. Master Qing Cao had wavered, which left the Spirit Nidus’s cultivators feeling suppressed.

When Lu Yin and the others returned, they quickly noticed the changes brought about by the arrival of the two megaverses’ cultivators.

The changes were not yet visible on a large scale, as not enough time had passed. But on a closer look, the Nine Odysseys cultivators were particularly enthusiastic toward the people from the Tianyuan. This was not mere acceptance, but rather a desire to learn something from them.

With explanations from others, Lu Yin soon understood.

The Tianyuan’s top cultivators had earned reputations of their own.

The Three Realms and Six Daos, the Three Suns and Six Rulers, and others who had trained in the Mirari Realm had experienced a tremendous increase in personal strength. They were no longer the same as when the Spirit Nidus had first invaded the Tianyuan.

Ever since the Tianyuan cultivators had first arrived in the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, they had passed from the initial period of adjustment to gradually participating in large-scale sparring.

Although Chu Yi, Ancient God, and the others were not peak Dukkhans yet, their combat power was close to that level.

Very few in the Nine Odysseys Megaverse could defeat the Tianyuan cultivators while at the same cultivation realm. In fact, only peak Dukkhans could suppress the Tianyuan’s most powerful cultivators, and even then, that was solely due to their greater cultivation and tremendous experience. Such matches were hardly fair fights at all.

Dukkhans, Ortusers, sequence powerhouses, and even Spirit Ancestors from the Nine Odysseys Megaverse discovered that their peers from the Tianyuan followed unique paths. With stellular energy as a foundation, people had developed many cultivation methods, and in addition to that, they had developed micro-array weapons, universal armors, the battlefield navigation system, and black energy converters. These innovations dazzled the Nine Odysseys Megaverse’s cultivators.

For eons, their megaverse had lacked innovation, aside from battle techniques. In fact, there had been virtually no innovation at all since the death of Greater Sancte Mi Jin.

The arrival of the Tianyuan cultivators had opened up new lines of thought for people.

The peak of Dukkha was a threshold. While Ancient God and the others were powerful, it would still take time for them to reach that level. However, there was one man who dominated all opponents. Within just half a year, his fame had spread across the megaverse. Much like Lu Yin before him, he was regarded as someone who had reached the pinnacle of power beneath the Immortal realm. His name was Jiang Feng.