Chapter 4549: Bone Tempering

One of the cosmic laws that Gao Tian had resonated with had allowed the Plume Immortal to deprive opponents of their intelligence. It was a method that was extremely difficult to defend against.

The Yan Gate's First Needle was already very useful. Lu Yin was looking forward to the other six needles.

Not only that, but the Seven Needles was also merely the legacy of the Seventh Rampart.

The more he understood the true strength of the Nine Ramparts, the more astonished LuYin became. It made him increasingly unable to fathom how the Nine Ramparts had been destroyed at their prime.

Was it really only because of Hong Xia and Wang Wen's betrayals? Because of You Che's defection? Because they were besieged by multiple fishing civilizations? How many powerful fishing civilizations had needed to gather to stand against the Nine Ramparts?

At this moment, powerful auras shot into the sky in every region of the Lepidarch Continent. There had been four Lepids, and he had eliminated two of them. At this moment, five more Lepids appeared. In other words, this civilization had already revealed nine Immortal Lepids. Adding the Lepidarch, it totaled to ten.

This was appropriate for a fishing civilization. Lu Yin only feared that there might still be more hidden. There should not be any more, right?

There were seven Immortal Lepids flying about, all frantically searching for him. The entire Lepidarch Continent was in chaos. Countless Lepids moved about. It was quite the beautiful sight beneath the sunlight.

Lu Yin looked away. Seven Immortals? It would not be easy for him to kill more of them. All of the Lepids were in groups of at least two, with the largest group consisting of three. These arrangements were clearly to guard against him. These creatures were certainly cautious enough.

However, doing this also made it much more difficult for them to find Lu Yin.

He decided to use this opportunity to search for traces of the Grand Clarity Civilization and complete that portion of his task for the Death Megaverse.

The Death Megaverse did not have much information regarding the war between the Grand Clarity Civilization and the Lepidarch Continent. There was merely confirmation that there had been a war, but no one knew exactly what had happened or what might be left behind. Lu Yin needed to search for himself.

Given how many years had passed, trying to find traces of a war within an area the size of a megaverse was no different from searching for a needle in the ocean. Fortunately, he had the Mirrorlight Art. As long as there was nothing blocking his line of sight, he could see across the entire megaverse.

Given the countless lifeforms living across the Lepidarch Continent, Lu Yin expected that, even if he did not touch the pollen, plenty of other creatures would. He was surprised to learn that no lifeform would approach a place shrouded in pollen. This should be considered a rule for all creatures on the Lepidarch Continent other than the Lepids themselves.

Fortunately, after the pollen fell to the ground, it would dissipate after some time. If not for that, there would be too many places that Lu Yin could not go to, especially places that were not currently being searched. Any area that he wanted to go could become filled with pollen, making it impossible for him to even approach.

The land rapidly receded behind him. Every step he took crossed a vast distance. He was moving purely with his physical abilities. As long as he confirmed the Lepids’ movements in advance, he would not be detected as he moved.

Time passed. Lu Yin crossed the mountains and lands, and he forded the rivers and oceans. He arrived at the highest peaks beneath the stars, and he also plunged the deepest canyons.

He saw all kinds of strange creatures living on the Lepidarch Continent. There were many, many different species, just like in a normal megaverse. He also discovered the history of the Lepidarch Continent.

He was deliberately searching for that history. Humans were not the only intelligent creatures in the cosmos. Many creatures, including insects that possessed savage appearances, could develop intelligence, build cities, and record history.

He came across quite a bit of history and learned more and more about the Lepidarch Continent.

The Lepids of the Lepidarch Continent were not as beautiful as they initially appeared. Each colorful Lepid had mountains of corpses and seas of blood in their wake. Even their pollen did not come from flowers, but rather from living creatures.

These Lepids were able to devour Myriad Metal Qi, and they used this same method to devour the aura of living creatures, which was how they formed the pollen. They used that pollen to wield absolute control over the Lepidarch Continent. Whenever a foreign enemy entered or searched for something, they would find no path of retreat beneath the pollen.

Lu Yin saw burial grounds filled with bodies, and all of them belonged to the Lepids.

However, after reaching the Immortal realm, the Lepids no longer devoured the aura of living creatures, as doing so would increase their karmic chains. That was why they only did so before reaching the Immortal realm.

Lu Yin quietly stood in a valley in the mountains. Below him, one Lepid after another had covered countless creatures of flesh and blood and were devouring the aura of living beings.

This aura could also be used to form the Yan Gate's First Needle, but Lu Yin did not want it.

This was rather disgusting. The more beautiful something’s appearance, the more vicious it might be.

That was not to say that these Lepids were wrong for what they did. This was the survival of the fittest. There were also humans who were considered evil, disgusting people and were reviled by all. Lu Yin’s entire purpose on the Lepidarch Continent was to destroy the entire civilization. Before arriving, he had not made a point to ask anything about the culture of this civilization. As far as the Lepids were concerned, Lu Yin was the evil one.

When building the wall in his heart, there had been both white and black bricks. The longer one survived in the Aevum Inch, the more they could adapt to that darkness.

Lu Yin watched for a while and then left.

Soon, several years passed. During these years, countless Lepids released pollen to search for him without stopping for even a moment.

Lu Yin kept evading them while continuously searching for the history of the Lepidarch Continent. He did not find the history that he needed, but he did come to understand more about the colorful Lepids. Among the information he found, one particular speculation shocked him.

The ancestor of a certain civilization that had been exterminated long ago by the Lepids had once recorded certain secret speculations. Lu Yin happened to find those records in a set of ancient ruins.

We creatures who are born and live upon the Lepidarch's back have legends that claim that the Lepidarch is asleep, roaming the cosmos across endless ages, never once awakening.

From ancient times to the present, on the Lepidarch Continent, only those colorful Lepids are able to become Immortal beings. None of us other living creatures are able to achieve that, and the number of Immortal beings always remains ten.

There are no injured, only the dead. This is the destiny of the Lepids.

Is the Lepidarch truly asleep? If it is asleep, how can it still roam the cosmos? Why does the number of Immortal beings on this Lepidarch Continent never surpass ten? And why does the number never fall below ten? Why is an injured Lepid always buried in the yellow soil? What is that yellow soil? It is the Lepidarch's back. It is the Lepidarch's body. Therefore, I have a speculation: is it possible that the Lepidarch is not sleeping at all, but rather cultivating? If so, this cultivation must rely on the cooperation of ten Immortal Lepids. Are those dead Lepids not actually dead, but instead undergoing some kind of transformation within the Lepidarch's body before appearing as another Lepid?

I dare not speak this speculation openly, for fear of bringing fatal disaster upon myself.

After Lu Yin finished reading this hypothesis, he crouched down and grabbed a handful of the yellow soil. It flowed through his fingers, piling up on the ground like a tiny grave.

The speculation of this civilization’s ancestor was not without merit. The Lepidarch had always roamed the cosmos, yet it was also said to be asleep. That was already a contradiction. If the Lepid was asleep, why had it never approached Thousand Mechanisms' Abyss despite countless years passing? The Lepidarch Continent had once fought against the Grand Clarity Civilization, but how long ago had that been?

If it was asleep, why had it always wandered around in the same area of the Aevum Inch?

Why would a colorful Lepid die after being injured? Lu Yin had badly injured two of the Immortal Lepids. The second was guaranteed to die, but the first had not necessarily received fatal injuries. Normally, it was not impossible to recover from such wounds. Normally, a civilization would do everything possible to help heal an Immortal. After all, each Immortal being that died meant one fewer, yet these Lepids did not seem to care at all.

It was very possible that the Immortal Lepids really did undergo some sort of transformation within the Lepidarch's body, preserving the power of an Immortal and becoming another Lepid.

Otherwise, how were the Immortal Lepids born?

As Lu Yin explored the Lepidarch Continent and studied the histories of various civilizations, he never saw any record stating that a Lepid had gone out to reset a megaverse in order to break through. Almost all of the Immortal Lepids were the most ordinary sort of Immortals. It was impossible for all of them to have succeeded via a direct breakthrough. That was simply unrealistic.

There was one more point: ten. There were always ten Immortal Lepids, but Lu Yin had only seen nine so far.

Where was the tenth?

He looked up. Pollen fell from the sky. It had not been released by an Immortal Lepid, but it could still locate him all the same.

He avoided the pollen and continued to wander around the world.

He would find an opportunity to kill one or two more Lepids.

It was a pity that he did not have the power of karma, as that could allow him to examine the Lepids and learn something more. Moreover, these Lepids could also be pressed into his Champions' Stage Purgatory to strengthen his Karmic Dao.

Truly, what a pity.

Several more years passed. Lu Yin continued searching for the traces of the Grand Clarity Civilization. As for the Immortal Lepids, they separated and stopped moving in pairs. They must have known they could not find Lu Yin using their chosen method, so they were attempting to lure him out by separating.

He did not rashly attack because he knew that there was still one Immortal Lepid that remained hidden. That one was very likely the strongest of the ten Immortal Lepids, second only to the Lepidarch.

Without complete confidence, he would not attack.

During these years, he was inspired and thought up a new cultivation method, which was to use Myriad Metal Qi to refine his bones.

He was inspired to attempt this after seeing the history of one particular civilization. The creatures of that civilization had specifically used all kinds of hard objects to refine their teeth, making them incomparably sharp. He had then thought that, if he used Myriad Metal Qi to refine his bones, could he make his own skeleton tougher?

With Thousand Mechanisms' help, his bone clone had already reached the limit of its potential, and his bones could be said to be quite tough. It had not been a problem for him to receive the attacks of the Immortal Lepids. However, if his bones’ toughness could be further enhanced, that would certainly be better.

For that reason, Lu Yin spent time comprehending the breathing of metal and condensing Myriad Metal Qi to form the Yan Gate's First Needle. He then used the First Needle to refine his bones.

At first, he was simply testing things out, but after more than ten years had passed, he found that the places where he had refined his bones in this manner had indeed become much tougher than the places that he had ignored. This greatly boosted his confidence in this method, and he decided to completely temper his entire skeleton before taking action again.

While his skeleton clone might never acquire as many different methods as his true body, solely in terms of defense, it might eventually be able to surpass what his true body had achieved as an Aberrant.

Myriad Metal Qi was essentially a kind of breathing, simply the breathing of metal.

In fact, while Lu Yin might say that he was refining his bones with Myriad Metal Qi, in truth, he was refining them with the Path of Breathing.

If his true body had not followed Master Qing Cao and learned the Path of Breathing, his skeleton clone would not have been able to succeed nearly so easily.

In that manner, several decades passed. Lu Yin believed that it had already been fifty years since he had first arrived on the Lepidarch Continent.

He had tempered all of the bones in his body once, but the Lepids still had not relaxed their search for him even the slightest bit.

For Immortals, fifty years could pass in the blink of an eye and could not even be considered time at all, but for Lu Yin, these fifty years had allowed him to improve the strength of his clone by another level.

Every civilization had its own unique power. Lu Yin had come into contact with many civilizations, and he was almost always able to draw something from those civilizations that could benefit himself. If he one day managed to see all the countless civilizations throughout the Aevum Inch, he could not even imagine how much his strength would improve by.

Pushing aside some rushes, he rowed a small boat into a dark, deep cave. The water within the cave led straight underground.

He was still exploring the vast landmass that was the Lepidarch Continent. Throughout the previous decades, Lu Yin had not dared to approach this region because most of the Lepids had scattered pollen across this particular area. With those Lepids scattering outward, he finally was willing to explore this place.

This region was also one of the continent’s forbidden regions. He had only discovered that by researching the histories of many different species. The rest of the world did not clearly state that this was a forbidden region; only creatures who lived close to it knew that this region could only be entered but never exited.