“Oh,” Lu Yun nodded. “Okay then, let’s go.”
“Huh?” Mo Wusheng was tensed for a sudden fight. What did he mean, “let’s go”? Feng Feifan was willing to go with him, just like that?
There were more than a few among the Luminaries blamed Lu Yun for the Great Brahma’s death. They wanted nothing more than to skin him alive, rip him to pieces, and dice him to minced meat to feed the pigs. General fury only heightened after they learned that he was just a minor World Manifest.
“Are you really going back with me?” Mo Wusheng asked dumbly.
“You’re a Nihil World Sovereign and I’m a World Manifest. Is it possible for me to ignore your wishes when you’ve come in person?” Lu Yun spread out his hands. “Do I have a choice?”
“You can try resisting, you know,” Mo Wusheng said solemnly.
“Really?” Lu Yun blinked.
“Really,” nodded Mo Wusheng.
“Then I shall. …I’m not going!” Lu Yun exerted Boundless Step and vanished on the spot.
“Kekekekekeke!! Not going? A pathetic World Manifest dares run away from a Nihil World Sovereign?” Mo Wusheng cackled and chased Lu Yun in the direction he’d disappeared in. “It would be so boring if you just followed me back. Now that you’re putting up a fight, I have the perfect excuse to beat you up and then drag you back with me!”
Roaring with laughter, Mo Wusheng threw himself in pursuit. Three days later, he plopped down in the void and stared dully at the dried soybean in his hand.
“Where’d he go? Where is he? Why did Feng Feifan turn into a strange bean? Or is he the physical manifestation of a bean spirit?” Mo Wusheng floundered for answers.
……
“Psht.” Lu Yun yawned lazily in a corner of the fourth realm—where he’d first bumped into Mo Wusheng three days ago. “I resisted, just like you said I could. Whose fault is it that you can’t catch me?
“Stop hiding, grand disciple. I know you’re around,” he announced with a lazy look at the void around him.
“Martial grandfather is indeed martial grandfather. I feel that you still have the right to be my martial grandfather even after I’ve recovered my true self.” Draped in moonlight, Yueyi floated up to Lu Yun and dimpled, “Greetings to martial grandfather.”
“Do you really recognize me as your martial grandfather?” Lu Yun could clearly sense Yueyi’s emotions since she wasn’t concealing them. She sincerely meant her use of “martial grandfather”.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I hadn’t wanted to at first, but when I saw that formula dao comes from martial grandfather, my hesitations went away.”
Her words made perfect sense—teachers conveyed dao, taught knowledge, and resolved confusion.
Yueyi would never forget her master Lu Qing as he’d raised her in another life and taught her everything he knew. Such was the gratitude for a lifetime’s worth of nurturing and tutelage, a sentiment that didn’t extend to Lu Yun. Given her status and identity, her karmic relationship with Lu Qing was the limits of her obligations. She didn’t need to acknowledge a martial grandfather.
But with the appearance of formula dao, it showed that Lu Yun was indeed worthy of his placement in the martial hierarchy.
Lu Yun smiled and nodded. “You are correct, I am indeed qualified to be your martial forefather. Do you need me because you have questions about formula dao?”
Yueyi nodded. “However, this is no place to hold a conversation. Come with me to Mount Astronomia.”
She waved her hand and changed the scene around them. Mount Astronomia was the Luminaries headquarters. It was where the sun and moon rose in the known expanses, and where they set.
The intersection of the sun and moon through their orbits marked one day in the known expanses. Three hundred and sixty-five intersections marked a grand cycle—one year.
Lu Yun had never made it to Mount Astronomia at any point in his thirty-three loops. With his visit, he realized that the sun and moon of the fourth realm were the same as the ones in the chaos sea. Or rather, they were a projection of the latter.
The sun and moon of the second realm were projected into the fourth realm to become their sun and moon. Their orbits and intersections reflected the orbits and intersections in the second realm.
At the same time, the sun and moon of the chaos sea were the ones of the original Hongmeng. They followed the rules of the sun and moon from the original Hongmeng and impacted the rest of existence. This had held true since ancient times.
As for Mount Astronomia, it was vastly different from the fertile lands of plentiful dao that Lu Yun had envisioned. The rules here had withered and great dao shrunk away—it was more barren than the Eastern Cluster.
Anyone cultivating here would find progress a hundred times harder than in the outside world.
On one side of the mountain were the known expanses. The other side was an endless darkness—not even the radiance of the celestial bodies penetrated the land. They were the unknown expanses!
Far from being a towering landmass, Mount Astronomia was a little smaller than the Central Hongmeng. It couldn’t contain the true bodies of powerful Nihil World Sovereigns.
“Is the mountain suppressing the endless darkness?” Lu Yun frowned.
“Yes, the darkness is the reason for the erosion of order in the known expanses. If it is allowed to expand, order in the known expanses will wither. Once order withers, the known and unknown expanses will no longer exist,” Yueyi explained.
“Is it not the unknown expanses?” Lu Yun paused.
“It is, and it isn’t.” Yueyi frowned ferociously. “The unknown expanses are a very strange place…”
She waved a hand and summoned a blank sheet of paper in front of them. She randomly poked more than twenty holes in it.
“Who knows whether it’s the holes or paper that we exist in,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“Some places don’t have order, so their rules and laws are chaotic beyond measure. They cannot form a great dao, so naturally, there is no life to be found in them. Some places have order, life can exist there. Just like this piece of paper, I don’t know if we exist in the paper or in the holes.
“We label places without order as places of darkness. Light cannot spread through them. What is termed as the unknown expanses is segregated from the darkness and cannot be reached by ordinary life forms. Everything about them is unknown, and to us, the darkness is also part of the unknown.
“The darkness that these places release have continuously corroded the order of the known expanses. Our order grows thin because of them.” Helplessness tinged Yueyi’s emotions. “But I don’t know whether we exist in one of the few holes of the paper, or if we are on the paper itself.”
She looked at Lu Yun.
“I don’t know if our existence is the foundation of all existence, or an accident that should’ve never come to be.”
etvolare's Thoughts
Wait, so they made it past the Great Filter, but shouldn't have?!
We're all holes!!
And lol @ MWS, dude's about to have an existential crisis. Are we all beans??
