Lu Yin silently left Vestigium. Ba Se’s words had laid bare the cruel truth of the Aevum Inch, even if humanity had always known about it.

The cosmic ecosystem that Ancestor Shan had mentioned and Ba Se’s claim that Obscura had no territory did not contradict each other.

When certain civilizations still existed, there would be a cosmic ecosystem. When certain civilizations were destroyed, it ceased to exist.

The determining factor of whether a cosmic ecosystem existed was not the fishing civilizations, but rather the civilizations within the fishing civilization’s territory.

From Ba Se’s perspective, there truly was no territory, but from the perspective of the human civilization, they were within Obscura’s cosmic ecosystem.

It was simply a way of thinking about the bigger picture. If Lu Yin shifted his perspective and the lack of territory that Ba Se had mentioned was because they possessed sufficient strength, then what did that imply?

It was like how the Death Megaverse used sourceboxes to seal white skeletons and send them off, how the technological civilization purchased scavenger coordinates to fish, how Obscura fished using gates, and how the springboard civilization fished everything. That overwhelming dominance fully demonstrated what true strength meant.

Was that also what Ba Se had been trying to express?

Lu Yin pondered for a while and then went to Master Qing Cao.

The Immortal stared blankly at Lu Yin. “You want me to go to Vestigium and retrieve something for you?”

Lu Yin gave a grunt of acknowledgment. Master Qing Cao sized Lu Yin up, finding this hard to believe.

Lu Yin met the man’s stare. “Is that so strange?”

“I know that you’re afraid of Obscura making a move against you, but you will one day have to go to Vestigium.”

“Maybe by that time, I won’t be afraid.”

Master Qing Cao gave a bitter smile. “Obscura’s strength-”

“Save it. I don’t need to know how strong Obscura is. Besides, you’ve already been to Vestigium. Just go back again to fetch something for me. I even brought you a gate.” With that, Lu Yin took out the red coffin and drew a gate on the lid. A gate that could be used to directly enter Vestigium manifested. It was a privilege that was only granted after one joined Obscura.

Once, Hui had tried to use such a gate to escape to Vestigium. If Lu Yin had not blocked its path, it would have been impossible to kill the silver creature.

Master Qing Cao looked at Lu Yin and then at the gate. He had just been mocked, and yet the young man wanted to use him again already. This brat truly lacked any sense of shame.

But before Lu Yin, Qing Cao knew that refusing would be pointless. Helpless, he passed through the gate alone.

A short time later, he returned. Lu Yin immediately put the gate away, fearing that something else from Vestigium might follow.

Master Qing Cao raised his hand. He held a shard of light that was no bigger than a fingernail. “Here’s what you want. Ba Se told you to go back.”

Lu Yin took the shard of light and examined it carefully. Inside it, all kinds of lights had been interwoven together. Cultivating the Mirrorlight Art meant engraving those same interwoven lights into the void in front of one’s eyes, layer after layer. The second layer would be more complex than the first, and the third would be more complex than the second. Each additional layer would be a degree more complex than the one before.

To see farther, it was necessary to construct multiple layers.

At the moment, Lu Yin was capable of seeing the same distance as an average Immortal with the naked eye. Such distance meant little; even with multiple teleportations, the Aevum Inch was still unbelievably vast. He needed to be able to see much, much farther.

Lu Yin instantly vanished, returning to the red floating coffin to send his consciousness to Vestigium. “What else do you want with me?”

“Choose your mission.”

Lu Yin had forgotten that he still needed to accept a new mission. That was Obscura’s rule. “As before, I’ll take a three-star mission.”

“You are qualified to accept a four-star mission.”

“No, just three stars.”

“Three-star mission: capture the Jade Thread of Heaven.”

Lu Yin was puzzled. “Not destroying a civilization?”

“The value of this mission is the same as destroying a civilization. The Jade Thread of Heaven belongs to the Jade Megaverse. The Jade Megaverse is not a fishing civilization, but it is steadily developing towards becoming one. Their behavior is already very close to that of a fishing civilization. They use Threads of Heaven as bait to fish. Your mission is to capture their Jade Thread of Heaven and use it to locate the Jade Megaverse.”

Lu Yin understood. “Destroying the Jade Megaverse itself is a four-star mission, right?”

“Destroying the Jade Megaverse is indeed a four-star mission. It has already been accepted by another. Even if you choose a four-star mission, your mission will have nothing to do with the Jade Megaverse. Do you confirm that you accept the three-star mission to capture the Jade Thread of Heaven?”

Lu Yin did not hesitate. “Fine, I accept. By the way, does this Jade Thread of Heaven move all over the place? If it’s too far from my human civilization, I won’t be able to find it.”

“The Jade Megaverse considers itself to be a fishing civilization, yet it lacks the awareness of one. To use your terminology, they continuously move from one cosmic ecosystem to another. They throw out many, a great many, Jade Threads of Heaven. Among them, there is one that is heading in the direction of your human civilization, which is why you have received this mission.”

“If you know the location of that Jade Thread of Heaven, why not just capture it yourselves?”

“This is us capturing it ourselves.”

Lu Yin understood; he was part of Obscura. The Jade Thread of Heaven’s whereabouts had already been determined, and he was being ordered to go capture it.

But did Ba Se really not understand that Lu Yin would just stall it out? If he could avoid completing his mission, he would. Those were precisely his intentions.

The fact that destroying the Jade Megaverse was a four-star mission meant that it was far from an easy target. They had to have approximately ten Immortals, and if the civilization was not destroyed and determined the coordinates of his human civilization, then that would be a real catastrophe.

If a civilization could develop ten Immortals, who could say what kind of powerhouses they might be? Even the Seven Treasure Anuras had not had that many Immortals, and yet they had had Ancestor Shan.

To deal with the Jade Megaverse, Obscura had divided the tasks into two missions; a single glance made it clear that the entire matter was problematic. Lu Yin’s human civilization did not want to take on that kind of trouble.

After leaving Vestigium, Lu Yin went to the Willbound Spire to check on the Origin Progenitor. The man was still the same as last time.

Next, Lu Yin went to Mirari Realm to look at Progenitor Ku. That man was also unchanged.

It was normal for cultivators to go into seclusion for millions of years at a time. Lu Yin could not judge other cultivators by his own progress.

Also, since he had already entered the Mirari Realm, he would cultivate the Mirrorlight Art.

The technique had no additional requirements, only time. The more time that he dedicated to cultivating the technique, the more layers that he could stack, and the farther that he would be able to see. There was no place more suitable for cultivating the Mirrorlight Art than the Mirari Realm.

After that, Lu Yin remained in the Mirari Realm, continuously constructing more layers of the Mirrorlight Art.

Each consecutive layer was more complex than the last. The first 100 layers posed little difficulty for Lu Yin, but once he surpassed that, the complexity abruptly multiplied severalfold, and the complexity continued to grow exponentially with every subsequent layer.

He did not know how long he spent in the Mirari Realm, focusing on the technique, but he was confident that it was not short.

That was because he knew that Zhao Ran had passed down the River of Aeons at least several different times, only to leave after stopping.

Blood Tower had also come by once.

Ever since the strange bird had ambushed Ku Deng, two Immortals had been permanently stationed on the other side of the Gate of Laws to stand guard, though things had recently returned to how they had been in the past. The information from the Immortal Lord had made Lu Yin confident that the strange bird would not return anytime soon.

Still, just to be safe, whoever stood guard past the Gate of Laws lingered close to the gate, to the point where they were almost halfway through the gate. The one standing guard would constantly remain vigilant, wary of another ambush.

If the strange birds attacked again, there might not be just one. That was humanity’s greatest fear. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

There was no other choice. They could not perpetually leave two Immortals to stand guard. Even Immortals needed to cultivate.

This meant that Blood Tower had had some spare time, even as he took turns standing guard at the Gate of Laws.

The rotation changed roughly once every fifty years. They could not leave Ku Deng to stand guard forever.

In the Mirari Realm, Lu Yin opened his eyes, let out a heavy breath, and then rubbed his eyes. It was too tiring.

He had succeeded in constructing 137 layers of the Mirrorlight Art. This was a great many layers, and it felt like a curtain of light floating in front of his eyes. It also enabled Lu Yin to see a distance equal to what a typical Immortal could traverse during twenty years of travel. It was an astonishing distance. The entire Heavenly Karmic Macrocosm only spanned a distance of three years’ travel.

This meant that using the Mirrorlight Art allowed Lu Yin to see halfway to the former location of the Seven-Treasure Anuras’ homeland, which was terrifying.

This reward was certainly worth completing a three-star mission. An entire civilization had been destroyed for the sake of gaining this Mirrorlight Art.

Unfortunately, given the number of layers that he had constructed, even Lu Yin found the process of adding another to be overly complex. This was primarily because the constant deduction was just too exhausting.

“Finished?” Zhao Ran approached in her boat.

Lu Yin nodded. “For the time being. It’s just too exhausting, so I’ll stop for now. By the way, has Blood Tower left?”

At this, Zhao Ran looked helpless. “He left. They rotate who guards the Gate of Laws every fifty years, don’t they?”

Lu Yin smiled. “You’re trying to determine when he’ll be free again. He definitely thought of that already, and he won’t let you do that. He just needs to adjust the rotation slightly.”

Zhao Ran sighed. It was not that she hated Greater Sancte Blood Tower; she was simply annoyed by him.

It was also hard for her to refuse the man, as if not for him, Zhao Ran would be gone.

Lu Yin stood on the bank of the River of Aeons and stared into the distance. He was looking in the direction of the karmic forbidden region, but there were other places as well.

The Mirari Realm had more than one forbidden region.

“You want to go in.” Zhao Ran commented.

Lu Yin withdrew his gaze. “Forget it. I won’t go.”

He had certainly considered exploring in the past, but Zhao Ran had revealed one detail that made Lu Yin shudder: “An Immortal died there.”

That one simple sentence erased Lu Yin’s desire to explore it.

He had already experienced the terror of the karmic forbidden region, and even though doing so had allowed him to comprehend karma, what if he had failed? He would have been trapped forever, unable to ever leave.

There was no doubt that the other forbidden regions would not be any easier to handle than the karmic region.

Although Zhao Ran did not have the vast majority of Wei Nu’s memories, there were still bits and pieces that she knew.

For example, Zhao Ran knew that the River of Aeons could not be without a ferryman. She knew of the existence of the River of Aeons’ main stream and other such things, but there were some matters that she simply could not explain clearly.

For example, she knew that an Immortal had once died in one of the Mirari Realm’s forbidden regions, but she had no idea which Immortal it was.

Lu Yin had thought about asking Wei Nu, but he had never found the chance.

He did remember that, the first time he went to visit the Willbound Spire, he had witnessed a memory of a woman in red. He had only seen her back as she walked away, singing. She had been walking through the Mirari Realm. That memory had incited a burst of grief at her self-sacrifice, and his eyes had grown red.

Self-sacrifice in the Mirari Realm meant that she had most likely entered a forbidden region.

From another one of those memories, Lu Yin had caught a mention of floating coffins, and he had even seen Vestigium for the second time.

To gain something, it was necessary to pay a corresponding price. In the cultivation world, it was even more necessary to risk one’s life. However, the current human civilization could not afford to risk losing Lu Yin. This was not only because he was an Aberrant capable of actually killing Immortals, but also because of his innate gift of teleportation.

It was possible that, one day, after human civilization truly stood at the level of a fishing civilization, he would be able to take the risk to explore the forbidden regions.

He also wanted to know the relationship between that woman in red and Obscura.

When he left the Mirari Realm, the outside world was the same as before, but Lu Yin was very tired. Deducing the layers of the Mirrorlight Art had left him feeling dizzy. He suddenly thought of the Infinity Empire; would it be better to use technological means to carry out these calculations?