“If only we could see through the power of this technological civilization. If we could conquer it, the battle strength of our human civilization would soar,” Blood Tower lamented.

Green Lotus replied, “We cannot take that risk. The greatest advantages of a technological civilization are their numbers and the fact that they have no karmic chains. That makes it difficult to gain a clear idea of their capabilities.”

Deciding whether or not to try to see through the technological civilization’s strength was no longer an important decision given that the Gate of Laws had already been destroyed.

What Lu Yin needed to do now was to find those mechanical spheres, as well as find a new civilization that could be exploited.

Every member of Obscura had a civilization that they used. Lu Yin had been assigned a mission to capture the Jade.Thread of Heaven, but while he could act personally this time, that might not work for his next mission. It was best to be prepared.

But what other nearby civilizations could be exploited?

There were a great many civilizations within a fifty-year distance. That was an extremely vast area, as it was a sphere with a radius that spanned the distance from the human civilization to the Seven-Treasure Anuras’ homeland. Even with Lu Yin’s ability to teleport, it would take a very long time to fully explore that sphere of space, and it was even reasonable to claim that he could not explore every corner of the region due to his vision being far too limited.

Being able to cover that sort of distance did not mean being able to see everything within that distance.

Being able to reach that distance did not mean being able to see everything within it.

The Mirrorlight Art allowed Lu Yin to see as far as an Immortal could traverse in twenty years, but that vision was limited to distance alone, not area.

Lu Yin could see stars far away, but the scope of his vision was no broader than it was at present. His sight did not cover everything between himself and what he was observing. This was a flaw of the Mirrorlight Art, or rather, a flaw shared by all techniques that allowed one to see across vast distances.

There was another drawback as well. If he focused his vision on distant places, then nearer locations would fall outside his sight.

Before cultivating the Mirrorlight Art, Lu Yin had already anticipated such complications.

All along, no one had ever determined just how many civilizations there were within the range of the human megaverses.

Taking advantage of the need to search for the mechanical spheres, Lu Yin decided to take a good look around. He could not see through everything, but he would explore as much as possible.

Soon, Lu Yin headed out in the direction of the Seal-Eater Civilization.

His first search would be centered on the Seal-Eater Civilization’s megaverse, and then it would spread towards the human civilization from there. It was the same region that Old Fifth had been sent to search with Dan Jin, Qing Xing, and some others, but they were too slow and could see too little.

***

Meanwhile, in a region of the Aevum Inch that was far away from the human territory, Little Eighteen hopped along, holding the snow-white bird in his hand.

They had been traveling for over a hundred years, and in about another hundred years, they would arrive at the Thread of Heaven that the snow-white bird had previously visited.

“I’ll carefully explain this once again: this Thread of Heaven moves around. It cannot stay in one place forever. If you can’t find it when we get there, don’t blame me. Do you hear me?” the snow-white bird shouted.

Little Eighteen grinned. “If we can’t find it, I’ll cook you and make bird jerky.”

The snow-white bird screamed, “I’m an insect!”

“Insect herb.”

“Insects aren’t herbs!”

“Shut up.”

The snow-white bird drooped its head helplessly. At first, it had struggled while being held by Little Eighteen, but it no longer had the strength to struggle. This damn toad was stubborn, foul-mouthed, and ill-tempered, but their combat strength was absolutely terrifying. Any escape attempt would only bring misfortune down upon the Verdant Sage.

Little Eighteen was a standard toad. Like the other Seven-Treasure Anuras, they had an awful temperament and would act despicably. But unlike the others, Little Eighteen was also completely trustworthy.

Since they had promised Lu Yin to search for the Thread of Heaven, they refused to delay in the slightest.

Although the romance in their bones made Little Eighteen want to change directions and head into the unknown, they would first finish this mission.

Several years later, Little Eighteen rubbed their eyes. What is that up ahead?

There was an emerald green mass. It looked somewhat like a cloud as it quietly floated up ahead. It was extremely conspicuous in the dark and endless cosmos.

Though it was small, the green cloud drew attention.

The snow-white bird looked over. “Eh? A Thread of Heaven?”

Little Eighteen felt it too. Threads of Heaven were places that, the moment they were seen, they would give off the feeling that they were a Thread of Heaven. It was much like how living creatures would instinctively seek vitality.

Threads of Heaven were a lifeline for countless weak civilizations.

“Is this the Thread of Heaven that you went to before?” Little Eighteen asked.

The snow-white bird rolled its eyes. “Of course not! It’s too far from that place.”

“Then what’s going on with this?”

“What does it have to do with me? I didn’t build it!”

Little Eighteen stared at the Thread of Heaven, thought for a bit, and then took a detour.

The snow-white bird was puzzled. “But it does resemble the Thread of Heaven that I visited... That one was a water surface, while this one looks like a cloud, almost mist, and it’s also emerald green. At first glance, it’s almost like jade.”

Little Eighteen continued with their detour. There was no time to waste.

The sooner their mission was completed, the sooner they would be free to pursue their own romance.

But as the toad tried to go around the emerald-green Thread of Heaven, they suddenly vanished, disappearing directly into the Aevum Inch as if they had never existed at all. Faintly, that emerald-green Thread of Heaven seemed to blot out the starry vault and cover everything. From a distance, it looked as though the vast Aevum Inch itself had been bitten away.

***

Decades passed. Lu Yin continued searching through the expanse between the Seal-Eater Civilization and his human civilization. After finishing that, he expanded the range of his search, but he never found even a single sphere.

It was uncertain whether this was good news or bad news.

Either there were no mechanical spheres, or they had all gone dormant and were waiting to be awakened at a suitable time in the future. Perhaps then, they would follow the technological civilization’s commands, or rather, their programming.

Lu Yin felt that the second option was highly possible, as the technological civilization had previously delayed their attack on the Seal-Eater Civilization, only acting long after the expected time had passed.

A war between civilizations was not child’s play. Since the technological civilization had already taken action, they would certainly go all out.

While Lu Yin failed to find any of the mechanical spheres during this time, he did discover several megaverses and civilizations in the region. However, none of them had even a single Immortal, and their overall strength was quite weak. There was also one civilization that had highly developed technology, but they were not even as advanced as the Infinity Empire. All of the civilizations were far from reaching the level of completely unifying their own megaverse.

Only by completely unifying one’s own megaverse could one be considered a cosmic civilization, but none of the civilizations that Lu Yin found were qualified.

However, in one of the megaverses, Lu Yin unintentionally found a plate of black armor that was part of the One-Hundredth Seal. This got him quite excited, but after taking it back for Old First to interpret, he discovered that the plate merely recorded Astral Anura’s Star-Plucking Hand, which disappointed Lu Yin.

However, it also gave him hope of finding more armor plates.

Some of them had been sent far away by the spatial turbulence, but others should remain relatively nearby.

After that, he added one more thing to his search: the black armor plates.

Finding more plates would be about as hard as finding the mechanical spheres. No, it would be even harder.

The spheres were somewhere in the Aevum Inch, but if an armor plate had been picked up by a creature, it could be hidden away, such as within a cosmic ring.

The armor plate that he had found had been stumbled upon by luck. It had just happened to be up for auction in a megaverse that he had seen. He had wanted to learn about the civilization, and its strongest creature had happened to be in the auction hall, which was why Lu Yin had managed to see the armor plate. Both the plate and the creature that Lu Yin had been observing vanished.

Presumably, the armor plate’s disappearance would be blamed on the civilization’s strongest being. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

If not for such a fortuitous coincidence, then even if Lu Yin had known that an armor plate was in that megaverse, so long as it was stored in a cosmic ring, it would be nearly impossible for him to find it.

One day, more than ten years later, Lu Yin entered a dead, silent universe. He looked around. There were spatial tears sprinkled about like raindrops and thunderous explosions that were nerve wracking.

This was a megaverse that had been reset.

The megaverse was about thirty-years travel from the human civilization, and the path to it was parallel to the path connecting humanity to the Seal-Eater Civilization.

The reason why Lu Yin had entered this particular megaverse was because it felt familiar to him.

Familiar, incomparably familiar.

At first, Lu Yin had thought that the sense of familiarity came from his bloodline. The first thing that he thought of was Crimson Starshade, the human civilization that Green Lotus had abandoned. Lu Yin also thought that he might have found the Crimson Starshade Megaverse that had been destroyed. Given that they were both human civilizations, it made sense for there to be a sense of familiarity.

However, after entering the megaverse, Lu Yin discovered that none of those reasons were the cause. The familiarity came from his consciousness.

More precisely, it came from Yue Ya’s consciousness.

Yue Ya had been born from the consciousness of a dead Immortal, which meant that there were still remnants of an Immortal’s consciousness within Lu Yin’s consciousness. It was those exact remnants that had once allowed him to see the Death Megaverse, and this strange sense of familiarity came from those same remnants.

Lu Yin released his consciousness, wanting to strengthen the sense of familiarity.

He even released the consciousness in his Mind Manor and merged with the will of the megaverse.

His gaze suddenly twitched, and one scene after another abruptly appeared in his mind.

Once again, he saw that black plaza filled with white skeletons. Dark clouds covered the sky. He saw a gigantic finger bone descend, punching a hole through the sky.

It was the same scene that he had seen when looking at the last page of the Cheng clan’s secret manual, and again through Yue Ya’s consciousness.

Suddenly, the dark clouds covering the sky parted. Following the finger bone upward, Lu Yin saw an incomparably massive white skeleton standing in the Aevum Inch. The black plaza was like a toy in the palm of the giant’s other skeletal hand. It was hard to describe what Lu Yin was feeling at that moment. Fear? Horror? No, those were not Lu Yin’s feelings, but rather the feeling of the remnants of consciousness.

The original owner of the consciousness had witnessed the scene before Lu Yin. They had been afraid, terrified. Run: That had been their only thought at the time. Run, run as far as possible.

That incomparably huge skeleton suddenly looked over. Its gigantic empty eye sockets were like whirlpools that could swallow everything. The image abruptly shattered, and Lu Yin’s eyes snapped open. Without him even realizing it, sweat had soaked his back.

That scene was of when the Immortal whose consciousness had given birth to Yue Ya had encountered the Death Megaverse. Had the Immortal died at that moment? It was not impossible. If they died, then they must have encountered the Death Megaverse somewhere close to the human civilization. If not, Yue Ya’s consciousness would have never appeared in the Nine Odysseys Megaverse, and the Immortal’s corpse would have never ended up in one of Aeternus’s Scourges.

Lu Yin stared blankly at the starry sky, reviewing image after image from the memory from the consciousness remnants.

That gigantic, white skeleton had seemed to overlook the entire Aevum Inch; why had its form been human?

Those white bones filling the black plaza had all looked like they belonged to humans as well.

Why?

Finally, there was Zhu, who had been released when a sourcebox had been unlocked. That creature had also resembled a human skeleton.

There were countless megaverses throughout the omniverse and infinite lifeforms. Why were the skeletons specifically human ones?

Was it possible that the Death Megaverse had also been part of the Nine Ramparts?

No, that was impossible. If that were the case, Green Lotus would not be ignorant of that matter.

Moreover, Zhu had tried every means possible to contact the Death Megaverse and destroy this human civilization.

Lu Yin sank into thought. He could not figure it out, but he did know that the Death Megaverse was strong, terrifyingly so.