Star Odyssey

Chapter 3041: An Unwelcome Guest

Lord Xu said, “We are lucky that Lu Yin was able to anoint that child. Next time we run into Corpse God, we’ll be able to attack him in the same manner.

“Just what is that child’s power? We were unable to break through the defenses of the Divine Tree, and yet that child’s power gravely wounded Corpse God from the inside.”

Mu Shen glanced at the Voidlord. “It’s time to return.”

Such a question was essentially the same as probing into another’s power. This was regarded as taboo among cultivators, and it was also why they had left Lu Yin to anoint Ye Zhang alone.

Lord Xu quickly apologized, “You’re right, it is time to return. I was merely curious, nothing more. Let’s go, Lu Yin.”

Mu Shen said, “While Corpse God is still alive, his heavy injuries mean that he will not show himself again for a very long time. When he does reappear, you might already be a Progenitor.”

Lu Yin appeared optimistic. “I should break through by then. With that, it might not be so difficult to kill him.”

With that, Mu Shen, Lord Xu, and Luo Shan all left. Yue Shen and Moon Fairy similarly bade Lu Yin farewell.

Lu Yin thanked everyone once more.

The Luna Alliance had repaid Lu Yin’s favor, which meant that it would be difficult to ask for their aid again in the future. The Luna Alliance was not part of the Sixverse Association, nor was it formally allied with Whitecloud City. The alliance was led by three sequence powerhouses, and they were strong enough to stand on their own.

Lu Yin returned to the Heavens Sect. The next item on his agenda was to find the nine-headed bird’s nest, as it contained some valuable treasures.

The nine-headed bird had been a powerful outsider powerhouse, and it had gathered an impressive collection of treasures. After Possessing the bird, Lu Yin had learned the way to go to the nine-headed bird’s nest, which had access to several parallel universes where time passed faster. Many outsider powerhouses highly valued such universes.

Lu Yin’s only problem was that he needed to first find the nine-headed bird’s nest.

While Lu Yin had obtained some of the bird’s memories, he was not the bird itself, and he had not left any sort of coordinate seal in the bird’s nest. The only way he could hope to find it was by using Bi Rong's compass.

Bi Rong's compass could guide a person to whatever they desired, as long as they were focused on an item and not a creature. For the compass, items were things that naturally occurred within the megaverse, such as parallel universes where time passed at a different speed. Lightning was also a phenomenon that naturally occurred within the megaverse. Thus, the Lord of Lightning had been able to use the compass to seek out lightning. However, searching for people or astral beasts did not work.

Fortunately, from the nine-headed bird’s memories, Lu Yin knew that, in its nest, there was an incredibly rare natural treasure: Searwood. This Searwood originated from the same universe as the nine-headed bird, and it was the core of the bird’s nest. This treasure was what had allowed the nine-headed bird to evolve over the course of countless years, eventually becoming a sequence powerhouse. However, the bird had never once in its long life found a second piece of Searwood. With that kind of rarity, the compass should be able to guide Lu Yin to the nine-headed bird’s home universe.

Lu Yin started focusing intently on the Searwood as he raised the compass and tore the void open.

He stared at the spatial tear and then stepped through it, vanishing from the Heavens Sect. He reappeared in an unknown universe, but when Lu Yin looked around with Heaven’s Sight, he became extremely excited. He had found the nine-headed bird’s nest on his first try.

This was the universe where the bird had lived.

Parallel universes where time flowed at an accelerated rate typically lacked sequence strings, which was why one had to use the compass to find them. The nine-headed bird’s home universe was a normal universe, and because it had sequence strings, Lu Yin was able to directly access the universe after tearing through the void.

It was actually a rather normal universe, and Lu Yin hurried across it.

He soon caught sight of a massive tree rising high. At the top of it sat the nine-headed bird’s nest, with the Searwood at its core.

Lu Yin’s eyes lit up at the sight of the tree. He could already see that there was someone inside the nest.

There a figure searching for something in the nest, destroying things as they moved around.

“Searching like that is useless,” a voice rang out.

The figure whipped around, revealing slitted scarlet eyes that were blazing with violence.

Getting a clear sight of the figure caused Lu to exclaim in surprise, “Nie?”

Nie was searching the nest. Lu Yin had encountered this corpse king while under his alias of Xuan Qi. At one point, he had been in the Transcendent Universe and had been sent to the Cloudflow Universe, where he had fought in a battle. Nie had attacked a bestowal art carrier. The actions of the Progenitor-level corpse king had let Lu Yin witness the power that Qiu Zhan was capable of unleashing with the help of a black energy converter. Nie was nothing more than a rather average Progenitor-level corpse king. He was slightly stronger than a member of the True God Guard and just barely qualified to receive a name, but he was only about as strong as Qiu Zhan.

Nie stared at Lu Yin. “How are you here?”

Lu Yin smirked. “It looks like you recognize me. I’m also curious about why you’re here. Does Aeternus know where the home bases of all of their outsider powerhouse allies are?”

Without warning, Nie suddenly punched Lu Yin.

The punch froze right in front of Lu Yin’s face. He caught the fist easily and held it in place.

Nie growled and lunged forward, but Lu Yin kicked and sent the corpse king flying. Lu Yin instantly appeared where Nie crashed down, and a foot stomped down, pinning Nie beneath it.

Nie flailed wildly, but his efforts were futile.

Lu Yin was simply much stronger than the corpse king. The two were not on the same level at all.

“Are you going to tell me? Does Aeternus know where to find all of their allies’ bases? Do they plunder them when the owner dies?” Lu Yin asked.

Nie glared up at Lu Yin through scarlet eyes. “Your own kind will kill you one day! Humans cannot resist us!”

Lu Yin frowned and pressed his foot down harder, crushing Nie.

Nie was a corpse king, which meant that interrogation was not an option, and speaking was unnecessary. Nie was only in the universe at Aeternus’s behest, which meant that the Aeternals had somehow managed to locate the nine-headed bird’s nest. That was certainly not some minor matter.

The nine-headed bird had always been very cautious, and it had only ever returned to its nest when it was alone. There was no way the bird had shared its nest location with the Aeternals.

However, if Aeternus knew where to find the nine-headed bird’s nest, then what of the other outsider powerhouses? If those bases were also known, then the possessions of the dead would inevitably fall into the hands of Aeternus. If Lu Yin’s guess was accurate, then Aeternus had gathered an unimaginable amount of wealth.

It was no wonder why Aeternus was able to repeatedly pay Astral Anura. The payment that the toad required must feel cheap to the Aeternals. There was no problem doubling Astral Anura’s payment when Aeternus was paying with resources gathered by other outsider powerhouses.

In that case, the question was, did Aeternus also know where Astral Anura’s home universe was located? If they did, then considering the resources that Astral Anura had already been paid, was it possible that the Aeternals were confident that they could reclaim the wealth they had paid to Astral Anura?

The more Lu Yin considered the possibilities, the more he realized that Aeternus was making deals that cost them nothing at all.

The better he understood about Aeternus, the more impressed he was. Despite most of their numbers being corpse kings, Aeternus acted with an incredibly high level of intelligence. There was a reason why the ancient Heavens Sect had been destroyed. There were many seemingly simple events that had actually all been interconnected.

Lu Yin suppressed his suspicions and then used the nine-headed bird’s memories to move deeper into the nest. Once he arrived at a specific corner, he pressed down with a hand, exposing the hidden entrance to the nine-headed bird’s vault. The bird had not used cosmic rings to store things, but rather hidden everything in a secret room.

These were the treasures that Nie had been searching for.

Lu Yin soon found all of the nine-headed bird’s treasures: weapons, cultivation resources, and countless natural treasures. Unfortunately, what Lu Yin found was also of little use to him.

There was even about 1 billion star essence. It was not a lot, but not too little either. At least, it was better than nothing.

In addition to the star essence, Lu Yin found transcendent crystals, flourishing crystals, and other resources from the Sixverse Association’s universes. There were also many other types of resources from the various cultivation civilizations that the nine-headed bird had encountered over the years. Lu Yin took everything, using them to strengthen the stars in the universe in his chest.

Of the many treasures, there were two which were particularly valuable. First, there were a few cosmic doors that led to all the parallel universes the nine-headed bird had access to where time flowed at different rates. The cosmic doors granted access to these universes, and the bird had periodically patrolled them, just to ensure that no one had trespassed on its domain.

The next invaluable item was the essence of Searwood. It was a liquid that took countless years to condense from the Searwood. Lu Yin did not know what the essence of Searwood did exactly, but he did know that the nine-headed bird regarded it as its most valuable treasure. The nine-headed bird had considered the essence of Searwood to be even more valuable than the universes it had found.

Throughout the bird’s entire life, the Searwood had only produced enough essence to fill a bottle the size of Lu Yin’s palm. It was incredibly rare, and the bird had never once allowed itself to use it.

Lu Yin took it.

The fact that the nine-headed bird had never used the essence of Searwood worked in Lu Yin’s favor, though he also had no idea what it could be used for. He would save it for the future.

After that, there was little left of the nine-headed bird’s possessions.

Lu Yin picked up the cosmic doors and carried them out of the vault and away from the tree. He glanced back but saw no need to destroy anything. The tree might soon see a new owner.

He returned to the Heavens Sect and took the cosmic doors to the mountain behind the sect. He passed through, intending to cultivate in the parallel universes. Later, he would use the universes as rewards for the Heavens Sect’s most elite disciples. No one would refuse the opportunity to train in such places.

For the first time since Lu Yin had become the Dao Monarch of the Heavens Sect, he possessed significant rewards to offer his followers. The Tower of the Fifth was not nearly as attractive to cultivators as the parallel universes that Lu Yin had just acquired.

The nine-headed bird had found four parallel universes where time flowed faster. Lu Yin took three years to be acknowledged by the four universes, which added another thirty-two seconds to how far Lightstream could look into the past. However, from Lu Yin’s perspective, he had spent seventy-eight years in those universes.

This was what seclusion was truly supposed to be for cultivators. In the blink of an eye, three years passed, whereas before, Lu Yin’s periods of seclusion were often as brief as a tea break.

All together, more than ninety years had passed since Lu Yin had arrived on Earth, and that was just the time that the Origin Universe had experienced. If Lu Yin also took the time that he had spent in his Timestop Space and in parallel universes into account, he was several hundred years old. He was no longer a member of the younger generation.

Lu Yin let out a breath and allowed his domain to sweep across the entire Heavens Sect. Huh? Why is He Ran here?

He looked down the stairs and saw He Ran standing by the cauldron, playing with Sapling. Just as Lu Yin was about to check in with the woman, the Second Nightking arrived to deliver a report. “There’s a war in the Astral Beast Domain. Please advise on how to respond, Dao Monarch.”

Lu Yin was surprised. “A war in the Astral Beast Domain? With whom?”

“With a civilization that accidentally entered the Fifth Mainland from another universe.”

Lu Yin chuckled. He had been visiting various other parallel universes and civilizations, and there were outsiders visiting his home universe. Not only were they visitors, but they were also unwelcome ones.

The Second Nightking quickly shared some footage of the war in the Astral Beast Domain with Lu Yin, who stared at the display.

He saw an array of uniquely shaped spacecraft which were surrounded by protective shields as they fired beams at a large number of astral beasts. These ships were distinctly different from the ones in the Fifth Mainland, and each one was protected by its own independent shield. Many of the astral beasts had no choice but to simply endure the assault.

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