Chapter 4507: The Last Time

"Are you happy?" Lu Yin suddenly asked.

Those three simple words made Hong Xia freeze. Happy? Am I happy?

"When was the last time you laughed heartily?" Lu Yin asked again.

Hong Xia stared at him in a daze.

Lu Yin met the man’s gaze. "When was the last time you were truly happy? When was the last time you told someone what was on your mind? When was the last time you were reluctant to part from someone?"

Hong Xia frowned. "Shut up."

Lu Yin continued, "When was the last time you drank some wine?"

"Shut up!" Hong Xia shouted sharply.

"When was the last time your heart ached? When was the last time you shed tears?"

"I told you to shut up!" Hong Xia roared. His eyes were manic as he glared at Lu Yin.

Lu Yin continued to stare at the other man. "When was the last time your heart was at peace?"

Hong Xia’s breathing grew ragged. His expression looked as though he wanted to devour someone. His eyes were savage and terrifying.

Lu Yin shook his head and clasped his hands behind his back. "You remember. You remember all of that. That is why you are so furious. It isn’t your body that’s furious, but rather your spirit. What right do you have to say that you control everything about yourself? Do you still think that your spirit obeys you?"

Hong Xia clenched his teeth and fists. The surrounding void even started to turn red.

"The more you care about something, the more it will pierce your heart like a sharp blade. Hong Xia, you are pitiful. Truly pitiful," Lu Yin continued.

Hong Xia let out a heavy breath. It took him a great deal of effort to calm down before he closed his eyes.

"Whether the world is a game or not, what we seek is only the words 'peace of heart.' We seek nothing more than peace of heart." Lu Yin turned to stare off into the distance. "Senior Jiu Wen is an Immortal, even a two-law Immortal at that, and yet he willingly sought his own death. What he sought was not the end of his life, but rather peace of heart. I don’t know what the meaning of life truly is, but I do know that a person's genuine happiness is more important than anything.

"I truly envy children for their carefree and happy spirit, but we can never go back to that time."

Hong Xia opened his eyes. He had already regained his calm. "Everyone pursues different things. I am not wrong, while you may not be right."

Lu Yin nodded and sighed. "That is true. You value life, so cherish your own. Don’t let someone else play you to death."

Hong Xia's eyes flickered. The Soft Megaverse flashed through his mind, then Wang Wen, Ba Se, and all sorts of details related to Obscura. He then gave Lu Yin a set of coordinates and a few words. With that, the man left.

Lu Yin breathed a sigh of relief. He finally had it. These coordinates should be Ni Bieluo’s location.

He decisively headed toward the coordinates, not doubting Hong Xia. Given Lu Yin’s current strength, Hong Xia could no longer deal with him with just one or two sets of coordinates. If that were possible, there would have been no need to wait for so long. Hong Xia would have done it when he had given Lu Yin the first batch of coordinates.

Lu Yin was worlds apart from the person that he had been at that time.

The coordinates indicated a rather distant location. It was more than 1,000 years’ travel away from the Trio.

When attacking Lu Yin’s human civilization, Ni Bieluo must have relied on White’s gate to reach the Trio. Its paper bridge could not have crossed such a vast distance.

No matter how far it might be, as long as he had coordinates, Lu Yin could reach his destination.

Some time later, he drew close to the location indicated by Hong Xia’s coordinates. He peered into the distance in a daze. At that moment, relief welled up deep within LuYin’s eyes. It was the relief of having solved a mystery.

He understood. It was no wonder why Obscura had been so eager to go to war with the Mudwater Dominion. Lu Yin could now see the reason.

When he had destroyed the Plume Immortals' great tree and absorbed the vast green motes of light in it, Lu Yin had seen an incomparably massive tree that had appeared to be truly boundless. That tree's size exceeded all imagination, as though it could encompass everything within the omniverse, while the Plume Immortals' great tree was merely nothing more than a tiny twig of that enormous tree.

That was the vision that Lu Yin had once seen, but at the time, he had not known whether it was real or false. He had even suspected that he might have hallucinated after absorbing too many motes of green light. He had wanted to turn in a reward to Obscura to gain information regarding that vision, but Ba Se had stated that the information required a six-star reward, which had made Lu Yin shrink back.

He had only managed to obtain a six-star reward through a rare opportunity during a war. He had used the broken sword that Wang Wen had left behind to cut down the Plume Immortals' great tree while the birds had been away, fighting a decisive battle in Vestigium. If Lu Yin were given another chance, he was not confident that he could succeed again.

Even with his current strength, he lacked confidence. Or rather, it would be even more difficult for him to succeed because the Plume Immortals would certainly pay more attention to him, given his new strength. He would never find the same sort of opportunity to exploit.

In other words, a six-star reward could only be obtained by chance. It could not be deliberately sought out. Naturally, he could not possibly spend such a precious reward for just a single piece of information. After all, that knowledge had not meant much to him at the time.

At present, there was no need to trade for that information either. After breaking into the Immortal realm, when he had first looked at the Aevum Inch, he had seen the same vision. However, there was a difference. After absorbing the motes of green light from the Plume Immortals' great tree, he had seen a vertical tree, boundless and endless. Its countless branches were the Mother Trees that were rooted in the various megaverses.

However, the great tree that he had seen after becoming an Immortal was tilted.

That was right. It was tilted.

LuYin knew that it was not the tree itself that was tilted, but rather their perception of the cosmos and the Aevum Inch.

The most straightforward explanation was that their location in the Aevum Inch was on a branch that had grown crooked, which caused the great tree to appear tilted when seen. The position of the Plume Immortals' main tree, or rather the branch that the Plume Immortals lived on, was aligned with that massive tree. So, the main tree had seemed upright when he saw it then.

The great tree's roots and branches were tangled and interwoven, while its branches could either droop downward, rise straight upward, or slant sideways.

The reason why Obscura had gone to war with the Mudwater Dominion, if Lu Yin’s guess was correct, was that the Mudwater Dominion was approaching the junction between the branch where Obscura was located and the limb that stretched out from the Mother Tree. Although this was only a guess, Lu Yin was confident that he was correct.

If the cosmos was an enormous tree, then the branches were naturally not as important as the limbs and trunk. To come into contact with the trunk, one either had to climb up from below or seize a branch and move along it to reach the trunk.

The Mudwater Dominion had approached the same limb, which had drawn war upon itself.

Previously, Lu Yin had not been able to see such matters clearly, but he now clearly understood. This meant that he had a way to push Obscura to wage war with other civilizations. It was as if he could step on Obscura's tail at any time.

Looking upwards, Lu Yin's eyes flickered. But was this the true face of the Aevum Inch? Was the Aevum Inch an incomparably enormous Mother Tree?

No. If it was a Mother Tree, then everything should exist in connection to the Mother Tree. However, the Mudwater Dominion clearly had not touched the true Mother Tree. Instead, their megaverse was floating in the cosmos outside of the Mother Tree.

Seeing the true Mother Tree did not mean that Lu Yin was seeing the Aevum Inch clearly.

He did not tell anyone what he saw. He did not know how others were supposed to see things. Was it related to cultivation? Or could it be related to the motes of green light? He could not rashly confirm any of these matters, so he could only proceed slowly, step by step.

So far, all he knew for certain was that living creatures’ senses were not accurate. The Mother Tree that he could see was clearly tilted, but even if others could not see it, the cosmos would still be the same cosmos.

In truth, there was no up or down in the cosmos.

He arrived at the location indicated by the coordinates, but he did not see the Mudwater Dominion.

It was not possible for Hong Xia’s coordinates to be so accurate that Lu Yin would see the Mudwater Dominion as soon as he arrived. Hong Xia was not a member of the Mudwater Dominion, and he might have obtained the coordinates from the war.

Looking around, Lu Yin could only peer into the distance and hope to find a megaverse.

Several years passed as Lu Yin looked in one direction after another. Finding a megaverse in the vast cosmos was as difficult as ascending to the heavens. He had given himself a time limit, and if he could not find the Mudwater Dominion within that period, he would stop searching.

One day, he unintentionally checked a direction that he had already examined once before, but this time, he saw that a civilization previously there had disappeared.

A civilization was gone. Lu Yin confirmed it again and again. He was right. He had seen a megaverse with a civilization in that direction before, but that civilization was now gone. The answer was simple: it had been recorded. Mud dolls specialized in recording civilizations.

Teleporting over, Lu Yin arrived outside the megaverse’s previous location. He lightly tapped the void, causing ripples to spread out in every direction.

The ripples moved extremely quickly, but the fluctuations were very faint. They might not even be sensed by Immortals.

Suddenly, Lu Yin looked over. He had found it.

In the dark cosmos, something that looked like cement was moving slowly. Without examining it carefully, one would think that the object was a meteorite. It looked exactly like a meteorite, so who would ever imagine that it was actually a pseudo-Immortal?

The more that one was exposed to the Aevum Inch, the more they would discover that, although some species could not produce large numbers of Immortals, all species searched for various ways to produce pseudo-Immortals.

The Divine Realm was one example, and the Mudwater Dominion was another.

The creatures of the Divine Realm established laws within their own bodies and then continuously expanded their law until it merged with the Aevum Inch, thereby creating an alternate form of Immortality.

In contrast, the Mudwater Dominion created mud dolls and used ink made from civilizations themselves to bestow them with power. Once that ink was consumed, the mud dolls would fall from the Immortal realm, but so long as the ink remained, they would be pseudo-Immortals.

Lu Yin had considered trying to add similar means to his human civilization before. The closest methods that they had available were the Nirvana Tree Path and the transformation of Wielder-realm battle force into Lifeforce, but neither method was easy.

For the Nirvana Tree Path, there was a lack of motes of green light. Moreover, even if the method was spread on a massive scale, if those using it were not at the pinnacle of power beneath the Immortal realm, they would not be able to leap up to the level of an Aberrant.

Wielder-realm battle force was even more difficult to cultivate. The requirement was to transform battle force into Lifeforce. After doing so, with the help of Lifeforce and Immortal matter, one could fight against ordinary Immortals. However, so far, only Lu Yin and Ancient God had accomplished that. Even Jiang Feng, who had comprehended Wielder-realm battle force long ago, had not succeeded.

It was not that Jiang Feng lacked the necessary spirit. Rather, his current focus was on reaching the Immortal realm again. Master Qing Cao had once stripped the man’s past and senses from him, but Jiang Feng had overcome that obstacle and broken into the Immortal realm. He had not had any time to experiment with Wielder-realm battle force.

When Lu Yin had last visited Whitecloud City and found that Jiang Feng had shed his cultivation to rewalk the path to the Immortal realm again, he had also reminded Jian Feng that it might be more convenient to first transform his Wielder-realm battle force and obtain the strength of an Aberrant.

Given Jiang Feng's boldness, he could definitely succeed.

Whether it was the Nirvana Tree Path or Wielder-realm battle force, both required a cultivator to personally obtain it. Neither was something that could be obtained simply by being given the method.

Humanity lacked a means of producing pseudo-Immortals with nothing more than time.

Lu Yin teleported over, appearing before the mud doll. The thing stared at Lu Yin in a daze. Although it had no eyes, ears, mouth, or nose, Lu Yin could sense its emotions.

"Surprised? And frightened too... It seems you recognize me," Lu Yin observed.

The mud doll made a sound. "I don’t recognize you."

Lu Yin stared at it and suddenly made the connection. "I remember now—during the war between Obscura and the Mudwater Dominion, after I defeated Ni Ren, you’re the one who found us, and then were scared away. Right?

"You are really unlucky."

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