LWGP - Chapter 252
Chapter 252: Knocking on the Door
Whether Wang Jiu would return, Wang Shu and the others truly didn't know. They didn't even know where the Old Lady was.
They had never considered letting the Old Lady participate in a war, not out of respect for the elderly, but out of reverence for a dead person.
How dare you put someone Lao Wang worked so hard to bring back on the battlefield?
Lao Wang would probably crawl out of the underworld.
Hmm… perhaps it was worth a try?
Wang Shu didn't know why his mind would wander to such things even as he saw a swarm of flying swords emerge from the spacetime tunnel.
Perhaps it was because if his dear Master were here, forget flying swords, even if you brought the Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin, his master could still smack you down.
But now, his master was gone. The grand entrance belonged to others, with their spacetime tunnels and their domination, one after another…
These swords descending… thankfully, they weren't aimed at me, but at big shots like Xing Yao, Qing He, and Xie Lu.
Wang Shu's mind went blank, his thoughts drifting, but he instinctively retreated from the danger zone. For those targeted by the flying swords, however, the feeling must have been one of absolute precision. Otherwise…
They would die!
The situation changed in a breath, a breath that decided the fate of the world.
Xing Yao was mentally prepared for such a scene. He held a scepter in his left hand and tapped a point in the void with his right.
The scepter was for boundary breaking. The spatial void created by this was a special environment, one where a certain technique could be used.
A self-created technique—Vacuum Control.
Thus, when that terrifying flying sword entered the boundary-breaking vacuum, its tip trembled slightly, like a phoenix feather blown by an immortal's breath. Then… it twisted three hundred and sixty degrees, letting out a pained cry.
Yes, the sword was in pain, for it was a truly legendary weapon.
An immortal weapon with a spirit, its pride wounded by being bent, it naturally cried out.
Crying was useless.
Xing Yao was the kind of guy who could ruthlessly deal with even his own son; his composure was unshakable. After controlling the flying sword, he ignored the others who had been targeted and immediately extended his mental power to capture its controller.
Having just broken through spacetime, the person couldn't be so powerful as to still be hiding in the tunnel. They had likely emerged and gone into stealth.
An assassin-type Sword Cultivator.
Just as Xing Yao located a wisp of a spiritual body and launched a mental shockwave…
In the unseen realm, it collided with the opponent's spiritual body. Hmm? A defense?
To have a mental-type defensive item, that must be a top-tier resource.
Amidst Xing Yao's surprise, the opponent was not entirely unscathed. At the very least, their spirit fluctuated, and their body materialized.
What a handsome Sword Cultivator, clad in brocade, standing tall with an ethereal and noble air. After the mental impact, a hint of surprise crossed his face. He caressed his sword with his left hand and brushed a strand of hair from his ear with his right, as if holding a breath of immortal air between his lips. "I never thought the Fourth Spacetime could produce a mage with some mental talent like you. It makes my trip worthwhile. Otherwise, to find no worthy opponent here would be…"
…would be rather uninteresting.
He couldn't finish his eloquent and somewhat pretentious words. The sky trembled as the starships controlled by Qing He and the others vanished, only to be replaced by even more starships.
More numerous, more impressive, with longer range and greater destructive power.
A cosmic-level, dimension-reduction strike had arrived.
The Eternal Night Race had descended.
If the subtle expressions of surprise from the very few like Xing Yao, Saling, and Qing He were feigned, then the ethereal Sword Cultivator was genuinely stunned.
So soon? But he quickly realized his miscalculation. He hadn't anticipated the acuity of the Eternal Night Race. Based on their previous encounters, the Eternal Night Race was currently launching high-intensity attacks on the first and fourth spacetimes. He hadn't expected them to target the third spacetime simultaneously. They must have anticipated that the other two spacetimes would prepare the third as a retreat route.
After all, the consequence of being a step too slow was right before their eyes—the second spacetime had already been destroyed.
The fleet of warships was for long-range attacks. The descent of the Eternal Night Race was always accompanied by their Mecha Warriors and Mecha Sappers.
The troop types were varied. Those with slender bodies and mechanical wings were certainly speed types. The short, stout ones were bombers. In any case, each had its combat specialty. Their coordination was programmatic, perfectly controlled, unlike humans with their potential for error. Their performance was stable. That was why every descent of the Eternal Night Race caused terrifying devastation—because by the time they arrived, all enemy forces in the target area were already within their grasp.
The Mecha Sappers generally had attributes in the tens of thousands, while Mecha Warriors were in the tens of thousands, with some reaching the level of minor and major kings.
Their number was thirty thousand.
This was actually fewer than the number of humans present. Just as the Old Lady had predicted, this was not a normal descent but one forced by the Eternal Night Race, so its scale was naturally smaller. However, its destructive power was immense, sweeping through a large area right from the start.
"Attention, defensive positions!"
"Everyone, defend!"
"Quick!"
The various factions that had been bickering and threatening to annihilate each other just moments ago now seamlessly banded together.
Don't ask why. Just chalk it up to their flawed nature.
But what was most terrifying, what made both Xing Yao and the Sword Cultivator's expressions turn grave, was a figure riding a mechanical shield-glider.
He was so strong that Xing Yao and the Sword Cultivator, who had just crossed blades, instantly began formulating a strategy to face him together.
For the Eternal Night was the ultimate enemy—an immutable law for the living beings of every spacetime.
And this Mecha Warrior was clearly different from the others.
For some reason, the mechanical race's combatants all looked more or less the same unless they were different troop types. Even the powerful Mecha Warriors at the minor and major king levels only differed in the type of metal, energy intensity, or chip intelligence, which wasn't apparent on the surface. The mechanical race was not one for ostentation; they had no habit of branding "Private," "Sergeant," or "General" on their chests. So, it was basically impossible to tell them apart. Furthermore, many of them had different built-in protection systems. If you couldn't see through them, you wouldn't know who you were fighting, or who was fighting you.
But this Mecha Warrior's mechanical skin, its physical form, and even the weapon it used and the shield-glider under its feet all exuded an incredible presence, making anyone who saw it feel they were facing an irresistible, terrifying powerhouse.
"Holy shit, it's him!" Wang Shu, who was hunkered down behind a mecha shield, enduring the bombardment from above, was stunned the moment he saw the figure.
The impact was a bit much. Even if his soul was fat, his body was still large. Crouching down, his volume wasn't small, and the surface area taking the hits was large. He was about to cough up blood, but this damn fatty couldn't keep his mouth shut. Seeing Xie Lu and the others' surprise, he immediately howled, "Lu-ge, you forgot? That night Master dressed up all pretty and killed the rats, she made eye contact with this mechanical big shot. I thought back then that if it weren't for their different races, it was almost like they were checking each other…"
His mouth ran away with him. He suddenly realized that while under enemy fire, he was running his mouth off, and on top of that, he was fabricating a baseless romance between his ascended master and an enemy big shot. What a sinful act!
Xie Lu and the others didn't look too pleased, but not because of Wang Shu's big mouth, which was habitually chattering about Wang Jiu every day. It was because the mecha big shot, the one who had made even Xing Yao and the Sword Cultivator—two combatants with two million average attributes—change their expressions, had turned his head.
Turned his head to look at whom?
Was there anyone on the entire battlefield worthy of him turning his head to gaze at from afar?
Yes, in the southeast.
During the first wave of the Eternal Night's mass attack, the Old Lady had timed her soul summoning for the moment they breached the spatial barrier.
It was a technical feat, but that was just the initial phase. She hadn't known that activating it in the later stages would drain so much mental power.
Fortunately, her talent seemed to lie in this area. It was something she had figured out after coming back to life and digesting the game's knowledge to develop her own profession path.
As for which profession path she chose… she had many professional talents, but the strongest was Soul. It seemed incredibly powerful, something that couldn't be obtained through the game's resources. The moment she activated her professional talent, the System squealed like a stuck pig, dropping all sorts of hints for her to pursue a soul-arcane type of path.
She paid it no mind and contemplated her skill choices on her own. Thanks to a certain girl who had passed away, she had become the wealthiest person in the third spacetime the moment she came back to life, with the highest resource allocation, allowing her to establish the entire system from a grand strategic perspective.
She didn't know what to call it, so for now, she'd call it a Soul Master.
It was quite fitting for soul summoning and didn't compromise her destructive power. The System didn't even complain.
Of course, the Old Lady also suspected that these System NPCs were all managed by a single central consciousness. She reckoned that the central System consciousness also hoped she would summon Wang Jiu back. So, while she was setting up her skills, she deliberately took a few wrong turns, and sure enough, the System spoke up, both overtly and covertly. It wasn't a reminder, but a form of attention.
It was then that the Old Lady had a faint feeling that Wang Jiu's soul truly still existed; otherwise, there would be no point in performing the summoning array.
With this mindset as her foundation, the Old Lady proceeded with even greater stability. Now, she was simply outputting mental power while consuming precious mental power recovery resources.
System: When it comes to spending money, this family, young and old, has a hereditary talent for spending it like water.
She didn't even blink while spending resources worth hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of points.
But the summoning array was already a success. The Old Lady's soul was too strong, her mental power abundant. After consuming four-fifths of it, it finally activated perfectly. Grayish-white, silver-tinged, profound light patterns constantly shifted, forming soul-images of various living races. Threads reached into the heavens and the oceans. But when the Old Lady placed the Calendar, which held Wang Jiu's aura, in the center of the array, all the summoning threads shot downwards.
They pierced through the entire ocean, through the Devil's Eye, past a depth of thirty thousand, and pierced further… infinitely downwards!
Until they broke the boundary!
Buzz… they struck the Red Copper Gate.
Were the threads soft?
Yes, but they didn't need to break it open. They only needed to… seep in, continuously seeping in!
The Old Lady's will was connected to them. Her mental power could feel the two temperatures on the Red Copper Gate, their frequencies changing hundreds of times per second.
Extreme ice, extreme flame.
The temperatures of life and death.
This was a gate of resistance.
The sensation on her mental power reached a soul-level of pain, both scorching and freezing, but the Old Lady's expression didn't change in the slightest. She continued to output the remaining one-fifth of her mental power, inch by inch, merging with the Red Copper Gate, using her soul talent to feel the patterns on it, and then to influence it.
If there was a microcosm, if there was a soul-thought, if it could break through boundaries infinitely, entering another world within the ten-thousand-meter barrier.
A boundless purgatory, the Ghost World below.
Countless members of the Ghost Race crawled and climbed, roaring, or slaughtering, devouring, or merging, or remaining silent like stone carvings, like air.
A world without the warmth of the living, only desolation and congestion.
Because it had no temperature, no superfluous existence.
The Ghost Race, with no other path in this life, looked up at the sealed ceiling of purgatory and down at their indifferent kin.
Every day, their sanity and memories faded, eventually reducing them to mere ghosts that emerged only when the Red Copper Gate opened once every three hundred years.
Only by getting out, by taking that first breath of mortal air, would they recover some memories, find some desires.
But now… they all heard it.
There seemed to be a faint stirring at the Red Copper Gate.
As if a weak yet gentle hand was trying its best to lightly knock on the great door.
She was reminding someone.
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