Chapter 193 - 192: Time Flow Rate: 1 to 10000
“Immortal Elder, I have a question for you,” Jiang Li came with Yu Yin and Bai Hongtu, posing his question to Immortal Elder Changcun.
Immortal Elder Changcun greeted them with a hearty laugh.
“You just came back from another world and seek me out. It must be no small issue. Fire away.”
“Does the will of all beings at the brink of death generate something that frightens the Heavenly Demons?”
Immortal Elder Changcun shook his head gently: “I have never heard of such a thing. ”
“Have you obtained this information from the Heavenly Demons?”
“No, I just heard a Heavenly Demon telling its underlings that at the moment of terror of life and death, one’s will would become invincibly strong.”
“Considering my experiences in three different worlds where the Heavenly Demons always refrained from making a direct move but instead killed indirectly, I suspect they are afraid of something.”
“The stele left by the Dao Ancestor also confirms this as it states, ‘Transforming oneself into a continent … providing refuge for you all, so they dare not …”‘
“Which stele?”
Yu Yin frowned. she had never heard of such a thing.
“Do you remember the Ming Zhong world I’ve visited?”
Yu Yin nodded. She had read about it in the Heavenly Machine Gazette.
“The continent of the Ming Zhong world was formed from the corpse of the Dao Ancestor, who left a stele before his death containing a record of his end albeit an incomplete one.”
This revelation hit Yu Yin like a bolt from the blue.
The Dao Ancestor… he is dead?
Jiang Li recounted the content from the stele to Yu Yin word by word, while Immortal Elder Changcun explained the indifference of the Immortal Realm on the side.
“From this, it seems that the Dao Ancestor failed, escaped from the Immortal Realm with a group of followers, encountered the Heavenly Demons on the way, fought inconclusively, and unfortunately perished. Before his death, he transformed his body into a continent to protect the people.” Yu Yin reluctantly accepted this conclusion.
The mention of the Dao Ancestor rendered the atmosphere heavy and silent among those present.
Jiang Li sighed internally and continued: “From this, we can see that the
Heavenly Demons fear the will of all beings, especially the will of the dying.”
“I could not understand it before, but after the King of Death’s words, I realized that they might fear the birth or alteration of something from the will of all beings. ”
“That’s very probable,” Immortal Elder Changcun affirmed Jiang Li’s point of view. However, even for someone as well-informed as him; he didn’t know what exactly lay within the collective will of the beings.
They can’t possibly experiment by killing everyone in the world.
“Why don’t the Heavenly Demons harbor ill intents for us in Jiuzhou and directly resort to sabotage?”
Bai Hongtu didn’t understand. Other than the Heavenly Immortal-level Heavenly Demon that caused mischief and fled, all the Heavenly Demons encountered by Jiuzhou in the past 9000 years had directly killed.
There was no trace of conspiracy or indirect murders.
“Perhaps it’s because Jiuzhou is too strong.” Immortal Elder Changcun wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or sad about the strength of Jiuzhou.
“Heavenly Demons are divided into Heavenly Immortal level and Earth Immortal level. The Earth Immortals lack wisdom and can only follow the commands of Heavenly Immortals,” said Immortal Elder Changcun, sharing information he had never revealed before.
“The rest is just my speculation and it may not necessarily be accurate.”
“The Heavenly Immortal-Level Demons might find it extremely difficult to obliterate Jiuzhou using conspiracy. With so many transcending the Tribulation Stage in Jiuzhou, some of them are formidable enough to contend with the Immortal Realm.”
“So, they dispatched Earth Immortal-Level Heavenly Demons to Jiuzhou, causing a massacre. It’s inevitable for the cultivators of Jiuzhou to resist, and in the process, Jiuzhou would have lost its foundations, eventually becoming like other realms; scarce in powerhouses, thereby becoming an easy target for invasion and alteration.”
“Look, when powerhouses become scarce, Heavenly Immortal-Level Demons infiltrate Jiuzhou, leaving traps at every corner, intending to gradually alter Jiuzhou. If we hadn’t drawn their attention, who knows what Jiuzhou would end up looking like in a few thousand years.”
Jiang Li agreed. Setting aside everything else, Jiuzhou would indeed be in a precarious danger if the God-hidden Cult were allowed to flourish.
“Judging by the three worlds that Jiang Li has experienced, it’s very likely that all worlds outside of Jiuzhou have fallen into the Heavenly Demon’s plot, in a state of chronic death.”
“The Heavenly Demons won’t quit after a setback; they will definitely launch a counterattack. Despite Jiuzhou having a guardian array and Jiang Li’s protection, we still cannot afford to let down our guard.” Immortal Elder Changcun seriously instructed.
Three? Jiang Li was taken aback for a moment.
He suddenly recalled that the Ming Zhong world was not the first place he visited.
Before that, there was a world of yellow sand and grey beasts. He didn’t see anything of interest in that world and left after a brief visit.
Jiang Li named that world ‘the Grey World.’
That world gave Jiang Li an uncomfortable feeling, causing him to dislike staying there.
Looking back, the Grey World may have had a problem.
“What, you have been to a world with no people?” Immortal Elder Changcun was astounded. “How is that possible? In the Ten Thousand Realms, there doesn’t exist a world without people.”
“Let’s go and take a look,” Immortal Elder Changcun said with seriousness.
Jiang Li commanded the Fantian Tower to establish a temporary passage, transporting Immortal Elder Changcun, Bai Hongtu, and Yu Yin.
“This is the place,” Jiang Li said, picking up a handful of sand. The uncomfortably familiar feeling that repulsed him returned.
“Indeed, there’re no people,” Bai Hongtu and Yu Yin, who had never seen such a barren world, could only see sand and grey beasts. Besides, spiritual energy was severely scarce.
The world had no trace of civilization.
They also felt a sense of revulsion.
“How can there be no living beings on a continent?” Immortal Elder Changcun was puzzled if this place were a planet, they could still explain that there might be beings residing on other planets. But the fact that this is a continent suggests that no living beings existed.
Immortal Elder Changcun inquired, “What is the flow rate of time here?”
Jiang Li suddenly remembered something. After he returned to Jiuzhou from the Grey World, a statistical officer had contacted him with the Remote Communication Talisman, saying they hadn’t been able to reach him for a few days.
However, he had only spent a very short time in the Grey World!
Jiang Li contacted Pure Heart Saintess to confirm the rate of time flow.
In the end, he stated in a bitter voice, “While 9,000 years have passed in Jiuzhou, it has been 90,000… thousand years here.”
Time flow ratio: One to Ten Thousand!
What can happen in ninety million years?
If the Heavenly Demons had interfered, ninety million years would be more than enough for a civilization to decline and turn into a stretch of yellow desert!
Immortal Elder Changcun picked up one of the grey beasts, his lips trembling, and tears welling up in his eyes, “You may not know this, but there is indeed a Dao in this world called the Dao of Creation that can… can transform people into beasts…
“These grey beasts… they bear traces of the Dao of Creation. Albeit faint… it’s indeed present…”
“These grey beasts… all the grey beasts on this continent… they… or their ancestors… were… humans…”
The three of them froze in shock using the phrase ‘human.’
They hadn’t thought that there would exist a world with such a fast flow of time, nor had they expected that the rationality-defyingly twisted beasts which merely ate sand, showed no semblance of intellect, were human.
Ninety million years is such an incredibly long span of time. They were unable to ascertain what techniques the Heavenly Demons had used to bring humans to this ridiculous, pitiful, and tragic state, nor could they save them or rather…
them.
Jiang Li stepped towards the sky reaching the edge of the cosmos, tilted his head back and let out a long, mournful howl that triggered a rain of falling stars.
He opened his arms wide and then brought them together with a brutal force that was outrageous by any standard, condensing the myriad stars into a massive stele.
Jiang Li erected the stele at the edge of the continent, serving as a grave marker for the world.
Everyone saluted the gravestone with a deep bow, expressing their mourning for the Grey World, a world they had never met, and now would never have a chance to.
And then, the Grey World was devoid of stars. All that remained were a barren desert, a gravestone, an endless yellow sand, and countless grey beasts..