Star Odyssey

Chapter 1826: Completing More Cycles

Ming Yan's hair turned white very quickly. The personality of the white-haired Ming Yan was completely different from her black-haired self.

The girl’s eyes grew cold after she grabbed Lu Yin's wrist with a hand. "You have been afflicted with Vitality Poison, but there are also other poisons. How did you get poisoned?"

Lu Yin felt his vitality flowing away, and his body was overcome with a feeling of powerlessness. It was an odd sensation, as if he was turning to liquid, and it was very difficult to move his star energy. Vitality flowed into his body from his upper meridian point and the sprout that was in there, but the amount could not compare to the speed of the poisons in Lu Yin’s body. After all, there was not only the Vitality Poison, but also Samaritan’s Tears. The two poisons worked together to ravage his already dried out body.

The white-haired Ming Yan placed Lu Yin's finger in her mouth and bit down. Lu Yin stared at her in shock. "You?"

White-haired Ming Yan bit down on Lu Yin's finger, and blood spilled out from his finger and her lips. The next moment, Lu Yin could feel something within his body being sucked away by Ming Yan, and his vitality also stopped draining from his body.

"I removed the Vitality Poison, but I can't do anything about the other poison," Ming Yan said quickly as she stared at Lu Yin in a rather helpless manner. She represented all of Ming Yan's negative emotions, and she had never shown such a reaction to Lu Yin before, so he was quite surprised to see this.

Also, Lu Yin had not thought that the Samaritan’s Tears would actually be just as potent as the Vitality Poison. Just how many poisons had the Aeternals developed?

With the removal of the Vitality Poison, Lu Yin’s vitality was no longer draining away. But instead, his hair had started to become white at a clearly noticeable rate. The remaining poison was not affecting his vitality, but rather seemed to be speeding up time for his body.

Lu Yin could not believe that Samaritan’s Tears was actually capable of such a thing. How could such a poison even exist?

The white-haired Ming Yan put Lu Yin's finger back in her mouth, but Lu Yin pulled back. He instead reached out to hold her face. "Don't worry. I know how to deal with this."

The young woman’s eyes were already bloodshot. "Really?"

Lu Yin nodded. "Head on out first."

Ming Yan gritted her teeth and replied, "If you die, I’ll be sure to avenge you!"

Right after that, her hair turned back to black, and the original Ming Yan appeared. Her eyes also turned bright red. "Big Brother Lu!"

"It’s ok, go on out." Lu Yin tried to reassure her.

Ming Yan nodded and slowly walked out of the room.

Lu Yin took a deep breath. He lifted a hand and brought out his die to tap it.

One by one, his hair turned white.

Lu Yin stared at his die. It stopped on Pilfer, and something useless fell out. He rolled the die again, only to get Enhance. Continue.

The fourth roll got him four pips, and the scenery changed before Lu Yin’s eyes as he entered the Timestop Space.

Upon entering the space, Lu Yin instantly extended his time in the space to about a year and then started focusing on fixing things.

He had clearly underestimated the Aeternals. He had been confident that Extremes Must Be Reversed would be enough to protect him from even Vitality Poison, and he certainly had not expected the Samaritan’s Tears to be so shockingly potent.

It was not that the technique was ineffective, but rather that Lu Yin’s recovery speed was not enough to offset the effects of Samaritan Tears. The only thing that he could think of was to recite the Origin Sutra.

As soon as the indistinct voice rose up, the surface of Lu Yin’s withered body began to shine. Within his body, the Samaritan’s Tears was destroying his body, but Extremes Must Be Reversed eventually managed to surpass the speed at which the poison ravaged Lu Yin’s body, and he slowly began to recover.

“Never underestimate the Aeternals.” Many people had said this, and Lu Yin had thought that he was more than cautious and wary enough. But in the end, he had still underestimated the Aeternals.

Vitality Poison was not their most potent poison. They had even more terrifying toxins at their disposal.

This was a poison that normally could not be dealt with or countered.

Extremes Must Be Reversed was a legendary healing and recovery technique that had been created by a Progenitor, which meant that it should have been powerful enough to even allow Semi-Progenitors to recover, and yet it had nearly failed to help Lu Yin deal with a poison, which was completely out of Lu Yin's expectations.

Lu Yin spent more than half a year within the Timestop Space to completely remove the poison from his body and turn it into a powerful tonic for his recovery.

This was the basis of Extremes Must Be Reversed. As long as an attack did not surpass what the technique was capable of handling, the attack would actually restore whatever one suffered, which meant that they would not be injured. Instead, the more damage they suffered, the more power they would accumulate within their body.

Lu Yin let out a sigh of relief, as he knew that he had been lucky to survive the poison.

His mind calmed down. He knew that he had underestimated the Aeternals this time. He had known that Vitality Poison was incredibly powerful, but he had not expected there to be other, even more ruthless poisons.

A thought occurred to Lu Yin, and he pulled out his own vial of Samaritan’s Tears from his cosmic ring.

When he had first bought it, Yi's Emporium had told him that the poison was able to kill even an Envoy with a power level of 700,000. Lu Yin had not actually believed them at that time, but at the moment, he had a new question. Just how in the world had Yi's Emporium managed to get their hands on Samaritan’s Tears?

The Divine Venom Dynasty needed to look into just what the Neohuman Alliance had been researching in Venom Flowzone in addition to Vitality Poison.

Lu Yin’s time soon ran out, and he left the Timestop Space. He went to meet with Ming Yan, reassured her that he was fine, and then returned to seclusion.

Since he had managed to acquire a new batch of funds, it was time to improve his cultivation. He still had quite a few flames stored in the Skyblaze Stone, and he hoped to raise his cultivation as much as possible.

Ten days quickly passed, and he rolled his die again. The first roll ended up being Timestop, which was wonderful to see.

He was resolute in his actions as he pulled out over a billion star essence and the Skyblaze Stone. The temperature in the Timestop Space soared, and the star essence melted. Stars appeared and began to revolve around Lu Yin. This time, Lu Yin was also reciting the Origin Sutra, which sped up the rate at which he could absorb the star essence even more.

Lu Yin was quite confident that no one was capable of cultivating faster than him.

He had already completed forty one cycles, so after absorbing 300 million star essence, he finished his forty second cycle and continued on without stopping.

He could never stay in the Timestop Space for a full year, as such an amount of time would cost too much.

He had no idea if it was pure luck or what, but after his time in the Timestop Space ended, his very next roll ended up being four pips once again.

All Lu Yin knew was that this was very unusual. He had actually assumed that he would roll Possession or something along those lines.

These two trips into the Timestop Space was enough for Lu Yin to complete forty three cycles, but he felt that this was still not enough, so he continued.

…

The die slowly stopped to show Gift Copy. Again. Pilfer. Again.

Lu Yin was forced to rest for ten days before rolling his die again.

During this cultivation session, his goal was to drain all of the heat and flames from the Skyblaze Stone to see how high he could push his cultivation.

Lu Yin’s strength was high enough that there was no such thing as cultivating too quickly.

Lu Yin's eyes narrowed when he saw Possession on his die, but fortunately, he had already set his cosmic ring aside. Given the incredible amount of star essence that he had in his ring, he had no idea how far away the target of his Possession would be. It was possible for him to Possess someone in the Perennial World, or even the Aeternal’s native regions. However, his funds would only support one such Possession.

He would definitely have time to take advantage of Possession later, but not right now.

Again.

…

Black Street was as calm as ever. It was a different sort of calm that could be found in the outside world. This was a calm that belonged to Black Street alone.

Cruel and dark affairs were conducted in this place at every minute of every hour of every day. This was a unique feature of Black Street.

Disgust filled Ming Yan’s eyes as she stared out at the filthy region of Black Street that lay off in the distance. She hated this entire place, but she had to stay. If she left, Big Brother Lu would have no source of income and would lose his source of raw materials.

Unwanted refuse from all parts of the Neoverse ended up in Black Street, but that trash might possibly be great treasures for Lu Yin. Even if such things were only rarely found, it still made sense for Ming Yan to stay.

"The recently collected items have all been sorted." Ming Yu approached Ming Yan from behind and whispered a report.

Ming Yan sighed. "Has anyone else tried making trouble?"

This question caused Ming Yu's body to tremble. "No. There have been none."

When the desiccated corpses had been chasing down people with ancient bloodlines, some of them had fled to Black Street. The corpses had been used by people to uncover ancient bloodlines, and their appearance caused a period of chaos in Black Street. However, the white-haired Ming Yan had revealed an iron fist, suppressing and cleansing Black Street in short order. She had even dealt with the people who caused problems for Bu Laoweng. In the end, there was no one who contested Ming Yan’s absolute control over Black Street.

During her cleanup operations, more than 10,000 people had died. Ming Yu had been truly terrified by the methods that the white-haired Ming Yan had employed. The young woman was becoming increasingly intimidating in Ming Yu’s eyes, and it was not just the white-haired Ming Yan. The black-haired version was also growing stronger by the day.

Lu Yin emerged from the void, and Ming Yu bowed her head and backed away when she saw him. He had already regained his normal appearance, as his previous physique would have badly frightened Ming Yu.

On the other hand, Ming Yan’s eyes lit up when she saw Lu Yin appear. "Brother Lu, are you finished?"

Lu Yin nodded and casually put an arm around Ming Yan's waist. She rested her head on his shoulder, enjoying the rare moment of warmth.

During his last retreat into Timestop Space, Lu Yin had completed his forty-fifth cycle. In total, he had absorbed 1.7 billion star essence. If not for the Skyblaze Stone running out of flames, Lu Yin would not have exited seclusion. After all, he still had more than 30 billion star essence in his possession.

Completing his forty-fifth cycle as an Enlighter had only slightly improved Lu Yin’s strength, but with the addition of Hollow Palm, his new level of Truesight, and his other improvements, he was now capable of dealing with second-tribulation Envoys, and he could even face off against experts with power levels of 700,000. He even had a hope of escaping from a monster with a power level of a million. All of this was also without taking his bodysuit armor into account. If he considered that as well, he was absolutely able to go head-to-head against Envoys with power levels of 700,000.

"Brother Lu, these are the things that we prepared for you." Ming Yan offered the various items that Black Street had collected that could possibly contain rare components to Lu Yin.

Lu Yin had actually forgotten all about this request. He knew that he could easily Decompose all of these items when he next went into seclusion, but there was no rush. He would simply deal with this the next time he rolled his die. "Yan'er, do you still not want to leave this place?"

Ming Yan shook her head and firmly replied, "Black Street is able to gather all sorts of news and rumors from the entire Neoverse. Brother Lu, would you like to know how Yang Ji became an overseer?"

Lu Yin was surprised. "How did you find out about that?"

Yang Ji was the master of the Light World, and he was a powerhouse who was about as strong as Cang Zhou had been, or possibly slightly weaker. Throughout history, there had never once been anyone from the Honor Zone’s 3,000 hidden worlds who had become an overseer, but Yang Ji had accomplished just that.

Lu Yin had thought that the man had been given his position because the Hall of Honor intended to keep a closer eye on the 3,000 hidden worlds, but Ming Yan was suggesting that there was something else to the man’s appointment.

She smiled at Lu Yin. "Yang Ji provided a gift."

"A gift?" Lu Yin was puzzled.

Ming Yan nodded. "He gave a gift to Arch-Elder Zen himself. I have no idea what the gift actually was, but after that, Arch-Elder Zen agreed to make Yang Ji an overseer."

Lu Yin found this quite odd. Arch-Elder Zen was a Semi-Progenitor, and he was naturally removed from most worldly affairs. He was someone who should be immune to being bribed with gifts.

"I only found out about this by accident, but Yang Ji made a bet with some people that he could become an overseer despite there being no precedent for anyone from the 3,000 hidden worlds being given such a post. Even gaining the approval of all of the other overseers would not have helped Yang Ji achieve his goal. Whatever he gave to Arch-Elder Zen could not have been a small price…" Ming Yan took some time to explain it a bit more for Lu Yin.

It was only then that Lu Yin understood that Yang Ji had no real interest in the position of overseer. Rather, he had been elevated to that post so that he would have adequate prestige.

"Also, an elder from the Cosmic Sect who’s a powerful Lockbreaker, Yuan Miao, has a thing for Sect Master Yuan Qiong," Ming Yan whispered.

Lu Yin was completely speechless. "Where did you get that info?"