Free Web NovelChapter 624: Chapter 241: The Unreachable Beyond
Denglin City.
The use of distortion amplification had ceased, the immense power consumption had nearly depleted the entire energy reserve of the technological edifice.
The decision to stop at this moment was Xie Yingjie’s intent, he instructed Xie Xingzhi to contact Lin Rui The First Generation and others, preparing to arrange for the evacuation of the scientists.
"As humans, this is not a battlefield we can partake in. I hope our research has helped Jing Si, but now, it’s time for us to leave," Xie Yingjie said calmly as he looked out the window.
The battle in the north seemed to have entered a standstill.
The presence of Jing Si, the presence of Alpha, both appeared to have solidified.
If they were to evacuate, this would be the best opportunity.
"We won’t go, you’re still the same after all..."
"Shut up."
A scientist, determined to live and die with everyone else, wanted to scold Xie Yingjie for his "traditional skills," but another scientist stopped him.
"We’ve already done what we could. To even gain a minute for those people is almost impossible for us, yet we’ve done more than we could’ve imagined. Now... we should save our lives, to prepare for worse possibilities."
"Death is so simple, in such circumstances, it is surviving that is the most difficult."
It was like a fire, burning most intensely at its brightest. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
But this fire was about to go out, and it seemed Xie Yingjie was ready to flee once more.
In truth, he was preserving the ember.
After this speech, everyone lowered their heads, and before long people began to pack up their things.
"Where shall we go? There may no longer be a place with such advanced experimental equipment."
Everyone shared the same confusion, to which Xie Yingjie responded:
"I have a bit of a private relationship with the Master of the Mechanical City, what he can offer you will only be more, not less."
His words provided direction to the people, but everyone was clear—if this war ended in defeat for humanity—
Mechanical City would not be a safe haven, and no one fighting against the distortion in this world would have any safety.
...
...
The Graveyard.
"Their presences seem to have quieted down. What’s happening? Have Jing Si and Alpha entered a severely injured state? Have they temporarily called a ceasefire?" Xu Wei asked.
"This is our chance, the array is halfway complete. As long as Jing Si can continue to hold Alpha off, we have hope!"
Even The Pursuer, who was usually taciturn, became agitated.
Only Lin Rui noticed something off about The First Generation’s expression.
The First Generation said:
"The one dealing with Alpha now is not Jing Si."
"Not Jing Si? Then who could it be?"
The First Generation shook his head.
In his heart, he already had an answer. Ever since the moment he saw the Ten of Spades, he had felt... perhaps today, there would be a miracle.
This miracle was Bai Yuan. But has Bai Yuan really been alive all this time?
If he truly was alive, then for seven hundred years... not visiting Xiaoyugan, keeping everything tightly concealed, does this indicate that this person truly has no heart?
Memories of the past surfaced in The First Generation’s mind.
Bai Yuan was charming, elegant, and occasionally playful. But all of this was just his facade.
No one knew what lay deep in Bai Yuan’s heart.
The First Generation felt he should be happy, yet his heart was also burdened with a sense of gloom and sorrow.
He quickly dispelled these distracting thoughts because next, he had to seize this opportunity to accelerate the array, to completely seal away Alpha.
...
...
The Inner World.
The empty inner world of Bai Yuan left Alpha unable to find any weakness.
How could a person’s inner world contain absolutely nothing?
He walked through nothingness and darkness, for a long time, and he also observed the situation on the ground.
"I’m getting closer, even though many times, you’ve made me think I’ve returned to the starting point."
Alpha found this man’s inner world increasingly interesting.
If it were anyone else, perhaps they would fall into despair upon seeing such an Inner World.
But Alpha wouldn’t, his heart was too strong, he firmly believed that a person must have joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, firmly believing that a person also must have hatred and love.
He didn’t know how long he had walked when Alpha seemed to always come back to the very center of this world.
Because he had left a mark here.
"Labyrinth."
This was the conclusion Alpha came to after many verifications—the seemingly void world actually had boundaries.
This also meant that this formation was just a facade.
It was very possible that in the depths of Bai Yuan’s heart, there hid a world completely opposite to "void."
As long as there is a formation, there is an Array Eye.
After all, Alpha was a high-dimensional being, with channels for acquiring information that far exceeded those of humans.
The inverted Red Pupil began to scan the surroundings continuously, this time, Alpha even felt a loss of his power.
A sense of exhaustion was gradually surfacing.
He had never thought that facing a human, he would feel his spiritual power showing signs of exhaustion.
The Red Pupil shone brightly, and all the truths of the world were to be revealed.
Alpha sighed again:
"Such a perfect Inner World, it’s so strong it doesn’t seem like it belongs to a human."
A person adept at invading others’ minds surely understood the weak points of various defensive formations.
Bai Yuan was such a person, and once such a person set up a defensive formation, it was bound to be the most difficult to break through.
However, in front of Alpha, cracks finally appeared. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
Alpha saw a door. At the boundary of the void world, it was covered in darkness.
Without strong spiritual power, one could not see this door, nor could they blunder into it by mistake.
This meant that Bai Yuan’s heart truly had no weakness.
At least for this layer of camouflage, Alpha believed that aside from himself and the old adversary who had passed away, it was impossible for anyone else to see through it.
In a battle of spiritual power, Bai Yuan would be considered invincible in this world.
But not having a weakness, that was a relative concept. When the power difference between two individuals was too great, then having no weakness meant the whole body was a weakness.
Alpha kept moving closer to that door; with each step, he felt his spiritual power draining away madly.
But he could calculate that he had enough remaining strength to reach the door.
He was like a ghost walking in the universe, seeing the entrance to another world.
At last, Alpha moved step by step and arrived in front of the door.
He gently pushed the door open, and a golden light surged forth...
A completely different world appeared before Alpha’s eyes.
"This is too interesting, such a human should serve me."
Bai Yuan’s true Inner World had finally revealed itself; in this world, there were farms, there were shores, there were small towns, there were High Towers.
Alpha stepped through that door, walking on the streets, seeing many children walking on the streets.
These children, as well as the vast majority of adults on the streets, had normal human bodies, but from the neck up, they had no heads, just a card in place of a face.
Alpha’s consciousness spread out, and in that instant, he discovered the farms, the shore, the small town, the High Tower—all the elements were distributed like a neat chessboard.
If you looked closely, you would find that these people with playing cards for heads looked very much like chess pieces.
But there was an exception.
At the edge of the shore, there was a huge Ark, resembling a castle.
This Ark seemed always ready to set sail, yet for seven hundred years, it had never left the coast.
Alpha’s gaze seemed to pierce through the Ark,
In its depths, he saw people who were no longer topped with "Playing Cards."
A girl was inside the Ark.
And another person, this person wore a mask, Alpha had seen him.
"It seems he’s very important to him, but that’s not who I’m looking for."
Alpha was clear that he could destroy the two people inside the Ark, but there was no point.
Becoming too free from concerns, Bai Yuan would become more like a true heartless person.
He had to find the one that could make Bai Yuan collapse.
After examining the High Tower and the farm, although he also saw a few seemingly significant characters, none were as important as the two in the Ark.
In the end, in that small town, Alpha saw a child.
The young Bai Wu.
At the sight of Bai Wu, Alpha was beside himself with excitement.
He had spent a great deal of spiritual power searching for Bai Yuan’s weakness. This feeling of weakness was even more intense than during his several confrontations with Jing Si.
Bai Yuan was indeed his most formidable enemy. He had never imagined his greatest opponent would be a human.
But now, everything was about to end.
"I see, there many incompetent fathers in this world, and you seem to be one, but only seemingly so."
"This must be your biggest lie, right?"
Alpha, already within the small town, slowly walked toward the child.
...
...
The Inner World, the city of a high-dimensional civilization.
After crossing a colossal hemispheric structure that could compare with an entire city, Bai Yuan saw three houses.
In the purple house.
The scene beyond the massive hemispheric structure was like a vast empty hall.
The three houses were located in one place.
He saw clearly that the entire world was divided by the symbolic structure representing the High Tower Master.
The seemingly vast world was actually just a superficial layer.
The true emptiness lay within Alpha’s heart.
Of course, he couldn’t achieve absolute emptiness; among those three houses was something even Alpha feared.
It didn’t take long for Bai Yuan to reach the far end of Alpha’s Inner World.
Walking on the ground as smooth and white as jade, a sense of unease emerged within him.
Climbing that mountain should have been an easy task for Bai Yuan.
On the outskirts of the Inner World, he could command reality, effortlessly annihilating Alpha’s legions.
But as he approached the giant hemispheric structure, Bai Yuan found his abilities sealed, as if by magic.
By the time he arrived there, he had expended much time and energy.
In the realm of the spirit, the loss of physical strength was, in fact, the consumption of spiritual power.
At this very moment.
Both men, having invaded each other’s worlds, had found the most secret things of their adversary.
And both had suffered great exhaustion.
Alpha had forgotten when he last felt such a degree of fatigue.
And Bai Yuan also took each step with great difficulty.
They were like two evenly matched opponents.
...
...
In Bai Yuan’s Inner World, Alpha finally stood in front of "Bai Wu".
Everything in the Inner World, whether people or objects, corresponded to the parameters of the mind and soul of the body’s owner in the real world.
Alpha didn’t know what the young Bai Wu corresponded to, but he was clear that this child was something Bai Yuan greatly cared about.
He could feel that there was something here worth Bai Yuan’s sorrow, as well as his fear.
On the other side.
Bai Yuan finally stood in front of the door to the purple house, symbolic of fear.
He had expended the majority of his spiritual power to cross the mountain that seemed insurmountable, and was about to reach the end.
The journey was much longer than Bai Yuan had anticipated, so much so that he wasn’t sure what point Alpha had reached.
But no matter what point, the next step was simply to open that door and see what Alpha feared, to know what he truly dreaded deep inside.
However, just as he was about to touch the door, his body violently trembled.
It was like the time he was first taken over by the fish—a piercing pain assaulted his soul.
Bai Yuan was already accustomed to this torment, but this time, it was far more intense than any before.
It was so painful that Bai Yuan felt something was terribly wrong.
But he was Bai Yuan, after all. At this moment, he was just like Bai Wu.
"The more painful it is, the more important it is to stay alert. And make the mind work faster."
"I can’t do that..."
"Don’t worry, take it one step at a time, start with getting used to the pain."
Memories of fatherly kindness and filial piety, of teaching by word and example, kept surfacing.
Suddenly, the shadow of Alpha flitted through them.
Bai Yuan realized that his Inner World had been invaded.
Alpha had broken through the empty shell and entered the deepest layer of reality.
But he didn’t mind, on the contrary, at this moment his gaze was exceptionally determined.
This man’s eyes were always somewhat hazy, as if he looked at everyone with indifference.
Only now, his eyes were filled with unwavering determination.
It was like two duelists, each stabbing their sword into the other’s body.
What they were competing in next was not a matter of technique.
It was another manifestation of spiritual power—Will.
Enduring intense pain, Bai Yuan violently pushed open that door.
"You have already lost,"
came the voice of Alpha, suddenly.
As Bai Yuan touched upon the most core secret of Alpha, Alpha also began to distort "Bai Wu."
In that instant, as the people in two different Inner Worlds touched upon their most central matters, they actually resonated briefly.
"This is indeed an interesting duel, calm, yet fraught with hidden dangers."
Bai Yuan didn’t speak, but the voices in his mind became denser.
Those voices seemed to be persuading him to give up, but he did not relent, instead delving deeper into the purple room.
The dense purple mist obscured a shadowy figure.
Beneath the purple curtain, the outline of that shadow sharpened.
If Bai Yuan had left Bai Wu later, he would have known that this was a "Sequence" with "thought," a scene of its emergence.
He didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t affect him.
He wanted to lift that curtain and feel Alpha’s fear for himself.
But it was extremely difficult to do so.
Because in another world, the pain inflicted by Alpha grew increasingly severe.
At this moment, a sense of panic surged in Alpha’s mind.
This mysterious fear brought him back to the day of merging with the Immortal.
His process of distorting "Bai Wu" was interrupted; unprecedented weakness, coupled with an inner fear, caused Alpha to drop to his knees.
And because of the intense pain, Bai Yuan’s approach to the mysterious Sequence was also interrupted. He likewise fell to his knees, his chest heaving tumultuously.
They both gasped for air in their respective worlds, one seeking to conquer the opponent completely, the other wanting to uncover the opponent’s fear.
On the outside, the world remained incredibly peaceful.
But in the Inner World, the duel between the two had reached its final moment.
Eventually, Alpha stood up first.
The fusion with the Immortal had elevated his Will to a level unattainable by ordinary people.
"I am the one who won, human."
In previous battles, Alpha had always been the victor, but only this time, his words carried excitement.
Because this human named Bai Yuan had truly made him feel a sense of crisis.
Bai Yuan tried to stand up, but the intense torment imposed by Alpha became more and more terrifying.
Suddenly, he realized that the answer that was within arm’s reach...
he would never be able to touch it, just like a destination forever out of reach.
And before long, he might become Alpha’s pawn.
He was very clear about what Alpha was doing to him, perhaps distorting a core or even twisting the entire Inner World.
At this moment, an expression that should never have belonged to Bai Yuan appeared.
It was of solemn resolve and decisiveness.
This man, always elegant, faced any enemy and peril throughout his life—whether Jing Yi, the Ace of Spades, or the many challenges he faced with Bai Wu...
Most of the time, he faced them with grace, only showing seriousness in few battles, treating them with real consideration. But never had an encounter made him show such determination.
"Only I can decide my own journey, Alpha."
On the other side of the Inner World, with victory seemingly in his grasp, Alpha suddenly furrowed his brow, then his face showed disbelief.
This town, so incredibly calm—was undergoing a drastic transformation.
