Clothes soaked with sweat, Lu Yin continued to stare at the ground and recall the scene he had just witnessed, that foreign heaven, the giant ancient battleships, and that jade finger.
“Go down. The Stargazing Deck shows you the stars, your gratitude and grudges, the world through the ages, the cycle of causality, and a part of the heavens that belongs to you,” the tutor’s voice rang out again.
Lu Yin looked up before bowing slowly, “Tutor, might I ask a question? The Stargazing Deck can look into the past, but can it also look into the future?”
“Causality dictates everything,” the Starmaster said dully, “If you see the cause, there will be an effect.”
“And what does a part of the heavens that belongs to me mean? I clearly saw some foreign space.”
“Ask yourself what you witnessed; there have been many changes since ancient times. Go down, I will not answer you further.”
Lu Yin had many questions as he walked down the Stargazing Deck. He still was at a loss; if no one saw the exact same thing, what did his vision represent? His innate gift and the Stargazing Deck had both shown him that jade finger. Whose finger was it? Why did it crush him? Why did he feel so angry?
Ever since arriving at Astral-10, Lu Yin had only experienced one thing: insignificance. Unmatched as a Sentinel? That was just a joke, and only in the Great Yu Empire. A person’s strength didn’t just depend on their relative strength in the same realm; how many people in the Innerverse were younger yet much more powerful than him? Unequalled in the same realm, fair fights… those were all false glory. Like Bazeer had said, no one limited themselves in an actual battle. Star energy was a definitive part of power, proved by the ported battles. He hadn’t met any Sentinels in five battles; the powerful believed in crushing victories, not fairness.
He would never forget the humiliation that Wendy Yushan had wrought upon him. She hadn’t even canceled their engagement in person, looking down from a high vantage point with disdain. Muttering to himself, he raised his head and headed back to the Rain Observatory. That was the place everyone who passed the assessment had been sent to first, which had to be intentional. Perhaps that would be the right place to begin.
The dark green skies suddenly felt strangely familiar this time. He looked around and leaped into the sky, crossing one tree after several minutes of flight. The entire forest looked a little scary from the skies; as Big Pao had said, each treetop had its own limestone platform. He spent two hours on the journey before settling on one he liked, sitting down cross-legged and staring silently at the raindrops.
……
Great Yu Empire, the second ring around the Zenyu Star. A blade sliced through the air and chopped down a flying beast, drawing cheers from a man nearby, “You’re back to a Sentinel, amazing!”
Zhang Dingtian calmly looked at the sky, staring at the first ring, the Zenyu Star, and finally out into space. Lu Yin was likely at Astral-10 by now.
“Brother Zhang, let’s have a friendly duel to see how strong your realmbreaking power is,” the man walked over excitedly.
Zhang Dingtian refocused and gripped his sword, “Alright.”
Not long after, the two of them parted. The man was a powerful Melder while Dingtian was just a Sentinel; the outcome had been decided quite quickly.
“So powerful, you just recovered as a Sentinel and have the power of a Yu Academy elite. No wonder they made an exception for you to remodel, and you even have the Captain’s favor,” the man exclaimed. Seeing the Bladesage just wipe his sword in disappointment, he continued, “Right, I heard you know King Zishan?”
Zhang Dingtian nodded silently, and the man was stunned, “Tell me, is he really such a genius? He’s one of the four people from the Empire that enrolled into Astral-10. I heard he was unparalleled as a Sentinel and even defeated Melders from Yu Academy.”
“I’m not sure,” Zhang Dingtian growled.
The man tutted, “So stupid. If you could use your connection to King Zishan, you could have walked alongside him and decided the future of the Great Yu Empire. His title might have been empty before, but now that he’s entered Astral-10, everything is different. He might be able to enter the Innerverse just like Princess Wendy in the future, and she might not hate our Empire anymore.”
Zhang Dingtian’s gaze flickered and he gripped his blade with resolution, swearing to himself that he, too, would walk out of the Great Yu Empire to find Qingyu Daynight and Liu Shaoge for vengeance.
Elsewhere on the second ring, Bai Xue was panting heavily as she stared straight ahead. Her body suddenly vanished and reappeared a few meters away.
“No, no, nope. Too slow, this is a turtle crawling, not the Flash!” Peach said unhappily from her perch atop a peach tree, swinging her legs while she munched on snacks. She saw the sweaty Bai Xue gritting her teeth and followed, “Faster. Faster! The Flash is my specialty; as my assistant, you need to be super fast. Faster, use it with your innate gift.”
The royal courtiers were walking out of the royal palace on the Zenyu Star below. It should have been an ordinary day, but all of them were scampering to hide from the Blind Monk. Him alone was one thing, but he had brought Seruzen along. No one dared approach them because of their appearance.
‘I miss you, Boss.’ Inside an enormous spacecraft in the distance, Xu San looked out the window with dejection as the Zenyu Star shrank into nothingness in the distance. He wanted to cry, but the tears simply would not come. He was being shipped off to the seventh filament to meet captain Batson, and did not know when he would return to the capital.
……
Astral-10, Rain Observatory. Lu Yin sat on his chosen platform for five days straight, remaining motionless throughout that duration as he stared at the raindrops without end. There was no change in them from start to end, but he had slowly stopped thinking of them as drops of water. They were now a heavy curtain that connected the heavens to the earth, and his body’s star energy slowly started imitating them. His surroundings slowly changed as a shower of star energy joined the dark green rain.
Ten more days passed in the blink of an eye, and Lu Yin had continued to sit and stare. He could feel the changes in his star energy at this point, but it was far too slow. He was certain that his star energy control would massively improve if he sat here for the next year, but he couldn’t wait that long.
Lu Yin was the first to admit that patience wasn’t his strong suit, or he wouldn’t have robbed all the trainees for star crystals back on Earth. He had to think of something! As he diverted his mind, he huffed and shook his limbs, “I haven’t rolled the die in a while. But I don’t have enough star energy crystals, it isn’t worth it.”
The dark green sky suddenly trembled as he was pondering over it, and the rain actually stopped. Unimaginable pressure swept across the Rain Observatory and sent him to the floor in an instant, spitting out a mouthful of blood. Terrifying star energy formed a visible tornado that crushed the tree he was on, heading right for him.
Lu Yin’s eyes shrank with fear; he was going to die!
“Headmaster, stop!” a voice barked just as he was about to be crushed into a pool of blood, dissipating the terrifying strength.
An old man in ragged clothes flew by, howling in laughter, “You started this war, you’ll suffer the consequences of your actions! Hahaha! You started this war…”
Lu Yin stared blankly as the crazy old man passed him, and his throbbing brain finally gave up. Many profound runes flashed behind him in the instant he fainted, forming a lock that flickered with light before fading away.
A middle-aged man stepped out of the void and arrived behind Lu Yin, staring in shock, “Was that a seal? For what? How have I never seen this before? There are even a few lines I can’t decipher, and it can’t be broken either… Interesting…”
The old man wrecked a dozen more trees before vanishing; Lu Yin just happened to be unlucky enough to be on one of them. If not for the tutor in the Rain Observatory intervening, he would have died.
It took a day and night for Lu Yin to wake up, and his head was still hurting when he did. His gaze slowly focused on the raindrops that were dripping down on his hand, the process helped by the slight chill. Was this the Rain Observatory? What happened?
“You’re awake,” a wizened voice rang behind him, and he turned to see a middle-aged man. He seemed normal, but he had heard this voice before; it belonged to the tutor here.
“Are you the tutor?” Lu Yin asked, his voice very hoarse.
The middle-aged man looked at Lu Yin with a bizarre expression, “I’m Guanyu, you can call me the Rainmaster.”
“Yes, Rainmaster,” Lu Yin bowed.
“Do you recall what happened?”
Lu Yin frowned and thought about it, his expression changing as he saw the dozens of destroyed trees all around. “There was a crazy old man.”
“Forget it,” the Rainmaster sighed, and Lu Yin just nodded. He had a vague memory of the word ‘Headmaster’ being said before he fainted. Was that old fogey Astral-10’s headmaster?