Chapter 715: The Hermit

Relying on Luo Sai Er's help, he briefly suppressed the God of Steam and Machinery, and Lei Ke Dun reached into the void before him and drew out a wooden staff that looked like a withered branch.

At the tip of the staff was set a spherical crystal with a deep black base and a ring of gray‑white stars, and the wooden shaft was engraved with numerous mysterious symbols and sigils representing domains such as change and history.

It is a wondrous artifact he crafted from the spirit insects he obtained from Cha La Tu and the breath he borrowed from Ke Lai En that belongs to Yuanbao, capable of creating a large‑scale Miracle.

Grasping the wooden staff, Lei Ke Dun whispered a passage in ancient He Mi Si language:

"I make a wish."

Pale, translucent flames erupted, the staff turned to ash and vanished, an indescribable torrent surged from nowhere, sweeping the surroundings swiftly and coalescing into an illusory wilderness!

Above the wilderness, light and shadow were mottled, as if bearing countless mysteries and knowledge, bearing civilization and history.

All kinds of figures continually moved across the Wilderness; some were human, some giant, some dragons, elves, even unknown strange creatures.

All the oddities that Lei Ke Dun and the Steam had created using their respective authority vanished, leaving only a pure Wilderness.

Luo Sai Er's figure darted backward, avoiding being engulfed by the Wilderness.

Bright, dazzling sunlight suddenly appeared, bearing a purifying might, even space warped under its golden radiance.

"So fast?" Luo Sai Er frowned.

In the next instant, Luo Sai Er let the underlying rules of the world twist and scramble, making that golden sunlight seem to exist in another realm where the base rules differed, unable to affect the surroundings.

The interference did not last long; soon, a sun nearly true appeared nearby, rapidly approaching this place.

This Sun emitted scorching light capable of illuminating the whole world, even the entire galaxy; its fierce golden rays made others unable to open their eyes, hard to entertain extraneous thoughts.

Luo Sai Er's distortion was quickly shattered; the Sun above sprayed golden energy in waves, creating ultra‑hot flames like a golden waterfall descending from the sky.

Luo Sai Er's skin continuously cracked, countless shadows surged from beneath it, causing the surrounding order to shift rapidly, forming a barrier imperceptibly separated from reality.

A crimson Moon rose swiftly within the Star Realm; its scarlet lunar light fell, making every being in the Star Realm feel the joy of growth and rebirth, their bodies becoming unbearably stagnant.

The golden sunlight and flames quivered, as if about to give birth to their own life and consciousness.

At the same time, a figure wrapped in dark‑green vines and adorned with various herbs and flowers emerged in the crimson moonlight.

They were plump, their emerald dress fluttering, cradling an illusory infant, bathed in the crimson moonlight, and casually tossed a gem‑inlaid eye.

The eye fell unhindered into the Wilderness below, shattering instantly into pale blue specks that merged into the Wilderness.

In the Wilderness summoned by Lei Ke Dun using the Miracle, the figure of the God of Steam and Machinery became layered and dense, becoming part of the countless silhouettes wandering here.

In the earlier confrontation, they had separated their own information and fought on the informational level.

But as Lei Ke Dun summoned the projection of the Knowledge Wilderness, those separated pieces of knowledge began to activate uncontrollably, gradually becoming part of the Wilderness and no longer recoverable.

This caused the current state of the God of Steam and Machinery to keep slipping; its spirit and will projected within countless bits of knowledge and information diverged from itself, thereby imprisoning it here and preventing any move to break free.

Lei Ke Dun originally intended to rely on his own stature to suppress the opponent, forcefully stripping from the Steam God the traits and authority he needed.

But the item dropped by the Earth Mother God completed the final Knowledge Emperor trait he required; after merging with the Hidden Sage, within the projection of the Knowledge Wilderness, his ascension ritual began outright.

Lei Ke Dun's body instantly became ethereal, disintegrating into successive streams of pure, tangled information; as the uniqueness and three Knowledge Emperor traits merged, a qualitative change occurred while the information flood expanded, as if to encompass all knowledge in the world.

In this state, he could no longer spare extra energy to oppose the God of Steam and Machinery, so he simply absorbed that portion of the opponent's information as well, subjecting both to the pressure of the ascension ritual.

Having already inherited the Hidden Sage's spirit and madness, acquiring a bit more of the God of Steam and Machinery's spirit is merely a matter of being a little more or a little less insane.

"Perhaps, the moment I conceived this idea and took this action, I was already mad."

Gu Zi whispered a sentence; his spirit kept elevating, undergoing a qualitative change, entering a peculiar realm, as if becoming knowledge itself, the embodiment and sum of all mysteries.

At the same time, his traits were gradually being completed, increasingly shedding the influence of his original source essence and trending toward a new individual. Lei Ke Dun timely halted this trend, repeatedly emphasizing the portion of information belonging to his own identity, continuously replicating it to achieve self‑suggestion and reinforce his cognition.

Since the core of the Western Continent cannot intervene here, once his self‑recognition errs, he would truly become a conglomerate of many consciences and cognitions, an abstract deity understood by followers rather than merely himself.

"The Hermit" itself is an embodiment of information, knowledge and mystery, a conglomerate of information and abstract concepts; its perception of information can, to some extent, evolve into fact.

Above the Suniya Sea, after the departure of the Eternal Blazing Sun, the Lord of Storms was swiftly suppressed by the True Creator.

Layered, heavy black clouds cast a pitch‑dark shadow, twisted, snarling faces emerging from the gloom as if imprinted fears from the deepest sea of collective subconscious, bearing extreme emotions and stirring a terrifying psychic storm around.

Within the layered, heavy clouds, constantly darting silver‑white lightning seemed frozen, giving birth to humanity, spawning fear and terror, now hard to move.

As the aura of brutal destruction accumulated, the clouds above the sky turned almost bright white.

Below, the sea roiled with howling gale and towering, crashing waves, as if brewing a storm capable of destroying a planet.

Streaks of silver‑white lightning suddenly erupted, breaking through the shadow barrier and vanishing into the horizon at near‑limit speed, disappearing from the real world.

Boom—! Boom—! A massive sonic boom slowly resonated after the silver lightning vanished, echoing around, mixed with the wailing of the wind domain, as if to tear the sky apart.

In the abstract, illusory Star Realm, silver lightning appeared at an incomprehensibly swift, uncatchable speed, forcefully joining Luo Sai Er and the Eternal Blazing Sun on the battlefield.

Within the projected illusory Wilderness, the weather suddenly went out of control, with storm, lightning, and scorching sunlight appearing together, as if to shatter the Wilderness completely.

Luo Sai Er's figure became illusory and black, as if cloaked in shadow, situated in another world where the base rules differed, drifting like a shadow between two contradictory rivers of fate.

Chains of black order shadows materialized out of thin air, intertwining into an impenetrable net, attempting to block the Eternal Blazing Sun and the Lord of Storms from damaging the Wilderness projection.

Crack! Crack! As more attacks breached Luo Sai Er's blockade, the surrounding echoed with the sound of illusory things shattering.

The next second, the patchwork illusory Wilderness projected by the Miracle shattered into fragments of pale blue or silver.

Lei Ke Dun, amid his ascension ceremony, seemed struck by something; the rising aura around him briefly stalled.

His own spirit and will oppressed, only the instinctual Lei Ke Dun, under pre‑set self‑suggestion, gave up the action of continuing to seize the God of Steam and Machinery's traits and authority, stripping away the opponent's information.

Countless "lights" composed of pure information surged within the shattered Wilderness, exuding a vast, expansive, weighty aura.

Rivers of "light" surged like floods; the terrifyingly massive information torrent began to coalesce, forming a pair of eyes pure as gems, containing countless brilliant stars, cold and indifferent, without eyelashes.

Below the eyes lay a star‑sparkling blackness, constantly writhing and shifting, sprouting countless eyes.

It eventually evolved into a hooded black‑cloaked figure; the tattered black robe drifted in strands through the air, from which grew a single eye, either open or closed, utterly emotionless.

At that moment, all the world's information sprang to life, as if suddenly awakened, reflecting in the eyes of surrounding beings, becoming a flash of insight for them.

Beike Land, and Leonard, still dazed by the war's sudden end, suddenly felt an unprecedented inspiration, conjuring a peculiar melody and an exquisitely artistic verse.

On the "Future" ship, Fu Lan Ke hurried to his laboratory, suddenly thinking of a new direction for improving mushrooms.

In Beifangbang, Anderson, wielding a flaming longsword, paused, looked at Mr. A Zi Ke beside him, and chuckled:

"I suddenly have a creative spark; when this war ends, I'll paint it, and it will be an unsurpassable masterpiece."

Perhaps, in the future I could still consider a part-time job as a painter—well, that's an elegant identity, very suitable for someone like me who is elegant.

"Hmm." Azike nodded lightly. As an angel, even though it wasn't a path related to "knowledge," he also noticed some changes just then.

Knowledge suddenly became active; this is a change at the level of rules—has the battle in the Star Realm already reached its outcome?

In the midst of his thoughts, Azike looked up at the illusory starry sky above him, then quickly withdrew his gaze.

The Star Realm's complex and majestic aura is too much even for an angel to bear, let alone to see clearly.

(End of chapter)