Chapter 431: Carving a New Path, Strengthening Divine Fire (22)

Once, Luosen regarded the Vanishing Goddess as the source of chaos.

But from his experience dealing with the Vanishing Goddess, this opponent, though extremely powerful, the Eternal Empire is not entirely without the ability to fight back.

Moreover, judging by the extent of the Vanishing Goddess's infiltration of the Eternal Empire, she also seems unable to inflict such a massive impact on the Eternal Empire.

However, the current clues are still too few to outline the silhouette of the mastermind behind the scenes.

After a moment of thought, Luosen's mind prompted him, and he teleported to the side of the black‑clothed Lu Bo Te, the special envoy of Count Gangtekin.

That unlucky fellow is being held in the dungeon of Dawn Fortress, and next to him sits Sa Wosi, the former president of the Dawn Eye Mage Association.

When Luosen arrived, the two were exchanging words, arguing.

"Sa Wosi, you really raised a good daughter!"

"Lu Bo Te, what does it mean for you to say that now? Isn't it you who had me capture people?"

"I let you capture people, but I never let you capture the wolf cub who murdered his father!"

"I think I've figured it out: you Yueliangcheng mages are only good with your mouths; in other respects you're no different from trash."

At that moment, Luosen appeared, temporarily isolating Lu Bo Te's dungeon from the outside.

"Lu Bo Te, come over, I have some questions for you."

"Who are you?" Lu Bo Te, still angry, asked.

Luosen crossed his arms over his chest, leaned his back against the wall, a faint golden divine fire glimmered in his eyes as he looked down at the seated Lu Bo Te.

"Your thoughts?"

Plop~~

Lu Bo Te knelt on the spot: "What orders, sir?"

"I want to know the details of your life in Yueliangcheng, the more detailed the better."

"Start from your earliest memories; no matter how big or small, don't miss anything."

"Ah, this will probably take a long time, sir."

Luosen's thought spurred, and he erected a temporal torrent barrier amplified ten thousand times: "We have plenty of time."

Lu Bo Te immediately began recounting his life story.

He truly is an 18th Circle mage, with strong magical talent; his records begin early, and he remembers everything after age three with perfect clarity.

At this point, he complied with Luosen's request, detailing everything, even accidental bedwetting, spying on his parents' affairs, and other private matters, all laid out plainly.

Luosen listened attentively, remaining silent the whole time.

After listening for about two hours, he asked: "So, in Yueliangcheng, you never have to worry about daily trivialities; whenever a problem arises, you just silently utter 'Juliet' in your mind, and you immediately receive services corresponding to your rank?"

"Exactly."

"Has it always been like this?"

"In my memory, it has always been so; my parents, my grandparents, even going back tens of thousands of years, everyone has lived this way."

"Has no one ever questioned this state?"

"Of course there have been; historically, there have even been many nationwide referendums discussing whether to reduce reliance on Juliet."

"But most voting results were negative, because we have grown comfortable, and no one is willing to give up this comfortable life."

Luosen thought for a moment, then asked: "Who proposed the experiment probing the deepest limits of the spacetime ocean?"

"It was proposed by Imperial Sage Oulades of the Brilliant Glory Plane, who has been promoting it, ultimately causing the terrible accident in the Eternal Eye Laboratory."

Upon hearing this, Lu Bo Te said resentfully: "Oulades is a fool; he destroyed everything!"

Luosen immediately followed up: "Is that Imperial Sage still alive?"

"He died; there was a massive explosion in the laboratory. The sage was blown up on the spot, and all the core experimental mages in the Eternal Eye Laboratory were also blown up."

"The wildly flowing ultra‑high energy pulverized the basic elements into dust; even across the plane, we could clearly see the terrifying flash produced by the explosion."

"At that moment, the Brilliant Glory Plane became the brightest starry dawn in the sky, visible clearly even in daylight."

It turned out there was no evidence of death.

Luosen was silent for a while, then asked: "Are there any close associates of Oulades still alive? Such as mentors, inheritor disciples, or parents, siblings, wives, etc."

"None."

"Oulades was a lone wanderer; his parents died early, he never married, had no children, and had no inheritor disciples either."

Well, the newly obtained clue is completely cut off again.

Luosen thought for a moment and asked: "The Imperial Council all died in interdimensional high‑energy wars, right?"

"Exactly."

"How did they die?"

"I'm not quite sure; after all, I'm just a retainer of the count, but they died anyway."

"Their deaths caused a huge uproar in the Empire; among the populace there are many theories, but most people attribute it to Antowan Jigan."

This is similar to Aigedelin's claim.

Afterwards, Luosen asked some more questions; Lu Bo Te tried his best to answer, but they were essentially worthless.

Feeling that he had asked enough, Luosen finally asked: "If the Great Teleportation Array is destroyed, what way do you have to return to Yueliangcheng?"

"If freedom can be restored, I can teleport back directly, because the Great Teleportation Array's true purpose is massive material transport; moving people is just a side effect."

"Very well, tell me the teleportation method."

Quickly, Luosen obtained Lu Bo Te's teleportation method, which was basically the same as the one given by Empress Aigedelin, and it also requires approval from the Eternal Heart to succeed.

The only difference is the destination of the teleport.

"It seems Yueliangcheng mages are all greenhouse flowers, their fates firmly held in Juliet's hands."

After thinking, Luosen carefully scanned Lu Bo Te's soul and body, then recorded all the data into the Laifu database for backup.

Having done all this, without waiting for Lu Bo Te to beg for mercy, Luosen's thought spurred, and he left the dungeon.

Obviously, the behind‑the‑scenes mastermind's tracks are spotless, and a lot of time has passed again, so the vast majority of leads have been cut off.

But there is still one lead that remains intact.

However, this lead is a bit risky, and the other party may not necessarily cooperate.

Luosen did not rush to investigate, because the previous various operations had consumed a large amount of source essence, and he needed to accumulate again before he had the confidence to face it anew.

Thus, he returned once more to his underground secret chamber and began secluded cultivation.

He obtained a batch of source‑essence knowledge about divine fire from the Extinction Goddess, and also accidentally learned the secret of the Truth‑Speaking Gem; naturally he put both to use. In the following time, he stayed in the chamber, focusing on carving his own divine fire.

To be frank, the structure of the divine fire is exquisitely fine to the extreme, its details virtually endless, and carving it is extraordinarily tedious.

Everyone says computer crystals on Earth are fine, but the scale of divine fire is smaller than crystals by more than twenty orders of magnitude, so the workload increases enormously.

After Luosen pondered for ten days, he felt a sense of mental exhaustion.

Even with Laifu's assistance, relying solely on manpower would be like imprisonment, and moreover a sentence of countless millennia of hard labor.

"The true gods of another world are really all ruthless folks."

Luosen also had no other idea; he could only grit his teeth and persevere.

While pondering the divine fire, his understanding of the creation‑source essence that belongs solely to him naturally deepened further.

During the carving, a thought flashed in his mind.

"It seems there is a shortcut!"

"The Truth‑Speaking Gem seems able to save me a tremendous amount of energy."

The function of this true‑god artifact, the Truth‑Speaking Gem, is to turn the caster's wish into reality.

Actually, the ability to grant wishes is related to the power infused into it.

The greater the infused power, the stronger the wish‑granting ability.

"If I infuse source essence, can it directly help me condense a stronger divine fire?"

From a principled standpoint, it seems feasible.

Because source essence is a kind of semi‑idealistic existence.

"Let's give it a try; if it works, that'll save a lot of effort."

During this period, the Natural Empire constantly gained more followers who approved of his ideology, so the source essence flowing in also increased steadily.

Moreover, the source essence in a mortal's soul core is not a one‑time thing; it recovers continuously, albeit slowly.

Under various factors, Luosen's rate of acquiring source essence also kept getting faster.

This gave him great confidence to conduct source‑essence experiments.

He began carrying out experiment after experiment.

After roughly hundreds of experiments, he obtained many conclusions.

"The Truth‑Speaking Gem works, but it has limits."

"Each divine fire forged via the Truth‑Speaking Gem can have a source‑essence strength only 10% higher than that of the source essence composing the Truth‑Speaking Gem."

"The divine fire is so exquisitely fine that the Truth‑Speaking Gem needs at least 36 hours to condense a divine fire."

"After condensing a stronger divine fire, the soul core will exhibit a 'source‑essence resonance' phenomenon, causing the strength of all source essence in my soul to equal that of the new divine fire."

"Stronger source essence can then condense into a stronger Truth‑Speaking Gem."

This is a huge piece of good news.

This means that, as long as Luosen follows the cycle 'divine fire—gem—divine fire', he can raise the level of his divine fire at a rate of 10% per 36 hours.

This process is like using a low‑precision machine tool to grind high‑precision parts, then using those high‑precision parts to build a high‑precision machine tool, and repeating the layering until an ultra‑high‑precision machining tool is achieved.

Compared to Luosen's slow, incremental pondering, this is faster by several orders of magnitude.

But there is also a drawback.

"The biggest drawback is the enormous consumption of source essence, which only grows larger as we go on."

"Even with my current source‑essence acquisition efficiency, far surpassing that of an ordinary true god, I can barely sustain it."

"I need to gather more followers."

In this regard, Luosen possesses tremendous potential for improvement.

"In the Natural Plane, having more children and cultivating like‑minded talent can increase the population at least threefold."

"A little development in the Nawat Plane can also yield a great number of followers."

"The Void Gods of the other planes are no match for me; I can begin infiltrating and laying plans early."

If everything goes smoothly, within three generations his followers will number in the hundreds of billions.

Having confirmed the future followers' development plan, Luosen then allocated half of Laifu's computing power to begin implementing the plan.

The other half of the computing power then began focusing on raising the divine fire's strength.

He did not devote all his source essence to boosting the divine fire's strength, but kept 50% as a reserve.

Secluded cultivation knows no years; in the blink of an eye, six months have passed.

Luosen, using this near‑bug‑like method, expended an amount of source essence unimaginable to an ordinary true god, thereby raising his divine fire strength to 0.99 ring.

He is only a hair's breadth away from breaking through to the first ring.

In fact he could push further, but the source‑essence consumption is too great for him to bear.

Moreover, if his divine fire strength breaks the first divine ring, he can no longer remain in the mortal realm and must enter the divine realm, i. e., the Solar Law Ring.

And he has not made preparations for entering the Solar Law Ring.

For these reasons, Luosen temporarily ended this secluded cultivation.

He could clearly feel his power had increased greatly, and at the same time he had amassed a tremendous amount of source essence.

Furthermore, he employed the Truth‑Speaking Gem to greatly enhance the performance of his existing four source‑essence divine arts.

"This should be enough to face the mortal incarnation of Felikesis."

Back on the ground, the first thing, naturally, was to contact the mortal incarnation of the Goddess of Annihilation.

Before, he certainly couldn't have done that, but after going through the previous events, he deliberately kept a wisp of the other's soul.

With the help of that wisp of soul, he easily located the other's position.

"Feili Qisi, I want to see you."

"Get lost!"

"I have something very important to discuss with you, a matter concerning our future destiny."

The other side fell silent for a moment, then replied again.

"If you have the guts, come to my side."

(End of chapter)