Desolate Era

by RWX

  “Another dimension?” Ning frowned, but he didn’t hesitate in immediately charging through the rift and entering the world of water.

  “That was fast. The dimensional rift closed after just three seconds.” Ning watched as the tear he had created vanished before his very eyes.

  “So this is a world of water, eh?” Ning flew through the water. The waves were powerful and heavy, but like the flames they were incapable of harming Ning in the slightest.

  “I’ll break through again.” Ning once more used his sword-arts as he flew to the edges of the world, then began to frenziedly assault the dimensional membrane. It once more took him the amount of time needed to boil a kettle of tea to once more tear a dimensional rift open… and this time, he was able to see a world that was filled with vitality and boundless green light.

  “Yet another world?” Ning had a bad feeling about this, but he still flew through and continued to assault the dimensional membrane in this third world.

  ……

  And so, Ning began to enter and then furiously chop through one world after another without stopping. An ordinary person probably would’ve given up long ago, but Ning spent an entire day chopping through a hundred different dimensional membranes before stopping. Alas, there was no end to them.

  “I’ve broken through over a hundred worlds in a row.” Ning was standing atop a mountain, pondering to himself. “These hundred worlds seem to be constructed from eight dimensional archetypes. I can view them as the ice world, the water world, the life world, the earth world, the mountain world, the fire world, the lava world, and the metal world. The dimensions continuously fluctuate between these eight worlds…”

  “There’s only eight basic ‘types’, but each world I enter seems to have a slightly different aura than the previous ones.” Ning was growing a bit nervous. He had spent an entire day analyzing the worlds, but still had no idea how he was supposed to break through them.

  When he had been within the spacetime formation, at least he could tell that there were countless spacetime bubbles that were linked together into a formation. He was able to glean insights on the workings of the formation from those bubbles before finally solving it!

  However, the ‘eight revolutions formation’ he was trapped in simply gave him a new world once he broke through the previous one. It was a never-ending cycle of these eight types of worlds, a cycle without end…

  “How should I break through? How should I escape?” Ning continuously pondered this.

  “Can it be that there are actually only eight worlds in total? No, that can’t be right. I can sense through my mastery of spacetime that there should be more than just eight.” Ning simply had no idea as to how he was supposed to understand the mysteries behind this formation!

  ……

  Time continued to flow on one day after another. The Sithe Exalts on the eight stone pillars gradually began to relax. Everything was as they had predicted. The eight revolutions formation was much more difficult to break than the spacetime formation, after all. In truth, every single one of these temples was quite extraordinary. Autarch Ekong had only been able to escape his temple thanks to Autarch Titanos sacrificing his avatar.

  “Once Iyerre gets here, we’ll have completed our mission.” The Sithe Exalts continued to wait silently.

  As for Ning, he was now seated in the lotus position at the very center of a world of lava. Time was sped up to a rate of 100x around him as he continuously pondered the problem before him. Ning had already notified Titanos, Mogg, Skyfeeder, Bolin, and the others. All six Autarchs were helping him with suggestions, but none of them were able to come up with any true solutions for this deceptively simple cycle of eight worlds.

  Book 44, Chapter 12 - A Murderous Voice

  Oftentimes, the simpler something was the fewer flaws it had. One of the simplest measures was to just construct a dimensional cage to imprison someone, one which was so stable and tough that there was no way to break through it.

  However, simplicity carried its own stringent requirements. Ji Ning and the Autarchs were so overwhelmingly powerful and had such limitless reserves of energy that no mere dimensional cage could possibly withstand their assaults! The eight revolutions formation went about it in another way. It generated multiple worlds, each of which Ning was able to break through fairly quickly… but the worlds continued to be generated one after another!

  “All of these worlds are extremely stable. Maintaining this sort of world can’t be easy,” Ning mused. “And there can’t really be an endless amount of worlds!”

  “Break!” Ning once more rose to his feet in three-headed, six-armed form. He transformed into a dazzling streak of sword-light which slammed against the dimensional membrane. After the time needed to boil a kettle of tea the dimensional membrane was hacked open, revealing a freezing world of ice. Ice filled the entire world, making up its continents, mountains, and valleys.

  Ning stepped through the dimensional rift and into this frozen world.

  “It doesn’t really matter which direction the tear is created in; the end result will still be a new world. Given how stable these worlds are, there can’t be that many of them… and yet they continue to loop in on themselves in an endless cycle. The only way this is possible is if these eight worlds are actually moving to line up in front of me! That way, no matter where I go I’ll see an endless procession of worlds before me.”

  By now, Ning had a rough idea as to how this eight cycles formation had to work. It consisted of several dozen or several hundred worlds that were perhaps arranged into a spherical shape! Ning was located at the very center of this sphere, so no matter where he went he would enter a new world. Once he did so, the other worlds would relocate themselves to keep him at their center.

  No matter where he went, he would remain trapped in the ‘center’ of the formation. He’d never be able to make it out!

  This was his current theory. Perhaps it wasn’t perfect, but he felt confident that this was more-or-less how it worked. However, this theory just made Ning feel even more worried, precisely because of how simple it was. The simpler something was, the fewer flaws it would have.

  “Its only real flaw is that these worlds have to constantly move and shift around as I do. If they didn’t, then I would eventually be able to advance beyond the scope of the formation. This moving process has to take time. It takes me the time needed to boil a kettle of tea in order to break through a world, and that’s more than enough for them to readjust themselves,” Ning mused. “If I could break through the worlds over ten times faster… perhaps it wouldn’t be enough time for the worlds to relocate themselves perfectly, resulting in some openings that I can exploit.”

  Based on his current level of understanding, he knew that using force to breach this formation was completely hopeless. The eight formations formation would continuously rearrange its internal configuration with each world he escaped. Power wouldn’t work… what he needed was speed! He needed to move fast enough that the formation wouldn’t be able to reconfigure in time, resulting in flaws being revealed.

  “This is my only option.” Ning could come up with no ideas save for this one. “But how am I supposed to break through these worlds faster?”

  Two options came to mind. The first was to somehow make himself become more powerful. For example, if he managed to reach a greater level of understanding with regards to the Dao of Spacetime, he would be able to quickly and more easily breach those dimensional walls. Alternately, if he managed to create the Oblivion Sword Dao then he could use its all-encompassing destructive force to devour everything in his path. Ning had the feeling that once he created it, he would become much more powerful, and he could use that power to more quickly breach those dimensional barriers.

  However, improving his personal strength was an extremely difficult goal. He had already devised the Spacetime Sword Dao. Ning had no idea how he was supposed to upgrade it any further.

  The concept of ‘Oblivion’, he ha
d only gained after scrying the secrets of the sphere of annihilation. This was a form of power that was capable of destroying an entire Chaosverse. Iyerre had found this mysterious item from within the Infinite Void, and in all his countless aeons of existence he had never found a second such item. Ning’s avatar remained trapped within the Annihilation Hive, and it had never stopped analyzing this technique.

  The second option was to find flaws in the dimensional membranes before him. If he could find some flaws, he would be able to break through them much faster with much less effort.

  “I’ve been constantly training in the Oblivion Sword Dao. There’s no way to rush it.” Ning inspected the area around him. “My only choice is to find flaws within these dimensional constructs.”

  Whoosh. Whoosh. His sword-light became watery, flowing across the dimensional membrane and causing it to first shudder, then crack.

  Ning stared at the cracks, watching them quickly heal. “These dimensions were created based on the secrets of spacetime. Every single part of the dimensional membrane seems to be identical. There don’t seem to be any flaws.”

  ……

  As Ning remained trapped within the eight revolutions formation, the war outside began to pick up the pace. Autarch Skyfeeder’s avatar ended up being tricked while hunting down Sithe and was trapped within a temple, as was Autarch Bolin’s avatar.

  Autarch Stonerule’s avatar was more formidable. He was a wary man and a mastery of illusions. When the Sithe temple appeared, they discovered that they had trapped nothing more than a mere projection… and now that the temple had revealed itself, Autarch Stonerule immediately set down a grand formation around the temple, securely sealing it away and ensuring that it was unable to escape.

  For now the clashes remained fairly low-level, as Autarchs could replace lost avatars with slightly weaker ones. In the end, the real focus of the war remained on Emperor Darknorth.

  If Emperor Darknorth died, the Annihilation Hive would no longer be checked. It would continue to furiously devour the energies of the Chaosverse. The only other person who understood how the reverse-vortex formation worked was Autarch Titanos, whose avatar had already been destroyed. His new avatar wasn’t strong enough to keep the Annihilation Hive in check. Titanos would have to go in person if he wanted to stop the thing!

  Darknorth was the strongest member of the seven cultivator leaders, while Titanos was the second-strongest. If the former was slain while the latter was tied down, they would have all-but lost the war.

  “If we can kill Darknorth, we’ll have won.” Iyerre viewed killing Ning as a mission of critical importance. As far as he was concerned, Ning was a greater risk than all six of the other Autarchs combined.

  ……

  On the sixty-ninth day of Ning’s capture.

  In recent days Ning would only occasionally break through to a new world, then spend most of his time strolling about before beginning to meditate.

  “Ah. So is that how it works?” Ning opened his eyes, his gaze as deep and fathomless as the starry skies themselves. Countless stars seemed to be swimming through his eyes. This was a sign that he had reached a truly incredible level in the Dao of Numerancy.

  Suddenly, Ning’s body rapidly increased in size. Boom! He transformed into a towering three-headed, six-armed giant who wielded all six of the Northbow swords. He strode across the land, his six swords also increasing in size as he used them to deliver repeated chops of sword-light against the dimensional membrane all around him.

  When Ning’s swords moved, multiple sword-shadows appeared around them. There were chops, stabs, thwacks… all sorts of attacks filled the area around him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s wrong with that world. It’s destabilizing!” The Sithe Exalts responsible for maintaining the eight revolutions formation were quickly shocked. They had only grown more confident in their formation as they had watched Ning fail to make any progress. They had allowed themselves to relax… but now, all of them were shocked! This was because the world Ning was in had begin to shudder, almost as though the entire world was unable to remain stable and was at the verge of collapse.

  “I can’t send in additional energy!” the black-haired Sithe Exalt called out in shock. “We’re blocked from sending our energy into any part of the dimensional membrane of that world. Something’s disrupting the conduits! The lack of energy is causing the dimensional membrane to be unable to repair itself. He’s going to break through much faster than before!”

  “How is this possible? How did he do this?!” The Sithe Exalts were frantic. Previously, Ning needed the amount of time for boiling a kettle of tea in order to break through a dimensional membrane. This was because each time he assaulted the dimensional membrane, the formation would quickly send in more energy to reinforce it. This was why even after he did manage to tear a rift open, the rift would quickly close after just three seconds.

  But now, the dimensional membrane was no longer being resupplied with energy. That made the destruction process much faster.

  It didn’t make sense. The energy transfer was an invisible, formless process which saw energy be directed straight into the membrane itself. By all rights, there should be no way to stop such a thing. However, to a person who had reached a sufficiently high level of insights all things were possible, be it creation or destruction. Ning had spent many days in accelerated meditation, figuring out a way to accomplish this by joining together his Numerancy Sword Dao, Spacetime Sword Dao, Light Sword Dao, and Dark Sword Dao.

  Boom! Three gaping holes appeared in different parts of the world Ning was trapped in. Ning glanced through the holes, only to see three completely different worlds. He smiled.

  “Dimensions, revolve!” a strange, murderous voice suddenly rang out.

  Suddenly, Ning saw the three different worlds outside the rifts begin to spin away. The world he was in became completely detached from them… and slowly, Ning began to see the fourth and fifth worlds which were revolving around him.

  Book 44, Chapter 13 - Fatal Trap (1)

  “Not good.” A terrifying sense of danger instantly flooded Ji Ning’s mind. “They can no longer hold me, so they are going to try and kill me instead?”

  These temples were all manned by Sithe Exalts. They could be used to trap, but they could also be used to kill! Autarch Titanos’ avatar and Autarch Ekong had to work together to survive the one they were in, with Titanos eventually losing his avatar in order for Ekong to escape. These temples were not easy to deal with!

  Ning had the vague feeling that staying within this world would be even more dangerous, and so he immediately transformed into a streak of light and shot outwards.

  Whoosh! As soon as he exited the world, his face paled. In the past a new world would greet him once he exited the previous one, but this time was different. This time, he was within an empty region which had many enormous pocket dimensions. Above him, below him, to his left, to his right… the entire area was filled with those spinning worlds. Ning was able to see over twenty of the things. They all circled around him, with him being at the very center.

  “It really is as I had predicted. These worlds are all mobile, which is why I would always enter a new one after breaking through the old one.” Ning became all the more certain of his hypothesis when he saw this. “Now that I’m breaking through the worlds much more quickly, they aren’t able to keep up and so they’ve chosen to discard the useless trappings entirely.”

  “Emperor Darknorth!” a cold voice rang out.

  “Are you absolutely sure that I’m Darknorth?” Ning replied, relaxed. His body was glowing with such radiance that the Sithe Exalts were only able to see a glowing figure and were unable to make out his features.

  “I can’t imagine anyone save you, Emperor Darknorth, who would be able to so quickly understand and deconstruct the eight revolutions formation,” the cold voice replied. “The eight revolutions formation isn’t just meant for trapping people, it’s a
lso filled with many killer mechanisms! Emperor Darknorth, our original plan was simply to trap you. However, you are forcing our hand. We’ll have to kill you now,” a second deep voice boomed out.

  “Hah!” Ning stared at the many worlds revolving around him, then let out a loud laugh. “What a joke! If you were able to kill me, you would’ve done so long ago. In the end, this is my homeland. We cultivators are far more powerful than you in our own Chaosverse. Kill me? Even if you have the assistance of this temple, I’ll wager you aren’t sure of your chances!”

  The faces of the eight Sithe Exalt stiffened slightly. It was true. They had to admit that they weren’t 100% sure they could kill Darknorth. Not even Iyerre was confident that they could accomplish this, which was why he had merely ordered them to trap Ning and tie him down. If they could keep Ning trapped until Iyerre arrived, their chances of victory would increase to 100%! Alas, there was nothing the Sithe Exalts could do. Now that Ning had already worked out how the eight revolutions formation operated, he would probably be able to escape within an hour if left to his own devices!

  Thus, they had chosen to transform the ‘eight revolutions formation’ from a trapping formation to a killing formation.

  All of the temples had terrifying offensive powers built into them. The same was true for the Eight Revolutions Spacetime Temple!

  “Hopefully, we can kill him. Even if we cannot, we can still use ‘annihilation mode’ to buy ourselves some more time.”

  “It’s already been sixty-nine days. If we can buy another ten-plus days, we’ll have accomplished something great.”

  “He’s forcing us to do this. Attack!”

  “Attack!” The eight Sithe Exalts immediately activated the offensive functions in the eight revolutions formation.

  ……

  “Eh?” Ning’s face hardened as he stood there in the empty void, staring at the vast worlds which were spinning around him. He could clearly sense that each of the giant worlds were accumulating and preparing to unleash a terrifying amount of power. Freezing energies, flaming energies, watery energies, vital energies, metallic energies… all types of energies were beginning to pour out of the many worlds.