Chapter 656: Chapter 364: Second All Heavens Force? (2)

Especially under this kind of high-pressure state, over countless years, Adventurers of the High Tower have no idea how many rounds of research and how many attempts they’ve made.

They’ve basically tried every possible method that could be combined with technology, one after another.

This also led to many of the technologies and many of the lines of thought that emerged being considered extremely powerful, even from the Association’s perspective.

The intersellar world Shen Yu had also not had such a chance, for a long time now, to systematically and massively absorb knowledge from other systems.

You could say he was so busy he didn’t even have time to feel tired.

The task of exploring and compiling intelligence related to the Tower World was shifted onto Shen Yu’s shoulders.

At this moment, facing the intersellar world Shen Yu’s question, Shen Yu didn’t hedge; he spoke directly: "It’s not like we gained nothing at all. Right now there are two main directions. The first direction is the High Tower’s self-awareness. Through our continuous deep exploration, we’ve actually discovered traces of its self-consciousness."

But as soon as this first direction was mentioned, it immediately drew the focused attention of all the other Shen Yus.

Self-awareness!

The current Association, in terms of exploring the All Heavens, could be considered quite experienced by now.

So they naturally understood very clearly what it meant when a world’s Heavenly Dao Rules gave birth to self-awareness.

This was far more troublesome than a world having a Creator God, or someone seizing the Heavenly Dao Rules and merging with the Great Dao.

After all, a self-awareness born directly from the Heavenly Dao Rules themselves innately represented a perfect degree of compatibility.

They could control the Heavenly Dao Rules in a far more perfect way.

Almost to the extreme.

If you wanted to deal with a world like that, having enough powerhouses of the same tier alone would be hard to resolve the issue.

The best way was to rely on the Celestial Dao Tree, spend a huge number of worlds to slowly seize the Extraordinary Rules, and/or directly dispatch powerhouses a tier higher.

The former also carried many risks and, generally speaking, required the Gray Mist as a safety net.

Thus, the Association mostly adopted the latter approach.

However, in this world, let alone finding powerhouses of a higher tier, they couldn’t even find any of the same tier.

"Can we be sure?" The other Shen Yus were somewhat worried.

"We can basically confirm the existence of a Heavenly Dao consciousness, but the situation isn’t quite that bad." Shen Yu first nodded, then shook his head.

Facing all the puzzled gazes, he explained, "First of all, even though this Tower World has no manager at the moment, it doesn’t mean they made no preparations at all regarding the possibility of it developing self-awareness."

That’s right, the High Tower itself was created by an external party.

This point had already been confirmed.

Even the Association’s Celestial Dao Tree had adopted all sorts of methods to limit the birth of its own self-awareness, or at least the permissions of that self-awareness.

The High Tower naturally wouldn’t be completely undefended.

Otherwise, the various ’plug-ins’ used by that clone of High Tower Shen Yu earlier would have already been blatantly obvious in the data.

As long as it was a living being, even a child who had just learned two-digit arithmetic wouldn’t fail to see that something was wrong.

If the High Tower’s self-awareness truly had too much independent authority, problems would have already erupted long ago.

"The High Tower consciousness we discovered is actually trapped within some extremely harsh rules," Shen Yu continued, "which results in the fact that whatever it wants to do must follow those rules. And rules that benefit it are actually very few. The reason we noticed its existence was because some missions contained a subtle bias under the rules. If we hadn’t observed carefully, done massive data comparisons, and then confirmed through the Celestial Dao Tree that there was influence from a higher Law, we wouldn’t even have been able to confirm the existence of a High Tower Rules consciousness."

It could only be said that the restrictions currently placed on this world’s High Tower consciousness were simply far too severe.

Of course, these restrictions were only temporary.

As time went on, the High Tower consciousness would naturally gain more and more of an advantage until, at some point, it overturned all of the High Tower’s original permissions, rules, and limitations, taking complete control of this world.

However, that was where another problem arose.

No one could determine how much longer that would take, nor whether this was actually the ultimate reason the Tower World had fallen into an apocalypse. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

If it was, then it was simple: they just needed to find a way to eliminate the High Tower consciousness.

If it wasn’t, then things would get troublesome.

"So far, we haven’t been able to discover any threats in this world other than that," Shen Yu said, expression turning grim. "This means that if the apocalyptic crisis doesn’t come from the High Tower consciousness, then the only remaining possibility is a factor from beyond the world. And very likely, it’s the creator of the Tower World!"

The creator of the Tower World!

When this was said, everyone’s expression grew equally serious.

They naturally knew what this implied.

The creator of the Tower World was an extremely powerful force among the All Heavens Forces.

Far stronger than Force One, which they had discovered previously.

Yet up to now, they hadn’t even managed to deal with Force One.

"Can we use the Gray Mist to lock down one of these two possibilities?" Cultivator Shen Yu suddenly asked.

Indeed, when faced with a binary choice like this, the Gray Mist could often exert maximum effect.

This time was no exception.

Shen Yu had called everyone together for this meeting with this very idea in mind.

So he didn’t hesitate now; he directly activated the Gray Mist in front of everyone.

In the next moment, the answer surfaced.

But this answer left everyone silent.

"Outside the world!"

Yes, the answer given by the Gray Mist clearly pointed out the source of the Tower World’s apocalypse.

It was shockingly from beyond the world.

Given the current situation, this was practically the worst possible outcome.

Shen Yu lifted his gaze and looked toward the other Shen Yus in the presidium.

"What are your thoughts?" he asked. "The question was asked in front of all of us. The facts are already laid out and can’t be changed, but we still have to do something from here on out."

Yes, the facts couldn’t be changed, but the problem still had to be solved.

Martial Artist Shen Yu was the first to raise his hand. He hesitated a little, but still said, "Since we’re facing such a dangerous enemy, why don’t we temporarily retreat, abandon this world, and observe from the shadows? If there’s an opportunity, we can take another step forward?"

Abandon it—this was actually the first solution proposed in response to this problem.

Just from that alone, one could see the enormous threat this second All Heavens Force posed to the Association.

However, a second suggestion quickly followed.

"I don’t think the situation is necessarily that bad," Wizard Shen Yu said. "Don’t forget, this Tower World has gone unmanaged for a very long time. If we’re not mistaken, that length of time is clearly abnormal."

"Indeed." Shen Yu nodded. "Although we haven’t found anything like a ’version diary’ here, many of the rules confirm the existence of a ’manager’. This means that this world once had a manager."

It once had a manager, but now it didn’t.

And it had been without one for a very long time.

This was enough to show that this, too, was a world that had gone wrong, at least one that was no longer under the management of its creator during this period.

And not a complete world still under full control.

Clearly, this could count as a pretty good opportunity.

"If that’s the case, then whether the All Heavens Force that pushed this world into an apocalypse is actually its creator is still another question," Wizard Shen Yu continued. "Maybe, like us, they’re external discoverers of this world. If so, then it might not be impossible for us to fight them. Therefore, I think our next step should be to find a way to obtain more intelligence, or at least make preparations for dealing with them."

Gathering intelligence was, of course, never the wrong choice.

The problem was that any time intelligence involved an All Heavens Force, the cost was unimaginably high.