Star Gate-Chapter 1604: Center of Attention (III)

The Sword Sovereign inclined his head and thought over his response. “There is still potential in Silver Moon. Granted, it’s not a major world, but the fact that a dao universe has been born in it means there is opportunity to be had and a strong foundation! 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“In addition, those of Silver Moon more or less have an affinity for cultivation.” The Sword Sovereign looked gratified at this. “Silver Moon is a world that can naturally give birth to dao methods...”

Li Hao glanced at him; the Sword Sovereign looked meaningfully back. “Do you understand me?”

The young man thought for a bit before nodding, “I do, sort of, but... I’m curious. That one only seemed to be sixth rank back in the day. Is he really that invincible and talented?”

“I don’t know, I’m not from the same era as him,” the Sword Sovereign said emotionally. “I’ve only ever seen him once, just once! And that was many years later, with the version of him that’d died.

“It wasn’t even his real person. It was just fragments that came for a look around New Martial before dissipating, vanishing upon the wind!

“Fang Ping... the Human King, that is, owes a lot of his modern day accomplishments to that one. The creation of Yin and Yang also has much to do with him!” The Sword Sovereign shook his head with regret. “What a pity he died! Or perhaps it’s not a pity, but that our thoughts are childish to him. What is the point in living for so long? Those who are mediocre are just gasping for life, no matter how long they live!”

Mediocre?

The Sword Sovereign was someone who could fight exalted emperors a rank higher than himself, but he claimed to be someone mediocre!

Void blinked and looked at the other two. Who were they talking about? Whether it was Li Hao or the Sword Sovereign, they were the most talented people he could see out there. There were too few people like that!

Was there someone even more exemplary in their eyes?

“Perhaps it’s as Uncle Li says—we’re all mediocre to him!” Li Hao nodded.

“So what if we are?” chuckled the Sword Sovereign. “We just need to live good lives! To put it bluntly, I rather think that that one was too lonely toward the end. He thought too much and didn’t have any friends or family.

“Because he had no ties to existence, that is why he chose to drift apart upon the wind. Unlike us down on the earth, people like him stand at peaks that are too high and see too far away. It’s lonely at the top, eh! It would be such a lonely, miserable existence that one wishes for death!”

“Who are you guys talking about?” Void couldn’t help himself. This person must be extraordinary if these two were talking about him like this. And he was dead? Was it someone from New Martial?

Void knew a little about New Martial, particularly their greatest villain—the Heavenly Emperor. That had been a peak sixth rank personage. He wouldn’t necessarily have been stronger than the current Sword Sovereign, he’d be on par at most.

“Someone in the past,” laughed the Sword Sovereign as he patted Void on the back. “We can drop this topic. Kid, keep in mind that the more you know, the more you’ll be disappointed. Why get to the bottom of everything?”

“......” Void somehow felt a little different about this topic. He watched as the Sword Sovereign patted himself again and again; the latter exuding an indescribable resignation and strangeness.

Void was the crown prince of Light, a lofty being no matter where he went. That was the case even when he left home and joined the Dragon Observatory as a mid rank. He’d gained a friend after meeting Li Hao, but they related to each other as peers.

Li Hao was a bit weaker than him, so the young man kept to a certain degree of respect when they interacted.

The Sword Sovereign, however, wasn’t much older than Void. Was a gap of two to three hundred years even significant between exalted emperors?

No!

Interacting with each other as peers was showing the man face, but he really seemed to view Void as a junior. We’re both sixth ranks and pretty much the same age!

And yet... Void really did feel like he faced a senior when he stood in front of the Sword Sovereign. The situation induced a bit of resignation. My father’s one million years old and any of our Light exalted emperors are older than me, but none of them give me this feeling!

Perhaps it’s because the Sword Sovereign is a very casual person... He doesn’t hold aback despite not really knowing someone. He keeps patting my shoulder!

The Sword Sovereign didn’t find anything wrong with his actions. Void was Li Hao’s friend and Li Hao was part of his bloodline if the young man was a descendant of the Lis. He couldn’t be bothered with counting how many generations removed Li Hao was. Despite the young man calling him senior or forefather, Li Hao wasn’t even the grandson of his grandson of their grandson and their grandson... when it came down to it.

Okay well, the Sword Sovereign didn’t have grandchildren.

Since Void was Li Hao’s friend, that made the man his junior.

“Let’s talk about actual business,” the Sword Sovereign began strategizing after the brief conversation. “My goal is very clear—establish my world, establish my dao, and assimilate my dao. I may not create a world to support life. Instead, I’ll focus on one of dao. It will be for my dao and my dao will be for me!

“Therefore, I need a large amount of dao crystals and comprehension of dao universes to build it out. I’ll also need enough resources to satisfy the energy requirements for my ascension!

“Combined with Red Moon being the enemy of New Martial, this means I’m going to take out a batch of Red Moon allies in the days to come. I won’t pretend to be above needing resources either. I definitely need them, and we need to be dividing them clearly!”

Void opened his mouth to speak; the Sword Sovereign promptly cut him off. “It’s your business if you’re rich. Let’s set aside if you want a share of the spoils or not, we’ve already agreed that you’re getting twenty percent. I only want to ask you, what is your goal?”

Void blinked, then said, “I want to enter seventh rank!”

“That’s too generic!” The Sword Sovereign shook his head. “Disassemble your goal into its components, it’s too empty as it stands now. For example, you can say you want to comprehend emptiness. Or exterminate a world. If your goal is to exterminate a particular world, then we’ll work with you to do so. I don’t want to be killing people just for the sake of killing... There’s not much meaning in that.

“Even if the difficulty level of our venture increases with your goal in mind, since it’ll be more complicated than just killing, we can still prioritize your request.”

Void was touched by the sentiment. He suddenly felt a bit different, truly a bit different. Previously, he’d thought of becoming part of them for a different kind of life experience. It would be interesting to be a robber for once...

But the Sword Sovereign was both a bandit and not a bandit at the same time. He also felt somewhat like a... teacher?

People said that he was the Human King’s teacher. Was this his teaching style?

Void suddenly regarded the man with ginger caution; he didn’t know why he was feeling this way either. He was usually comfortable and composed in front of seventh ranks.

“Just as the senior says, I do indeed feel this way,” he said after some consideration. “I don’t like to randomly kill people and neither do I wish to do so. I mean to say that if such an opportunity presents itself, I’d like to sink a world into silence, then attempt to revitalize it!

“Of course, accidents may occur. The world might be enshrouded by eternal silence and I prove unable to revitalize it. We would be actually killing people then. But if it comes down to it, I’m no saint. It’s just that revitalizing a world is harder than simply silencing it!”

“We can do that!” laughed the Sword Sovereign.

Could they?

Void didn’t immediately react in kind. It was actually inappropriate to raise this kind of request when they were deep in enemy territory. It was easy to kill, but to silence...

Enormous complications might develop with the slightest mishap. It took only one blow to kill someone, whereas silencing a world was not a guaranteed course of action.

The Sword Sovereign didn’t mind; he looked at Li Hao.

“I want resources, that’s one,” answered the young man. “Number two is that I want to study the structure of various great daos. We can find that only in a major world! Third is that I’m also studying emptiness and revitalization. What Void wants is what I want too. Fourth is that I want to kill people so I can study life and death...”

“That can be done!” The Sword Sovereign nodded after some thought. “Is there anything else?”

Li Hao shook his head.

“It seems that both of you have modest requests!” smiled the Sword Sovereign. “This will work! Then the three of us know what we’re looking at and have a general shared goal. That’s all that we need!

“Now, to the actual work! Just digging a hole isn’t enough! A cunning rabbit has three burrows. We need to be careful and dig a few hundred holes around Red Moon! They need to be connected so that when their seventh ranks come, we can make a clean getaway. They won’t be catching us!

“It’ll be a lot of work that’s difficult for me to handle alone! So from today onward, you guys will learn how to dig holes!”

Void and Li Hao looked at each other, nodding. It was just an inelegant name for a technique that actually forged the foundations of a world. It was the comprehension of dao that one was unable to learn under normal conditions.

As for this being hard labor... this wouldn’t even be an option to most exalted emperors. The Sword Sovereign wouldn’t teach just anyone.

“We have a few other things to do apart from digging holes,” the Sword Sovereign instructed. “We need to collect information so that we know the enemy as well as we know ourselves. It’s mainly the information of those major worlds that we need. Void, you’re from Light, you have some basic intel, right?”

Void nodded.

“Very good, give a copy to me and Li Hao. I need those intelligence reports!” The Sword Sovereign then turned to Li Hao. “Your strength that helped me layer my blows, was that time?”

The young man nodded.

“Time...” contemplated the Sword Sovereign. “Don’t use it in the short term anymore! Not only should you set the dao of time aside, but you should also abstain from utilizing life and death, as well as emptiness and revitalization!

“Don’t think of using it as part of something else either. A chaos tribulation is the result when you call upon those abilities!

“That also indicates one key point—you guys haven’t melded enough with those skills. You are not one with them!” explained the Sword Sovereign. “It was the same with Fang Ping when he didn’t reach a high enough affinity with yin and yang. He easily provoked a chaos tribulation when he melded the daos of yin and yang.

“It was better later on and he wasn’t struck with chaos lightning as much because his degree of affinity grew. The chaos tribulation won’t target you at that stage, not unless you resurrect someone through yin and yang. Otherwise, anything else would be normal usage!

“The appearance of a chaos tribulation means exposing your identity! Also, you guys don’t have to continuously use the same dao. Since you have the desire to cultivate the myriad of daos, try all the daos you can! You don’t have to be skilled in them, but you must use them. Only then will you come to a new understanding of them!”

Li Hao felt that these words made sense. He nodded in agreement. The dao of time was indeed something to not be employed at random. He’d expended too much of his resources in doing so before!

The Sword Sovereign had clearly seen some of the drawbacks of his methods. Or rather, perhaps the man was aware of them to begin with.