Chapter 117: Absentminded

Which one of you first?

Or perhaps both at once?

These words were simple, but they carried an incredibly overbearing tone with them.

The crowd of spectators glanced at each other. Finally, one of the Harpies stepped out from their ranks.

“My name is Ocean Pledge. Remember my name……”

Before he was even able to finish his sentence, Su Chen’s Lightless Ring came crashing down upon him.

The Harpy named Ocean Pledge was stunned. Arcana Masters needed time to unleash their Arcana Techniques, so they usually fought at a slower pace. The only reason why some of Su Chen’s opponents had been able to unleash Arcana Techniques quickly was because they were either incredibly talented or possessed Innate Arcana Techniques. Though there were some Arcana Techniques that focused on a quick cast speed, most Arcana Techniques didn’t.

This was the case with the skills that Ocean Pledge was using. His talent wasn’t very high, his cast rate was sluggish, and his agility was very low. As such, he preferred to open with a verbal barrage, which would give him time to prepare his attacks.

Su Chen, however, had no intentions of giving him the opportunity to do so. Since Ocean Pledge had declared his intent to do battle, what need was there to waste any more time?

He was a human by nature, after all, so he naturally fought like a human as well. No matter what kind of opponent he was up against, he would first give them a taste of steel.

That Harpy was caught completely off-guard. Shock was plastered all over his face as he instinctively applied a protective barrier to himself. This was already the fastest Arcana Technique he could unleash.

Even so, Su Chen’s blade descended unerringly. Light gleamed off the surface of the blade before it slammed into the barrier, shattering it. The blade’s momentum continued, bisecting the opponent in one smooth stroke.

“This is a battle, not a conversation!” Su Chen said coolly. “If you guys want to fight, I’m happy to oblige, but don’t even think about trying to save yourselves.”

As he spoke, he charged at the Mother Goddess Sect disciples.

Those disciples responded simultaneously by throwing Arcana Techniques through the air at Su Chen, thick and fast.

But at the same time that they attacked, Su Chen’s figure flickered, this time reappearing near the group of Fate’s Hands Harpies. His sword blinked through the air, reappearing in the heart of one of the Harpies in the next moment.

He was actually provoking Fate’s Hands even while the Mother Goddess Sect was still angry with him.

The Fate’s Hands members were stunned and enraged by Su Chen’s actions, and immediately attacked simultaneously.

Unexpectedly, Su Chen’s figure disappeared once again, this time reappearing behind one of Li Daohong’s sacrificial warriors and chopping off his head.

The targets he had chosen were all weaker than him in terms of cultivation base, and their combat strength was even weaker. As such, not one of them was capable of withstanding his attacks, and he was able to easily slaughter all three of them.

How could the other Harpies not be enraged by his actions? They all leapt into action, looking to make trouble for Su Chen.

However, Su Chen continued to rely on Whitetower Teleportation to evade their pursuit, making it incredibly difficult for them to pin down his location. This rendered most Arcana Techniques useless against him. And these lackeys were not strong enough to use high-tier spatial techniques, so they could only unleash wave after wave of area-of-effect Arcana Techniques and pray that one of them would hit.

All of the Harpies had realized this. In addition, even if Azure Mark was their opponent, so too were the other Harpies, so they were not worried about collateral damage.

Wild torrents of Origin Energy flew everywhere from the haphazardly clashing Arcana Techniques.

Everything was as Su Chen had said. Since he had been dragged into the fray, then no one else should even think about sitting around and doing nothing.

Let’s fight!

Boom!

The sounds of explosions could be heard resounding everywhere as vast waves of Origin Energy spread in all directions. At this point, no one could avoid being caught up in the battle.

Even though the battle was chaotic, a general rhythm and flow was still present.

Li Daohong and his men were fighting Holly Keen, while the Mother Goddess Sect was fighting against Fate’s Hands. Their grudges towards each other had clearly manifested in this moment. No one tried to conceal their intentions any longer, and they began to attack each other mercilessly.

Of course, they all had the same attitude towards Su Chen.

Su Chen would attack anyone, and anyone who saw Su Chen would likewise attack him.

The fisherman was unable to benefit this time and had also been dragged into the water.

This was the real world.

Otherwise, the battle probably wouldn’t have even broken out in the first place.

Because Su Chen was no longer standing off to the side watching the battle, Night God Sun and Inigo could afford to fully concentrate on their own battle. At least to them, the feeling of being used by someone had disappeared.

But just because Su Chen was personally involved in the battle didn’t mean that he was using his full strength.

By relying on the maneuverability that Whitetower Teleportation provided, Su Chen danced elegantly across the chaotic battlefield. Since his position wasn’t fixed, it was hard for him to be completely pulled into the turmoil. His “desire” to fight was merely to placate the other parties — it was as if he were saying, ‘See, I’m fighting now. You guys can stop paying attention to me.’

As such, he didn’t take much initiative to attack and instead focused on protecting himself.

Su Chen didn’t really care about how fiercely his opponents attacked each other.

Enemies were enemies. Even though Su Chen was the one who had provoked them into action, their underlying hatred for each other had manifested itself during the battle. Even their leaders were fighting each other, so the subordinates had no excuse but to attack wholeheartedly as well.

The flames of battle very quickly spread far and wide in an extremely rapid yet natural manner.

Su Chen had merely sparked the fire; the spread of the flames was completely natural.

Torrents of Origin Energy flew through the air as a brutal battle began to unfold.

Because Harpies primarily used Arcana Techniques in battle, they depended heavily on the energy in the environment. Even though only a few hundred people were battling, the flow of Origin Energy was even more chaotic than when the Ravagers had been fighting an all-out battle against the beasts.

The scale of the Ravager battle had been greater, but their ability to use Origin Energy was limited. As such, while the general chaos created by that battle had spread further, the intensity of their chaos was actually inferior to this one.

Here, where hundreds of Harpies were involved in a furious battle, the competition for Origin Energy in the air was incomparably fierce.

A massive vortex of Origin Energy had been created by the battle of these hundreds of Harpies.

Within this vortex, Origin Energy flowed in chaotically. Outside, Origin Energy flowed in a whirlpool-like fashion as it swirled towards the center of this black hole.

Of course, this strange phenomenon was impossible to observe with the naked eye and could only be seen by those with adequate consciousness perception skills. An artificial image would be reconstructed in the mind, with different levels of perception producing different levels of detail.

Without question, Su Chen’s perception of this event was the clearest.

In his mind, the vortex appeared seemed physical, as it was made up of colors that corresponded to the elemental character of the energy and forms that corresponded to the Arcana Technique. The overall picture, of course, represented the chaotic flow of Origin Energy within the area.

It appeared incredibly lifelike and alive, as if it were an oil painting.

Su Chen hadn’t seen anything like this during the Ravager-Beast battle.

It wasn’t only because the local intensity of the battle was greater than the Ravager-Beast battle; Su Chen’s abilities had improved greatly since then, which also played a large role.

At that moment, Su Chen saw an even smaller black hole at the center of the multi-colored vortex.

A small amount of the multi-colored light would escape from the vortex every once in a while as the stream flowed over the hole.

What was that?

Su Chen was stunned.

He wanted to get a closer look but found that no matter what he tried, he was unable to see it any more clearly. The hole was so small that it was almost a one-dimensional point. It was already difficult for him to see the miniscule bit of light leaking from it.

In any case, since he was just wandering around, Su Chen decided to activate his microscopic eye.

To his shock, he found that the black dot wasn’t magnified in the slightest despite the fact that he had activated his microscopic eye.

What did this mean?

The microscopic eye allowed Su Chen to see almost any substance at the atomic level, so why couldn’t he see through this black dot?

What if it was completely unrelated to microscopic substances?

Because this new discovery had enthralled him, his attention to the battlefield began to slip.

Two Arcana Masters and a Harpy archer attacked him. Su Chen was too lazy to dodge and casually applied a powerful barrier to himself as he furiously performed some calculations.

A myriad of ideas shot through Su Chen’s head like lightning.

With the consciousness crystal, Su Chen’s calculation abilities were greatly increased. Most of the time, however, he used those calculative abilities to increase his own strength.

Su Chen was very quickly able to obtain a number of different hypotheses as his brain fired on all cylinders.

Su Chen explored those different hypotheses some more, eliminating them all until he came to one final possibility.

A spatial realm!

This black hole was very likely not composed of Origin Energy. After all, black was not a color that represented Origin Energy in the first place.

The reason he could see it wasn’t because of his eyes, but rather because of his spatial perception.

His spatial perception was only at an elementary level, which was why he could only see a small bit of the black hole. Only by increasing his spatial perception would he be able to observe it in more detail.

That was merely a guess of Su Chen’s, but after removing all other possibilities, there was only one path forward. Through this deductive method, his answer had gotten closer and closer to the truth.

When he thought about how the total amount of Origin Energy across the Primordial Continent had begun to decline over a period of tens of thousands of years, making it impossible for the Origin Beasts to survive and causing them to all fall into a deep slumber, the existence of this black hole suddenly seemed to give rise to a shocking hypothesis.

High-power battles would open up spatial fissures, causing Origin Energy to permanently disappear!

After all, under normal circumstances, the amount of Origin Energy in this world should have been held constant as it cycled through its various forms.

Powerful creatures were basically able to gather and unleash large quantities of Origin Energy.

But no matter how much energy they were able to gather, whether it was the Origin Beasts, human cultivators, or Harpy Arcana Masters, their cultivation shouldn’t have affected the total energy capacity of the continent. After all, energy was constantly being transferred between a user and the environment. Eventually, all of the consumed energy would return to the environment.

But this black hole provided another hypothesis.

Energy was actually flowing directionally.

Perpetually and gradually flowing in one direction and one direction only.

Was that how it was?

Su Chen didn’t know.

This was just a vague idea that he had come up with by gazing at the black hole.

But this was also not a completely baseless idea either. Rather, it had been formulated on the foundation of countless inquiries and theories that Su Chen had developed over the years.

If this was the case, then Su Chen would have discovered the true reason for the decay of the continent’s Origin Energy atmosphere.

So where was that Origin Energy flowing to?

What was at the other end of that black hole?

One answer seemingly gave rise to a whole host of new questions.

Su Chen had no idea what the answers to those questions were.

However, he had discovered that the secrets this continent was hiding seemed to be increasing.

At first, he had only been paying attention to ways to strengthen the human cultivation system.

But as his cultivation base and strength had increased, his focus had begun to shift from merely studying the human cultivation system to uncovering the truths hidden behind this world.

What was outside of this world?

This seed had now been planted in Su Chen’s heart.

In this moment, Su Chen suddenly had a premonition that the path he was walking on was not limited to just the human race.

It surpassed humanity and involved the fate of the world itself.

When he thought to this point, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

At that moment, the Harpies were still furiously attacking Su Chen. They were already infuriated when they noticed that Su Chen wasn’t fighting back at all. When they saw his faraway, vacant expression, their anger burned even more fiercely.

How can you afford to be absentminded in the middle of battle?

That was too much, wasn’t it?

Boom!

An exceptionally powerful flaming Arcana Technique surged in Su Chen’s direction.

As the flames washed over Su Chen, the Harpies could only see a satisfied smile hanging on his lips.