The Gaze

Fear bit down on the bamboo skewer, gave it a hard yank, and swallowed the fat-and-lean roast lamb. Then, under Sect Master Chunyang's increasingly impatient gaze, he unhurriedly took a mouthful of mutton soup and let out a satisfied sigh: "The one who became the Lord of the Sun was neither the Lord of the Stars nor the Lord of Taiyin, but your old enemy, Yuanshi Tianzun!" Boom! It was as though a heavy hammer had smashed into Sect Master Chunyang's skull. Astonishment and shock crashed straight through his reason and left his mind a blank. His face twisted hideously, and he flew into a rage on the spot: "Don't joke about something like that!" You know perfectly well my mental state is fragile. I can't take provocation. Fear looked at him with pity: "If the Sun origin contest hadn't already ended, why would I have returned to reality?" Sect Master Chunyang's face contorted: "What about the Lord of Taiyin? The Lord of the Stars? Are those two useless? Are they?!" As he spoke, he kept soothing his own emotions, dragging his crazed mind back from the cliff edge bit by bit. The news that Yuanshi Tianzun had become the Lord of the Sun was practically testing the very limit of what he could bear. Sect Master Chunyang's current rank was peak level-7 Nihility Master and peak level-6 Stargazer — he had never had the chance to devour a Day Wanderer. It was precisely because the Illusionist class's rank surpassed the Night Wanderer's that he could rely on his mental manipulation ability to offset his own madness. Fear sighed: "The Lord of Taiyin has fallen, and the Lord of the Stars has defected to the Freedom faction. In the near future, he and Yuanshi Tianzun will fight a battle that decides the fate of the orthodox faction and the Freedom faction. "No — the fate of this planet." Once again Sect Master Chunyang soothed his emotions, forcing down the jealousy and rage that churned like a river turning over. The one thing he could least accept was Yuanshi Tianzun becoming the Lord of the Sun; it hurt worse than being killed. At the same time, he was deeply thankful that he hadn't killed that middle-aged woman surnamed Zhou. Otherwise, Yuanshi Tianzun would already have taken notice of him. "So the Lord of Taiyin really did fall. It seems the fighting inside the instance was far more spectacular than I imagined." Sect Master Chunyang ground his teeth. "When there are no heroes, a nobody gets to become a god... Deciding this planet's fate — is the evil faction going to destroy the world?" "To be precise..." Fear smiled. "Destroying the planet." Hearing that, Sect Master Chunyang studied him carefully: "Is the evil faction even more thoroughly insane than I am? Or do you have some way to preserve yourselves after destroying the world?" Fear nodded: "Naturally! "All evil classes can go live on other planets and experience different civilizations and intelligent races. But this planet can't be allowed to keep existing. As for the specific reason, you're not qualified to know yet." He finished the last of the soup and finally got to the point: "Yuanshi Tianzun is not yet a complete Lord of the Sun. The Lord of the Stars deduced that the clue to stopping Yuanshi Tianzun from obtaining the Sun origin fragment lies with you. The Soldier Master sect is searching for you, and here you've delivered yourself to our door. Fate works in mysterious ways." The clue to the Sun origin fragment lies with me? Sect Master Chunyang blanked for a moment, finding it both absurd and laughable. If he knew the clue to the Sun origin fragment, would he need to wait for the Lord of the Stars' deduction? He would long since have seized it in his own hands, reckless of everything else. He sneered: "How flattered I am by the Lord of the Stars' favor!" Fear was silent for a few seconds, then said: "Star-gazing deduction is like that — mysterious, cryptic, unfathomable. That you don't know it yourself doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Since you can't recall it, we'll set it aside for now. "The Forest King, one of the Dark Night Rose's protectors, says you have important intelligence to tell us?" Sect Master Chunyang's heart stirred. Yuanshi Tianzun's identity was problematic and held hidden mysteries. Combined with his sudden rise from nowhere and his almost unreasonable ascent to Lord of the Sun, Sect Master Chunyang vaguely sensed the true meaning of the Lord of the Stars' prophecy. Perhaps the clue the Lord of the Stars wanted lay right there in his important intelligence. Sect Master Chunyang said at once: "I've been investigating Yuanshi Tianzun all along, and I've found that his origins are not simple..." Just then, Sect Master Chunyang suddenly noticed how utterly quiet his surroundings had become. He stopped talking and looked around warily. The noisy, bustling night market had gone empty; everyone had vanished. The meat on the grill still sizzled and steamed, the mutton soup in the pot bubbled and rolled, and dense steam rose in steady puffs. It made Sect Master Chunyang feel as though he were inside a horror story, and dread rose in his heart inescapably. "Banishment!" A low voice sounded by his ear. Before the voice had even reached him, Fear slammed a hand onto Sect Master Chunyang's shoulder and, shifting like a shadow, carried him to appear a dozen meters away, dodging the teleportation. Immediately after, Fear flicked the bamboo skewer toward one of the night market's grill stalls. In front of that stall, a man in a wine-red suit was gnawing on a skewer dripping with sizzling fat. "Pfft, pfft..." The skewer pierced the man's figure and nailed itself into the stall. The man's figure dissolved like a dream, like a bursting bubble. Fear gave a soft laugh: "During the Sun origin contest, the orthodox faction's demigods all fell into slumber. Only three escaped the instance, and the President was one of them." Before Sect Master Chunyang could speak, he drew a deep breath and exhaled hard. Plumes of grayish-white fog poured out, tumbling outward in every direction. It swallowed the night market and kept spreading, threatening to engulf the entire city. The dense fog would keep the President from locking onto his target. Fear dragged Sect Master Chunyang along, blinking in and out of place within the fog, constantly shifting position: "I hadn't finished what I was saying!" "He won't be finishing it." A voice with an air of majesty came from the sky, and the next second, clear, bright golden light pierced the fog. The sun had risen. The grayish-white fog dispersed rapidly, like dust and grime wiped away. The world came back into clarity. A streak of golden light landed before Fear and Sect Master Chunyang: it was Yuanshi Tianzun, his whole body coated in gold lacquer. At the sight of him, Sect Master Chunyang began to tremble all over, his face full of terror, as if he had met his natural predator. "Go now!" Fear's expression changed; he shoved Sect Master Chunyang's shoulder. Sect Master Chunyang let the push carry him backward. First he hid his form as a Night Wanderer, then he activated his Dream Leap ability, searching the dreams within a radius of several kilometers. He picked one at random and leapt into it. Fear's figure abruptly shot upward as he manifested his three-headed, six-armed dharma body, then became a black shadow and hurled himself at the Lord of the Sun to buy time for Sect Master Chunyang. Zhang Yuanqing stepped forward, seized Fear by the throat, and slammed him down against the ground. "Boom!" The earth cracked instantly. Fear was pinned flat to the ground, arms flailing, hacking and stabbing with blades, spears, staffs, and clubs at Zhang Yuanqing like rain, striking with the ringing clang of metal on stone. Zhang Yuanqing looked down at Fear, his tone majestic yet flat: "You've only obtained one demigod authority — not quite enough. In close combat, Asura could barely suppress me." With a whoosh, golden flames erupted over Fear's body, scorching flesh, spirit power, and soul. The sun, moon, and stars symbolize the origin of the universe. Even an incomplete Lord of the Sun had a rank that crushed ordinary demigods. "Watch your back!" The demigod President's warning came from far away. Zhang Yuanqing didn't turn his head. "I see him," he said flatly. He turned and crossed his arms over his chest. A black shadow came hurtling in like a meteor from beyond the sky. The terrifying force of its fist shattered the air and landed squarely on Zhang Yuanqing's crossed arms. "Boom!" A violent shockwave raged outward, flinging the entire night market into the sky. Tables and chairs, buildings, pots and pans — all flew up like snow, and amid it all gas canisters burst again and again, blossoming like brilliant flowers of fire in the night. The windows of the homes surrounding the night market shattered one after another, and cracks spread through the walls. The bones of Zhang Yuanqing's arms and his ribs snapped, yet he did not retreat a single step. Gazing at Asura, who had descended like a divine warrior from the heavens, he hooked up the corner of his mouth: "You're here too!" Asura said flatly: "I know you've been watching us all along." "After I ascended to Lord of the Sun, wherever my heart turns, my eyes follow. He knew the secrets of Taiyin and could not block my gaze, so he used the Lord of the Stars' rank to churn the river of stars and interfere with deduction. I couldn't divine anything amiss in the long river of fate. Fortunately, so long as I kept my eyes on you, I could discern his purpose. I never expected that Sect Master Chunyang had already touched my greatest secret." Zhang Yuanqing suddenly gave a sneering laugh: "For a century he never revealed to the world that he had the ability to interfere with deduction. If he had used this trick earlier, Ling Tuo and I would have understood a great deal." As he finished speaking, two searing golden beams shot from his eye sockets and bored into Asura's eyes like lasers, hissing as they went. Asura's head burst into roaring flame, his skull instantly pierced through; the two golden beams passed out the back of his head and melted holes in the ground a dozen meters away. Asura drove his red-hot skull savagely into the Lord of the Sun's forehead. Thunk! The red-hot skull burst apart outright, and the Lord of the Sun was sent flying hundreds of zhang, punching straight through two apartment buildings along the way. Asura — three meters tall, three-headed and eight-armed, his skin pitch-black like the guardian deities enshrined in temples — looked at Fear, who had been burned to charcoal, drew a deep breath, and blew hard. The blazing, inextinguishable golden flames were snuffed out on the spot. "Go find Sect Master Chunyang." He seized the charred body and hurled it away. "Uncle, banish everyone in this city!" Zhang Yuanqing's roar came from the ruins in the distance. "That wouldn't be called banishment anymore..." The man in the wine-red suit appeared high in the air and spread his arms; his suit jacket fell open, the buttons dancing wildly in the night wind. "...It would be Great Teleportation!" Crack! He snapped his fingers. In that instant, the sound of colliding vehicles and all manner of chaotic noise rose from every corner of the city. After that came silence. The gas leaks, explosions, and other problems that arose from a city without maintenance would need time to brew. In the silence, a golden sun rose slowly, shedding clear, bright sunlight. …… Sect Master Chunyang leapt continuously through the world of dreams, using one dream after another to carry himself far from the night market. He didn't know how much time had passed when he was suddenly forced out of it, appearing in a home on the edge of the city. Sect Master Chunyang looked around and found the bedroom empty, though the bedding was still warm. There was no time to think; he hurriedly activated Dream Leap. But there were no dreams in his field of vision — within a hundred meters, a thousand meters, several kilometers, not a single dream. It was as if all life nearby had vanished. Sect Master Chunyang finally understood why he had been forcibly ejected from the dream: there were no dreams left in the entire city. There was no one left in the entire city. At that moment, a starlight rose in the bedroom, and Yuanshi Tianzun stepped out of the brilliant starlight. Unlike the Lord of the Sun from before, this Yuanshi Tianzun looked no different from an ordinary person.