Chapter 1402: Only for a Chance to Win
Jiangnan's heart sank, thoughts swirling endlessly!
Without experiencing it personally, one would never know the turbulent magnificence of that bygone era!
Jiangnan hadn't considered it much before!
Born into a prosperous age, technology soaring, all industries thriving—everything seemed so taken for granted!
But was that really the truth?
No!
Everything now was fought for and won by countless predecessors who gave their all!
The present embodied the expectations of countless ancestors!
Without them, there would be no Blue Star today, let alone this era!
The Holy Star had repeatedly struck at Blue Star, trying to develop it into a Star Ruins!
But each time they returned defeated!
Jiangnan had always thought the ancients were truly incredible, facing an existence like the Holy Star!
A higher-dimensional life form not even in the same league!
How did they manage to win?
But it wasn't that the ancients were that strong—it was simply that the predecessors had given everything, exchanging all for an acceptable outcome!
They didn't lose, that was all!
Earlier, Jiangnan only saw the result, never considered the process!
How brutal and arduous that process must have been!
Two thousand years ago, in the Ancient Su Era, Xiao Di reversed time 127 times! Exhausting everything, he bought an acceptable ending!
A thousand years ago, Yu Shen ferociously slain nine gods, protecting that era!
Even Atlas, though he summoned the Heavenly Meteor and obliterated the entire Lantis Ancient Kingdom,
his original intention was still to become stronger! To win!
From the God-Slaying Cannon to the God-Slaying Spell Array, Atlas also fought with everything!
He even used up the entire ancient kingdom he had built with his own hands!
Jiangnan believed that every era had its own protagonist, its brilliant stars!
Because of their existence, human civilization continued to this day!
And beings like Xiao Di and Yu Shen, and countless others, gave their all for their era!
Yet they were forgotten in the river of history, not even their names left behind!
But without them, there would be no current era!
Jiangnan suddenly remembered what Bai Kou had said before!
This era stood on the shoulders of countless ancestors!
They used their flesh, blood, and lives to forge a path to the future, allowing civilization to continue to this day!
At this moment, Jiangnan felt awe, looking at the shattered space before him and murmuring...
"Then who will be the protagonist of this era?"
Bai Kou tilted her head to look at Jiangnan, her expression complex!
Earlier, she thought it was Jiangnan, precisely because of that incident at the Yu Guo Broken Star Sea, where Jiangnan led a crowd of Dao Heaven to resist the Heavenly Meteor!
On Jiangnan, Bai Kou saw the spirit of an Era Lord!
But then Jiangnan died, and Bai Kou felt quite upset about it!
Being too prominent too early would only invite suppression from the Holy Star. She thought Jiangnan hadn't made it through!
Who the hell knew he was faking his death?
Tricking the whole world? Using a secondary account to come to the Permafrost and build a Star Ring?
Bai Kou saw Mila, saw Xia Yao, Wu Liang, and the others...
In a daze, she saw the shadow of her own former team on Jiangnan and his group.
Looking at Jiangnan's profile, Bai Kou's lips curled into a faint smile!
"Who knows what the future will bring... Humans really are strange creatures. Normally they fight each other, struggle alone, kill each other, making everything chaotic and messy!"
"But when true crisis comes, they band together, tenacious like a bug that can never be crushed!"
"There will always be someone who stands up, bearing the will of everyone, brilliant like a star, dazzling like the scorching sun!"
"Maybe we'll know on that day..."
Jiangnan nodded repeatedly, looking convinced.
(๑•̀◠•́)و "Right, right. Someone will definitely step up. Why am I worrying about this?"
Bai Kou: (≖‸≖❆)...
Does this guy have no self-awareness?
If Jiangnan really were the protagonist of this era...
Then this era is hopeless, isn't it?
Maybe it's that Mila instead.
Just then, Jiangnan frowned again.
(•︠～•︡ˀ̣ˀ̣) "With Yu Shen's ability, he definitely broke the human limit, right? And he's a space system!"
"In that case, for him, going to the moon and such should be simple, right?"
"Why did he still build a Star Ring?"
Bai Kou propped her hands on the ground, casually swinging her big feet.
(❅ᵒ̴̶̷～ᵒ̴̶̷) "Yu Shen went there, otherwise how did he break the human limit?"
"Exactly because he went, he had to build the Star Ring. Personal power is ultimately limited!"
"To win, one person alone isn't enough. The entire era must also become strong!"
"But in the end, there wasn't enough time. The world lost all spirit, the era reached its end. Rekindling the spark was meaningless..."
"Plus, the limitations of that era: humans exposed to the lunar environment could hardly survive..."
Jiangnan frowned deeply. Just listening to Bai Kou, he could feel Yu Shen's ambition and boldness!
He wanted to lead the entire era to break the racial limit of humanity, to truly win once?
But time did not wait for him.
"So Yu Shen placed his hope in the future?"
Bai Kou nodded, her eyes firm!
"That is the agreement between him and me! I will let Yu Shen know that his efforts were not in vain!"
"The future will surely be the way he hoped it would be!"
As the two talked, an hour flew by!
With Bai Kou's shriek, she suddenly shrank from over 180 meters tall to a tiny figure 1.8 centimeters in size!
Only the ice armor remained on the ground, and her body was bare again!
Startled, she quickly regenerated ice armor to cover the important parts!
Jiangnan's side effects also began. He turned into 1.2 centimeters, his Hulk Brand Shorts fluttering down through the air.
Eventually, they landed on Bai Kou's head, covering her from inside.
Jiangnan's forehead dripped with sweat. Shorts covering the head—how was that possible?
(•́ω•̀٥)
But from inside came a frantic scream!
"Ah! What is this? Ptooey, ptooey, ughhh~"
After a struggle, Bai Kou burst out from under the "huge" shorts, her face full of shame and anger!
(Ծ～Ծꐦ)
Jiangnan looked guilty.
(◔д◔ิ٥) "What are you standing there for? Let's go! Don't you want to see Yu Shen?"
[From Bai Kou: Resentment +1001!]
So after growing big, it really does shrink?
Where did he get such an amazing biscuit?
Before Bai Kou could make a move, Jiangnan used his spirit silk to tie around her waist, and the two tiny figures dashed straight into the broken space ahead!
─=≡ዽ〰ጿ
Because their bodies had become extremely small, places that were impassable before now seemed wide open!
But they still had to be careful at all times!
Once cut by a space rift, they'd turn into dumpling filling!
The journey was fraught but without major incident. Jiangnan finally brought Bai Kou to the innermost altar position!
Here, because the altar suppressed the area, the space was relatively stable!
The surrounding space rifts seemed to have a mind of their own, rarely coming near here!
The moment Jiangnan rushed in, his eyes lit up, staring directly at the center of the altar!
But the expression, excited a moment ago, froze solid!
What lay before him was a huge circular black stone altar, over 300 meters in diameter!
The material was the same as the black stone pillars of the God-Slaying Spell Array!
The altar was engraved with an extremely complex spell array, emitting a terrifying spatial fluctuation!
But what drew Jiangnan's gaze was the figure at the center of the altar!
Yes!
At the center of the black stone altar sat a human figure—
But it was already a skeleton, completely devoid of flesh!
The bones were as white as mutton fat jade, covered with many cracks, missing three ribs!
A crystal unicorn horn was deeply embedded in the back of the shoulder blade, almost grown into the bone!
Jiangnan recognized it at a glance—it was the horn of a Bose Body!
And the bones were inscribed with countless spell patterns. The space behind the skeleton was cracked like a spider web!
Half of the skeleton's body was in the Dimensional Gap, while the other half sat firmly in three-dimensional space!
In the Dimensional Gap, endless raging space power was absorbed by the skeleton, refined through the incantations engraved on the bones!
Finally, it condensed into two crystal-clear, water-drop-shaped transparent beads!
They dripped from the two dark eye sockets of the skeleton, fell onto the black stone altar, and rolled into a groove around the edge!
That circular groove was filled to the brim with Yu Shen's Tears!
Occasionally, a gust of wind would sweep by, carrying away a few drops that were already about to overflow, drifting off into the distance...
Jiangnan stared at the skeleton sitting in the middle of the altar, his expression complicated!
Even though the treasure lay right in front of him, he couldn't feel happy at all.
"Is he... Yu Shen?"
Bai Kou looked at the skeleton, her mind traveling back a thousand years. She seemed to see again his dashing figure as he soared across the sky and fought fiercely against the gods!
Unbeknownst to her, her eyes had already moistened!
"Now do you know how Yu Shen's Tears came to be?"
"The Star Ring needed a driving source. Back then, the world had lost all spirit, and almost all space-type spirit beasts had been slaughtered!"
"With no driving source available, Yu Shen carved spells into his own bones, using his body as a bridge connecting three-dimensional space and the Dimensional Gap!"
"He absorbed the space power of the Dimensional Gap, condensed it into Yu Shen's Tears, and sat here all day long!"
Jiangnan stared blankly at the scarred skeleton. Just how many life-and-death battles had it experienced?
To leave the bones, which had lasted a thousand years without decay, so severely damaged?
The cracks in the bones, the unicorn horn deeply embedded in the shoulder blade—these said enough!
Bai Kou murmured: "Yu Shen didn't have to do this. He had enough strength to leave, to abandon his homeland, to go beyond the heavens, to embrace an infinite future, a bigger stage!"
"But he didn't. He just sat here in silence until the end of his life!"
"He knew that in his lifetime, he would never see the Star Ring activated, never see the bright moon shine upon the mortal world!"
"So he chose to bet his life on condensing Yu Shen's Tears, preparing for future generations to use the Star Ring to reach the moon, betting everything on the future!"
"Only for a chance to win!"