Chapter 47: Transcending the World 8000
Struggling awake from the brink of death in the dark void, the Great Khan, who had just been jointly struck down by Joshua and the Decay Evil God, quickly realized his situation was extremely dangerous.
Within the hazy black mist of chaos, a shimmering river of souls formed a ring.
At the two ends of the ring were, on one side, a sphere of light whose outer layer burned like a sun and whose inner core was a silver crystal like ice, and on the other, a star river of darkness rotating with countless soul points within.
Within the dark star river flowed the aura of calamity and destruction—the wail of a world after its annihilation, the resentment of a race, even an entire civilization. This power was so immense that mere unwillingness ignited black flames in the void, seeking to reduce all order to ashes.
"This is... an Evil God! And that strong one from the ancestral civilization!"
Without a doubt, the Great Khan quickly understood the current situation: after his defeat, the strong one from the ancestral civilization had not annihilated his soul but had instead turned to fight the Evil God. Currently, it seemed the Evil God had awakened but was grievously wounded, while the ancestral strong one was in no better shape. The two seemed to be engaged in a final battle on the soul level.
However, amidst his complex emotions, the Great Khan noticed that although the sun-like soul appeared evenly matched with the dark star river, in reality, from various details, he was steadily losing ground. It only seemed otherwise because of his extremely strong recovery ability.
Decay fluctuations mixed with chaotic power swept through the void, directly annihilating countless decaying soul remnants from the Soul Abyss. Behind them, large patches of silver radiance dimmed, but in the next instant, even more silver light burst forth from the sun's core, making it seem as if he wasn't at a disadvantage.
The battle between the two was like a tug-of-war. One side was powerful, constantly pulling the rope toward itself, but the other, though not as strong, could endlessly produce new rope, preventing the opponent from ever pulling him and his side of the soul over.
Outside, the surface of the Steel Force Continent was burning fiercely.
The Mass-Soul Conversion Technique was one of Ocean Sage Faina's signature skills, allowing the user to freely convert mass, soul, and energy. Normally, this sage, who specialized in soul cultivation, used techniques like 'Soul Materialization' or 'Soul Energization,' which approached 'Immortality' and 'Infinite Energy.' Since learning this skill, Joshua had mostly used it to convert mass into energy and soul.
As the Steel Force Continent blazed, in the spiritual world, the sun-like soul, despite several setbacks, maintained its integrity, contending with the dark star river for the ownership of countless souls.
"This won't work."
Although they had been enemies earlier, even fighting with real killing intent, those were personal matters, trivial affairs. Faced with the Evil God—a major issue affecting the entire race—the Great Khan couldn't feel any schadenfreude. Remembering the Void Behemoths and his people still lurking in the surrounding void, he frowned deeply: "This ancestral strong one isn't very skilled at soul combat."
Though he had been knocked down in one blow during their soul battle earlier, without the Decay Evil God's influence, the Great Khan believed he wouldn't have lost so easily. Moreover, according to this ancestral strong one, he had no soul, so most soul attacks were ineffective against him.
This was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage was that in life-or-death combat, this ancestral strong one could completely ignore soul defense and focus on destroying the opponent's body. The disadvantage was that when he needed to contest ownership of something on the soul level, his temporarily converted soul couldn't be wielded as deftly as real limbs.
"Awake, foreign strong one?"
Suddenly, the newly awakened Great Khan heard a deep voice: "You recovered slower than I expected."
At this moment, the soul void crab floated behind the soul sun. Hearing this familiar voice, its eight crab legs instinctively drew together, preparing to withstand an impact. But soon, the Great Khan realized the ancestral strong one had no intention of attacking him.
"As you can see, I am engaged in a soul-level battle with the Evil God—also the final battle."
The deep voice vibrated through the void, calm and sincere: "But I have no soul. The result of my Soul's Ultimate Essence is that the soul is merely a tool. I have the ability to create it, but I'm not adept at using it. Because of this, I never learned how to fight with the soul."
As he spoke, in the dark void, the chaotic dark star river erupted with countless tentacle-like black energies, seemingly trying to seize control of the soul river. The silver sun also burst forth with countless crystalline light bands, resisting the erosion. But it was clear that the silver sun consumed several times, even dozens of times, more energy than the dark star river, and the Steel Force Continent outside had visibly shrunk by a noticeable margin.
"You are different."
After fending off this wave of the Decay Evil God's fierce assault, the voice spoke slowly: "Foreign strong one, I can see you specialize in this path."
Of course.
Of course, he specialized in this path.
The Eight-Legged Fungus Race was essentially a soul race. The initial fungal bodies were merely eggshells nurturing souls. Only with a soul could one be considered a citizen of the Eight-Legged Fungus Race; otherwise, they were soulless failures, waste products worse than slaves.
Their survival, life, and combat all relied on magic and psychic power, both of which depended on the strength of the soul. The Eight-Legged Fungus Race's mastery of this path was so profound that they had long since transcended the mortal realm.
Back when the World Devourer destroyed the Eight-Legged Fungus homeworld, the Great Khan, then merely a strong member of the race, used his powerful soul cultivation to annihilate the Void Behemoth's soul, control its body, and flee with a large number of residents. Over thousands of years, the Void Behemoths under their care rapidly split and grew, even forming a world fleet that terrified many civilizations. The Great Khan's soul had also split and expanded from controlling these numerous beasts, eventually taking on the form of that ancient Void Behemoth.
He knew all too well how to fight with the soul.
"I understand what you mean, but why should I help you?"
The Great Khan said coldly: "We were enemies before, attacking each other, seeking to kill. What makes you think I would help you?"
"Because I will threaten you, force you, tempt you, until you have no choice but to help me. I don't need confidence, because you have no options."
The deep, low voice honestly stated his thoughts: "If you don't help me, you will die, and your subjects will die. I don't know why you came to this World Star River, but I guess it was to escape the Evil God. Now, there's a weakened Evil God here. Don't you want to try how to completely destroy an Evil God and gain experience for a counterattack?"
The Great Khan's soul image twisted, his crab leg joints bending backward. He had never experienced such conflicted emotions, nor had he ever communicated with a warrior whose words could choke someone to death.
But in the end, he made his choice.
"You're right. I really have no choice."
The Great Khan said, his tone carrying helplessness but also a hint of genuine anticipation and excitement: "I will help you destroy this Evil God."
With that, the white soul void crab rapidly merged into the silver sun.
"What kind of help do you need?"
"First, defense." The deep, low voice said: "The Evil God's erosion against me uses the information of an entire destroyed world to assault my mental defenses, weakening my control over my soul. I can feel my outer soul rapidly decaying—both my persistence and my true heart are fading away in a near-time-reversal decay, turning into chaotic nourishment. This must be stopped as soon as possible."
The Great Khan didn't reply. Instead, through silent mental communication, he began teaching the warrior soul techniques.
In the next instant, the countless crystalline light streams emanating from the silver sun immediately dispersed and then re-formed into even more complex and sturdy structures.
"Soul combat isn't much different from physical combat. The most important thing is to make the information and structure composing your own soul complex, so the opponent can't quickly analyze it—useful or useless, even junk information works. In short, confuse your opponent, make them bewildered and unable to act."
The originally nearly translucent silver sun became turbid at a visible rate. Endless labyrinth-like barriers and metallic structures began to condense on its surface. The silver sun was rapidly shrinking but also becoming more solid. If a specialist in soul matters were to look, they would clearly see that the dense metal pipes and labyrinth walls on the sun's surface were actually composed of countless calculus formulas and various mathematical expressions of unknown origin, mixed with large amounts of fragmented, meaningless junk information.
When the chaotic decay fluctuations touched this surface, the black fluctuations that had previously been unstoppable, instantly decaying large areas, now retreated without success, only eroding a tiny bit before self-annihilating. Behind the surface, the thirty-seventh defensive barrier was rapidly being constructed.
"On the soul level, the most important attack is to disintegrate the opponent's soul structure. Whether by brute force or technique, it's all about better destroying their structure. You're not bad at this, but you always fail to expand your gains. Let me teach you a small trick."
The crystalline light streams, which had been entangled with the opponent's chaotic tentacles, suddenly began to flexibly bend and contract, breaking free from the binding of numerous tentacles. Then, their tips instantly transformed into blade-like drills, spinning rapidly, cutting large swaths of tentacles into powder. In the next instant, as the tentacle powder writhed wildly, about to recondense into chaotic tentacles, countless drills detached from the tips, flying out like missiles, causing a magnificent explosion at the concentration point of the chaotic tentacles, annihilating vast amounts of chaotic power into nothingness.
"Ah, I know this one."
The deep voice took over: "Very skilled."
Outside, the burning speed of the Steel Force Continent visibly slowed, causing the Nature Mentor and the legendary magical beast to feel their pressure decrease. They naturally understood that this should be a sign of Joshua gradually turning the tide in the underlying battle, and everyone felt a surge of encouragement.
In the spiritual space, the soul river, which had mostly been pulled toward the dark star river, began to flow back and be pulled toward the silver sun.
Within the nine warships, the constantly trembling souls gradually calmed. Powerful souls were awakening, but they had been eroded deepest by chaos. Even with instinctive counterattacks, they didn't know what to do or what needed to be done.
Thousands of years ago, nine legendary experts had chased the Decay Evil God to this place.
They built seals, created planets, imprisoned the Decay Evil God, and used its power to convert order and chaos, creating a perfect world.
But as long time passed, the awaited reinforcements never arrived. Distorted time confused the ages, making the originally hopeful expeditionary force gradually uneasy and fragile.
The chaotic power of the Decay Evil God took this opportunity to penetrate their hearts, causing them to forget skills, lose techniques, and their will to fight grew increasingly faint, even becoming like walking corpses, knowing only to live but not why they lived.
The nine legends had noticed this, but by then they were deeply eroded. To prevent themselves from becoming accomplices of the Evil God in the future, they sealed themselves within their warships, using automated programs to harness chaotic power and resist the Decay Evil God.
They had indeed been eroded by chaos, but they were not the Decay Evil God's minions.
Joshua absorbed the techniques taught by the Great Khan quickly, using them without any stiffness or lag. Although he couldn't extrapolate from one instance to another, he could always find the Decay Evil God's weak points, crucially shattering its control over the soul river. Although the Decay Evil God's decay fluctuations could force the warrior to retreat and defend, at least now it was a back-and-forth.
Watching this, the Great Khan felt Joshua had stabilized the situation. As long as he could maintain the soul supply, he could, in a prolonged mutual attrition, defend his own soul while beginning to attempt a counterattack.
But just as the Great Khan thought it was time to prepare a counterattack and truly destroy the Evil God's structure, he suddenly heard Joshua speak.
"Alright."
From the core of the silver sun came a clear voice: "I understand."
What? What do you understand?
The Great Khan thought blankly. Hadn't it just begun? This soul battle still had a long way to go. According to his estimation, even fighting for tens of thousands of Peta (six months) would be conservative.
But clearly, he didn't know how well Joshua understood chaos.
"Famine Evil God, Plague Evil God, Calamity Evil God, Atmosphere Evil God, and now this Decay Evil God... I have personally contacted five different Evil God powers and fought against them."
"Based on my personal experience, I have understood the essence of the Decay Evil God's power." Joshua's voice sounded as if everything was under control. The silver sun emitted even brighter radiance.
"The decay of matter, the reversal of growth, from strong to weak, from prime to infancy. It's not simple time reversal, but pure weakening, from perfection to decay. It doesn't manifest as aging because the old age of a transcendent strong one might not be weaker, so it only appears to trace back to the past... This is an unreasonable power."
The World Devourer's power was never reasonable. The Great Khan knew this, so he immediately focused, listening intently to Joshua's analysis.
"But no matter how unreasonable, it must obey one principle: the greater the energy level, the higher the priority."
Techniques have limits. Even borrowing millions of times the power of heaven and earth through formations and techniques is useless against an enemy's tens of thousands of times more powerful blow. Even the most concentrated poison, enough to kill an entire city with a single drop diffused into the air, becomes harmless when entering the sea.
Even if one sea isn't enough, what about two, three, or an entire world-sized planet made entirely of water? Or an entire water elemental plane?
If that still doesn't work, throw it into the sun—then no poison is of any use.
When Joshua possesses the power to blast all enemies into a black hole, the only value of their techniques is how gracefully they struggle.
"In the end, it's just the ghost of a world and a civilization, mixed with some transcendent power I can't analyze, forming a bizarre existence... That's the essence of an Evil God. Using the information erosion of a world and civilization, most individuals will steadily lose ground against it, even I am suppressed... But ultimately, it's just the ghost of one world and one civilization."
"I'm not incapable of destroying a world." Joshua's low words sent chills down the Great Khan's spine, making him wonder what kind of terrifying existence he was helping. The warrior continued: "The Evil God is already very weak. Its chaotic erosion, that destructive information erosion ability, is no longer absolute. I just need my computing speed to be several times higher to completely decipher its information impact, or even erode it back."
"Then how?" The Great Khan couldn't help asking: "My techniques can't increase computing speed out of nowhere. They can only optimize your calculations, processing more information at the same speed. Although you say it simply, computing speed isn't so easy to increase!"
"Mass."
For some reason, the Great Khan heard a calm and indifferent tone in Joshua's words: "The greater my main body mass, the more thinking organs I have, the stronger my computing power, and the stronger my power and soul... I will become stronger in all aspects."
"Foreign strong one, instruct your subjects to find worlds without life. Have them devour mass and then deliver it to me in meteor form."
Due to the decay fluctuations affecting information transmission, within the sealed world, information exchange and space-time teleportation with the outside world were invalidated. Or rather, only entry was possible, not exit.
Joshua couldn't connect to his Restorative Pillars in other worlds to devour local mass and provide himself with mass across space and time.
But those Void Behemoths could do it for him this time.
I'm not a good person at root, and I have no standing to condemn these world-devouring Void Behemoths. The warrior thought calmly. At most, I won't choose worlds with life, and the reason isn't to protect those primitive life forms without intelligence, but because I don't need to absorb organic matter.
A dead world has the possibility of revival, though that possibility is nearly illusory, perhaps unrealizable even until the end of the multiverse. But eating a planet, a world, means destroying that possibility... Joshua didn't think this behavior was wrong.
Compared to illusory possibilities, the lives that still exist are more important.
The silver sun looked at the soul river floating around it.
In this river were the souls of countless intelligent beings.
The Evil God intended to feed on them to restore its power—and Joshua was going to stop all this.
In his eyes, useless matter, even a planet, was worth less than a living life. A dead world, even in its entirety, was less valuable than a human soul. Everything in the world exists to serve life. Even a world is merely a greenhouse nurturing life.
Joshua admitted he was narrow-minded, a hypocrite who could only see the living, who would decide a world's future based on possibilities.
But what else?
Unless one possesses 'absolute' power, life must always make choices.
The silver crab separated a small piece of its soul.
With Joshua's help, this small piece of soul turned into a flying star, piercing through the Steel Force Continent, crossing the cosmic vacuum, breaking through the world barrier, and arriving at the vast and desolate void of the multiverse.
It flew toward the Void Behemoths still standing before the silver line, not daring to cross, then entered one and issued commands.
Thus, countless Void Behemoths began to swim toward the surrounding worlds. They sought out worlds without life, worlds trapped in ice or fire, extracted matter from them, condensed it into meteors, then returned to the outer layer of the sealed world, following the barrier cracks Joshua and the Great Khan had blasted open, and dropped them down.
In the cosmic vacuum, now devoid of any atmosphere, countless red lines fell from the world's edge, eroded by chaotic mist into striking red streaks.
The Void Behemoths had little intelligence or skill in controlling force and direction. They simply extracted matter, condensed it into meteors, and threw them into this world. Countless red lines scattered in all directions, like a grand fireworks display.
But someone would clean up after them.
On the silver planet, Steel Force surged. It began to stir space-time, enhance gravity, guiding one meteor after another to fall in succession onto the continent. Huge flames rose into the air, but in the end, the Steel Force absorbed and decomposed them, turning them into its own mass.
Thousands of arcs spread out at the beginning, eventually converging at one point. At a glance, it looked like converging world lines.
But contrary to what everyone thought, Joshua didn't choose to convert this matter into his own mass. Instead, he stockpiled these enormous meteors, forming them into a sphere.
A sphere of neutron degenerate matter with extremely high density, matching the warrior's combat form.
It was spinning rapidly. Its initial rotation speed alone was 9,400 revolutions per second, and the continuously falling meteors, while creating massive explosions, further accelerated its spin.
Visibly, this ultra-micro neutron star, originally about the size of a human finger, began to grow larger bit by bit. Space-time twisted around it, forming basin-like depressions, even gravity wells.
At the same time, within Joshua's body, all structures specialized in calculation began to rapidly converge. The material structures responsible for supporting the warrior's soul, once scattered across the entire continent, now condensed into one, forming a brain-like structure.
This brain was also composed of electron degenerate state structures. Countless energy light streams and Steel Force shuttled through it, providing the legendary strong one with computing power far exceeding any supercomputer.
Soon, with Joshua continuously providing mass and the Void Behemoths dropping meteors, the neutron star sphere, originally the size of a finger, began to grow slowly but steadily. It spun at tens of thousands of revolutions per second, making itself a pulsar far more terrifying than an ordinary neutron star. But under the space-time concealment of its own gravitational collapse, the electromagnetic field capable of reducing any matter to ashes was confined to one direction.
Meanwhile, Joshua's computing core began to slowly approach this insane pulsar.
Was he going to commit suicide?
No.
Joshua had long had a plan in mind.
What he said to the Great Khan wasn't a lie or deception. He indeed needed mass to increase his computing power and thus suppress the Decay Evil God.
But the path the warrior walked was the most straightforward and honest in the world: do one unit of work, get one unit of result. To increase his computing power by several times, he needed to increase his mass by several times.
That was a massive amount of mass that even twenty-odd Void Behemoths devouring together couldn't transport in a short time.
So how could he increase his computing power as much as possible in a short time?
Thanks to Fatlervi, his former powerful enemy, and the space-time distortions that had recently appeared in the Mycroft World and even the entire World Star River, Joshua had an idea.
At this moment, the pulsar in midair had reached nearly ten meters in diameter. Combined with Joshua's main body mass and its ultra-high-speed rotation angular momentum, space-time began to twist in ways ordinary people couldn't imagine or describe. Even expressed in mathematical formulas, it was a complex process capable of forming a soul barrier.
Meteors continued to fall from the sky. The pulsar's mass crazily increased. The range of space-time distortion grew larger and larger, until it was enough to completely envelop Joshua's thinking core.
At that instant, the warrior shut down all his other thinking threads. He began to concentrate his computing power, fine-tuning the distance between his thinking core and the pulsar, ensuring it could maintain a stable model.
How to increase computing power?
Very simple: when the original one second becomes three, four, or even five seconds.
Then computing power increases by three, four, or five times.
A very simple principle and technique. As long as the mass is large enough to distort space-time, slowing down one's own time, then computing power can be increased.
At the moment Joshua's thinking core—the root of Joshua's soul—entered the space-time disturbance zone of the ultra-high-mass celestial body, at the instant the warrior entered another reference frame.
The flow of time stagnated.
It took Joshua a full three seconds to stabilize the binary star structure, ensuring he could maintain the temporary pulsar for eight hours of normal time flow. And these three seconds, for the normal world, were less than one second.
His time flow had accelerated by a full five times.
His computing power had directly increased by a full five times.
At that instant, in the spiritual space.
The Great Khan watched in shock as the soul sun emitted an incomparably brilliant radiance.
Boom! As the entire spiritual space echoed with a roar capable of distorting space-time, the silver sun began to spin. It began to pull. Endless crystalline light streams, with five times the speed and force, and even greater precision, pulled the dark star river toward itself at an unbelievable momentum!
And the surrounding soul river, in an instant, all shifted toward the direction of the soul sun!
It was like a tug-of-war. The two sides, originally evenly matched, suddenly had one side displaying five times its previous strength. Not only did it pull the rope over, but it directly pulled the opponent on the other end of the rope, person and rope together!
It could be seen that the soul radiance, which had at most been evenly matched with the chaotic star river and even had to defend against the endless erosion of chaotic decay fluctuations, began to counterattack fiercely.
The warrior's violent, ferocious, destruction-desiring, extremely difficult to control, seemingly wanting to devour everything, annihilating all soul essence, even began to use the most pure, most brainless method—using computing power to directly decipher the chaotic information defense, beginning to suppress and erode in reverse!
In the black and gray mixed chaotic star river, brilliant silver veins began to appear!
On the surface of the silver continent, from within the nine huge steel warships, war cries came across endless time. In the spiritual space, nine dim but still huge and dazzling soul stars appeared around the silver sun, rapidly orbiting Joshua like satellites, further shattering the Decay Evil God's information structure!
"Fatlervi... this is the power of space-time."
Thinking at five times speed, Joshua couldn't help recalling his former powerful enemy. Layer by layer, he unraveled the Evil God's essence, shattering the information barrier and soul defense formed by a world and a civilization, advancing unhesitatingly toward the root of the Evil God's existence.
"It's not about stopping the world."
"It's about transcending the world."