Volume One: The Nature of the Devil Never Changes
Arc: The Great Guerrilla War
Back to Scarlet King, who finally opened his eyes and continued forward. But this time, he was knocking on the wall as he walked.
After walking and knocking on the walls for some time, a different sound and echo came from one of the strikes. Because of Scarlet King's powerful intuition, he was able to tell that there was a large empty space behind the wall. However, he showed no expression or reaction that would arouse suspicion.
He suddenly looked behind him and said:
"Very well. I know you are watching me, Yin and Yang Guards. I want you to bring me a special and distinctive gun, one that works using primal stones. I will send you the details through the system."
[While Scarlet King turned around and continued walking forward, knocking on the walls, the Yin and Yang Guards were looking at the system screen.]
Yin Guard spoke:
"Well, Master's senses truly are extremely powerful. Now let us return to the laboratory and order the slaves to make the gun."
Yang Guard nodded and flew away quickly, while Yin Guard followed him.
Lin Yuan shouted as he ran and jumped to fly after them:
"Hey! Wait, wait for me!"
Lin Yuan flew after the two guards, muttering while gritting his teeth:
"I am starting to hate flying with you…"
Yin Guard laughed softly, but Yang Guard began speaking to her:
"We need to ask Master to create a spacetime teleportation gate so we can return to the laboratory through a necklace, a symbolic badge, or anything like what he did in the sealed world, instead of flying like this."
"Even though we fly at infinite speed, we are still considered slow. Our level is the ninth level of Qi Condensation, and the universes are also expanding at infinite speed, while the dimension itself expands at immeasurable speed!"
Lin Yuan asked stupidly:
"Wait… does that mean I am also moving at infinite speed?"
The Yin and Yang Guards were silent for a few moments.
Then they shouted in one voice:
"Of course!!"
Yin Guard spoke with boredom:
"We need to teach you the foundations of the cultivation world before we teach you cultivation itself."
[While the Yin and Yang Guards were frustrated by Lin Yuan's stupidity, Scarlet King was doing something different.]
Scarlet King stopped and said in a calm voice, with a faint smile:
"Good. They have left. Now I can find out what is behind the wall."
Scarlet King turned around and returned to the wall that had produced the echo. Then he passed through it with complete ease, thinking:
(Good. It is fortunate that I can manipulate the composition of my body. That is why I was able to pass through the wall so easily. I gained that after the Black Hole Transformation.)
Scarlet King opened his eyes and found that it was an ordinary passage like the rest, but he ignored it and continued inside the hidden corridor.
When he reached the end of the passage, there was a wide room. Small rivers flowed down from its walls, and around the edges of the room, water surrounded it in a hexagonal shape, circulating before returning to the rivers.
There were many glowing green and blue herbs lighting the place, unlike the dark mine from before, where Scarlet King had relied more on his hearing than his sight because of the extreme darkness.
There was also a fresh scent because of the water.
Scarlet King thought in question:
(Hmm… a strange room. It is closer to a training room than a mine chamber… Wait, what is that?)
Scarlet King noticed a strange coffin in the center of the room, slightly raised above the ground.
Scarlet King approached the coffin and raised his arm to open it, but failed.
Immediately, dozens of black arrows appeared from nothingness.
(Damn it… It seems I activated a defensive formation.)
The arrows shot toward Scarlet King at terrifying speed, but a black hole immediately appeared in the center of his body, and Scarlet King's body vanished into it. The black hole expanded until it became one meter wide and one meter tall, circular in shape.
All of this happened in less than a second.
The arrows immediately rushed toward the body of the black hole, piercing and cutting through it, leaving large gaps inside it. But seconds later, the gaps vanished, and the black hole returned to its original form.
A sharp smile appeared on the face of the black hole, and it spoke:
"Good. This is another feature of the Black Hole Transformation: attacks become zero against my body, even if the attack is powerful."
"But apparently, there are limits to this power. I need to cool down and rest after a certain number of strikes before the black hole body can return to making attacks deal zero damage. If the nullification ability stops working, I will take damage directly."
Scarlet King returned to his normal form, as the black hole began changing shape and took on the same form as Scarlet King's body. Then dark energy emerged from his shadow and merged with his body, forming his usual clothes.
Scarlet King thought while looking at where the arrows had appeared:
(It seems the arrows appeared through attack formations linked to the coffin's sealing formation. If someone touches the coffin or tries to open it, the attack formations will activate to kill that person.)
(Now I must dismantle the formations.)
Because the formation had activated, the shape of the formations became visible. It was a hexagonal formation, covered in cultivation symbols.
But Scarlet King did not care. He moved and began pressing certain points on the formation while thinking:
(I need to break the basic supports, then attack the center. That way, I can destroy the formation.)
While Scarlet King was pressing the formation, he made a move and sent his soul inside it.
There was an infinite white void, six black pillars, and a violet sphere in the center.
At that moment, Scarlet King laughed.
"I possess the strongest soul in existence, so destroying this thing is extremely easy."
Suddenly, millions of arrows appeared in the white void and shot toward Scarlet King.
But a simple pressure from Scarlet King's soul shattered all the arrows into pieces.
Scarlet King moved his arm, and it transformed into the shape of a scythe. Immediately, he swung it and cut the pillars and the sphere in half.
He instantly came out, because the inner world of the formation was collapsing.
When he emerged, he opened his eyes and looked at the rest of the formations.
"This will be easy."
He continued moving and did the same thing to the rest of the formations.
After he finished, Scarlet King approached one of the arrows and held it. Immediately, he knew its strength.
"These arrows are capable of killing a weak person from the Third Dimension with complete ease. If not for the Black Hole Transformation, I would be dead now."
He thought again, more deeply:
(And well, you may wonder why there are no stronger defenses. Very simply, these arrows are extremely powerful and more than enough for the First Dimension. If stronger arrows had been placed here, they would have been exposed because of their energy.)
(Due to qualitative superiority, the weakest cultivator from the Second Dimension is capable of erasing the entire First Dimension, with all its laws, universes, concepts, and inhabitants, with complete ease.)
(And this applies to the rest of the dimensions. These arrows are extremely powerful, but they are not absolute.)
At that moment, a gate opened behind Scarlet King, and the Writer came out, shouting:
"Hey! Do not break the fourth wall! That ruins the plot of the story, and the reader will think you are omnipotent!"
Scarlet King replied dismissively:
"Omnipotent? It is true that I can manipulate the narrative, but I am extremely weak even with narrative manipulation. Cultivation is stronger than narrative, and narrative moves according to the laws of cultivation."
"That is why, even if I am the strongest in terms of narrative, I am still weak in cultivation, which means I can easily be crushed."
"Liu Zai Hang, for example, would not even tire himself killing me. Even though I am stronger than him in narrative manipulation, he is stronger than me in cultivation."
"And also, I do not care about your novel or the plot you write. I do what I want for the sake of my goal. I have free will, and as I said before: I am inside the narrative, but I am not one with the narrative."
"But now, let us see what is inside the coffin."
Scarlet King approached the coffin, while the Writer flew above him to see what was inside as well.
Scarlet King asked him:
"I assume you do not know what is inside the coffin, correct?"
The Writer replied while placing his hands behind his back:
"Well, yes, I do not know what is inside the coffin. My absolute senses cannot pierce the coffin's barrier, and perhaps that is because the one who made this place is from the Immortal Dimensions."
Scarlet King did not speak.
He only lifted the lid of the coffin.
Inside, there was a girl with white hair, closed eyes, pale skin, and a black dress with red edges. She was extremely beautiful, but her expression was calm.
The Writer and Scarlet King spoke at the same time:
"Haaah… we expected something better."
Suddenly, the Writer felt a strange presence behind them.
Immediately, without any discussion, he turned around and raised his finger. A very tiny sphere appeared, but it released a wave of energy that caused complete devastation, and a vast white void appeared.
It was the white page that carried all narrative.
Scarlet King turned around and said mockingly:
"Oh, good. One movement of your finger caused half of the First Dimension to be erased."
The Writer was silent for a few moments.
Then he replied:
"Hah, it does not matter. But I felt a strange presence behind us. Well, I will fix the situation."
The Writer tapped with his finger, and everything returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.
Then the Writer continued speaking:
"I repaired the dimension and erased everyone's memory of the destruction that happened… except yours."