Night of Despair-Chapter 412 - 410 Hope 4

"You must not be a disciple of the True Origin Sect, right? Oh, that’s right, a while back, the only True Origin Sect disciple here committed suicide, his name was Yang Chenhe." The tiger said with a laugh, "Have you ever met him? He was in a very low position."

"Yang Chenhe... I’ve met him." Yu Hong replied, his heart sinking.

"Did he ever tell you that in this world, all things, everything, only the Source Disaster is the true orthodoxy! It is the main theme of everything, we living creatures... are merely the miraculous results of chance?" The tiger laughed heartily.

"Life as such is just a fleeting bubble in the lengthy cycle of the Source Disasters, with only a tiny moment in time where the environment is suitable for our survival. For the vast majority of the time, it’s an environment of Source Disaster completely inhospitable to any form of life."

"Do you know what I used to do?" The tiger continued. "A Fate Master! I was a supreme Fate Master who specialized in calculating people’s future destinies! After much effort and strategizing, enduring revulsion and the blood of hundreds of thousands as my base, I sought the hope for the future! Searching for a chance for our life to thrive, calculating how much longer the Source Disaster might persist..."

The smile on its face gradually began to twist.

"Do you know what I figured out?!"

"..." Yu Hong stared at its almost completely distorted face, remaining silent.

"Six billion years!!" The tiger shouted. "We have to wait six billion years before the Black Disaster might begin to weaken, but do you think it ends there? No!"

"Haha, once the Black Disaster is over, there’s the Cold Disaster, Wind Disaster, Flood Disaster, Light Disaster... cycles upon cycles of recurrence, our lives can only survive tenuously in the small intersection areas where various Source Disasters overlap, keeping a fragile balance. At all other times, all that awaits us... is consumption..."

The tiger’s piercing laughter echoed continuously in Yu Hong’s ears, while he watched the other’s face expressionlessly.

"So, you’re saying, there will be no more stable and peaceful places in the future?"

"Hah, just as rocks occasionally emerge in the river, and the area behind the rocks where the water is blocked is calmer. I tried to find such places in the past. In the end, I found these regions were also occupied by other Source Disasters... So, in essence, there is no hope..." The tiger turned away, refusing to continue the conversation, still facing the wall, sitting at the desk, closing its eyes as if dozing.

"What if I assimilate the power of the Source Disaster and used it for my own?" Yu Hong thought of Ku Chan’s self-created Cultivation Technique and asked again.

"Source Disaster represents singularity, purity, consciousness is a form of spirit, a foreign impure energy. If you consume it, and your method is strong, you’ll survive at first, but soon after, you’ll be quickly eroded, your consciousness will be treated as an abnormal force and expelled. Eventually becoming part of the Source Disaster, losing self-awareness. Only an empty shell remains."

The tiger replied in a soft voice.

"Because consciousness itself is a structured entity formed by the orderly arrangement of external forces. Once order is lost, consciousness will not arise. Ordinary consciousness is composed of brainwaves, while the stronger ones will use similar powerful transmitters to replace brain electricity. But all roots of order stem from order itself. Unfortunately, everything within the Source Disaster is chaotic, and chaos affects not just power, but consciousness as well."

Hearing this, Yu Hong suddenly remembered many stories and novels he had read in the past, where someone wielded the power of chaos yet retained their own will.

That in itself is a contradiction...

Will is the crystallization of order, constructed by a large network of information built from brainwaves and similar energies. Without order, not even the most basic neural structure can be formed.

Information that can’t be transmitted and organized in an orderly manner manifests as confused consciousness or even an inability to preserve memories.

Because memory too is a product of order. It is the orderly storage of information.

"Have you tried it?" Yu Hong asked.

But the tiger did not reply anymore, and the room fell silent, devoid of any further sound.

No matter how much he asked, there were no more responses.

Feeling helpless, Yu Hong had no choice but to return to riding on Agrius’s back, contemplating their path ahead.

’If the Source Disaster is truly as Zhao Chenhu said, then... the future might really be...’

Snap.

He suddenly slapped his arm fiercely, a faint sting jolting him awake from his sadness.

"I just want to peacefully live on, what do the billions of years in the future have to do with me? I just need to ensure that my time alive is stable and wonderful..."

Thinking this way, Yu Hong felt much better inside.

"All things are ultimately unable to escape the fate of decline; cycles are only natural. I only need to find a stable place and live the life I want to live. In this way, I can just find any corner world and help sustain it for a few hundred years, just like the Ancient Mages of the Taoist Sect did, creating the Sky Stabilizing Plate and coexisting peacefully with the Spirit Disaster for over a thousand years."

"As for what comes after, I’ll leave it to future generations to handle."

Thinking this, the oppression in Yu Hong’s heart dissipated a great deal.

’Find a new place to relocate!! I must do it as soon as possible!’

Once he confirmed his thoughts, he immediately felt an urgency.

The temperature in the Hope City World was still dropping; once it fell to minus one hundred and seventy or eighty degrees, even oxygen in the air would liquefy, and then we could only rely entirely on technology to produce oxygen. With the Black Disaster encroaching, the world’s resources could not be massively mined and converted, only a dead end awaited.

Leaving Prison Island, Yu Hong quickly pulled Ku Chan, Qing Huang, and Zhang Kajing to board a ship and began randomly exploring for lands of vitality.

Three days later.

The enhancement at Black Wind Camp ended.

Layers upon layers of black walls, resembling both metal and stone, covered the shelter’s outer shell once more, completing a new round of enhancement in strength and hardness.

Over at Hope City, Chen Yaofeng took the lead, directing everyone to concentrate on building an immensely huge airship.

They named it the Dawn Project.

But Yu Hong held no hope for it.

If the Source Disaster was so easy to evade, then so many formidable forces wouldn’t have been easily wiped out.

He didn’t try to dissuade them; after all, even if it couldn’t serve as a spaceship, it could still serve as a huge, fully enclosed base.

*

*

*

Whoosh.

The roaring sound of the Black River’s waves could be heard constantly outside the ship.

Yu Hong stood at the bow, slightly fatigued, gazing at the thick fog continuously being split apart ahead.

During these days, he had taken the Black Ship to explore numerous shattered islands, but they only contained some oddly shaped Black Disaster Monsters, without any useful clues found.

Ku Chan was meditating on the aft deck. Qing Huang was flipping through foreign language learning materials collected from Hope City.

Zhang Kajing leaned against the ship rail, holding a comic book in one hand, reading it with relish.

Yu Hong glanced at her; she was holding a martial arts comic book. He had read it himself when he was bored. The characters could all casually destroy mountains and part seas, with their martial arts levels exaggerated to the extreme.

At that time, he had fantasized that if he had the power of those characters, perhaps he could have resisted the Source Disaster and maintained the life he desired.

But judging from their experiences in the Taoist Sect world this time, even such powerful figures might not see any hope...

"What do you think, what kind of power can withstand the Spirit Disaster Black Disaster? Martial arts powerhouses in comics? Gods and Buddhas? Or the pinnacle of scientific development?" Yu Hong asked softly.

"The martial arts powerhouses probably can’t do it... Gods and Buddhas, isn’t that what the Spirit Disaster is? According to ancient records, the Source Disaster is endless and rejuvenates. They have infinite energy and quantities. To confront them, we need to find an infinite power as well, but the only infinite thing in this world is the Source Disaster itself. So it comes back to using the Source Disaster to fight the Source Disaster, which is like walking a tightrope—one misstep, and the entire game is lost. So..." Ku Chan shook his head and opened his eyes. "Only the power that can devour them! Turning them into a part of oneself, to weaken them, to empower oneself! In reverse, suppress them!"

Clearly, he had this idea long ago, which is why he created a Daoist Skill with similar effects.

"That makes sense, Ku Chan. Can you share your Daoist Skill with me? Perhaps I could strengthen and improve it..."

Yu Hong nodded in agreement. Indeed, a true genius. After having a breakthrough, he caught on to the key point immediately.

"Take it." Ku Chan flicked a booklet towards him. "This is the Cloud Transformation Technique I created myself. It’s not perfect yet—only those whose Dao Breath is close to that of a Heavenly Master can use it. Ordinary people cannot even practice it. As an Alliance Hierarch, you shared the Spirit Light Secret Skill and saved so many people—this Cultivation Technique is nothing by comparison."

He seemed to have gotten over his issues now, his essence qi spirit was much more vibrant than before, his eyes bright and resolute, and he started actively joining the efforts to investigate the Source Disaster.

It seemed like he considered the Source Disaster as the only remaining enemy responsible for the death of his family and had found a new goal for surviving.

Click.

Yu Hong caught the booklet, flipped through it, and roughly understood Ku Chan’s train of thought.

Using one’s own Dao Breath to condense an Array in the body, draw in the power of the Source Disaster into oneself, and by outnumbering them with an advantage, suppress and reduce the power of the Source Disaster. Then, bit by bit, clarify the chaos and reorganize it into a completely new structure of power that can integrate and coexist with oneself.

This Cloud Transformation Technique could only be used against Source Disasters that weren’t too opposite to one’s own Dao Breath attributes. The idea was quite novel, and the method straightforward and brutal.

If we ignore the aftereffects of integrating the Source Disaster’s power into the body for the short term, there’s no major issue.

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But... upon seeing that Ku Chan’s eyes had already turned blood-red and new dense blisters had started to grow on his disfigured face, Yu Hong knew that the aftereffects had started to manifest.

It’s nothing but a stopgap measure...

He sighed in his heart.

Holding the booklet, he crossed his legs and sat down, silently reciting in his mind.

"Strengthen the Cloud Transformation Technique, direction: eliminate the aftereffects."

Hiss.

A black line flowed out from the Black Mark, rapidly merging into the booklet.

But the next moment, the black line returned to the Black Mark and provided feedback.

’Unable to eliminate, Cultivation Technique’s related functions incomplete.’

"..." Yu Hong immediately understood that the Cultivation Technique needed at least a tiny bit of functionality to combat the aftereffects, but it seemed there was none at all. Perhaps Ku Chan never cared how long he would live.

He thought for a moment and decided to try another approach.

’Strengthen the Cloud Transformation Technique, direction: delay the manifestation of aftereffects by one hundred years.’

Magicians don’t have methods to extend their lifespan, with Quan He being the longest-lived. If Ku Chan’s aftereffects could be postponed to manifest after one hundred years from now, wouldn’t it be equivalent to having no aftereffects?

After all, by that time, Ku Chan would probably have died of old age.

This time, the black line flashed and flowed into the booklet, prompting a query for feedback.

Yu Hong knew the enhancement was successful.

After he confirmed the success, he saw a bright red countdown appear on the booklet’s cover: 5 days 11 hours 05 minutes.