Desolate Era (Book 41 - Book 45)

Thus, using raw force to overpower a formation was actually a highly effective technique, even though it seemed rather brutish and clumsy!

“It seems like it is breaking.” Ning could see that the dimensional membrane was shuddering in the face of his frenzied attacks.

In the spacetime maze, Ning had tried to furiously assault the spacetime bubbles in this manner as well. However, all of the spacetime bubbles he destroyed would release their energies to the local spacetime field, which would then give birth to new bubbles. As a result, the actual energy of the formation wasn’t depleted in the slightest. Raw force was useless against a tactic like this, unless he reached a level where he was so strong he could tear apart the entire formation with just one strike of the sword.

Dimensional membranes, however, were different. They had to endure the weight of Ning’s strikes head on, and each time that happened they would be depleted of energy. Eventually, they would be so weak that they would simply collapse!

Boom! After the time needed to boil a kettle of tea, one of Ning’s strikes finally tore open a giant wound that was roughly three hundred meters in size. Through the tear in the dimensional membrane, Ning was able to see… a vast world of water outside.

“Eh?” Ning turned to stare at the world of fire he was currently in, then back at the world of water on the opposite side of the dimensional membrane. The rift in the membrane was already beginning to quickly heal.

“Another dimension?” Ning frowned, but he didn’t hesitate in immediately charging through the rift and entering the world of water.

“That was fast. The dimensional rift closed after just three seconds.” Ning watched as the tear he had created vanished before his very eyes.

“So this is a world of water, eh?” Ning flew through the water. The waves were powerful and heavy, but like the flames they were incapable of harming Ning in the slightest.

“I’ll break through again.” Ning once more used his sword-arts as he flew to the edges of the world, then began to frenziedly assault the dimensional membrane. It once more took him the amount of time needed to boil a kettle of tea to once more tear a dimensional rift open… and this time, he was able to see a world that was filled with vitality and boundless green light.

“Yet another world?” Ning had a bad feeling about this, but he still flew through and continued to assault the dimensional membrane in this third world.

……

And so, Ning began to enter and then furiously chop through one world after another without stopping. An ordinary person probably would’ve given up long ago, but Ning spent an entire day chopping through a hundred different dimensional membranes before stopping. Alas, there was no end to them.

“I’ve broken through over a hundred worlds in a row.” Ning was standing atop a mountain, pondering to himself. “These hundred worlds seem to be constructed from eight dimensional archetypes. I can view them as the ice world, the water world, the life world, the earth world, the mountain world, the fire world, the lava world, and the metal world. The dimensions continuously fluctuate between these eight worlds…”

“There’s only eight basic ‘types’, but each world I enter seems to have a slightly different aura than the previous ones.” Ning was growing a bit nervous. He had spent an entire day analyzing the worlds, but still had no idea how he was supposed to break through them.

When he had been within the spacetime formation, at least he could tell that there were countless spacetime bubbles that were linked together into a formation. He was able to glean insights on the workings of the formation from those bubbles before finally solving it!

However, the ‘eight revolutions formation’ he was trapped in simply gave him a new world once he broke through the previous one. It was a never-ending cycle of these eight types of worlds, a cycle without end…

“How should I break through? How should I escape?” Ning continuously pondered this.

“Can it be that there are actually only eight worlds in total? No, that can’t be right. I can sense through my mastery of spacetime that there should be more than just eight.” Ning simply had no idea as to how he was supposed to understand the mysteries behind this formation!

……

Time continued to flow on one day after another. The Sithe Exalts on the eight stone pillars gradually began to relax. Everything was as they had predicted. The eight revolutions formation was much more difficult to break than the spacetime formation, after all. In truth, every single one of these temples was quite extraordinary. Autarch Ekong had only been able to escape his temple thanks to Autarch Titanos sacrificing his avatar.

“Once Iyerre gets here, we’ll have completed our mission.” The Sithe Exalts continued to wait silently.

As for Ning, he was now seated in the lotus position at the very center of a world of lava. Time was sped up to a rate of 100x around him as he continuously pondered the problem before him. Ning had already notified Titanos, Mogg, Skyfeeder, Bolin, and the others. All six Autarchs were helping him with suggestions, but none of them were able to come up with any true solutions for this deceptively simple cycle of eight worlds.





Book 44, Chapter 12 - A Murderous Voice


Oftentimes, the simpler something was the fewer flaws it had. One of the simplest measures was to just construct a dimensional cage to imprison someone, one which was so stable and tough that there was no way to break through it.

However, simplicity carried its own stringent requirements. Ji Ning and the Autarchs were so overwhelmingly powerful and had such limitless reserves of energy that no mere dimensional cage could possibly withstand their assaults! The eight revolutions formation went about it in another way. It generated multiple worlds, each of which Ning was able to break through fairly quickly… but the worlds continued to be generated one after another!

“All of these worlds are extremely stable. Maintaining this sort of world can’t be easy,” Ning mused. “And there can’t really be an endless amount of worlds!”

“Break!” Ning once more rose to his feet in three-headed, six-armed form. He transformed into a dazzling streak of sword-light which slammed against the dimensional membrane. After the time needed to boil a kettle of tea the dimensional membrane was hacked open, revealing a freezing world of ice. Ice filled the entire world, making up its continents, mountains, and valleys.

Ning stepped through the dimensional rift and into this frozen world.

“It doesn’t really matter which direction the tear is created in; the end result will still be a new world. Given how stable these worlds are, there can’t be that many of them… and yet they continue to loop in on themselves in an endless cycle. The only way this is possible is if these eight worlds are actually moving to line up in front of me! That way, no matter where I go I’ll see an endless procession of worlds before me.”

By now, Ning had a rough idea as to how this eight cycles formation had to work. It consisted of several dozen or several hundred worlds that were perhaps arranged into a spherical shape! Ning was located at the very center of this sphere, so no matter where he went he would enter a new world. Once he did so, the other worlds would relocate themselves to keep him at their center.

No matter where he went, he would remain trapped in the ‘center’ of the formation. He’d never be able to make it out!