Chapter 340: ? !Just Merely! ?
“Play it safe, play it safe one more time.”
“Don’t rush, don’t rush, don’t rush, don’t rush, don’t rush, this definitely has something fishy going on.”
“A sliver of health remaining is her lie.”
Jiegeng said with a hint of teasing, looking at Tiyana lying in the upright capsule:
“Isn’t that what you always used to say? You don’t seem like someone playing it safe now, and you’re very impatient. Why are you so impatient?”
“Some things are above everything else.”
Bearing the gaze of the End Beast, with her Magical Outfit beginning to mutate, Tiyana declared righteously, “I can take risks, but I cannot be risked!”
“Isn’t it ‘we can sacrifice, but cannot be sacrificed’?”
“It’s the same meaning.”
“It’s completely different.”
Actually, for Tiyana, taking risks and dying were about the same.
From the moment she made a move on Senior Sister Bai Mei, every step was like walking a tightrope. Dealing with Thousand-Pinweed meant waiting for Jiegeng’s second personality to appear.
Of course, all of this was calculable. Even if she failed, neither Thousand-Pinweed nor Senior Sister Bai Mei would necessarily kill her. After all, they were fellow disciples from the same sect. The sect rules would likely send her to Lady Bingtang—though that was no different from death.
The most important thing was accepting the gaze of the End Beast.
No one knew what the outcome would be.
“Are you sure this is okay?”
Seeing Tiyana’s Magical Outfit being tainted by pitch-black magic, the originally beautiful patterns began mutating into countless eyeballs.
Before long, the entire outfit had become grotesque beyond belief.
“You could make prayer beads out of this.”
Countless eyes continuously opened and closed, flashing with eerie light. Their pupils darted left and right with extreme agility, constantly looking around like living beings. Just looking at them was enough to make one’s heart clench.
When Jiegeng spoke, the ten thousand eyeballs immediately fixed their gaze on her.
It made Jiegeng frown involuntarily.
“There’s no need to go this far for the Dream Incubator, is there? From the very beginning, you were expelled from the Dream Incubator, and your own world has long been gone. There’s no need to take such risks, right? You’re not even following your own principles…”
“When did I ever say I was doing this for the Dream Incubator?”
“You said it yourself back when you were with Fengqin, didn’t you?”
“Oh, that.” Tiyana smiled, and all the eyeballs on her body squinted joyfully in response. “If I hadn’t said that, I wouldn’t have gotten the method to summon the End Beast.”
“…”
Jiegeng sighed and continued, “Although I think with the Sect Master around, there’s no need to worry about risks, if what you summon causes major trouble and leads to losses, then out of consideration for our status as righteous leaders, Lady Bingtang won’t let you off easy.”
“I’ll plead for you.”
“No way, I don’t want to get scolded,” Jiegeng said indifferently. “I don’t want to be hated by Lady Bingtang either.”
“Forget it. Anyway, as long as the Sect Master is satisfied, she’ll plead for me with Lady Bingtang.”
Tiyana said, as if she had anticipated this. “But it’s strange, though. I heard that your second personality, Jiegeng, was born after you were assimilated by a Disaster Beast. Disaster Beasts are vicious, cruel, aggressive, and violent. How did the Sect Master agree to let your second personality, which was infected by a Disaster Beast, become the dominant personality?”
Jiegeng, as a girl who was nearly killed by being assimilated by a Disaster Beast, had always had a problem with two personalities after being taken in by the Azure Cloud Sect.
Although the Azure Cloud Sect later managed to suppress it, the second personality still existed.
Tiyana looked at the polite, rational, and kind Jiegeng and couldn’t help but find it strange that the sect would allow that violent, warlike Disaster Beast personality to remain dominant…
“Because I am the second personality formed by the fusion of the Disaster Beast’s consciousness and hers.”
Jiegeng smiled slightly and explained, “The Sect Master and Lady Bingtang naturally wouldn’t allow me to appear as the dominant personality.”
Tiyana was stunned for a moment, and the pupils all over her body also went blank. “That crazy personality of yours, full of foul language, violent and warlike…”
“That’s just how Jiegeng originally was.”
Tiyana fell silent.
You’re even worse than the Disaster Beast, Jiegeng!
For a moment, there was nothing to say.
Then Tiyana looked down. The entire Chongxu was eerily silent. Members of the Saint Hall, the Disaster Control Bureau, the Azure Cloud Sect, the Harry Potter Branch Division, the Chongxu Pseudo-Type, and others from other worlds passing through—all the Magical Girls had turned to stone.
But the most special one, the Sect Master, Magical Girl Shion, had simply disappeared.
Not knowing what method the Sect Master had used to avoid the influence, Tiyana didn’t think about it too much, because just using the Personal Reality enhancement devices of all of Chongxu to keep her own Personal Reality from collapsing under the assault of the End Beast was already pushing her to her limits.
Yes, the reason Tiyana chose Chongxu for the summoning ritual was precisely this device she had found fascinating from the start: it connected everyone’s Personal Realities and funneled them into one person.
Before, just a single heart could maintain vitality and exist forever through Personal Reality.
Now she had grafted all these Personal Realities onto herself, and not just those from Chongxu—even people from the new world were enveloped by Chongxu’s devices. A broader, more intense Personal Reality ensured she wouldn’t lose herself under the gaze of the End Beast.
However, it was clear she had still underestimated the power of the End Beast.
The End’s gaze kept shaking her Personal Reality. At first, it was barely anchored by the Personal Realities of the masses, but like a small boat tossed on a stormy sea, it swayed unsteadily. Soon, with the prolonged gaze, her Personal Reality was completely corrupted.
Not only was it fully corrupted, but the power from the End Beast began to flow through her Personal Reality to affect others!
Tiyana quickly cut off the connection to Chongxu’s Personal Reality enhancement devices.
Losing the support of many, the corruption instantly engulfed her.
From just having eyeballs all over her Magical Outfit, within moments, Tiyana’s hands and feet no longer belonged to her. Her head, including her torso, kept turning into indescribable things. Her skull lost support and slowly sank into the melting body, looking utterly disgusting.
Jiegeng, who had been talking to her, was startled for a moment, then sighed regretfully. “I told you, it was too risky. A plan with such high risk isn’t suitable for you, my dear friend Tiyana.”
Jiegeng didn’t seem to care much about Tiyana’s death. She opened the capsule and took out Tiyana’s head. There were eyeballs on her ears, forehead, mouth, even the back of her head and neck. Just holding it was nauseating.
“I’ll give you a proper burial and plead for you. Hopefully, Lady Bingtang and the Sect Master will allow you to be buried in the toilet of the Azure Cloud Sect. So rest in peace, my poor friend Tiyana.”
But then the headless Tiyana began to laugh. The laugh made Jiegeng feel a bit strange.
Then Tiyana opened her mouth, and from her tongue and throat, eyes opened, looking at Jiegeng. But despite so many eyes in her mouth, they didn’t hinder her from speaking:
“I’m nothing but an ordinary, unremarkable avatar…”
A hand grabbed Jiegeng’s wrist and took the head from her hand.
Jiegeng turned her head, looking at the other Tiyana who had appeared again, then back at the capsule filled with mutated eyeballs and flesh.
She was a bit puzzled. “Didn’t you say you were going to take the risk yourself?”
The person who appeared was indeed Tiyana. The golden-haired, blue-eyed girl lifted the head of her avatar, now covered in eyeballs. “I only said I needed to take the risk myself when dealing with Senior Sister Bai Mei. I never said I’d use my real body against Thousand-Pinweed.”
“In that case, the Sect Master probably saw through it, right? Then your score in the duel with Senior Sister Thousand-Pinweed might drop.”
“I never planned on relying on that to improve my score from the start.”
Tiyana looked leisurely at the head in her hand. The eyeballs quickly spread from the head to her body—or rather, she actively drew those eyeballs onto herself. The eyeballs began appearing on her Magical Outfit, and just like before, a strange mutation started spreading across her.
“Let me guess, this is another ordinary, unremarkable avatar?”
“No, it’s the real me.”
Only then did Jiegeng notice that the eyeballs on Tiyana’s body no longer had the risk of going out of control.
The originally cold and eerie eyeballs had now become like cute, big, anime-style eyes. The art style had even changed, adding a bit of adorableness.
It was hard to imagine that Jiegeng would one day call the eyeballs on a person’s body cute.
There weren’t as many, and they seemed to be wearing some kind of colored contacts, with just the right amount of vibrant color.
“Alright, that should be enough.”
Tiyana showed a smile. “That’s probably enough to stand before the Sect Master now.”
Although Jiegeng couldn’t sense her opponent’s strength, she knew that when Tiyana said “that’s enough,” the probability was likely very high.
“Your plan had a success rate of less than fifty percent, right?”
“Risks with a probability below fifty percent are meant to be shown to the Sect Master,” Tiyana said, feeling the fusion of Polluted Magic and Pure Mana, followed by the control of the world bubble. “And out of the four conditions, the one with a probability truly below fifty percent was figuring out how to get the End Beast to just gaze at us, not descend. The Sect Master must have seen that.”
As she spoke, Tiyana used the world bubble to skillfully control the fused magic.
Although among the seven true-transmissions, Thousand-Pinweed was the first to learn how to control the world bubble, Tiyana had been constantly asking Thousand-Pinweed how it was done. In the Azure Cloud Sect, the Sect Master and Lady Bingtang always encouraged such exchanges.
By continuously learning and chasing after Thousand-Pinweed, she had finally barely grasped the use of the world bubble.
Combining it with the fusion of the two types of magic, as her master said—just missing one more to perform the world bubble’s second transformation.
She would show it to the Sect Master then.
“Using an avatar to bear the End Beast’s gaze, then using the avatar as a relay station to grasp and control the End Beast’s power—the success rate is ninety-eight percent. A bit low, but it’s enough.”
Well, by normal probability, ninety-eight percent was the limit Tiyana could accept.
“But even so, the success rate isn’t high, is it? This is a direct test from the Sect Master, you know? The Sect Master is always strict. If you don’t perform well, all your efforts will be wasted.”
Jiegeng warned again. “Why not summon the End Beast directly? Or are you afraid the Sect Master might lose to it and end up destroying the world?”
“Of course not.”
Tiyana said matter-of-factly:
“The Sect Master hates the Beast Taming Genre.”
After a long silence, Jiegeng found there was no argument against that.
Yes, the Sect Master hated the Beast Taming Genre the most. Summoning an End Beast to fight the Sect Master would definitely earn a failing grade. She might even be kicked out of Azure Cloud.
“So cautious, so prudent,” Jiegeng could only admire. “As expected of you.”
All eyes immediately locked onto the Sect Master’s position in the distant new world. Tiyana took a deep breath.
“Then let’s begin—the final adventure!”
…
Why didn’t she just summon the End Beast directly?
Does this girl even know how to play…
Jiang Si felt the space created by Tiyana controlling the End Beast’s power on her own—it completely replicated Chongxu and the new world, but nothing else was copied, so a quick exploration would reveal the anomaly.
The whole world was silent.
Just as he was about to leap upward by stepping on air, planning to reach the broader universe, Black Keke’s voice suddenly appeared in his ear.
“Are you okay, Jiang Si? The End has descended. We’re in trouble now…”
“It hasn’t descended,” Jiang Si immediately denied her words. “It’s just gazing this way.”
“Eh, how do you know?”
“Because all things are four!” Jiang Si said with great confidence. “Since ancient times, no one seeking gold can succeed without the Four Methods!”
“Purple-Gold Path cultivators gather heaven and earth’s spiritual energy to refine Qi, dissolve through six cycles to form an Immortal Foundation, raise the Immortal Foundation to hold divine powers and cross the Purple Mansion, pass the Purple Immortal threshold to achieve five divine powers complete, then seek gold.”
“Body-Refining Path cultivators use their own true Qi as a foundation, elevate their Sea of Consciousness, refine their bodies to ascend, enter the Foundation Building stage to build the Great Dao Immortal Foundation, merge it with their soul and spirit, borrow the four medicines of Heavenly Nether and Earthly Fiend to achieve the Five Methods, and elevate their souls to seek the gold position.”
“Qi-Serving Path cultivators serve truth to enter the Dao, then forge a Dao Foundation, turn the Dao Foundation into divine power, which is the Purple Mansion. When the four divine powers of the Purple Mansion are perfected, they can seek the gold position.”
“I observe that the End’s four conditions align with the Qi-Serving Path’s imagery of ‘all things are four.’ Therefore, I assert she has not yet achieved the perfection of the Four Methods.”
Jiang Si said resolutely, “She should be missing one of the four conditions. Otherwise, if seeking gold succeeded, it definitely wouldn’t look like this.”
“The current state is merely achieving three divine powers, the late Purple Mansion stage, attracting the attention of the gold position!”
Black Keke: “Who the hell can understand that? This version of Keke is so pitiful…”
Having seen plenty in web novels, this girl Tiyana probably stalled one of the conditions halfway, attracting the End Beast’s attention without summoning it directly.
She only let a portion of the End Beast’s power descend.
But clearly, this method was very risky because, from the result, it was more like using the Purple Mansion to falsely hold a gold position.
The price afterward would probably be considerable.
After all, back when he established the [Cycle Sea] realm, its true meaning was [Purple Mansion Cave Heaven Realm], intended to prepare for seeking gold.
Although Tiyana already possessed the Purple Mansion Mental Landscape and had been promoted to the Cycle Sea realm, the risk was still comparable to dying directly from Full Bloom.
It was somewhat reckless, but Jiang Si was willing to see Tiyana in a new light because of it.
Able to go this far, he acknowledged that Tiyana was indeed one of the seven true-transmissions, far more courageous and promising than he had imagined.
But it still depended on the final outcome.
If she made such a huge commotion and paid such a huge price, only to end up as just a drizzle, even if Bingtang objected, he would expel Tiyana from Azure Cloud completely.
The prerequisite for allowing risk-taking was the willingness to bear the consequences.
Unless she could show strength that satisfied Jiang Si.
“Forget it, I’ll deal with this later.” As he thought, Black Keke’s voice came through, but her tone was serious. “You must have been isolated by the End Beast’s power. The place you’re in is completely different from here in both time and space. But don’t worry, I’ll bring you back soon…”
“Why go back?”
Black Keke’s voice paused. “Huh?”
“The space-time here perfectly aligns with my two Dao Fruits.”
Jiang Si even showed some excitement and anticipation. “If I can thoroughly comprehend this place and master the Dao Fruits of time and space, the Great Dao is within reach!”
“Wait, what Dao Fruits do you have? What are you even talking about? I don’t understand! What is the Great Dao? Why can’t I understand a word you’re saying…”
Jiang Si started smashing the surrounding space wildly!
Dense spatial cracks began to fill the sky above the new world!
“I’ve already mastered about ninety percent of it.”
“You’ve mastered jack shit!” Black Keke couldn’t help but shout. Then she took a deep breath to calm herself down—though since meeting Jiang Si, the number of times she lost her cool had been increasing. “Fine, let’s say you’ve mastered the Space Dao Fruit. How are you going to master the Time Dao Fruit?”
You can smash space with violence.
How are you going to control time with violence?
“Go ahead, try to smash time if you can!”
Jiang Si let out a cold laugh. “Heh, ignorant brat from the Reincarnation System.”
“Do you know what the Great Heavenly Venerable Fang Li once said? Power is space!”
Black Keke: “You made that up yourself!”
“And the Great Venerable Taiyi’s ultimate truth is—
“Speed is time!”
Then, Black Keke saw Jiang Si start moving—though they were in different timespaces, Black Keke could actually see what was happening on his side.
Having reincarnated so many times, her strength couldn’t effectively increase, but she had no shortage of small abilities and minor spells to deal with various unexpected situations.
The moment Jiang Si took his first step, the cracks on the ground instantly spread ten miles outward!
The flying dust and gravel froze in midair.
At his second step, afterimages solidified into a series of figures.
His physical speed and strength were pushed to their limits. The image began to blur as Jiang Si ran.
Surpassing sound, the young man sprinted at near-light speed, then gradually overtook his own shadow from the previous second.
Then he ran into a realm no human had ever stepped into.
He surpassed light.
Under this speed, the air turned into a solid far harder than steel or diamond, enough to pulverize flesh. But Jiang Si’s body broke through all of it, like an untiring, ferocious bull, brutally and without pause smashing through every wall of air!
He ran into the first second of the past.
Then the second, third, fourth…
As Jiang Si’s speed increased, Black Keke was horrified to see everything in her vision indeed flowing backward!
Light began to recede. Fallen leaves flew back from the mud to the branches. Raindrops reversed into the clouds. The gravel and dust also returned to the earth.
This guy had actually broken through time using sheer brute force!
After a long while, Jiang Si, who had smashed a mountain to pieces and evaporated most of a sea, finally stopped after running back to the tenth second of the past.
Under the sudden stop, the air was still torn apart by inertia. Space and time continued to flow backward!
Fun fact: the one running through time using pure brute force was a human…
Black Keke was stunned, feeling like even her own memory was about to rewind with time.
Jiang Si clenched his fist, then a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“Not bad, this is the feeling. I can feel myself getting more and more familiar with it—the feeling of mastering time.”
Running to surpass time counted as mastering it…
Black Keke suddenly felt like she was a country bumpkin seeing wonders for the first time, completely unable to understand Jiang Si’s actions.
“To think I could have a brother like this—this is the ultimate guaranteed reward for reincarnating a thousand times…”
Black Keke sighed. “But you’re not really human, big brother.”
“I am a true immortal.”
“A true human and an immortal combined? In the end, still a human. I think you’ve already surpassed them, big brother…”
Jiang Si ignored her, simply looking up at the sky.
His expression was full of anticipation and fighting spirit.
“Is it coming?”
A Magical Girl covered in pupils was approaching rapidly!
“Don’t disappoint me, Tiyana.”
Wings spread open behind him. Just as Jiang Si was about to greet her, Black Keke shouted, “Watch out! She’s been assimilated—it’s the End Beast…”
Jiang Si simply said calmly, “It’s fine. I found it.”
Black Keke was stunned. “What?”
“The location of the End Beast.”
“Huh?”
…
From the very beginning, after learning that the End Beast required conditions to descend, Witch Shion had decided to go directly to it.
There was no reason she could only let it come to her, but she couldn’t go to it.
If it can come here, I can go there!
If it wanted to destroy this world, then Jiang Si would destroy the world it lived in first!
Reciprocity.
And the vast land covered in Keke’s pitiful, desolate corpses that she had seen before—she could vaguely sense that was the End Beast’s location.
That roar was undoubtedly from the End Beast.
The pressure and aura that even made Witch Shion’s heart tremble were exactly the same as what Tiyana had summoned.
So no matter what happened in Chongxu and the new world, Witch Shion had no intention of returning. She had been searching and exploring near the place where she had seen the great Keke tomb earlier.
Until Tiyana successfully summoned the End Beast’s gaze.
When that power connected to Tiyana, Witch Shion instantly followed the direction of its descent and found the source.
But in reality, she only returned to that fragrant land full of Keke corpses.
She searched the garden of Keke corpses high and low, but couldn’t find the source of the leaked power.
So she decided to expand her Mental Landscape directly, encompassing all the Keke corpses and the entire space within her own Mental Landscape.
And when her Mental Landscape touched this area, it triggered a strong reaction!
Then a pleasant female voice came through.
“Hey.”
The voice was even a bit familiar, but Witch Shion couldn’t recall who it was at the moment.
“Isn’t this the world I devoured in the past?”
Before Witch Shion could react, the space suddenly twisted.
Then, in a strange flash of light, Witch Shion felt herself walking into a tunnel full of eyes.
In each eye, a complete world was reflected.
Soon, she saw a broken, incomplete eye.
In that broken eye, the reflection was of the ordinary world Jiang Si had once lived in, without any miracles.
And the missing piece was exactly what Shion had forcibly carved away from that world during the Mental Landscape Trial!
“So it was with you all along.”
Accompanied by the pleasant voice, the tunnel came to an end.
Witch Shion saw a true garden, filled with vibrant flowers. A young girl sat among them.
She was gently stroking a flower with her hand.
It wasn’t until Witch Shion arrived that the girl turned her head slightly to look at her.
“Can you give that piece back to me?”
Witch Shion stared at her for a long moment before finally moving her lips slightly.
“Iris?”