Chapter 729: The Silent Chalice Tournament!
Under the illumination of the Moon of Evolution, the Perfect Tree developed dual water and fire attributes. Its oak leaves were silver-blue, its bark was orange-red and scaly, its veins flickered like circuits, and its roots exuded the scent of sulfur.
This dazzling Perfect Tree treant activated All Things Return to the Tree against the entire Silent Plane. In an instant, the entire Silent Plane seemed to shift from a flood disaster to a drought disaster. The entire plane suddenly had not a single drop of water left.
Because the Perfect Tree had been incorporated into Locke's ecological community, the magic pressure of his Moon of Evolution surged sharply. And the Perfect Tree had equally incorporated the Moon of Evolution into its ecological community, so the Perfect Tree's magic pressure also began rising.
This caused the two Grand Magics to form a mutual ecological community, triggering a chain reaction.
The total magic pressure of the entire Silent Plane began to rise.
At this moment, the Silent Plane fell into a special state of flickering between light and darkness.
This state was entirely caused by the two Grand Magics combining with each other, mutually elevating magic pressure, and then through elevating the Silent Plane's overall magic pressure, forcibly suppressing the disc creature's descent, producing this special state.
The entire world alternated between being plunged into absolute darkness as Omega descended, and being lit up by the radiance of the Perfect Tree and the Moon of Evolution.
This was equivalent to Edgar and Locke using their Grand Magics to stand between the two planes, forcibly preventing the two planes from colliding with each other and triggering the apocalypse.
In the Silent Plane, in one city, a little girl looked up at the radiance in the sky with a mixture of fear and curiosity, then turned to her mother and asked, "Mama, I am afraid of the dark. Will the rain stop? Will the light always be there?"
Her mother did not answer, because at this moment a strange blue glow had appeared in her mother's retinas.
At this moment, a cracking sound came from the Perfect Tree.
Edgar looked toward Locke and said, "We have seized this only opportunity. Let us find the reason why the disc creature can descend so quickly."
Locke nodded.
The two Grand Magics were now wedged between the two planes, and both of them were bearing enormous pressure at every moment.
Omega's blue ring of light appeared before them both. Clearly it had not expected the two to temporarily halt the apocalypse through the mutual ecological community relationship between their Grand Magics.
It was somewhat flustered.
"Whatever you do, you are only a mantis trying to stop a carriage. No one can stop the apocalypse!"
"This is futile effort!"
"The apocalypse will inevitably descend!"
The two ignored Omega's flustered fury and began examining the Silent Plane.
Edgar first went to examine Omega's energy flow, while Locke flew into the imperial capital to examine those people with the eerie blue ring on their retinas.
Locke snapped his fingers and summoned the legendary history tome, attempting to use archaeological magic to search for the reason Omega could descend so quickly.
But after searching for roughly half an hour, there was nothing to be found.
At this moment, of the two Grand Magics, it was Edgar's Perfect Tree that gave out first. A cracking sound rang out, and a branch of the Perfect Tree fell from the air and crashed to the earth.
Inside a church, Omega's eerie blue glow appeared in the retinas of those people. Omega broke into delighted laughter.
"Locke Augustine, stop searching. This plane will certainly be mine."
"You could never find the answer."
"Hahaha. The Silent Witch could not find it back then. Do you think you can? Hahahahaha. Disc creatures have all timelines unified, so I have always retained the memories of that era, and I have always retained your memories too. How many years have passed, how many wizards have died in the apocalypse I descended, without a single exception."
The eerie blue ring of light rose into mid-air.
On the other side, Edgar appeared at the crown of the Perfect Tree, his face pale. The Perfect Tree's structure seemed somewhat more fragile than the Moon of Evolution.
That was only natural.
Locke's Moon of Evolution too closely resembled a genuine moon, and his Moon of Evolution also had a world-scale realm providing support.
So between the two, it was Edgar who could hold on the least.
At this moment, Edgar felt the Perfect Tree had finally reached its limit under the crushing gravitational force of the two planes.
A blue ring of light appeared before him and coaxed in a beguiling voice, "Edgar, give up. You are already the wizard I have seen who has held out the longest. But the apocalypse is destined to come. You cannot find the slightest handle to use against me. I come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Hahahahaha..."
Edgar was manipulating the Perfect Tree's roots to spread through the entire Silent Plane, trying to find the point of Omega's energy invasion. But he found nothing.
Everything looked completely normal.
Omega's power was simply external.
There was not even a trace of its power within the Silent Plane itself.
Edgar scattered the blue ring before him with a botanical magic, and after the blue ring dispersed, it reassembled and appeared again at Edgar's side.
"Edgar, stop wasting your effort. All your struggles are futile. Hahaha..."
At the same time, another branch of the Perfect Tree broke off, and it was as though a chain reaction had been triggered. The Perfect Tree began to collapse in a chain sequence.
Edgar gritted his teeth and held on. He no longer had the capacity to do anything else and could only use everything he had to maintain the Perfect Tree's existence.
"Damn. That accursed disc creature. Am I really going to be beaten by something this disgusting?"
Edgar stalled for time for Locke as long as he could. "Locke, any findings on your end?"
On the other side, in the imperial capital, inside a church.
Locke raised his head, suddenly looked toward Omega, and asked a question.
"There is something I have been wanting to ask you for the past half hour. The first time you and I met, you successfully influenced me, making your blue glow appear on my body, even trying to assimilate me."
"You were able to do that so easily at the time. But why, in the past half hour, have you not made a single attempt to appear on my body, and... you have only been appearing on the ordinary people inside this church?"
Omega's laughter stopped abruptly, as though someone had suddenly gripped it by the throat.
Locke lowered his eyes.
"Your mockery of me actually reminded me of a possibility. In such a short time, you have lost your ability to influence me. You can no longer assimilate me."
"The assimilation is a deception, is it not, Omega?"
"I have somehow kept forgetting to try something."
Locke used the permissions he held over the realm's gateway and closed the doorway leading to the realm.
At the same time, the torrential rain pouring down in the entire realm's sky came to an abrupt and complete stop.
Omega's ability was completely unable to invade the realm.
This left the spectators beneath the Silent Throne thoroughly baffled.
Because not very long ago, Locke had closed the realm's gateway, and Omega had simply ignored it, letting the Fallen Rain Realm's planar territory descend directly into the realm.
This had led all the spectators to believe all along that closing the realm was meaningless.
At the same time, the seven sun ring judges all involuntarily leaned their bodies forward, trying to see what was happening.
In the Silent Plane, Locke closed the realm's gateway and cut off Omega's power from invading the realm.
He thought of something, turned quickly, and walked toward the mind network he had abandoned near the imperial capital. He recited a spell to open the mind network's permission space, and was about to walk in, only to find that some kind of power blocked him from entering the mind network.
Locke furrowed his brow, held the climbing fern, and tried attacking once. But it did not open.
He immediately thought of Grand Duke Westminster. "Could it be that you, the emperor, are interfering?"
Locke used the shadow grass he had left on the emperor's body to quickly fly to his side. He saw that the emperor was now sitting in the Emperor's Hall, head tilted back, his throat already cut.
He seemed extremely shocked. Before death, his pupils had dilated, revealing an expression of horror.
Locke looked at the emperor. "Grand Duke Westminster has actually died."
Omega seemed to have been frightened. Its illusion no longer appeared, afraid that its continued conversation with Locke would cause Locke to identify the crux of the problem again.
Locke's perceptiveness was far too strong. In just a few exchanges, he had seized upon the key to the problem.
At this moment, Omega even felt a pang of regret.
It had been far too carried away with arrogance.
If it had not been relentlessly mocking Locke, perhaps Locke would never have noticed that it had lost the ability to assimilate him.
Locke looked at the emperor's corpse. It was clear the emperor had been in a fight before his death. And within this plane, the only thing capable of killing the emperor besides the four competitors was Disc Creature Omega.
The emperor must have been fighting Omega right before his death.
The climbing fern in Locke's hand transformed into a gilded fern spear. Then he flipped the spear around and fired it toward the direction of the mind network.
If this was the case, then the only place where a problem could have originated was not anywhere in the Silent Plane. It was within the mind network.
Locke suddenly understood. He had guessed at the full truth of the matter.
The gilded fern spear concentrated all its energy into a single point, then, like a bolt of thunder-fire streaking outward, shot toward the mind network on the outskirts of the imperial capital.
Was there still time?
A thunderous boom rang out.
Only a single sound, like the sky itself collapsing, was heard. The entire Perfect Tree, from top to bottom, was directly crushed. And Locke's Moon of Evolution, because the Perfect Tree's structure had collapsed, bore double the planar pressure in an instant and cracked in two.
Omega's voice rang out in triumph, breaking into a loud laugh.
"Hahaha. The apocalypse has officially descended. All you wizards, the time for games is over. Silent Plane, how many times have I swallowed you now. Hahahahaha..."
Edgar went pale. Before he could say anything, his holy avatar died completely because of the destruction of his true body, the Perfect Tree.
If this had been in a normal world, there would not have been even ashes left of him by now.
At this moment, he vanished from the Silent Plane.
In the next instant, he fell from beneath the Silent Throne.
And the Silent Plane in an instant became completely dark.
Like a lamp abruptly extinguished.
In the instant the apocalypse descended, the tree was crushed, the Moon of Evolution was split in two, and both competitors suffered an enormous impact.
The entire image on the Silent Throne went dark.
The screen showed nothing more.
The wizard spectators fell silent.
Just a moment ago they had still been expecting a miracle to happen, but after Locke and Edgar had stalled for half an hour, the apocalypse had still arrived as expected.
This produced a faint trace of sadness and regret among the wizard spectators.
Wizard Rush let out a sigh and looked in silence toward where Edgar had appeared. "Edgar, that was enough. You have already done your best. In every edition of the Silent Chalice, the Silent Plane inevitably succumbs to the apocalypse. No one can stop that."
On the Golden Crown Mountain district side, the sun ring wizard from the Academic Committee furrowed his brow.
The spectators whispered among themselves.
"The apocalypse descended in the end, all at once. The entire world seems to have been swallowed in an instant. But this way, the competition is over. First and second place should be determined."
"Yes. This edition's competition was very exciting. It was well worth attending."
At this moment, quite a few wizards in the spectator section were already preparing to stand, pack up, and leave. Then suddenly, someone called out, "Wait... it looks like a ray of moonlight is rising within the Silent Plane..."
The wizard spectators all looked up in surprise.
Within the boundless darkness of the Silent Plane, a ray of moonlight suddenly rose. That sliver of moonlight was like the first light of creation, like the world being reborn.
A crescent moon hung over the darkened earth.
All things were dark. At this moment, only the moon's light shone.
Upon this vast and dark earth, there was only one ray of moonlight, illuminating the hearts of all who beheld it.
Inside the mind network's permission space, Locke looked at the climbing fern, which had transformed into a heart-shaped leaf and entered its gametophyte state. Just now when he was attacking the mind network's permission space, he had suddenly understood one thing.
What was restricting him from entering the mind network's permission space was his own magic pressure.
In other words, the magical seal that had newly appeared on the mind network's permission space was very primitive. Its method of differentiation was based on a person's magic pressure.
And as long as he voluntarily lowered his own magic pressure, there was a way to enter.
So just now he had activated the botanical magic Alternation of Generations. This magic caused the climbing fern to transform from its sporophyte adult form into its gametophyte form. When that happened, his own magic pressure as the climbing fern's master could also drop along with it.
Like a creature entering dormancy.
And it was precisely because of this that he had been able to enter the mind network's permission space at the most dangerous moment.
And the instant Locke entered the mind network's permission space, he understood everything.
Locke raised his head and looked at the existence spirituality linked to the emperor chess piece.
'Because I connected the emperor chess piece to the existence spirituality of all intelligent beings on the Silent Plane, this indirectly strengthened the resilience of the mind network. The descent of the apocalypse was indirectly slowed by this action of mine. Otherwise, the mutual ecological community formed by my and Edgar's Grand Magics could never have held the apocalypse back for as long as half an hour.'
Locke stepped onto the mental chessboard. "Only at this moment do I finally understand the trick you have been playing. Omega."
"Come out. I know you can manifest here."
Locke saw no reaction and gave a cold laugh. He stamped one foot on the chessboard. "A chessboard must have two faces, does it not?"
At this moment, the mental chessboard, which served as the foundation of the mind network, suddenly flipped over with a terrifying force, as though heaven and earth had reversed. The entire chessboard rotated and turned over.
Then heaven and earth switched places, with up and down inverted.
The other face of the mental chessboard also had a chessboard, and this chessboard was also a network of intersecting grids.
This was a mental dark web.
Within this mental dark web, points of light appeared on the chessboard. Those blue points of light, each one, represented the lights of the mind of an ordinary person in the Silent Plane.
Only these ordinary people at this moment all seemed to have been blinded, all of them drowsy and befuddled, captured by the mental dark web and sunk into slumber.
Locke smiled. "The ability of a disc creature is absolutely incapable of achieving soul assimilation. You do not have this ability. So the true nature of your assimilation ability is a psychic school Grand Magic that captures the minds of ordinary people and forcibly draws them into the mind network."
"In other words, your power and the mind network are fundamentally identical."
A blue ring of light appeared before Locke.
Locke said coldly, "The reason you were able to influence me the first time we met was because I was presiding over the mind network at the time."
"Your power was able to easily enter the realm even when I had closed the realm's gateway, because at the time I was the master of the mind network. So you simply bypassed the realm's gateway and easily entered my other source of power, the realm, through the mind network."
"When you first met me, you could have killed me through this. Because I had not yet perceived that the mind network was your territory, Omega. Just as you killed Grand Duke Westminster and wizard Zorro."
"Am I not correct?"
"Only at the time you wanted me and Edgar to wear each other down, so you did not move against me and let my actions proceed. But you did not anticipate one thing. First, I would voluntarily give up the mind network. And after that, you had in truth already lost any means of interfering with the realm."
"Only at that time I had opened the realm's gateway, so your power was descending through that gateway."
"Second, you could no longer ambush me. And then, what you even less anticipated was that instead of choosing to fight each other, Edgar and I chose to make a trade, making our two Grand Magics mutual ecological communities, buying the most critical half hour for me to find your presence."
At this moment, the blue ring of light that Omega had manifested still said nothing.
Locke smiled slightly. "The last key point is why you could control the mind network. Very simple. Because when wizard Zorro Ryke was building the mind network, he lacked resources, so he used that meteorite as the mind network's foundation. And at the same time, he... also used a part of you."
At this moment, Omega finally could not restrain itself. "How could you know that?"
Locke said, "Deduced from all the available clues. And proving it, for a Second Circle archaeological wizard, is trivially easy."
Locke snapped his fingers. A full moon appeared, and then he used the Second Circle spell, Historical Reconstruction.
Because of the legendary history tome's existence, Historical Reconstruction was naturally infused with a Grand Magic Rune.
This was the fourth Second Circle spell incorporated into the Moon of Evolution's construction.
At present, the Moon of Evolution had five Second Circle spell models incorporated into it: the Firetree Silver Blossom, the Lunar Blessing Curse, Alternation of Generations, Historical Reconstruction, and the Peach Bow Thorn Arrow.
These five Second Circle spell models, like patches, had each added certain capabilities to the Moon of Evolution.
And at this moment, under the effect of Historical Reconstruction, the full truth of the Silent Plane finally rose to the surface.
A meteorite appeared in the void. That meteorite was the civilization seed scattered by the wizards of the Age of Enlightenment. This seed of civilization, after a long span of time in the void, was finally captured by the Silent Plane's planar gravity.
And was drawn into the Silent Plane.
But at that same instant, a disc creature, specifically a division of Omega, also spotted that civilization seed. Impatient and desperate, the division lunged headlong directly toward it.
A tremendous boom rang out.
With the collision of earth-shaking proportions, the meteorite and Omega's division, which had been chasing the meteorite's tail, descended together into the Silent Plane and struck it with enormous force.
The meteorite embedded itself in the ground of the Silent Plane, waiting for the Silent Plane's intelligent life to one day dig it up in later generations.
And Omega's division fell into unconsciousness.
So Omega's division at that time had directly fallen into a coma, its connection to its true body severed. This had caused even Omega's true body to be unable to come over.
Because it had not received the specific location of where its division was.
And after the division fell into its coma, this comatose state lasted quite a long time. As time passed, the division's body was covered by the earth. It was buried underground.
Then it was dug up by someone, treated as a fossil, and exhibited all over the Silent Plane as a curiosity.
Later, wizard Zorro Ryke of the Silent Plane found it. At that time, wizard Zorro wanted to build the mind network, but constructing a psychic school Grand Magic required large quantities of high-grade biological neural tissue material.
Zorro Ryke, extremely short on resources, fixed his gaze on that fossil.
Wizard Zorro Ryke placed his palm on the fossil and said, "What luck. This is actually the body material of a high-grade magical creature, which must have accidentally fallen from beyond the void into this world. I will use it and the meteorite as the foundation for my mind network."
The vision ended.
Locke looked toward Omega. "So you did not come here to invade the Silent Plane at all, at least not the first time. Your original purpose for coming to the Silent Plane was to retrieve your division. Then this world was sealed by the Silent Witch and later modified into a competition arena."
"Again and again, Omega. Every time, you narrowly missed your own division."
"Omega, you have never been whole."
At this moment, the blue ring of light that Omega had manifested was seething in a bizarre fashion, like gas being boiled. Although it was a ring of light, it looked like boiling water, filled with bubbles of light. "You wizards have made my life miserable!"
"Accursed wizards. The Silent Witch did not discover the truth, so she could not have stopped me back then. I already had part of my body within the Silent Plane. My power could bypass the crystal wall system and descend. Not a shred of my true body's power ever descended here. My true body was always outside the world."
"But my division was here."
"Back then I was just one step away from reclaiming my division and incidentally destroying one more plane. But you accursed wizards stopped me. Again and again."
"And now you have even discovered the truth."
Locke said, "So when you said the apocalypse could not be stopped, you were deceiving us. The truth is that the method you use to invade this world is to use the mind network to drag the minds of the Silent Plane's living beings in large quantities into your mental dark web. You killed the emperor by invading the mind network without his knowledge."
"But at this moment, as long as I merge the two mind networks, I can remove your control over the mental dark web. And the other mind network, because I connected everyone's spirituality to the emperor chess piece, is incredibly stable. In fact, with just one simple operation, I can merge the mind networks."
"The apocalypse will be forcibly halted because the conditions for its descent are no longer fulfilled. Your true body never actually drew close to... here. The one that initiated the apocalypse was your division!"
"But your division is equivalent to having been sealed within the mind network. So as long as I remove your control over the mental dark web, the apocalypse will be paused!"
Locke suddenly understood everything.
"No wonder you were so flustered and desperate that you directly killed Grand Duke Westminster and forcibly triggered the apocalypse. Because the moment I transferred the mind network's master to all the beings of the Silent Plane, you knew I could easily merge the two mind networks."
"That is why you made your desperate gamble."
Locke snapped his fingers. "Then, Omega, farewell."
Omega said, 'No!'
Beneath the Silent Throne, Edgar looked back unwillingly and saw not the already destroyed Silent Plane, but Omega's phantom in the sky of the Silent Plane suddenly vanishing.
The entire Silent Plane was miraculously restoring itself.
The apocalypse... had disappeared.
Edgar showed a puzzled expression. His left eye contracted, his right eye widened, and he showed a comical expression. "What happened? Where is the apocalypse?"