Chapter 172: The Step Towards Eternity

Eternity, the meaning represented by these two words, had been engraved deep into Lin Lei’s soul during his second strengthening, and he established it as the goal he would pursue all his life.

During the second strengthening, Lin Lei was only twenty-one years old; he was like a newborn calf that did not fear the tiger. Back then, amidst extreme pain, when these two words flashed through his mind, he grabbed onto them as if they were a life-saving straw.

Today, Lin Lei was no longer the hot-blooded youth he once was. The passage of years and the sculpting of time had caused him to shed his old self and transform into an existence that was wise, mature, and even somewhat cold-blooded.

He also realized what a luxurious concept the word “eternity” was. It stood at the very pinnacle of all meaning in the world, the ultimate sentiment of all intelligent beings.

The Watcher Civilization also pursued eternity. The weak will of their individuals could not resist the erosion of the Sands of Time, but the entire civilization they built stood tall in the Galaxy for tens of millions of years! Generation after generation, their inheritance never ceased.

Pan-dimensional Creatures, as powerful individuals, had also made the same choice. The fire of their Will would never be extinguished!

No one knew why this concept possessed such great magic, able to attract life to pour everything into it. Many great philosophers in the Galaxy could not figure out the reason, so they could only helplessly choose a clever method to evade the essence of this question.

Thus, the philosophers said: “Since we exist in this Universe, then this Universe has a reason for our survival. How to survive longer is an instinctive impulse, and that is where the concept of eternity was born.”

Alright, this explanation was very lazy, but it gave those worldly mortals who did not want to rack their brains pursuing such a baffling question a reason to comfort themselves.

But this explanation was merely a method for weak intelligent beings who lived only a hundred years to avoid tangling their short lives in a profound problem. They had their own ideas; if they could not do it, their descendants always could. At worst, the descendants of their descendants would surely figure it out.

In any case, Lin Lei actually envied the lazy way of intelligent beings, but he had to face this very practical problem.

If he wanted to comprehend the Time Dimension and dance with time, then no matter what, he had to make an understanding of the question of eternity that he considered most reasonable and most able to withstand the test of time.

These understandings were bizarre and varied, existing within one’s heart; inherently, there was no way to judge right or wrong! But deceiving others was easy; deceiving one’s own heart was the hardest!

The World Tree chose guardianship and creation; the Blood-colored Abyss chose destruction and depravity, as well as endless darkness. As for the Dark Saint, he walked a path where he viewed all living beings as ants, walking alone between heaven and earth.

Indeed, these powerful beings achieved eternity in themselves because they became Pan-dimensional Creatures, but they still had to face the choice of the entire Universe.

You persist in your Dao; the Universe, or the “Ultimate Will,” will judge your right or wrong!

Time passed slowly; a thousand years went by in a flash. Regarding the time element of the Dark Saint, Lin Lei had finished comprehending it. Before him, the time strings had begun to reveal themselves, just as Lenna had once extracted them. From the perspective of Will, they were silver-white cold threads, filling everything in existence.

The Lin Lei of today stood at the edge of these time strings, facing the final barrier to becoming a Pan-dimensional Creature.

As long as he jumped in and merged with the time strings hypothesized within this Will, he could become a supreme Pan-dimensional Creature.

But Lin Lei hesitated. His situation was somewhat special; all the Will Dimensional Elements he had comprehended were provided by the Dark Saint. Compared to true Pan-dimensional Creatures who had withstood tens of thousands of years of trials, he was still too young and perhaps insufficient to face the test of endless time.

Lenna appeared silently beside Lin Lei and asked softly, “Lin Lei, what are you waiting for?”

“I am waiting for the Dao in my heart!” Lin Lei answered thus. At this moment, in his heart, past memories began to surge forth, every detail clear beyond compare.

From the moment he developed self-awareness, starting in his mother’s womb, to being born, growing up, learning, and finally the destruction of Earth, he survived in the Mote Ecological Sphere.

Subsequently, time played a joke on him; he instantly returned to three years ago. Time was dark in this segment; a jump occurred.

Lin Lei looked at a bad sector that suddenly appeared in this originally continuous period of time, his eyes dark and unreadable, not knowing what he was thinking.

Finally, he let out a long sigh, gave up pursuing that blank period of time, and jumped over it. Time returned to three years ago, which was exactly the eve of the Layite People’s invasion, and also the true beginning of his magnificent life.

In Lin Lei’s life, two truly great dangers also appeared during this period: one was facing the Dark Saint, and the other was facing the mysterious System.

Both existences were far more powerful and wiser than Lin Lei, yet due to a strange combination of circumstances, they were defeated by his hands.

Originally, it was nothing, but at this critical moment testing his soul, they jumped out one by one.

The first to jump out was the Dark Saint. His image was the majestic appearance capable of destroying heaven and earth right after his resurrection, very real and very clear. Even that violent Will Fluctuation was exactly the same as what Lin Lei had once experienced.

His voice rang in Lin Lei’s mind.

“Mortal, you stole my secret! Prepare to accept eternal punishment!”

This image roared violently. Suddenly, his giant palm slapped towards Lin Lei with an irresistible might.

Lin Lei’s image as an ordinary person seemed as if it would be shattered by him in the next moment.

But just at the instant the giant palm touched him, Lin Lei raised his head, his eyes flashing with intense brilliance, staring straight at the Dark Saint’s image!

“I am still alive, while you have already perished! Even if you were once supreme, now you have fallen into the mud!”

This one sentence represented Lin Lei’s inner determination regarding the flow of time, uninterfered by any external object. This was an essential quality to devote oneself to eternal time.

If he could not do this, he would eventually be troubled by memories, lost in the Abyss of time, then go mad, and finally perish!

The Dark Saint’s image faded amidst Lin Lei’s words, but the mysterious System simultaneously emerged. Its face remained unchanged, still with a question-mark nose, a straight-line mouth, and two black dots for eyes. But unlike the mechanical stiffness of the past, the expression on its face was now much more vivid.

“You think you won? Lin Lei, no, you are still a loser. Want to become Pan-dimensional? You are still too young!”

Lin Lei’s feelings towards this System were very complex. If one asked who truly entered the deepest part of his heart during his process of growing strong, it was not Yan Siyu, not Fuweili, not even his daughter.

Rather, it was this System that had accompanied him through his most difficult and desperate times.

Once, the two escaped from Earth together and struggled to survive on Blue Rain Star together. Even though the System harbored ill intentions, after Lin Lei defeated it, he felt no joy in his heart, only sadness.

It was like being betrayed by a closest friend; the event itself was a painful matter.

Lin Lei did not know what the System before him actually was. He did not want to see anything related to the System, and he even felt extreme anger towards the words of this fake System.

The System was cold and heartless; any System with emotions was a facade!

“Enough! You lost, I won. The words of the weak, whether slander or Curse, are nothing but the glory of the strong. And I am that strong!”

After saying this, Lin Lei’s vision suddenly cleared. The cold time strings appeared before his eyes again. Beside him, Lenna stood there with a look of worry.

“How are you, Lin Lei?” Through long interaction, unknowingly, Lin Lei’s place in Lenna’s heart had become much more intimate and important. This had nothing to do with romantic feelings; it was just a fusion of the two modes of thinking between him and her.

If their thinking did not fuse, like with the Dark Saint and Lenna, over time, the two would only grow more disgusted with each other!

“I am fine. I just suddenly realized that being able to stand here and make a choice proves I have the qualification to become a Pan-dimensional Creature. I don’t need to hesitate at all!”

Hearing Lin Lei’s words, Lenna revealed a smile. This represented Lin Lei’s clear and rational Will, which was exactly what one must possess when facing time strings.

Any hesitation or impulse would lead to getting lost!

Lin Lei took a last look at Lenna beside him, nodded to her, and then walked without hesitation towards the time strings that had become incredibly clear.

Upon contact, cold and vast Will Fluctuations wrapped around him, startling Lin Lei instinctively, but he quickly realized that this was not a Will Fluctuation, but a projection of time within his own Will; time itself did not possess Will.

Lin Lei existed in such an absolutely heartless and cold environment, and his soul began to accept the baptism of time.

Within his Will, anything impure or unable to withstand the test was washed away like sand adhering to the surface of a gemstone, leaving only the dazzling gemstone.

But as this process proceeded, Lin Lei felt something was wrong. Wasn’t the sand being washed away a bit too much, and the gemstone left a bit too little?

Within Lin Lei’s Will, what was being washed away was basically some discordant Law information; these things determined a person’s way of thinking, which was their personality.

Now, time was unknowingly changing his personality, making Lin Lei feel a tendency towards becoming cold and heartless.

This trip back five thousand years had two goals: one was to help Lenna repel the Blood-colored Abyss, and the other was to resurrect his wife and daughter.

But now, the cold time seemed to be washing away the feelings for his wife and daughter in his Will as if they were sand.

Lin Lei was unwilling to do this. The value of a gemstone was merely the result of the judgment of one’s Will. Lin Lei considered these emotions to be his gemstones, so he firmly held onto them tightly.

The washing of the Will was just the first step. Subsequently, the memories of the Dark Saint from tens of millions of years began to recover within Lin Lei’s Will, and the System’s massive trigger-activated database also began to unlock!

This step should not have happened, but because Lin Lei leveled up too quickly, these drawbacks were not resolved, and now they all surged up together!

Whether it was the Dark Saint or the System, the sheer volume of information stored by both surpassed Lin Lei’s imagination!

Lin Lei’s experiences were simply a drop in the ocean compared to these two; there was no comparison. The scenes experienced by both sides in the river of time quickly flashed before Lin Lei’s eyes.

Do not think that storing information was harmless; this was the foundation for constructing Will Law information. If Lin Lei’s Will had not just undergone the baptism of time, he might have gone mad right now.

Setting aside the System, the information in its database did not carry much personal bias, or rather, it contained no emotional color. But the Dark Saint was different; everything he did bore a strong personal stamp.

It made Lin Lei know at a glance that only this guy could do such good deeds!

For example, before the Dark Saint became a Pan-dimensional Creature, he was actually an Energy Controller in the Andromeda Galaxy. To vent his desires, he actually raped and murdered dozens of young girls in a single month… After his bestial desires were satisfied, he annihilated the bodies of all these girls and then continued to madly devote himself to the thirst for truth.

He was like a completely different person before and after, but this fully embodied his theory of self-interest.

Even more tragic was that such scenes were not unique in the process of tens of millions of years. Lin Lei was forced to watch the Dark Saint’s memories of tens of millions of years, which almost made him collapse.

It was like watching a high-definition movie; watching for an hour or two is entertainment, watching for a day is torture. But watching for tens of millions of years, a movie detailed in every aspect and consistent in style, was enough to make an ordinary person unknowingly change their thinking and be assimilated into the Dark Saint’s mode of thinking!

Fortunately, Lin Lei was no ordinary person; he was almost a Pan-dimensional Creature, so he pulled through!

Regarding the System’s database, that was much easier; it contained only pure information. Lin Lei felt like he had watched an ultra-long science popularization movie. He didn’t have any specific feelings after watching it, just felt he benefited a lot.

Lin Lei felt that the time he spent watching the memories of these two was much longer than the time he had lived himself. This suddenly made his brief life experience incredibly rich, and his Will became unprecedentedly vast, even surpassing Lenna and the Blood-colored Abyss he had once seen!

His perspective on the world immediately changed. His Will tentacles extended infinitely outward in an instant. In the haze, Lin Lei heard an exclamation, but he did not care and continued to enjoy this incredibly powerful sense of transparency.

In the process of extending his Will tentacles, he saw many bright or dim lights of Will. What these lights represented were vivid lives one by one.

Will travels through the Universe!

At this moment, Lin Lei truly felt the meaning of this sentence. His Will tentacles had crossed the multi-dimensional Universe, extending without obstruction throughout the entire Pan-dimensional Universe.

Lin Lei had finally become a higher-level existence!