Chapter 68
“??? What? What do you mean by ‘only my laws apply’? What ‘only deity’… No way, what’s there to look forward to being a deity in a garbage dump? What kind of deity lives in a garbage dump? Such a deity’s life would be too miserable!”
Cries of a young man’s disbelief echoed from the second floor of an apartment in the old town district.
Staring at the text floating in mid-air, Bai Yi seemed to have seen some kind of devil. He pouted with frustration, suddenly leaned back, and crossed his arms over his chest to make a big X. “I refuse, refuse! Refuse!”
Noise from all directions converged on Bai Yi incessantly. With the passive “Rhythm of All Things” activated, this planet was filled with “sources of pollution” for him. As he continued to level up, according to the system, he was getting closer to the level of a deity. The Rhythm of All Things talent kept awakening, and the noise he received would become stronger and stronger. The pollution would become even more terrifying… What human suffering this was! Just thinking about it made Bai Yi feel awful!
“System, don’t tell me you have no solution~” He suddenly revealed an exceptionally gentle and radiant smile, staring unblinkingly at the text in mid-air, even his tone of voice was unusually gentle.
At this moment, if drawn in a comic, Bai Yi would probably be covered in dark transformation special effects from head to toe.
System, danger!
“If this world truly didn’t allow any supernatural powers to emerge, you wouldn’t have given me three choices in the first place, so there must be a possibility to leverage this world’s physical laws.”
“In fact, this possibility might have already appeared before me…”
“There must be something I’ve overlooked…”At this moment, Bai Yi’s thoughts were extraordinarily sharp, his brain seemed to enter a state of focus beyond the ordinary, operating at super speed.
Perhaps this was “three times stronger when blackening” (doge)?
Suddenly, inspiration struck.
“I’ve got it!”
As Bai Yi spoke, black text slowly floated in mid-air, though this time, these words appeared much slower, as if breaking through some invisible restriction: [To leverage this world’s strict physical law limitations and spread supernatural power, the only item that can achieve this is…]
At the same time, Bai Yi uttered the last sentence:
“Fragment of the Principle of All Things!”
[Fragment of the Principle of All Things.]
Looking at the identical words that appeared in mid-air, Bai Yi’s face instantly lit up—
As expected, it seemed he hadn’t guessed wrong~
When the Fragment of the Principle of All Things first appeared, the system’s introduction was that it could indiscriminately enhance skill attributes, and even items. In a game, this would be considered a cheat-like modifier!
No, it was even more overpowered than a game cheat, because Bai Yi’s skills could be applied in reality. The fact that the Principle of All Things could affect his skills meant it could influence the laws of reality.
In what game could modified attributes and skills affect reality?
Was this reasonable?
The only explanation was that the essence of the Principle of All Things was above all tangible and intangible things in the nightmare game, reaching a level of turning falsehood into reality.
This point had a similar yet different brilliance to the system – the system was essentially also a cheat that turned falsehood into reality, extracting card items from nightmare instances and materializing them in reality, though it needed nightmare crystals or legend degree as driving energy.
The Principle of All Things, however, could modify skill attributes without needing any other energy.
Comparing the two, were their essences actually on the same level? Or even…
As if divinely inspired, a guess emerged in Bai Yi’s mind, seeming to understand certain truths.
He didn’t say it out loud, but instead spoke with a half-smile. “So, system, your previous introduction about the Principle of All Things was actually quite one-sided, with many key details left unsaid, right?”
[The Principle of All Things, as the name suggests, is the ‘principle’ of all things, the most fundamental way of a world, the most fundamental principle, the most fundamental rule, also known as – the origin.]
[Heaven above, earth below, sun rises in the east and sets in the western sea, birds are good at flying, beasts are good at walking, fish die out of water, humans drown in water… All the natural laws of heaven and earth, the principles of existence for all things, are encompassed within the Principle of All Things. Different worlds have different Principles of All Things.]
[Only the Principle of All Things can leverage rules because it is the origin of a world’s rules.]
“Oh, I understand!”
Bai Yi had a sudden realization.
“Using games as an analogy, every game world operates with a set of rules running on predetermined logic – the Principle of All Things is equivalent to the underlying logic of the game world. As for different worlds having different Principles of All Things, that’s only natural! It’s just like how every game has different rules and skill systems…”
For instance, the nightmare fragment instances Bai Yi had experienced were very different. Some had strict physical laws like the real world, while others allowed supernatural powers to exist, and these supernatural instances had different supernatural systems…
He clapped his hands lightly.
“However, none of that matters~”
All he wanted was to leverage the physical laws of the real world to allow supernatural powers to emerge, and the Fragment of the Principle of All Things must be able to do this!
[The player’s understanding is completely correct. The more Fragments of the Principle of All Things used, the greater the leverage on the real world’s physical laws.]
[Player has Fragment of the Principle of All Things ×1. After use, it can weakly leverage the real world’s physical laws, transforming the real world from a non-magical state to a low-magical state. A certain degree of supernatural power will be unrestricted. Do you choose to use it?]
“Refuse… that’s impossible, of course!”
Feeling relaxed, Bai Yi joked around a bit.
[Fragment of the Principle of All Things ×1 has been consumed.]
Suddenly, tiny sparks of fireflies appeared around Bai Yi, countless points of light spreading out with him at the center, like an invisible, dazzling sea of stars sweeping across the entire world.
He walked to the window and gazed into the distance.
The whole world was wrapped in this exquisitely beautiful sea of stars. Bai Yi seemed to see invisible threads floating in the starlight, crisscrossing between heaven and earth, weaving into a net.
Many messages flooded into his mind, perhaps due to the Rhythm of All Things listening to the voices of all things in heaven and earth. He instinctively knew that those countless invisible threads were the rules weaving this world, or rather, the Principle of All Things belonging to this world.
The starlight emanating from his body continued to spread, gradually tinting those threads. Thus, the invisible threads symbolizing the world’s rules were all dyed with a faint, gorgeous starlight.
The spectacular phenomenon like a sea of stars only appeared for an instant before vanishing. All that remained before Bai Yi’s eyes was the desolate long street of the old town district, ancient buildings, and the sun falling on the distant rooftops.
In a daze, he felt that this world had undergone some change imperceptible to ordinary people.
“Spiritual energy, supernatural factors, magical energy, or spirituality… call it whatever you want, anyway, this world seems different now…”
“Earth’s anomaly, revival of spiritual energy, I never thought, never imagined, that those words I casually made up would actually come true. Could it be that this Flower Speaker card can also double as a prophet?”
As Bai Yi muttered to himself, the system prompt appeared.
[The real world’s rules have undergone a slight distortion, the world line has significantly deviated, already shifted by 10%.]
[World line extrapolation in progress…]
[Great changes on Earth, spiritual veins are born. Spiritual energy containing supernatural power is surging in the newly born Earth spiritual veins. Under special circumstances as catalysts, the spiritual energy naturally emitted by the spiritual veins will spread across the entire Blue Star within a year.]
[The real world has transformed from a non-magical world to a low-magical world. Based on the level of supernatural power, it will at most allow the emergence of lv1 supernatural beings.]
[—The world line has shifted, a low-magical world that only allows lv1 supernatural power has been born, you will be the only exception.]
At the same time, the system thoughtfully annotated what the lv1 level of power represents: for the martial arts side, it’s the ability to move swiftly across rooftops; for the magic side, it’s the ability to produce small fireballs or water balls. Things like sword flying or meteor showers are impossible.
“So the next step is to continue collecting more Fragments of the Principle of All Things…” Bai Yi sorted out his thoughts, then turned his attention to another thing the system mentioned, “But, spiritual veins?”
Now this was something he was very familiar with!
In that nightmare instance that transformed from wuxia to xianxia and then was twisted by Bai Yi into high-level martial arts, spiritual veins were the source of spiritual energy in the instance.
Before Bai Yi cleared and left the instance, as the top martial arts figure in that world, a teacher for hundreds of generations who passed on knowledge to those below, and the fully leveled up ‘Pei Hefeng’, he owned an excellent spiritual vein. He even recreated his original house, courtyard, and pond on the mountain where the spiritual vein was located.
If this spiritual vein was no different from that one, he was more than familiar with how to actively draw upon the spirit vein to stimulate spiritual energy…
[The old Principle of All Things has been distorted, the newly born Principle of All Things has bestowed five earth spiritual veins upon this world, distributed across the five directions of the world…]
As the system prompt appeared, it was accompanied by a virtual world map, with five light points marking the locations of the five spirit veins.
“Kun Mountain, Moyun Mountain, Melnis Mountain, Lai Mountain, Tassili Mountain—” Bai Yi immediately recognized the five locations marked on the map, “It turns out to be the five most famous mountain ranges in the world, hmm, conveniently distributed in different countries and regions in the east, south, west, north, and center.”
“However, under special circumstances as catalysts, it would take a year for the naturally emitted spiritual energy to spread across the world?”
Bai Yi slowly drew out a card, tilting his head with a curious smile.
“What kind of circumstances count as special? Would artificially drawing upon the spiritual veins and triggering a spiritual tide count?”
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