"The aura of the Soul Forging Tower?"
Lynn's heart suddenly tightened.
The moment that voice rang out, he clearly felt as if another "being" had appeared behind him.
It wasn't an aura leaking out, nor was it mental spying; it was simply a fact that it was already standing there.
Almost instinctively, Lynn turned around abruptly.
The next instant, his pupils contracted slightly.
Behind him, among the dense, star-like threads of regularity hanging down from the dome, there was indeed a figure suspended.
"Welcome to Shadow Cocoon Tower."
A deep, calm voice echoed in this bottomless abyss.
"Or, you might prefer to call it the Shadow Library."
"The young morning star."
"Your body... is indeed correct."
"That is the aura of the Soul Forging Tower."
Accompanied by a teeth-grinding "squeak," it was as if countless threads were being pulled taut at the same time.
From the shadows of the abyss, a colossal figure slowly descended.
That was not a humanoid creature.
It has no lower body; its torso is composed of translucent, deep purple, regular crystals, with countless flowing rune veins seemingly sealed inside.
From behind it, six enormous shadow hands extended, resembling the forelimbs of arthropods—long, sharp, and with an eerie elegance.
These shadow hands grasped the drooping, regular threads, making it look more like a spider weaving its web, suspended in the void.
Its "face" has no facial features.
Instead, there is a smooth, mirror-like obsidian surface.
When it opens its mouth, layers upon layers of flowing, collapsing, and recombining rune fluctuations will appear on the mirror surface.
It was draped in a robe that seemed to be woven from liquid shadows.
The edges of the robe stretched outwards, transforming into countless regular stitches hanging down throughout the tower, as if the library itself were woven from its shadow.
It doesn't walk. It floats.
Six shadowy hands gently plucked at the threads in the void, their movements delicate and precise, as if tuning an invisible instrument.
"hiss……"
Lynn's gaze narrowed slightly as he quietly observed the strange yet imposing figure, without harboring any hostility towards him.
At that very moment, a message naturally surfaced in the depths of his consciousness.
It was as if this library had proactively filled in the gaps in his "cognition".
Solas the Shadowweaver.
The administrator of the Shadow Library.
The guardian of the Shadow Cocoon Tower.
Lynn instantly understood.
If the vague "opportunity" mentioned by Wizard Alder is true, it is probably this very being before us.
As for the "aura of the Soul Forging Tower" that the other party repeatedly mentioned, Lynn was naturally very clear about it.
He entered the Realm of Morning Stars with the help of that invitation from the Soul Forging Tower.
As a result, his mental strength underwent a qualitative change, and he finally crossed that threshold.
And during that period...
He also experienced a "journey" that still seems like a dream to this day.
It was as if the spirit had left the body and was being drawn to some strange and grand place.
However, decades had passed since he broke through to the Morning Star Realm. During this long period, Lynn never sensed anything unusual again.
His mental functions were normal, his perception of rules was stable, and the existence of the "Invitation to the Soul Forging Tower" seemed to have come to an end with the completion of the breakthrough.
Therefore, he always thought that it was just a one-time opportunity.
Unexpectedly, today in the Shadow Library, the traces buried by time have reappeared and were seen through by the library administrator at a glance.
Of course, this may also be related to the social circles Lynn has been exposed to in the past.
Since he entered Morning Star, the strongest opponent he has encountered is none other than the Sea Emperor of Surging Waves, a level five creature at its peak.
Let alone the Morning Star Realm, he has never had any direct contact with any truly top-tier beings.
That is why the trace of the Soul Forging Tower emanating from him remained undetected.
But the Shadowweaver Solas before them was clearly different.
Lynn was unable to determine the other party's specific level of cultivation.
But to be able to serve as the administrator of the Shadow Library in the Shadow Forge, guarding this place of heritage, one's level must be at least a level six being.
With this in mind, Lynn became even more cautious.
"Lord Solas."
He nodded slightly, his tone restrained yet sincere.
"The aura of the Soul Forging Tower you mentioned... I did use an item called 'Soul Forging Tower Invitation' when I broke through to the Morning Star Wizard level."
"After that, I experienced a rather strange dreamlike journey, as if my spirit left my body and was led to some unknown place."
"But after that, I never felt anything again."
"So I always thought that invitation was just a one-time consumable."
Lynn raised his eyes and looked directly at the mirror-like obsidian face.
"What...what exactly did you sense in me?"
"That Soul Forging Tower... could it not be over yet?"
"Hahaha……"
The next moment, a chilling laugh echoed through the abyss.
The six shadow hands behind Solas moved gracefully through the void, like a loom in motion.
As he moved, countless shadow cocoons hanging from the ends of the silk threads swayed gently, collided with each other, and emitted a low and rhythmic echo.
The entire space seemed to have transformed into a breathing black forest.
“Young Morning Star, there’s no need to be so nervous.”
Soras's voice was genderless, like ten thousand coins falling onto ice at the same time—fragmented, cold, yet strangely orderly.
"The remnants of the Soul Forging Tower are not necessarily a bad thing for you."
"On the contrary."
On his obsidian mirror, the runes paused slightly, as if they were looking into something deeper.
"The reason I awoke from my slumber and appeared in person was because I sensed that familiar fluctuation."
“Those are the marks left by an old friend…”
"After meeting you, I have found the answer to what I wanted to confirm."
After a brief pause, Solas continued:
"Since that's the case..."
"It's both a return of a favor and a way of following the old practices of the Shadow Library."
"I will give you some opportunities."
"And a little guidance."
As he finished speaking...
Above the dome, the core furnace formed from the rules of shadow slowly lit up.
A deep purple glow descended from above, like cold, lonely starlight, scattering into this inverted abyss.
The next moment, billions of shadow cocoons trembled simultaneously.
Countless extremely fine, regular threads extend from the shadow cocoon, intertwining and overlapping, creating layers of shadows, like a huge web of shadows covering the entire library.
A series of shadows slowly spread out around Lynn, densely packed and seemingly endless.
At that very moment.
Solas's shadow hand suddenly twitched slightly.
The movement was extremely casual, yet it seemed to have deflected some predetermined trajectory of fate.
The next instant, one of the regular threads broke free from its original track and slowly slid down from the dome.
It fell silently down and stopped in front of Lynn's face.
Immediately afterwards, the cocoon suspended by the silk thread cracked slightly.
Darkness surged within the crevice.
A forbidden body of knowledge, swirling and twisting like a nebula, quietly revealed itself.
"Hmm...this is..."
Lynn's pupils suddenly contracted.
The moment his gaze truly touched that nebula, his mental energy uncontrollably extended forward to make contact with it.
The next moment!
boom!
It wasn't a real explosion, but rather the shock of information being suddenly released after being compressed to its limit.
An endless torrent of knowledge, like a burst dam, poured into the depths of his mind in an instant.
Lynn's consciousness suddenly froze, and he stood frozen in place.
Fortunately, he was no longer a low-level wizard.
The Morning Star Wizard's spiritual realm has long since evolved into a vast expanse like a starry sky, with four permanent magical marks guarding it like stars, stabilizing its spiritual structure.
even so.
Even as that massive influx of information poured in, his mind was still under immense pressure.
That's not "understanding," but being forced to bear it.
Its Morning Star level comprehension was operating at full speed, frantically analyzing, dissecting, and absorbing the content.
Even so, the amount of information was still far too vast.
If that forbidden knowledge was a vast, surging ocean, then Lynn's current comprehension was merely a river flowing by.
It will inevitably take time to fully read and digest it.
………………
I don't know how much time passed.
It felt like a fleeting moment, yet also like a long stretch of time.
Lynn finally slowly opened her eyes.
The weariness in his eyes had not yet faded, but it was replaced by an undisguised excitement and awe.
That information greatly shocked Lynn and made him understand what the so-called Soul Forging Tower was.
"Lord Solas..."
Lynn spoke up instinctively.
However, all that answered him was deathly silence.
He then realized that he was now the only person left in the vast Shadow Library.
The Shadow Weaver, Soras, has long since disappeared.
Beside him, in the void, floated an ancient and simple clock mark.
Lynn's mental energy swept over it lightly.
The next instant, his heart skipped a beat.
"It's unbelievable... three days and three nights have already passed!"
The librarian of the Shadow Library naturally couldn't stay here and wait for him to wake up from his enlightenment.
I just casually noted down the time for him, and then quietly left.
………………
It is worth mentioning that the time mark also included a brief but meaningful explanation.
It turns out that whenever the Shadowweaver Solas appears, any reader who happens to be in the Shadow Library will be given a "small gift".
The form of gifts is not fixed; some are obscure and complicated, while others are simple and direct; some are just a few scattered insights, while others involve real taboos.
But whatever the content, Solas would set a restriction on this gift.
That was three days and three nights.
After three days and three nights, regardless of whether the recipient has fully understood or read the entire text, they will be forcibly awakened and pulled out of the state of enlightenment.
This is to prevent readers from becoming addicted and to prevent time from being consumed endlessly.
Lynn's situation is clearly a rather special case.
The information he came into contact with mostly involved forbidden knowledge, and even with the mental capacity of a fourth-level Morning Star Wizard, he still found it extremely difficult to read.
Therefore, although he saw a lot of content during these three days and three nights, there was still much more knowledge that he had not yet had time to access.
Even so, the part he had already read and understood was enough to excite Lynn.
Because it contains hidden information related to the Soul Forging Tower.
The Soul Forging Tower is a supreme existence existing between the real and the illusory.
The term "nothingness" does not mean that something does not exist.
Rather, it refers to any plane in the myriad realms, whether it be a resource plane, a primary civilization plane, a secondary civilization plane, or even a higher civilization plane.
The coordinates of the Soul Forging Tower cannot be found directly in the real world.
However, this does not prevent all living beings from establishing a connection with it.
Through certain special mediums, such as the Soul Forging Tower invitation that Lynn once used, or other relics or opportunities related to the Soul Forging Tower.
When these mediums are activated, they will project a "Soul Forging Tower Journey" onto the original plane.
It was a projection, a spiritual journey.
After the journey, participants will experience a leap in mental strength as a reward for this encounter.
From this perspective, that journey was more like a dreamlike experience.
Even if the participants follow the path in their memories and search repeatedly throughout the myriad worlds, they will never be able to reach the true location of the Soul Forging Tower.
That is why the Soul Forging Tower is called "Nothingness".
However, the Soul Forging Tower is by no means a figment of imagination.
Because it truly exists.
However, it does not manifest itself in any surface world, but is hidden beneath a deeper origin, existing in a realm that rules, consciousness, and civilization cannot reach.
It is illusory yet not false, hidden yet not lost.
All of this is closely related to the origin of the Soul Forging Tower.
To this day, no one has been able to answer the question of who exactly built the Soul Forging Tower.
Many powerful individuals even believe that the Soul Forging Tower is not a man-made creation, but has existed since ancient times.
It may have originally belonged to the endless heavens, born from the very origin of heaven and earth, a "creation" formed by the laws of nature over a long period of time.
The reason for this speculation is that the Soul Forging Tower is a part of the natural cycle of heaven and earth.
When a living being dies, its body disintegrates, transforming into the finest particles and returning to the world; at the same time, the soul does not disappear into thin air.
The soul, too, will perish, breaking down into even smaller, more fundamental particles that sink into the deeper structures of heaven and earth.
Once their power and understanding reach a certain level, the strong in all the worlds will realize that heaven and earth are not just a single layer.
On the contrary, the entire universe is composed of multiple overlapping layers.
However, more than 99 percent of living beings only live in the outermost "surface world".
Most civilizations only reveal this one layer of structure, but "only revealing" does not mean "only existing".
Just like the divine realm where the civilization of gods resides, its true structure is a complex system with internal and external differentiation, totaling five layers.
Lynn had already learned this from ancient texts back in the City of Machines.
The Soul Forging Tower exists in the deepest planes of the endless heavens.
It does not belong to any one world, but rather acts as an anchor, connecting and guiding the flow of souls throughout all the myriad realms.
Whenever a soul is completely destroyed, the Soul Forging Tower will sense it and absorb a portion of the soul particles that have completed reincarnation from the depths of heaven and earth.
This is the true definition of the Soul Forging Tower.
Some powerful figures have speculated that in the most ancient era, the Soul Forging Tower may have only had a few floors.
But in the endless flow of time, it continuously absorbed and settled those soul particles from all the heavens and myriad worlds, and finally transformed into a supreme tower of immeasurable height and unknown number of layers.
From this perspective, it was no accident that Lynn's spiritual power suddenly surged after he entered the Soul Forging Tower.
It was more like, during his "journey" through the Soul Forging Tower, the Soul Forging Tower continued to absorb the soul particles from the entire endless plane as usual.
Lynn, however, merely absorbed a tiny fraction of it at that moment.
This is fundamentally different from the usual practice of searching for or devouring souls.
Because those soul particles have already undergone the cleansing of the cycle of heaven and earth, and no longer carry any impurities, obsessions, or pollution.
Thinking of this, Lynn's thoughts became even deeper, and his emphasis on the Soul Forging Tower was elevated to a whole new level.
He was, after all, a time traveler.
In my previous understanding, the universe was born from a Big Bang, originating from a singularity, and continued to expand. In the process of irreversible entropy increase, it eventually faced heat death or complete collapse.
If we apply this theory to the current context of the universe, the so-called myriad worlds are themselves like superpositions of one universe after another.
They are also expanding, evolving, and undergoing an unstoppable increase in entropy.
When entropy accumulates to its limit, will all the heavens and myriad worlds eventually face a total collapse?
The existence of the Soul Forging Tower is precisely like a reverse node.
It does not participate in expansion; instead, it absorbs and gathers the soul particles that have completed their reincarnation and transformation, "intercepting" them from the great cycle of heaven and earth.
In a sense, the Soul Forging Tower is itself a kind of entropy reduction device.
"If that's really the case..."
Lynn's Adam's apple bobbed slightly, and a tingling, almost numb, throbbing sensation welled up inside him.
"The level of that Soul Forging Tower is far too high..."
This is no longer a product of any particular civilization or world.
Rather, it concerns the stability of the entire structure of all the heavens and myriad worlds.
Looking across the wizarding civilization, the Morning Star warriors are already the backbone of advanced civilizations;
Only His Majesty the Moon can influence the direction and future of the entire civilization.
So, what if we want to influence the evolutionary trend of all the heavens and myriad worlds?
That can only be above the radiant moon!
In wizarding civilization,
That level of existence is given an almost mythical title: the Radiant Sun!
"The Soul Forging Tower... is most likely inextricably linked to Hao Ri."
The moment this thought crossed Lynn's mind, she felt a sense of relief.
Because once the level of power reaches a certain point, it ceases to be a threat to him.
Just as humans don't care whether ants have discovered the secrets of the world.
If Hao Ri exists as a human, then Lynn is nothing more than a tiny ant that has just learned to raise its head.
Moreover, what truly excited Lynn was not just this forbidden knowledge itself.
Rather, it is an undeniable fact that the Soul Forging Tower is not a one-time opportunity.
It is not a discarded object.
The items related to the Soul Forging Tower are not consumables.
Each use is like a short but real fantasy journey, a "journey to the Soul Forging Tower".
After the journey ends, the Soul Forging Tower will leave a mark on the user.
That is a path.
A road that can be traced back and retraced.
Of course, not everyone can walk this path; it is limited by one's level of understanding, strength, cognition, and even the essence of one's soul.
But these were never problems for Lynn.
He is rewarded for his hard work.
What he saw was not a threshold, but a clearly visible progress bar.
"The training of a Morning Star Wizard... is difficult, extremely difficult."
Lynn muttered to himself, his expression unusually solemn.
“Spiritual cultivation is fundamental, without a doubt.”
"But while enhancing spiritual power, one must also constantly resonate with the power of rules, become familiar with it, master it, and eventually integrate it into one's own system."
That's why the path to the Morning Star is so long.
His "Heaven rewards diligence" principle had already provided the calculated result, and with his current cultivation method, he was pursuing two parallel paths:
Meditation enhances mental strength and deepens the understanding and control of the power of rules. It takes about two hundred years to reach the mid-stage of a fourth-level wizard.
"That is based on the premise that... all cultivation paths are advanced simultaneously."
Lynn's eyes flickered slightly, and his thoughts became clearer.
"But what if... one's mental strength could be enhanced through another path?"
"Then I can completely free myself from this part of my time and devote all my energy to the resonance and understanding of the power of the rules!"
Upon realizing this, Lynn's breathing quickened.
"Efficiency... at least doubled."
He knew very well that the claim of "doubling" the speed of cultivation was not accurate.
Even if we remove the most ideal part, a conservative estimate suggests that an increase of 80% or even 90% is entirely achievable.
"It used to take more than two hundred years to break through to the mid-stage of the fourth-level wizard."
"But if one manages to traverse the Soul Forging Tower..."
Lynn's gaze suddenly became intense.
"A hundred years or so is enough!"
At that moment, an uncontrollable look of ecstasy appeared in his eyes.
This trip was definitely a steal!
Shadow Forge, Shadow Library, Shadowweaver Thoras...
This was no ordinary stroke of luck, but a complete set of fundamental insights that could change Lynn's cultivation trajectory.
He was guarding such a treasure trove, but due to his limited knowledge, he was unable to truly develop it for a long time.
It wasn't until he met Solas and came into contact with knowledge that was considered taboo that he finally understood.
"Next..."
Lynn murmured softly.
"Go to the Dark Wizards' Meeting."
"If we could find other ways to accelerate our comprehension of the power of the rules..."
A slow smile spread across his lips.
"A hundred years? Perhaps... it won't even take a hundred years."
If this thought were to reach the ears of other Morning Star wizards...
That would probably be enough to make them lose their composure on the spot.
When they broke through a minor realm, each time it was like an ordinary person ascending to heaven.
Wasted years, wasted effort?
Compared to Lynn, the gap is so large that it is almost despairing.
"Let's reunite with Ald, the Sea Emperor, and the others. I wonder if they've come out yet..."
The thought settled.
The next instant, Lynn's mind stirred, and his figure gradually blurred in the Shadow Library, eventually disappearing without a trace... (End of Chapter)
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