Little Pao was in the same aircraft as Big Pao, and he raised a hand right after Big Pao attacked. Black veins that looked like flames spread across his hand as two-lined battle force appeared. Then, Little Pao’s attack transformed into a giant black fiery palm. “Black Blazes Palm.”

The Black Blazes Palm smashed Wu Pa beneath the ground, causing him to spit out a mouthful of blood.

Although Wu Pa’s power level had nearly reached 50,000, he was actually just an ordinary Explorer and could not compare to elite Explorers. Big Pao and Little Pao were also Explorers, but they were elites who had graduated from the Astral Combat Academy and received direct guidance from Astral-10’s mentors. Thus, their strength was not represented fully by their power levels. When the two brothers joined forces, they easily overwhelmed Wu Pa.

A gunshot echoed as a bullet from the Firesoul Gun pierced Wu Pa’s forehead and caused a giant fissure to emerge along the ground, moving towards the city.

“Run!” Little Pao growled, and the two of them immediately fled the scene.

Not long after the two left, the entire city was sealed, and an expert from Deep Crimson Hall was dispatched to search for the assassins. News of Wu Pa’s murder was immediately reported to the Deep Crimson Hall Master—Bo Senior.

Deep Crimson Hall had two Hall Masters, who were nicknamed the Bo Duo. They were both from the Bo clan and were called Bo Senior and Bo Junior. They were both Hunters, and they had established Deep Crimson Hall along with almost ten Cruisers in the fringe territory of Chaos Flowzone. When Bo Senior learned about Wu Pa’s death, he was furious, and he immediately ordered Deep Crimson Planet to be put on lock down until the enemy was found.

Big Pao and Little Pao had not left the region after their assassination. Instead, they had hidden themselves inside the city.

Although Deep Crimson Planet was large, it was a simple task for a Hunter to scour the entire planet. There were not many people who were strong enough to kill Wu Pa, and since the brothers were afraid of being found, they had chosen to hide inside of the city.

“Wu Pa’s the first. Aside from the Bo Duo, we should be able to deal with everyone else,” Big Pao said gravely.

Little Pao looked at the list of the experts in Deep Crimson Hall and shook his head. “They have some Cruisers whose power levels are over 70,000. It’s still dangerous for us to try and deal with them with our current strength.”

Big Pao inhaled deeply. “Old Cai only gave us two Money Bombs, and those are meant for the Bo Duo. We’ll have to come up with some other way to take out the others on our own.”

“There’ll be a way. We need to hurry up and take revenge for back then,” Little Pao coldly replied.

Meanwhile, the golden ocean remained peaceful as ever, seemingly entirely devoid of any living creature.

Lu Yin was still climbing the mountain, and he looked down. It had been quite a while since he had lost sight of the ocean, and now, even the distant forest seemed small enough to fit in one hand. When he thought about how long he had spent in this place, Lu Yin quickly realized that he had been climbing for more than ten days and that he had been trapped in this strange place for nearly a month.

From his position and altitude, he felt like he could leap into the forest with but a single bound.

He looked up again, but the summit was still out of sight.

“Seventh Bro, why do I feel like you’ve recently been spending your time either crossing oceans or climbing mountains. Did you offend the Rune Progenitor somehow?” The monkey was miserable.

Lu Yin was speechless, as the monkey was right. Lu Yin had ascended the Sky Platform, crossed the Ocean of Death, and he was now climbing this mountain, and all of these things were related to the Rune Technology Civilization.

“Monkey, tell me what you know about the Rune Progenitor.”

“I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you. Progenitors are secret existences in and of themselves, so only a few people even know about them. I’m not some archaeologist, so I can’t get access to information about all of them.”

“How many years did the Rune Technology Civilization exist for?”

“I’ve said that I don’t know, but based on some records by a powerhouse, it was short. Very short.”

“A flash in the pan?”

“Somewhat. Anyway, that powerhouse’s journal described the Rune Technology Civilization in one sentence—one sky covering another sky.”

One sky covering another sky? What does that mean? Lu Yin could not understand the words’ meaning, but he was suddenly reminded of the island on the other side of the Ocean of Death where the ancient voice had mentioned the sky had changed from five to six. Could it be related to that?

“Rune Progenitor? How much do you know about him?” Lu Yin asked again.

The monkey grudgingly responded, “I don’t know. The Rune Progenitor lived in a bygone age long ago, and their civilization’s even extinct. It’s already pretty good that we have any records of them at all. You’ll probably have to find a Neoverse power, such as the Three Dark Hands or the Hall of Honor to get more information than that.”

“How long can a Progenitor live for?” Lu Yin did not give up, and he continued on the same line of questioning.

The monkey didn’t immediately answer and muttered to himself for a while. “I don’t know. Logically, even the Third Nightking has lived for a long time and still won’t die anytime soon. A Progenitor should probably live forever.”

“But in this part of the universe, there’s no mention of any Progenitor’s existence,” Lu Yin interrupted.

The monkey did not reply.

“Could it be that all the Progenitors have already died?” Lu Yin guessed.

“I don't know. Seventh Bro, don’t dwell on this so much. Even after a thousand years, you still won’t be able to reach the level of a Progenitor. No, it should be ten thousand—no, a hundred thousand years. Anyway, it’s not realistic to dream about reaching the level of a Progenitor in your lifetime. Let’s just aim to reach the level of an Envoy.”

“Envoy?” Lu Yin was stumped, as he had only ever heard of this term. Right, the monkey had mentioned visiting an Envoy’s grave.

“An Envoy is the term given to a powerhouse whose power level has surpassed 500,000 units. It stems from the idea that they are an envoy of the heavens. Such a person is basically unkillable, and even that Northgate Taisui that we saw before probably only had a power level of around 400,000 at best. He’ll never break through to become an envoy, or else he would never have gone into cryostasis and hidden himself within the Northgate family. To put it another way, there’s no Envoy in the Outerverse, though the Innerverse might have a few.”

Lu Yin longed to know what it would be like to have a power level surpassing 500,000. With just the passing of one’s gaze, the stars would collapse; that was an Envoy.

“Actually, the goal of becoming an Envoy might be too high for Seventh Bro too. After all, you’re from the Outerverse. What do you say? Why don’t we lower the standard to match Northgate Taisui?” The monkey probed Lu Yin.

Lu Yin snorted. “Cut the crap, and let’s keep climbing.”

The monkey lips curled up. “Who knows how much longer we’ll have to climb up this broken mountain for? It’s just a waste of my time. If Sister Feng Jiu was here, my Feng Jiu…”

With Lu Yin’s current strength, scaling a mountain was not a difficult task. However, once he reached a certain altitude, he realized that his star energy was being inhibited. His expression quickly changed as this task had just become a lot harder.

Without star energy, he could only use his physical strength to continue climbing upwards towards the endless peak. Lu Yin started to grow more desperate.

Also, no star energy meant that the Ghost Monkey was permanently screened off, so Lu Yin was by himself as he silently climbed the mountain.

It was unknown whether anyone had climbed up this mountain in the past.

As there were no traces of previous climbers, it led Lu Yin to think about the Cruiser who had vanished. It was possible that the average person would vanish once they touched this mountain and that Lu Yin was an exception. The reason for his exception would be either the Sky Platform or the Ocean of Death’s influence.

Another ten days passed, and the ordeal was very arduous for Lu Yin. Given his physical strength, climbing was not difficult, but he had maintained the same position for twenty days, no matter if he was eating or taking a break. And yet, despite all his effort, he still could not see the top of the mountain.

This repetitive life was incredibly boring.

Below, the forest seemed to be just beneath him, and all he could see was a golden color spreading out in all directions, nothing else at all. He didn’t even know if he was still within the same sealed space.

More importantly, his spiritual force was now being suppressed, and he didn’t know when that had started.

A formless pressure gradually suppressed him more and more. Much like a frog being boiled in warm water, the pressure did not begin with much strength, but it became more intense the higher he climbed. At his current altitude, he was feeling a little tired despite his resistance against spiritual force pressure. It was impossible for a normal Limiteer to reach this point, and even normal Explorers would have a tough time doing so.

The spiritual force suppression that he felt in this location was equivalent to what he had endured during the Astral Combat Tournament when he had received Liu Shaoqiu’s Third Sword.

Lu Yin shook his head vigorously. No matter what, he had to continue on as he had no other choice. He could either climb up or die.

Another five days passed by, and Lu Yin grew a bit dizzy since he was now resisting a rather significant amount of spiritual force pressure at this height. He was almost unable to take it any longer, but the peak seemed to be right in front of him; he had nearly reached it.

Lu Yin was delighted, and he endured the giddy feeling and climbed up a thousand meters in a single breath. He pulled himself up, and his entire body crashed onto the peak. He panted heavily and lay down flat on the ground. He had reached the peak!

He looked around and then behind himself, only to feel an even deeper sense of despair than before. This wasn’t actually the end. There was still another peak beyond this point—no, there were three more peaks that shot into the sky.

This one mountain had three peaks, but he shouldn’t be too far from the highest point of this mountain.

Lu Yin did not concern himself with the mountain any further and fell into a deep sleep that lasted for two days. For the entire time he was sleeping, his two hands never risked leaving the ground out of fear that he would vanish.

At this time, the Daynight Flowzone was growing even more lively, as the Daynight Feast was about to begin. The Daynight clan welcomed many youths from all over, and Nightqueen Yanqing, Chilian Daynight, Tiankong Daynight, Rou Daynight, Zhuo Daynight, and the other young elites of the clan had all rushed back.

The Daynight Feast was a tradition of the Daynight clan, and every time, they would send out invitations to some other members of the younger generation for this social event. It was a tactic to allow those of the Daynight clan to interact with others. Thus, most youth yearned to be invited to the Daynight Feast, which was its own little social circle.

Of course, an invitation was just an invitation, and not everyone would attend. After all, the universe was too vast. Some people were too far away, and it was not practical for them to attend.

The experts on the Top 100 Rankings would all be invited, but at most, only four or five would attend. The rest would all politely decline.

The Daynight Feast was held on the Daynight clan’s main planet, the Nightking Planet. It was an incomparably huge planet, and it was one of the largest in the entire Innerverse. It floated in the heavens like a monster, and it was rumored that the first Nightking had been birthed here. This planet was sacred to the Nightking clan.

The Nightking Planet was rarely opened to the public, but there were countless planets nearby for outsiders to visit. Only on special occasions such as the Daynight Feast would visitors be allowed to actually visit the Nightking Planet, though only those with invitations could enter.

At this moment, above Nightking Planet, a dozen spacecraft hovered in outer space as they watched two figures confronting each other.

Genius powerhouses were always invited to the Daynight Feast, and it was common for conflict to break out or for bitter enemies to meet. The Daynight Feast’s rules said that all grudges had to be settled in outer space, above the planet, and not to be brought down onto the planet itself. Hence, during each Daynight Feast, it would be very lively right above the Nightking Planet, as all sorts of battles would take place there, and nobody on Nightking Planet would not stop them either.

In space, one man and one woman faced each other before savagely attacking each other.

The two were not that old, only around thirty years of age, but both were Explorers. They were both from great powers, and although they could not compare to the people in the Top 100 Rankings, they were still in the top of the younger generation, which was a necessary qualification for them to attend the Daynight Feast.

Their battle grew more intense, and it attracted even more attention as more people gathered to watch the commotion.