This time it was Lin Moyu's turn to ask: "What is a calamity-bearer?" He had never heard the term before, but from the Primordial Chaos Gem's tone it clearly wasn't simple.
The Primordial Chaos Gem explained: "When a world undergoes a Great Calamity, it will sometimes designate a calamity-bearer—the focal figure of that calamity—someone who usually possesses certain traits. Some calamity-bearers are exceptionally gifted and exceptionally lucky; the world deems them worthy of becoming a True Supreme, so it assigns them that role."
Lin Moyu said, "Isn't that a good thing?"
The gem shook its head. "Not necessarily. Sometimes a calamity-bearer comes into being because he did something that affected the next Great Calamity—just like you. In the worlds I've seen, nine out of ten calamity-bearers perish. Only occasionally does one break through the calamity and become a True Supreme. It's a double-edged sword—pros and cons—and they usually experience very ugly things, with miserable ends more often than not."
Lin Moyu's heart skipped. "What kinds of things?"
"With a touch of mystery," the gem said, "all kinds: betrayal by family, lovers turning against you, brothers stabbing you in the back, and so on. As the calamity-bearer, you become the center of the world and the target of countless covetous eyes. Many people, influenced by the world-rules, will unconsciously shift their thinking and treat the calamity-bearer as an enemy. You can think of it as a shift in fate. And it's not only the calamity-bearer whose end is grim—his friends' destinies are affected too, often for the worse."
Lin Moyu frowned. "Now that I've become the calamity-bearer, will I become everyone's enemy?"
"Not guaranteed," said the gem, "but the odds are high. You must be ready."
Lin Moyu thought for a while and said softly, "I've already moved my relatives and friends into my world; they're now detached from this world and shouldn't be affected by the Ancient Wilds. Only my wives are still here. I need to bring them out quickly and send them into my world as well."
"Putting them in your world is indeed a good plan," the gem agreed. "Once that's done, you can fight with fewer scruples. A calamity-bearer's probability of becoming a True Supreme isn't low. I believe you can handle it."
"You think rather highly of me," Lin Moyu said with a small shake of his head. He knew what he would face next: Dao, the Calamity Supreme, and that hidden figure. All of them sought to become True Supremes. By the logic of the world-rules, he would inevitably become their enemy—no quarter given. To stand against beings who have surpassed Calamity Supreme is no small thing. But as matters stood, there was no other path—only by meeting the danger head-on could he hope to live.
"In the end, strength is the only solution," he said. "As long as my fist is bigger than theirs, there's nothing they can do to me. Whoever the enemy is, I'll end them with one punch."
Lin Moyu's Dao-heart was firm. "Whatever schemes and layouts you have—I'll smash them with raw power." He had no desire to scheme like the Calamity Supreme across eons. He hadn't lived that many years; he had no patience for that. He preferred to settle problems directly. He admired the Calamity Supreme's grand layout, but he himself would never do it. If I can take the straight path, I won't take the winding one. That was his temperament.
"Since I'm the calamity-bearer," he concluded, "the next step is to bring my wives back quickly and put them into the storage-world. Then I'll find Boyang Calamity Supreme and figure out what happened in the small world—where did Meng Anwen and the others go?" Lin Moyu had always felt they were alive. Back then, Boyang Calamity Supreme took them away—but what would be the point? Now another possibility made sense: perhaps the Calamity Supreme took them, intending to use them for something. But then why were there traces of their activity left behind in the Great World? Those were questions he would have to investigate himself.
He had a thought. "Once I finish this round of rebirth, I have something to ask of you."
"Just say the word," said the Primordial Chaos Gem. "If it's within my power, I won't refuse." Its attitude was far better than before.
They arrived before a new cluster of Primordial Dawn Vortices. Lin Moyu examined it from the outside; the vortices here were notably larger than the previous cluster's. With just a glance he marked several suitable targets. He flew in alone, set up a formation, and used the Heaven's Calamity Scepter as the formation core. Though it was only his third time, he was already adept. When the array was finished, the Balance Gem flashed and synchronized the array with the vortex's power. Lin Moyu plunged straight in and began another round of courting death.
A one-kilometer Primordial Dawn Vortex draws in much more power from the Forbidden Zone of Life. Lin Moyu entered and was instantly annihilated again. The gem watched him cycle between death and rebirth while feeling the world shift. When Lin Moyu hit five hundred rebirths and his body began to strengthen, the Primordial Chaos Gem acutely sensed the Great Calamity advance another notch.
Lin Moyu truly had become the calamity-bearer: as his body and soul grew stronger, the Great Calamity's progress accelerated. Great Calamities are hard to survive—especially for the calamity-bearer; they're practically death. Even so, the gem believed Lin Moyu could weather it.
Not far away, a vortex flipped phase—its force changed, and its orientation shifted too. An invisible power swept the void. The gem suddenly spotted something drifting in from the emptiness—tiny as dust, but in such a barren place even a speck stands out. With a wave of its small hand it drew the mote in.
"Time Essence Stone." It frowned slightly. The dust-speck was a minuscule grain from an exceedingly rare Time Essence Stone. It was so small as to be unusable, but the gem sensed another aura upon it—faint, but present. Its sensing would not be wrong; it meant someone had once obtained a complete Time Essence Stone and used it for something. After use, a Time Essence Stone loses its function and falls apart; this dust was a fleck shed after the stone shattered. Even shattered, a Time Essence Stone is top-tier material—no one would casually discard it.
"Let me see who was lucky enough to get one."
The gem activated the Elemental Gem and Realm Gem, and with them rewound time. With a specific target—the mote from the Time Essence Stone—the back-trace was precise. Soon images surfaced: a whole Time Essence Stone drifting in the void. Time Essence Stones are too special to evolve into living beings. A great hand appeared and grasped it.
"It's him."
In the projection, the hand clamped firmly on the stone. The gem hadn't mentioned one point earlier: a Time Essence Stone is so strong that at least a Calamity Supreme is required to seize it. Lin Moyu's body-and-soul power at the time, even just shy of a Calamity Supreme, would have needed Ascension to possibly catch one. The hand in the image held the stone unwaveringly—already proving the owner's realm: at least a Calamity Supreme.
In that instant the gem had a guess, and when the owner's figure appeared, it was not surprised: the Calamity Supreme had obtained the Time Essence Stone. The stone was sizable; the great hand clenched tighter, cracks veined across it, more and more, until with brute force it was crushed into four or five pieces. As it split, a few dust-like particles flew off and vanished into the void. The Calamity Supreme didn't care about the dust; he pocketed the stone and left, satisfied.
The gem cut the trace. The Calamity Supreme would surely use the Time Essence Stone afterward; what he'd do with it, none could know. The gem understood the world-rules: using a Time Essence Stone causes time disorder, and rewinding time also calls on the power of time—the two would conflict, and might even alert the Calamity Supreme. Besides, under such conflict it wouldn't see anything meaningful; better not to look. Lin Moyu didn't want to alert the Calamity Supreme yet, either.
Split into several pieces, the stone's size shrank and its effect weakened—but there were now more fragments. "What will he do with them?" The stone admits many uses; who could predict his choice? But surely a being like him wouldn't waste it—whatever he did would be momentous.
The gem thought of how Lin Moyu once mentioned the small world that vanished, amid a surge of time-space force. That had to be a Calamity Supreme's doing. At first it had suspected the old man in the green robe; now it might just as well have been the Calamity Supreme. Speculation wasn't the gem's forte—thinking about it made its head ache. "Let the Master worry about it." It kept the dust fleck; once Lin Moyu finished this round of courting death, it would hand it over.
Within the vortex, violet light flashed without end. Lin Moyu grew stronger through rebirth, and adapted through rebirth. He regained awareness again, from the faintest perception to full control of his body. He could clearly feel himself stronger again, and his understanding of the Forbidden Zone of Life had deepened. He had personally felt its desolation and solitude. The Zone contains a terrible power that destroys all that enters—especially living beings.
On one point the Calamity Supreme had been right: Calamity Supremes are the third tier; those who surpass them—Dao—belong to the fourth tier, though that fourth tier in their hands is unstable. A True Supreme should be the one who truly possesses fourth-tier power. If Calamity Supremes are the limit of tier three, then the Sky-rending Emperor-Lord was the limit of tier four. To enter the Forbidden Zone of Life requires stepping into the fifth tier. So far only the Heaven's Calamity Scepter and the system have reached tier five. The reason the Calamity Supreme could articulate these tiers so clearly is that he, like Dao, surpassed Calamity Supreme and touched that level—nothing else explains it.
During his cycles of rebirth Lin Moyu thought through many things, tying off points he'd never fully understood until now. The Calamity Supreme must have obtained immense information in the deepest Ancient Wilds; he even knew about the Great Calamity. After taking that step, he waited for the calamity—his chance to become a True Supreme. His layout was vast and his scheming deep; across the Ancient Wilds none outstripped him. He could be called the most outstanding figure since the second Great Calamity.
Amid these thoughts Lin Moyu realized he had fully adapted to the Forbidden Zone power within this vortex; it no longer sufficed to kill him, and the rebirth cycles naturally stopped. He didn't know how many times he'd resurrected—during the early stretch he had no awareness at all—but he felt his body and soul were again nearing a limit; this time it was the Calamity Supreme limit.
He checked his rebirth stock. After three rounds of courting death, with Little Tree pushing itself to replenish them, he still had 36,000 rebirths in reserve. Leaving a few thousand as a buffer, he could run one more full round—find another vortex.
With a thought he withdrew the formation and flew out of the vortex.
The Primordial Chaos Gem looked him over. "Master, your body and soul are approaching the Calamity Supreme limit."
Lin Moyu nodded. "Roughly. A few thousand more deaths should do it." He couldn't pinpoint the limit as cleanly as the gem, but he could feel his own body. The Calamity Supreme limit is a somewhat hazy notion; once the body and soul cross a certain threshold, you sense it.
"If I'm not mistaken," the gem said, "after you hit that limit, your body and soul will keep strengthening—but that growth won't show in this world. It will lay the foundation for entering the Forbidden Zone of Life later. Think of it as early adaptation to the Zone."
"I understand," Lin Moyu said. "It's happened before. Let's find another vortex."
"Already found—over there." It pointed deeper into the cluster—at a Primordial Dawn Vortex over ten thousand meters across. Lin Moyu was now somewhat adapted to the Zone's power; unless the force was very strong, it couldn't trigger rebirth anymore.
He flew straight through the cluster, ignoring the chaotic forces inside. His body was rock-steady; all impacts slid off without a ripple. Though his body was only near the Calamity Supreme limit, in this place if he fought a Calamity Supreme, the one to die would be the Calamity Supreme. Only back in the Ancient Wilds could a Calamity Supreme leverage the world-Dao to fight Lin Moyu—and even then, their odds weren't great. At this point even Lin Moyu didn't know where his limit lay.
He set the array, balanced it with the vortex's power, and once more plunged into the mist drawn from the Forbidden Zone of Life—shattering instantly.
The fourth round of courting death officially began. Lin Moyu grew stronger through rebirth; the Primordial Chaos Gem read the world's shifts. As Lin Moyu grew, the calamity's progress was pushed onward.
"The Ancient Wilds are going to descend into utter chaos…"