After speaking, Xue Dili covered his mouth.
The consciousness space was frighteningly quiet.
"Just pretend you didn't hear those embarrassing words." He immediately tried to salvage his dignity.
"No, it's alright, your first instinct wasn't wrong. Indeed, it proved my hypothesis." The Great Sage's expression was very serious, completely unconcerned about how embarrassing Xue Dili's words might have been.
"What hypothesis?"
"Something might be wrong with your world." The Great Sage began circling Xue Dili, stroking his beard repeatedly.
"My world?" Old Deng's circling made Xue Dili a bit dizzy, so he decided to stand up and circle with the old man around the half-built system.
"Your feeling is not wrong, mother-like intuition isn't something to be embarrassed about. If I'm not mistaken, that's your world's consciousness crying out to you for help." The Great Sage quickened his pacing, as if his thoughts were racing faster.
"Then what could be wrong with my world? A third world war?" Xue Dili watched Old Deng's pace quicken and matched his speed.
"I don't know, there's too little information, but this hypothesis must be correct: your world is calling for help, something big must be wrong." The Great Sage stopped his pacing, causing Xue Dili to bump into his back.
"What should we do next?" Xue Dili's expression turned serious as well.
"We can only wait. You keep to your normal schedule, and I'll continue perfecting the system. Tomorrow night, when you sleep, make sure to stay conscious, control yourself, then we can figure out what to do with more information." The Great Sage's words reassured Xue Dili quite a bit.
At the very least, this old man's knowledge and insight far surpassed his own as an eighteen-year-old, and if he hadn't mistaken in yesterday's dream, this old man was from an interstellar civilization.
Things being as they are, let's stick to the plan for now.
...
The next day, Xue Dili looked at the system panel showing Tier One at 96%, feeling an unparalleled joy.
Maybe in another day, he'll reach Tier Two, which is Hero Level.
He began to travel around Chiba Prefecture like an ordinary tourist.
He went to the ocean world, watched the performing orcas. For some reason, the orcas seemed particularly fond of him, continuously spraying water at him.
He also saw sea tigers... uh, tiger sharks. The tiger sharks kept locking eyes with him through the glass.
He also visited places preserving the Edo Era's architecture and customs, following his original plan.
However, what Xue Dili didn't notice was that, after he left the hotel, a figure had been tailing him all along.
The Great Sage, who was building a new module, seemed to notice, but he didn't raise an alarm.
In the evening, back in the hotel, Xue Dili sorted through his photos.
This time, the old man spent a long time constructing the module, and it was still not finished.
This piqued Xue Dili's curiosity, making him take another look at the consciousness space.
"Wait, old man, you seem different?" Xue Dili looked at the Great Sage and asked.
It wasn't his imagination; the old man was becoming transparent.
Through the white robe, Xue Dili could vaguely see the display panel behind him, like a normal person suddenly became an 80% transparency projection.
Perhaps it wasn't a change that happened today, but the old man was always becoming more transparent, but only today had he become so clear that light could pass through, prompting Xue Dili to notice.
"Really?" The old man seemed oblivious, looked at his arm, "This is normal, don't worry about it."
Xue Dili rubbed his eyes, sure he wasn't mistaken.
The old man did become transparent, like turning into a holographic projection.
But when Xue Dili wanted to pursue the question further, the old man rushed him off, saying he was busy.
Xue Dili could only do some light exercises before resting.
He was actually puzzled. The old man constructed the system panel in just one night, but building the new module took more than a day.
And the old man's increasingly transparent body.
Lost in thought, he drifted into sleep.
...
Still the old man's memories, Xue Dili watched his ever-traveling silhouette.
Battlefields, ruins, glaciers, deserts…
He seemed to always be saving people, continually saving, asking no questions, consistent as ever.
On ruins and broken lands, he established survivor city-states, taught them magic, laid foundations for schools, allowing these survivors to use their strength to change the future.
Once the magicians grew up, he would leave and go to the next place he wished to visit, repeating the cycle again.
Treading on a sand-strewn wasteland, Xue Dili saw the old man with cloth over his head moving steadily onward.
"Old man, what exactly are you doing?" Xue Dili tried to ask.
However, in the dream, Yushua seemed to hear Xue Dili's voice, as if crossing endless time and space to simply reply to Xue Dili: "Atonement..."
The sun was harsh. Xue Dili watched the old man in the dream continue to walk onwards.
"This is my personal, eternal atonement..."
Slowly, the Treasure known as "Cursed Blood" manifested on his body.
Xue Dili saw later on, this old man continuing his path of "atonement", being able to save more because of the increased power of the Cursed Blood.
He absorbed others' sufferings to bear them himself.
This usage was dual-sided, it could also be used to pass his own suffering onto others, but the Great Sage never used it that way; he always absorbed, helping those seemingly living in an apocalypse to keep going.
Xue Dili saw the children saved by the old man; there was something different in their eyes, called "hope."
The old man smiled, this was the first time in a dream that Xue Dili ever saw him smile.
Such cycles unknown how many times repeated, but this time, it was completely different.
Xue Dili saw a deathly desolate land.
No tribes, no survivors.
The entire planet seemed to become a Dead Star, only leaving a sole Gravekeeper.
"I've finally… waited for you..." The Gravekeeper's ancient voice sounded, reaching out a hand, skeletal like bones.
The Gravekeeper was the world's only living being now; besides him, no other creature remained.
In the end, the thing the Gravekeeper guarded was an abnormally mutated flesh like a hive. It seemed he used his last strength, saying: "Please… take them… thank you… Savior..."
"Here… within my civilization's… eight billion compatriots..." The Gravekeeper passed the last relic of the planet to the old man. It seemed upon saying these words, all his vitality dissipated, merging into the dead land.
A biological server containing eighty billion souls.
Xue Dili saw the old man extend his hand, the Treasure named "Cursed Blood" covering the mutated flesh.
"Stop! Old man, do you intend to bear the sufferings of eighty billion souls at once?" Xue Dili immediately shouted to stop him.
However, this was all just a dream. The Great Sage seemed to glance at him, smiling, like a final farewell.
Cursed Blood, operating at full capacity.