Chapter 4538: Moves

Dark Prisonbone had paid for attacking Lu Yin, but it was also possible Thousand Machinations had other test subjects.

Lu Yin was not used to placing his hopes on others. He could only rely on himself to find a way out. At the very least, he had to make his way to Thousand Machinations and let the Abyssal know that he was not yet crippled.

Crack.

A soft sound rang out, causing Lu Yin to look over. The underground space was dark, but that did not affect Lu Yin’s vision.

He saw white skeletons crawling far away from him. There were countless white bones in this area, not all of which were unable to move.

Lu Yin looked away. He needed to first piece his body back together.

Despite the numerous broken bones surrounding him, it was very easy for him to tell which belonged to him and which were from other skeletons.

Whether it was fortune or misfortune, when an existence like Dark Prisonbone took action, they would affect a vast area without even trying. When the Abyssal had thrown Lu Yin into this underground space, it had also shuffled up everything in the surroundings, which included the broken fragments of his skeletal body. That meant that all of his pieces should be somewhere in this underground region.

Lu Yin first reconnected all the fragments beside him that he could identify as his own. Only after that did he expand the range of his search.

Torso. Arms. Legs. Shards of white bone were stuck together one by one. It looked as though he was reshaping his body.

It felt terrible.

While restoring his body, Lu Yin also focused on absorbing Stillness. When the last shard of bone fell into place, he let out a breath.

Suddenly, all of the bone fragments that he had stuck back together fell away. Lu Yin looked down. How could this be?

He stared at his body in a daze. This should not happen. They were only pieces of his bones that had broken off. Given his current level of strength, even if every bone that made up his body was smashed to pieces, he should still be able to recover. How was it possible that he was unable to repair his skeleton clone?

In his mind, he once again heard the words that had been spoken as he had been thrown into this place: "It is already ruined. I will pay whatever price must be paid. Just treat this material as if it does not exist."

Ruined? How could he be ruined so easily? That was Lu Yin’s first thought. He had believed that, when Dark Prisonbone had mentioned him being ruined, the Abyssal had been referring to time. Lu Yin had thought that he merely needed a very long time to fully recover and that Thousand Machinations would not give him that time.

But now, it seemed that he had completely misunderstood. He had taken far less time to put himself back together than expected, but how could one of the seven Abyssals have worse judgment than Lu Yin?

When Dark Prisonbone had said “ruined,” it had meant that he could not recover.

Lu Yin refused to believe that. He stubbornly placed all of the white bone fragments back again. It had initially taken him a bit of time to find every last piece of his broken bones, but putting them back in place for a second time was much easier. He did not need to search for anything, so he quickly put every fragment back in its proper place.

Yet again, as soon as Lu Yin finished, the broken fragments fell off again. It was as though they could not bond to his skeleton.

Why was this happening?

Lu Yin slowly sat down and stared at the bone fragments surrounding him. There had to be something wrong with them.

A fragment of white bone floated up, and Lu Yin simply stared at it. It was eventually joined by a second piece and then a third. In the end, all the shattered fragments of his bones were floating around him. He examined each one with extreme care, piece by piece, yet he could not find anything wrong with them.

But it was impossible for there to be no problem.

Lu Yin inspected every fragment, as well as his skeleton where the fragments had broken off, yet he could still find no problem.

He refused to believe that.

He took a broken bone fragment and looked at it with the Mirrorlight Art.

The Mirrorlight Art could allow one to see far away, but it also had another usage, which was to magnify things. After all, the technique used light, and vision itself was based off of light.

This should reveal the cause unless Dark Prisonbone had driven some force into Lu Yin’s bones that was absolutely invisible. However, that was not something that even an unseen world could accomplish without the wielder staying within a certain range.

Suddenly, Lu Yin saw it. He saw a fish floating in a crack of a bone fragment. It was extremely tiny, small to the point where, even with his current level of cultivation, he could not see it without using the Mirrorlight Art.

This was the microscopic world of a microscopic world.

He soon found fish after fish floating in the cracks of his broken bones. It was these fish that were preventing his bone fragments from joining back together.

Lu Yin tried to erase the fish, only to find that it was actually beyond his ability to do so. These fish were not living creatures, but more like automatons that were stuck to his broken bones. Even Stillness could not erase them.

He tried to grind down the bones at the breakage points to remove the fish, but that proved useless as well. No matter how much bone was worn away, the fish remained. They seemed to be deeply branded upon the bone fragments.

Lu Yin's skeleton clone did not have many methods. He tried what he could one by one, but everything ended in failure.

This was what Dark Prisonbone had meant by “ruined.” It had left a power within Lu Yin’s bones that prevented him from recovering.

How malicious. It seemed that the Abyssal had greatly valued Great Golden Wings. If not, it would not have targeted Lu Yin in such a manner.

It could have simply destroyed him outright, but it had not done so. Instead, he had been thrown into the depths of Thousand Machinations' Abyss. Perhaps even the fact that he had heard its words had been intentional. Dark Prisonbone’s purpose was to leave him in despair. He had already arrived at Thousand Machinations' Abyss, but Lu Yin just could not crawl out. He was trapped, left to live forever in a skyless darkness.

Lu Yin looked around. If this was his current state, then these bones surrounding him were definitely not ordinary. They had likely been thrown into this place by Dark Prisonbone as well.

How utterly miserable.

His body was broken, and there were white bones scattered all around him. His skeleton still had the three black plates of armor embedded in it and, yet it was likely that not even his true body had ever been in such a miserable state before.

Above him, light occasionally swept by. Lu Yin looked up, and then lowered his head again as he continued to try to erase those fish. He could not remain in this place forever.

Crack.

Crack.

There were incessant sounds from all around. Various skeletons swayed as they stood up. Some walked, and others went through unknown movements before falling to the ground again.

Day after day passed, and several years flew by in the blink of an eye. During those years, Lu Yin constantly tried to erase the fishes on his bones while continuously absorbing Stillness, but he simply could not do it.

He had managed to discover something strange; there was a logic to the movements of the skeletons around him.

At first, he thought that the movements were completely random, much like the skeletons that wandered about in the wilderness in the outskirts of Joy City. Those skeletons only responded to Withered Requiem's music or orders to lie down. Some of the skeletons were even still lying down, having never moved after receiving that order.

Yet, as time passed, he had eventually discovered that the skeletons around him repeated their movements at regular intervals. Not only that, but they were also not casually scattered about. Lu Yin found that their distribution followed a pattern.

However, he had not yet discovered what that pattern actually was.

With these discoveries, Lu Yin focused on observing the various skeletons, studying their every movement and recalling every action that they had made during his time here. Aside from their physical movements, the ambient Stillness was also moving around. These skeletons were also absorbing Stillness. It was just that the amount that they could store was far too little. In fact, it was so little that Lu Yin had overlooked it.

As he observed them, Lu Yin gradually discovered that these white bones seemed to be moving via battle techniques. This could not be seen from a single skeleton, but if the movements of multiple skeletons were observed holistically and incorporated into a singular analysis, a battle technique was revealed. Moreover, Lu Yin discovered that it was something he had witnessed before: Cosmic Erasure.

While there was no strength to the movements at all, Lu Yin could confirm that he was seeing the exact same battle technique that he had seen Withered Requiem use in Zhou’s memories. It was the exact same Cosmic Erasure.

Humans have their own ways, just as rats have theirs.

The Cosmic Erasure that Withered Requiem had unleashed to instantly defeat Zhou had caused the megaverse to sway while the Cosmic Erasure performed by the skeletons in the underground space with Lu Yin produced an effect that corresponded to the amount of Stillness that they possessed, as well as their own power level. They also shook their surroundings, if only in a barely noticeable manner. Even so, this power surpassed the level of the skeletons themselves.

Lu Yin stared at a skeleton in the distance. Why is it using Cosmic Erasure? Do these skeletons actually know the techniques of the Death Codex?

This discovery forced Lu Yin to reexamine everything in this underground space. It seemed that things were not as simple as he had initially believed.

He began observing the skeletons with greater focus. They repeated their movements, but because the repetitions happened at various intervals, he would not have noticed the connection between them without constant observation. With time, he made another discovery; in addition to Cosmic Erasure, he also saw Hell's Advent.

This was Death's Dominion's move. It seemed that Hell's Advent was another battle technique from the Death Codex.

Legends claimed that the Death Codex was a compilation of battle techniques that had been deduced by Thousand Machinations. Every Abyssal had studied it to find the battle techniques that best suited them.

In that case, could all of these skeletons here be the test subjects that Thousand Machinations used to deduce the techniques recorded in the Death Codex? The entire reason why the skeletal bear had taken an interest in Lu Yin was because it believed that his talent surpassed Withered Requiem's, and it wanted to use him as an experiment to see how far he could go.

Since there were test subjects, then there also had to be a place for discarding those test subjects. It seemed that Lu Yin had just happened to fall into that sort of place.

But that also made sense. He was just another test subject in Thousand Machinations' eyes. Since he had been discarded, this was the most suitable place for him.

However, no one had realized that he was just a clone. Even if this clone ultimately died, Lu Yin’s mind would simply return to his true body, retaining everything that he had witnessed in this place.

This meant that, if these skeletons were repeatedly performing the battle techniques of the Death Codex, he could potentially learn them all.

Thinking of this, Lu Yin grew rather excited. He stared at the various skeletons, no longer even thinking of erasing the microscopic fishes from his broken bones. After all, it was simply impossible to eliminate them.

Dark Prisonbone's confidence told Lu Yin at least that much. His clone could not recover on its own.

Time passed. Lu Yin watched Cosmic Erasure and Hell’s Advent 100 times each, but he did not see anything else. That did not seem right. After thinking about the matter, he dragged his crippled body away and wandered about the underground space. If one area only had Cosmic Erasure and Hell’s Advent, then the other areas had to have other techniques.

He used the Mirrorlight Art to search the underground space, but he could not find any skeletons performing other battle techniques. Were they asleep? Or was the period between their movements’ repetitions even longer?

Roaming about made Lu Yin feel like a pebble falling into a calm lake; his mere presence stirred up this part of the world.

More and more skeletons stood up. Perhaps they had been decaying for too long, as some of their movements were very disjointed. They looked like they had been awakened from a deep sleep. They seemed quite dazed, but they recovered with time.

Lu Yin saw new moves. When the skeletons made the moves, there was very little power, and Lu Yin was not currently able to use them himself. However, he was certain that, if his skeleton clone could return to its peak, these techniques would be incredibly powerful. After all, they were all from the Death Codex.

300 years passed in the blink of an eye. During these three centuries, Lu Yin saw no fewer than twenty techniques. Some of the techniques clearly did not amount to much and were likely failed attempts to create new battle techniques, but some were very powerful, to the point of giving Lu Yin the impression that they far surpassed Cosmic Erasure.

In particular, there was one technique that required far more skeletons to perform than any other. Lu Yin did not know what the technique was called, but he did know that it was utterly terrifying. That was because it was the only technique that could produce ripples despite using a faint amount of Stillness.

No other technique had ever been able to produce a ripple in the underground region, only that one.

Moreover, it took a full twenty years and the most skeletons to replicate the battle technique. It looked very simple, as once the movements of all the skeletons were combined into a single technique, it merely used Stillness to form a triangle. However, it was precisely that triangle that created the ripples.

This was also merely in an abandoned underground space. If the technique were used in the outside world, Lu Yin could not even guess at just how shocking it would be.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.