Chapter 159: Abandoned by the Entire World, A Plan Targeting the Nether Forest
Chapter 159 – Abandoned by the Entire World, A Plan Targeting the Nether Forest
The stone coffin sealed shut with a heavy, final thud.
Silence reclaimed the Nether Forest.
Those Demon Beasts that once prowled at the edges of Chen Changsheng’s awareness now deliberately gave the stone coffin a wide berth.
It was as though the sentient will of the Nether Forest itself breathed a sigh of relief, welcoming his entombment.
……
The river of time flowed without end.
Six hundred and forty years. To the lesser creatures of the Nether Forest, such a span was an eternity, long enough to witness the turning of several karmic wheels.
Birth, the desperate clawing for survival, the inevitable withering of old age, and finally, death—returning flesh and bone to the earth to nurture new life.
Countless cycles of reincarnation played out beneath the ancient canopy.
Whether sentient beast or spiritual flora, none could escape the grinding millstone of the Heavenly Dao.
Yet, one man remained entirely unmoored from this cycle. Chen Changsheng, lying quietly within the belly of the stone coffin.
Grind—
The heavy stone lid was slowly pushed aside. Chen Changsheng sat up, the mortal fabrics that once clothed him cascading away as fine, gray dust.
“Has it really been six hundred and forty years?”
“It felt like nothing more than the blink of an eye.”
“System, I’ve just discovered that slumber might be the absolute best way to kill time.”
In response, the ethereal, dispassionate voice of the system echoed within his sea of consciousness.
“The reason the Host feels this way is because you have not slumbered enough.”
“When you have closed your eyes enough times, for eras long enough to shatter mountains…”
“…this fleeting novelty will become the source of your deepest, most primal terror.”
Hearing this, Chen Changsheng curled his lip, his tone steeped in casual mockery.
“System, spare me the apocalyptic preaching. Do you think I don’t know what it feels like to sleep?”
“You close your eyes, you open them. It’s no different from a mid-afternoon doze.”
“What exactly is there to fear in the dark?”
“The slumber itself is not the terror,” the system replied. “The passage of time is the true enemy.”
“One day, the Host will open his eyes to a world that has entirely forgotten him. Even your most hated enemies will have faded from memory.”
“That absolute desolation—the profound silence of being utterly abandoned by the world—is the ultimate horror lurking in the hearts of all living beings.”
Chen Changsheng pinched the bridge of his nose. “System, aren’t you laying it on a bit thick?”
“I grant you that all mortals return to the earth, but surely I wouldn’t be completely erased from the annals of time.”
“I’m a man of some repute, after all. If someone dug deep enough, they’d unearth a legend or two about my passing.”
“Hell, even those ancient anomalies in the forbidden lands wouldn’t forget my face, not even after a hundred thousand—”
“And what of ten million years?”
The system severed his sentence with cold indifference.
“The Host knows the truth of the Dao. Ten million years is an unfathomable ocean of time, but you will inevitably reach it.”
“The forbidden lands may be formidable, but against the relentless erosion of ten million years, they are fragile as dry leaves.”
Chen Changsheng’s jaw tightened, and he deliberately steered the conversation away.
“Six hundred and forty years of rest means I can allocate points again. Let’s see if my bodily defense can ascend another tier.”
With a thought, he called forth the System Panel. The system, having made its point, returned to its usual silence.
[Host: Chen Changsheng]
[Strength: 1100 (Life Lamp Realm)]
[Speed: 1160 (Life Lamp Realm)]
[Defense: 2000 (Seventh Realm)]
[Spiritual Power: 1020 (Life Lamp Realm)]
[Lifespan: 1280]
Chen Changsheng: ???
Seeing the realm bracketed beside his defense attribute, Chen Changsheng’s face filled with profound confusion.
“System, why is my defense label still stamped with this vague placeholder?”
“Hasn’t the cultivation system for this era already been firmly established?”
“Replying to Host. While the grand Dao of this era has been codified, the realms beyond the Sixth Realm remain unnamed by the world.”
“Therefore, a definitive label cannot be provided.”
Hearing the system’s irrefutable logic, Chen Changsheng was momentarily robbed of words.
After a long silence, he managed to squeeze out a single sentence.
“System, your devotion to clerical accuracy is truly frightening.”
“Thank you for the praise.”
With the dry banter concluded, Chen Changsheng began feeding Attribute Points into his defense, pouring them in slowly, bit by measured bit.
He did this carefully, eager to plumb the unfathomable depths required to bridge the gap between realms in this new era.
He had assumed that injecting six hundred and forty Attribute Points would violently push his physical paradigm into the Eighth Realm.
Yet, as the final point dissolved into his being, the label on his defense attribute remained entirely indifferent. It had not moved an inch.
Chen Changsheng: ???
“System, the numbers are static. Did you miscalculate?”
In the face of his rare agitation, the system’s voice returned, flat and impassive.
“Host, as an architect who helped lay the foundation for this era’s Dao, you should be intimately aware of the vast chasms that separate these high realms.”
“The true scriptures for the Seventh Realm and Eighth Realm are already in your grasp.”
“Before your entombment, you spent eighty bitter years meditating on the Dao.”
“Ask yourself: how much of the Seventh Realm did you truly conquer in those eighty years?”
“Six hundred and forty Attribute Points equate to exactly six hundred and forty years of focused cultivation.”
“Look into your own heart. Under normal circumstances, could the Host truly achieve Perfection in the Seventh Realm with a mere six centuries of insight?”
Chen Changsheng fell silent. He searched the vast expanse of his own logic but found no weapon to parry the system’s absolute truth.
“System, I was merely jesting,” he deflected, his tone dry. “Do you think I don’t understand the very heavens I helped prop up?”
“You truly lack even a sliver of humor.”
“Apologies. This system is not a living being, and therefore cannot process the mortal coping mechanism you call humor.”
Chen Changsheng rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, deciding to sever the mental link.
He casually drew a fresh set of robes and dressed, before stepping up to an ancient, towering spiritual tree.
Tracing the jagged grain of its bark, Chen Changsheng murmured, “This is your final warning. Open a void-path to the central region.”
He waited quietly. The primordial winds rustled the leaves, but the Nether Forest stubbornly refused to answer.
A cold, predatory light settled in his eyes as his plan targeting the Nether Forest officially commenced.
……
“In the little forest, chop, chop, chop!”
“Roasting up some demon meat, drop, drop, drop!”
Deep within the ancient woods, a young man, stripped to the waist, rhythmically swung a heavy iron axe.
Pearls of sweat gleamed like morning dew against his skin, tracing the lean, corded muscle of his torso.
CRASH!
A colossal tree, stretching hundreds of feet high, sundered and fell. Admiring his handiwork, the young man flashed a feral grin, and with a wave of his hand, the massive timber was swallowed whole by the unseen maw of his void-pouch.
He was a blight upon the land. He was Chen Changsheng, the immortal prisoner of the Nether Forest.
And today marked exactly eight hundred years since he began starving this sentient realm, one tree at a time.
Having met his daily quota of destruction, Chen Changsheng strolled back to his camp by the ancient stone tablet to prepare dinner.
Since today was his eight-hundred-year anniversary of absolute deforestation, he decided to be magnanimous and show the local wildlife some mercy.
Therefore, his evening meal would only require the slaughter of two Saber-toothed Tiger Kings, and a single demonic bear roughly the size of a small hill.