Destiny Clusters had other names in the many Artificial Divine Realms.
Spiritual Roots, Bone Structures, talents, gifts, bloodlines, and so on.
Since that was the case, there were differences in rank and strength. There were no useless Destiny Clusters, only useless users.
For example, Geng Liangchen possessed the Steel Skin Destiny Cluster, which greatly enhanced his skin's resistance to blows. It made his skin appear pale and tough, while allowing the force striking any part of his body to be instantly transferred across the surface of his entire body, further weakening the impact.
The Ghost Heavenly General Geng Liangchen, who possessed Steel Skin, looked fair and frail, but in fact had short-term damage resistance no weaker than that of Zhao Jian, that musclebound monster.
Lan Yi's Cang Hua was definitely stronger than Geng Liangchen's Steel Skin.
This was not difficult to see.
Without a sufficient reserve of Daoist knowledge, a martial artist who had activated Steel Skin could pin down and beat a martial artist who had activated Cang Hua right there on the ground. Cang Hua's cutting attacks in its early stages counted as damage that could not even penetrate Steel Skin's defenses.
But with enough experience, once Cang Hua began using Magnetic Control and Evil Conversion, sealing Divine Abilities, and casting Daoist arts from thin air, even a Steel Skin martial artist who had reached the Impenetrable Realm would still be toyed with to death by a Cang Hua martial artist.
That raised the question.
Were there any Destiny Clusters that—
didn't require the arduous accumulation of knowledge, didn't need deliberate cultivation, and didn't carry any risk of harming the user? As long as they existed, were they simply strong, utterly unreasonable, with a starting point higher than that of other Destiny Clusters?
There were!
And there was more than one!
The Seven Divine Destiny Clusters!
Some Divine Destiny Clusters could set all things ablaze, transforming them from solid matter into a plasma state. Some could absorb every kind of wave, release every kind of wave, and create the annihilating force of a supernova explosion. Some could directly turn a person into a top-tier spatial ability user, allowing them to leap through space at will.
One had to understand that for an ordinary Destiny Cluster to reach such a level, it had to rely on a Destiny Diagram and combinations with other Destiny Clusters. Divine Destiny Clusters, however, were not only absurdly powerful by themselves, but could already display terrifying might on their own. They could still be combined with other Destiny Clusters to reach even more exaggerated and horrifying levels of power!
Aside from Divine Destiny Clusters,
some special or powerful Destiny Clusters still possessed formidable combat power.
Take Lan Yi's Cang Hua, for example. Even without any knowledge of Daoist arts, as long as he wasn't afraid of dying, he could weave and whip three thousand white strands of hair through the air and slice even a Terminator into pieces. If he embraced the thought of dying together with his enemy, he could drive those three thousand white strands into the enemy's body and summon lightning directly. Even a liquid-metal robot would have to kneel.
And obtaining a single Divine Destiny Cluster meant that a person was destined to become a top-tier psionic cultivator.
Something this good
was naturally exceedingly scarce.
Just how scarce was it?
Before his rebirth, Lan Yi had never seen a single Divine Destiny Cluster. It was said that the main world had detected only one person who possessed one, but not long after the news broke, that person vanished for no apparent reason, even triggering a chaotic war between two civilizations.
In the end, that Divine Destiny Cluster disappeared without a trace.
Some said it had been hidden away. Some said it had already been destroyed. Others said that Divine Destiny Clusters didn't exist at all, and that everything from beginning to end had been an elaborate scam.
As for the Artificial Divine Realms,
there was even less trace of Divine Destiny Clusters there. All kinds of fake news flew everywhere, each one sounding utterly convincing, but psionic cultivators often discovered, after making a huge commotion, that they had merely been used as pawns. Eventually, they simply couldn't be bothered with it anymore.
But then again...
As a top-tier lone wolf who often dealt with opportunities like Jin Buhuan's, Lan Yi frequently slipped into some rather unusual Artificial Divine Realms. This was due to both subjective reasons (Old Demon Lan's reputation was utterly rotten, and the Artificial Divine Realms did not welcome him) and objective ones (the human complications were too troublesome, while the Human Emperor Banner often invited all three races over when asking him to be a guest, and wanted posters clung to him wherever he went).
The risks in these Artificial Divine Realms were enormous.
What was meant by "enormous risk" here
was not that the Artificial Divine Realms contained powerful experts or formidable power systems. Rather, it meant that the Artificial Divine Realms were incomplete and had already been abandoned—a state commonly known as the frontier beyond the wall.
The basic logic of these dangerous Artificial Divine Realms was riddled with problems. Space and star systems were abnormally chaotic, and things known as the Evil God Race and anti-logical lifeforms would even emerge. Usually, only psionic cultivators with nowhere else to turn, or pioneers like Lan Yi who had no real ties holding them back, would wander around the frontier.
There, Lan Yi had once obtained a clue concerning a Divine Destiny Cluster.
From within a strange, ruined altar that spewed violet flames, an unknown existence had told Lan Yi that the first Artificial Divine Realm he had experienced contained crucial information about a Divine Destiny Cluster.
That was why, during the final haggling, he had demanded that Jin Buhuan provide information on Divine Destiny Clusters.
Jin Buhuan's brows knitted together.
He actually didn't know anything about Divine Destiny Clusters either.
But Lan Yi, that old slicker, had gauged things with uncanny precision. He didn't know the information about the Divine Destiny Cluster, but this Artificial Divine Realm truly did contain a clue. As for what that clue was and where it lay, Lan Yi would have to find out for himself. Faced with this, even the swindler Jin Buhuan couldn't help giving his old friend a thumbs-up.
You really refuse to suffer even the slightest loss.
You've clung to your bottom line with an iron grip.
No wonder you're my fellow swindler's good friend!
"Psionic energy refined by an old hand like you really is the genuine article. I haven't inhaled such pure stuff in this backward Artificial Divine Realm for ages. When are you going to refine some psionic powder and let your old friend have a good time? Hoohoohoo!! Oh, yes!!!"
After finishing the serious business, Jin Buhuan began inhaling the air with great gusto.
His eyes rolled upward in an exaggerated expression of utter intoxication. His entire body was immersed in the bliss of being surrounded by psionic energy, and he even began twitching dramatically.
"There is some, there is. Just stick your head over here and you'll have it." Lan Yi wore a smile that did not reach his eyes.
The psionic powder joke.
It was a joke circulating among psionic cultivators about chemical ecstasy and psionic energy supplies. To the cultivators of the River Civilization, it was not particularly funny.
"You can't take a joke? Fine..." Jin Buhuan stood up and vigorously rubbed at his body, rolling grime from his skin. "...I'm going to help you apply for authorization. I'll find you when the time is right. Get your preparations in order. Even if it's only a temporary passage with a limited number of uses, I doubt completing the mission will be easy for you."
With that, Jin Buhuan transformed into a cloud of smoke before Lan Yi and vanished in the blink of an eye.
At that moment, Lan Yi subconsciously glanced at the sky.
The sky was already completely dark?
Time really slipped away before one even noticed.
Lan Yi's mood had improved considerably. To a large extent, his loneliness had been dispelled. Having a familiar old acquaintance who had appeared unexpectedly—even if that old acquaintance was somewhat treacherous and crafty—was still far better than having no one with whom he could speak frankly.
He didn't know why.
Whenever Lan Yi was with Jin Buhuan, he always felt a peculiar sense of comfort, as though he were staying with one of his own kind. But Jin Buhuan's appearance had also reminded Lan Yi of something. Although all the Artificial Divine Realm passages had been sealed during the apocalypse, there might still be people in the Artificial Divine Realms who remembered or sensed their reopening.
He absolutely couldn't crash and burn in an Artificial Divine Realm.
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