Judging from the teacher's description, he must be strong even among the top seven players, which explains why he seemed so relaxed and at ease.
Lin Hui had a rough estimate in mind.
Having confirmed this, he carefully considered his words and slowly asked his second question, which was the most fundamental question he had come all this way to ask.
"I have another question," he said solemnly. "Teacher, have you considered shedding your identity as a member of the Fusion Faction and avoiding the trouble and risks of losing your sense of self?"
Upon hearing this question, Seven Extinctions's smile slowly vanished.
He stood beside the jigsaw puzzle, gazing at Lin Hui. He didn't answer immediately.
Apart from the howling and rushing sound of the Wind Disaster, there was no other noise around.
The faint scent of medicinal herbs wafting from the distant alchemy hall created a subtle ambiguity between the master and disciple.
"Why didn't you think of that...?" Seven Extinctions finally spoke up.
He remained silent for over a minute. In that time, with his level of thinking speed, countless thoughts had already flashed through his mind.
"Every individual who has merged into the calamity has thought about this, but... very, very few actually do it," he continued. "It's not that it's impossible; in fact, the Fusion Faction is full of talented people, with no shortage of geniuses. Someone will eventually figure out a way to break free from the fusion, but ninety-nine percent of them give up."
"Why?" Lin Hui's heart skipped a beat, and he hurriedly asked.
"Because... merging into the calamity is both a constraint and a protection... by borrowing the power of the merged calamity, one can shield oneself from the destruction of other calamities," Seven Extinctions replied.
Lin Hui frowned.
"Other calamities... aren't there resistance factions and neutralists who flee? Didn't they also survive?"
"Are you talking about a resistance faction that only a handful of people in the world survive? Or a neutral faction that can only hide in a corner their whole lives and never dare to show their faces?" Seven Extinctions laughed.
He continued.
"You must understand, I initially brought in the entire Nine Heavens Gate, and it took over a thousand years to slowly reduce it to just me. But for them, during the time of calamity, they were left with only themselves. Thousands of years of peace, or the immediate death of your entire family—which would you choose?"
Lin Hui remained silent.
More than ten seconds later, he spoke again.
"And now? If there were a way to escape, teacher, you would..."
"No." Seven Extinctions said decisively, "Disciple, you've misunderstood something. We live amidst the Wind Disaster, and everything we come into contact with, absorb, see, and hear every day is Wind Disaster, but that doesn't mean that Wind Disaster is the only Source Disaster in the world."
You mean...?
"Yes, once I escape the Wind Disaster, putting aside the difficulty, if I really succeed, then an old guy like me who should have been decomposed and returned to the cycle long ago will immediately face the most troublesome Heart Disaster."
" Heart Disaster?"
"Yes, this is the most stealthy and fastest-acting, and also the most powerful. Before you know it, you're done for. Without the protection of the Wind Disaster, I definitely wouldn't be able to withstand it," Seven Extinctions confessed.
" Heart Disaster... is it that powerful?" Lin Hui frowned.
"Hmm, killing someone like me is about as easy as blowing a breath on someone like me," Seven Extinctions sighed.
"So... when will we inevitably encounter other Source Disaster, or even Heart Disaster?" Lin Hui asked the core question again.
"When you live too long and avoid too much death, something will inevitably come looking for you. It's a cycle, a link in the chain of all things..." Seven Extinctions sighed. "You are still young. If you have time, you can go and wander deep into the heart of the Wind Disaster, and you will understand..."
Lin Hui felt a strange blockage in his heart, but he didn't know how to relieve it.
He bid farewell to his teacher and, as instructed, did not return to the Heart Source Demon Palace. Instead, he followed the flow of the Wind Disaster into the depths and flew away at an accelerated pace.
The Nine Heavens Gate is located on the outer edge of the Wind Disaster area; one must fly inwards from here.
An endless blue Disaster Energy, like water or mist, obscures all vision. Only by relying on mental perception and three-dimensional imaging can one determine direction.
Lin Hui used the Surrounding Wind to gather Disaster Energy to protect himself, with the Wind Energy hidden deep within his body, and then flew in at full speed.
Perhaps because Wind Energy and Disaster Energy are of the same nature, although he successfully converted it, he was not rejected by the Disaster Energy.
The surroundings, which were initially somewhat empty and desolate, gradually began to appear in large numbers of human-headed monsters with long tails of Disaster Energy.
These monsters wandered aimlessly through the Disaster Energy, like fish swimming in groups without a destination.
Lin Hui saw that some of them were even having a meal together, gnawing on the carcass of a giant goat-shaped monster that they had caught from somewhere.
As he passed by these human-headed monsters, he was mistaken for one of them, and no one paid him any attention.
Continue going in.
One after another, tiny blue figures with transparent wings, like legendary fairies, appeared in the midst of the Wind Disaster and Disaster Energy.
They have beautiful faces, curvaceous figures, and wear thin gauze, making them look quite lovely.
But as Lin Hui got closer, he saw that these so-called demons had cruel and crazy eyes, and their mouths were full of serrated teeth.
Their dwellings were huge, white, round nests resembling beehives, filled with the remains of various creatures that had not yet been eaten, including humans and other species.
All the remains were covered with a layer of viscous, translucent, grayish-white mucus, protecting them from being decomposed by Disaster Energy Wind Disaster.
These demonic monsters didn't attack Lin Hui, but they clearly possessed basic consciousness. When they saw Lin Hui approaching, they all showed wariness and ferocity.
Lin Hui flew further in, for about an hour and a half.
He no longer flew straight, but wandered aimlessly.
As a result, he saw strange creatures living in various Wind Disaster.
Most of their bodies have become part of the Wind Disaster Energy.
It can decompose synchronously with the dispersion of Disaster Energy, but in doing so, it loses most of its own consciousness and cognition.
Unbeknownst to him, Lin Hui's body flew to a place with extremely high concentration of Disaster Energy, and the Disaster Energy in the surrounding environment was almost at the level of high-energy condensation.
He stopped there.
It wasn't that they didn't plan to continue flying, but rather that a house appeared to their right, slightly above them.
It wasn't an ordinary house, but a hotel, a three-story white cement building. A brightly lit neon sign hung at the entrance to the stairwell, which read: Comfort Inn.
On one side of the hotel sign, there was a small, earth-yellow wooden chair, on which sat an old bald man wearing a gray-white T-shirt and dark green beach shorts.
The old man sat blankly in his chair, staring straight ahead without blinking. There were no signs of Disaster Energy fusion on his body, clearly indicating that he was not on the same level as the other monsters.
Lin Hui became alert.
In the depths of such Wind Disaster, the individuals who emerge are almost certainly not the weak.
He stopped a few kilometers away from the other party.
This is a relatively polite distance. The concentration of Disaster Energy in this environment is too high, and there are too many turbulent currents, which greatly affects movement speed and makes it impossible to travel thousands of miles in an instant like in the outside world.
Even telepathic communication can be affected by turbulence, making it impossible to transmit clearly over long distances.
Therefore, Lin Hui maintained a distance that was just right for clear sound transmission.
"Hello?" he greeted telepathically.
The bald old man sat in the chair, and upon hearing the greeting, slowly raised his eyes and looked in this direction.
"Is something the matter?"
"My name is Qing Fei. May I ask your esteemed name, senior?" Lin Hui felt that as long as the other party didn't attack immediately, there was a possibility of getting to know him first. So he decided to test the waters.
"I... don't know..." The bald old man frowned and answered softly, "I don't know my own name."
"Then why are you sitting here, senior?" Lin Hui asked again.
The bald old man remained silent, seemingly not having heard, so Lin Hui repeated the question three more times.
They then came to their senses, realizing they had been daydreaming.
"I... this is my home... my home... I have family..." the old man murmured in reply.
Then, no matter how Lin Hui asked him, he would only say these few sentences.
He had no choice but to leave.
The concentration of Disaster Energy here is already close to the limit he can tolerate; if he goes any further, the Surrounding Wind might not be able to stop him.
Therefore, Lin Hui used the concentration here as a benchmark and flew in parallel around it.
As he flew, he also mentally recorded the terrain he was passing over.
Before long, another dilapidated, dirty, gray-white chapel appeared in front of them.
Several headless, humanoid corpses knelt motionless outside the church, as if in some kind of ritual.
A nun in a black robe with completely black eyes stood quietly in front of the corpse, holding a large black scripture in her hands, like a statue.
"Excuse me..." Lin Hui sent a telepathic message from afar, attempting to make contact.
"Pray, and the wind will answer you..." The nun's hoarse voice conveyed her thoughts immediately.
But Lin Hui noticed that the nun's legs, the legs beneath her black robe, had transformed into a blurry, bluish-black form of Disaster Energy.
"Hello..." he said again.
"Pray..." the nun continued, repeating the same words without moving.
Lin Hui tried asking other questions, but received the same answer each time.
"Alright, stop wandering around here. Let's get out of here." Suddenly, a weary, aged male voice came quietly from the side, touching Lin Hui's mind.
He quickly turned his head and saw that, in the torrent of Disaster Energy to his lower right, there had appeared a tall, strange man with one half of his head made of silver-black mechanical structure.
"They've reached the final stage, forgotten who they are, forgotten where they live, only remembering the last thing they did," the strange man sighed. "For tens of thousands of years, they've lived alone, giving up everything just to survive, and then, one day, suddenly they wake up and don't remember who they are—"
"Is this the end for the Fusion Faction?" Lin Hui's heart was heavy. He thought of Seven Extinctions, and the Black Elder from the Nine Heavens Gate who guarded the Heaven-Turning Wheel. Perhaps the future...
"Finally? No." The strange man shook his head. "Finally, it's complete alienation, the loss of even human form, transforming into a form that best utilizes its own strength, completely alienating into a combat monster of power, becoming one of the countless monsters outside."
He paused for a moment, then continued.
"The fact that they can still barely maintain human form is their last struggle for self-awareness. In reality, their memories and cognition began to quietly fade and change many years ago, without their knowledge."
"And you? Being able to move around freely here, I suppose..." Lin Hui was interrupted before he could finish speaking.
"I've forgotten who I am too, but perhaps it's because I'm still young and haven't reached their level yet," the strange man chuckled bitterly. "You shouldn't have come here. Staying in this place with such a concentration for too long will accelerate your erosion, and the time you can maintain your consciousness and sense of self will shorten rapidly. Only old fogies at the end of their rope are forced to be naturally drawn here."
"But I haven't seen any stronger monsters along the way... Where are they?" Lin Hui asked softly.
"Deeper inside, the Wind Disaster appear when needed, and when not needed, they are invisible Disaster Energy, without consciousness, without form, nothing at all." The strange man spread his hands.