Master of the Stars

Luo Nan was quite shocked after checking the time.

Acumen College was around eighty kilometers away from his aunt’s house. It took exactly an hour to get to it when one followed the speed limit of the city. He had just spent ten minutes to get here. In other words, the flying speed of his soul body was nearly five hundred kilometers per hour.

Luo Nan got a rough feel for the flying speed of the soul when he was in the out-of-body state for the very first time. He just felt that it was fast. He never thought that it was this fast. It must be known that he merely flew casually and was far from reaching his limits. If he truly put his all, it was entirely possible for his speed to increase by an entire factor.

Perhaps, this was the result of his catalytic progress?

There were a few satellite towns added to the main city district of Xia City, so the total radius of Xia City was around four hundred kilometers. This meant that he could easily reach any location in Xia City within an hour. In a night’s time, he could travel a whole circle around Xia City, and even travel several thousand kilometers away.

The marvels of astral travel lay here.

He just didn’t know if any issues would come up with the order frame, which was formed from his Body Gear and God Gear, from having his soul body be too far away.

Luo Nan immediately slowed the flying speed of his soul. He spared a bit of mental energy to sense the changes in his fleshly body located eighty kilometers away.

The out-of-body state caused considerable changes with the order frame of Luo Nan’s body and soul. The pressure coming from his soul strength toward his body was practically nil, but he was also separated from the external neuron. There was no longer the vast ocean iceberg structure and its massive order. The God Gear didn’t really live up to its name anymore.

Luo Nan tried to drive the heart lantern of the eyes orifice, but there was no reaction. At this point, he was certain that a corresponding material medium was necessary for an effective interference of reality when he used the mental plane. For instance, no matter how powerful his God Gear, Luo Nan’s current order frame was useless in this regard, for he lacked the meshing of the Body Gear.

Luo Nan couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed about this.

In this way, the substantial uses of astral travel were rather limited. He needed to plan ahead. He needed to make a few backups of the high-imitation Human-Faced Arachnid as long as the Wraith Sign wasn’t here.

Luo Nan pondered this matter and felt a little puzzled. Were mentally enhanced ability users like Mr. Bai and Old Man You, who definitely possessed the astral travel ability, like this in their out-of-body states? It didn’t seem so. How else would they show their skills in their day-to-day lives?

He pondered this from different angles, but was unable to get the gist of it. He was even thinking of giving He Yueyin a proposal: Add a course on the applications of the out-of-body state.

In any case, it was impossible for him to resolve this issue tonight. Luo Nan collected his mind, giving up on useless, distracting thoughts. With a flicker of his soul body, he arrived in the skies above Cloud City Water Village. He locked on the viewing platform atop Ocean Sky Cloud City and drifted down.

It was the wee hours of four o’clock in the morning. There naturally wouldn’t be anybody there on the viewing platform. It was desolate and quiet. When Luo Nan’s soul strength cut across, though he had no effects toward the material plane, he made contact with the consciousness of a living being via the mental plane.

Within the central crystal pillar of Ocean Sky Cloud City, the Mutant devil ray was resting and floating in the water. It suddenly became excited. It swung its enormous flat body to whirl in a circle, a habitual action. It was like a giant drill as it rapidly ascended upward, heading toward the peak of the crystal pillar. It rapidly advanced toward none other than the viewing platform of the Ocean Sky Cloud City.

Since Ocean Sky Cloud City held captive such a fierce creature, they naturally didn’t have a lowered guard. Every night, there were professionals on duty. There were also monitoring probes of different forms playing their role.

The instant the devil ray moved, its special behavior drew the alert of the monitoring system. There were groans all over within the central control room of the large building.

"This monster is going crazy again."

"A single disturbance costs hundreds of thousands!"

"Quick! Release the blocker!"

The so-called blocker was a defensive device that Cloud City Water Village temporary installed after the devil ray had broken through the reinforced glass of the Heavenly Ocean Lake. It had no other function besides preventing the devil ray from punching another hole through the Heavenly Ocean Lake.

The large building turned chaotic, and Luo Nan could feel it. He felt a bit embarrassed, so he imbued psychic waves into the devil ray, calming its agitated emotions.

The devil ray possessed decent intelligence. Although it had been under Luo Nan’s control in forced submission by the high-imitation Human-Faced Arachnid, it had felt all sorts of novelties and fascinations. Moreover, it had reached an utterly strong state under Luo Nan’s control. It both revered and feared the special frequency of Luo Nan’s psychic waves. Right now, it was already ranked in Luo Nan’s Societal Format Diagram. It was located in the Office Worker level. According to the definitions of Orders, it could be called a ’believer’ or ’family.’

Luo Nan’s telepathic mind sunk downward, and the devil ray didn’t dare resist. It immediately stopped its momentum. As it turned its body, it saw that it had alarmed its surroundings. Fish and shrimp, who were fleeing in all directions, were easily swallowed with a single bite. Ocean Sky Cloud City had blood spilled in it yet again.

The gambol of the just awakened devil ray would bring about great damages to relevant parties. Luo Nan’s soul body stayed above the viewing platform, and he looked into the distance, at the wetlands jungle of the north bank of Acumen College. He stared, unmoving for a time.

Gear was in the middle of the jungle. The viewing platform was over a dozen kilometers away from the wetlands jungle. The color of day was dark and desolate. Normal people would find Gear hard to see.

But Luo Nan could see it.

The distance of a dozen kilometers existed within the limits of Luo Nan’s mental senses when his soul and body were together. Before, he had used the coupling of the God Gear and the Body Gear to stimulate the heart lantern of the eyes orifice to marvelous effects. The caressing psychic light illuminated the earth from above, taking Gear, which was within the jungle, into his clairvoyance.

It was currently impossible for him to achieve coupling between the God Gear and the Body Gear in his astral travel state. But since entering the out-of-body state, the range of his senses increased explosively tenfold. He was able to clearly see Gear with pure observation

Back then, he had a magical feeling that Gear was the eye of heaven and earth, that it was a large format encompassing the entire universe. The problem was, it was difficult to trigger such feelings again, no matter how much he observed Gear.

This result was within his expectations.

He had already understood something the instant when his heart lantern illuminated Gear from above. The marvels contained within Gear couldn’t be seen by purely the naked eye. Mental senses couldn’t illuminate it clearly, either. Only when the two modes of vision and mental senses were coupled to realize a polished overlap could the reality behind the exterior be touched. Only then could he ascertain how that power of order rotated within the void of heaven and earth into a genesis.

Observing through pure mental senses was meaningless.

If possible, Luo Nan obviously hoped to go to the the viewing platform physically in person and observe Gear in the day and night with his clairvoyance. He would then take in the marvels of his experience. But this week, there had been ghosts dancing all around, all the time, regardless of the location being the viewing platform or Gear. It spoiled Luo Nan’s mood.

"Forget it. Forget it. I’ll go observe up close."

Luo Nan didn’t choose this location for his astral travel based purely on a whim. He had a clear purpose and plan.

Luo Nan’s soul body flew away from Ocean Sky Cloud City. With a mere thought, he appeared within the middle of the wetlands jungle, and Gear was just ahead. At that time, all the lights were off within the building. It was pitch-black, without any hint of a human.

To enter this place at this time and in this sort of setting would require some guts.... Oh, if someone really did come, Luo Nan didn’t mind testing out the fellow’s qualities.

What a pity; there was no such person here.

Luo Nan’s soul body went through the wall to go inside Gear. His mental senses naturally covered every space and every corner of the twelve floors above and below him. He missed not a hair.

Such things was possible when his body and soul were merged. In that state, he could do even better thanks to the strengthening from the heart lantern of the eyes orifice. It was more suitable to the environment of Gear.

But Luo Nan often had this thought: There are people ahead of the body and eyes behind the head; he must not act willfully. So he waited until he gained success with internal refinement, reckoning that now he could endure the pressure of his soaring soul strength. Only then did he embark forward.

He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he felt a chill as he stayed in this place in the form of a soul.