Ultragenic Warlord

Chapter 953: Frightening Strength

From Zhang Lie's perspective, the figure formed out of orbs represented the pinnacle of the mathematical sciences, an existence that surpassed time and space. The orbs continued to grow, vanish, and change, causing Zhang Lie's head to throb as he looked at them.

Li Zongming, despite being the king of a superior world, bled from both his eyes. The warlords clutched their heads in pain as they curled up on the ground.

The envoy, who had shut both his eyes, laughed. "To dare to look directly at the king of keys—you're lucky your heads didn't explode on sight."

Li Zongming groaned. "If you knew what would happen, why didn't you inform us?"

The envoy shrugged. "I'm not from your world, after all. Is there a need for me to respect a superior king like you?"

Zhang Lie frowned. "This king is... a collection of wills of the world?"

The envoy glanced at him in shock. "How did you know?"

"I looked."

The envoy glanced at him agape and retorted, "Ridiculous. Unless the king of keys erects an illusion around itself, perhaps half the kings present would be unable to look directly at it."

Did this ridiculous country bumpkin think himself stronger than half the superior kings present? The envoy snorted. "The king of keys is the oldest of the superior kings. Its body is formed from a chain of worlds, and it's simultaneously the king of a superior world and the world itself, allegedly formed from a mutation among the wills of the world. It has a sense of self much unlike a regular will of the world. The other superior kings postulated that the king of keys might contain a fragment of the most ancient will of the third realm."

Many suspected that the third realm had once been a cohesive whole, much like the first and second realms. However, some incident or another had caused it to fragment into the three thousand worlds.

"The king of keys must possess a fragment of the original will of the third realm, or it wouldn't have any capacity for independent thought."

The wills of the world were much like artificial intelligence, and they operated based on a rigid system of rules.

"Of course, some kings think differently. They suspect that the king of keys was formed from a king who merged his soul with the will of his world, linking the two inextricably. Many of the kings believe in this idea and think that the king of keys grows stronger by absorbing other worlds. Allegedly, the king has already absorbed hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, such worlds."

Li Zongming frowned. "He sounds like the death spirit king..."

The envoy snorted. "Like that madman? Of course not!"

Zhang Lie shook his head. "The two paths are different. If the king of keys were behaving like the death spirit king, the other kings would have done something about it already."

Li Zongming nodded. "That's a good point, Zhang Lie."

If the other superior kings suspected the king of keys, it wouldn't have been invited to the meeting among the superior worlds.

In some sense, it was true that the king of keys was like the death spirit king—but whereas the death spirit king consumed the world's energy and devoured wills of the world, the king of keys chose to encapsulate them all instead. Their paths were similar, but their destinations entirely different.

"The death spirit king's goal is to destroy these worlds, but the king of keys' goal is to combine these worlds, along with their wills."

The king of keys almost seemed to be a focus through which the worlds could combine and collaborate.

The envoy snorted and folded his arms. "Good that you can understand the difference."

Wincing as he bore with the pain, Zhang Lie scrutinized the king of keys' body. As far as he could tell, those glowing bubbles were the true forms of the worlds of this realm.

The king of keys was an organism formed of myriad worlds. Each world was like a cell, simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic.

"One of the superior kings once commented that the king of keys' body is like a gateway, not the true form of the myriad worlds."

It was a gateway into a collection of myriad worlds which grew and shrank, which budded and decayed.

The envoy continued, "The worlds that comprise the king of keys' body are independent entities that no longer belong to this realm. The king of keys is simultaneously a gateway and the gate key."

Zhang Lie asked, "Why are these worlds continuously forming and dissolving?"

This behavior made Zhang Lie think of cellular reproduction.

"The king of keys can only absorb finitely many worlds. Unlike the death spirit king, the king of keys has a limit, a threshold—it would be impossible to combine too many wills of the world."

The wills of the world were formless entities that rejected each other only barely, but even the weakest rejection or interaction could grow to a shocking extent when there were millions of wills all lumped together.

Furthermore, the king of keys' unique biology, an almost abiological existence, would eventually run into problems.

As a result of the unusual circumstances surrounding the king of keys, the wills of the world that it encapsulated began to develop their own wills.

In the context of the Milky Way, the king of keys was like a massive supra-artificial intelligence, which consisted of millions of weaker artificial intelligence engines. Because all these engines were linked, however, the enormity of data that was processed at any given moment ultimately caused sparks of intelligence to form from the constituent engines.

Put simply, the king of keys began to develop split personalities, who competed to take over its main body.

The envoy continued, "The king of keys' consciousness weakened as a result. In order to protect its own ego, it converted all the worlds it absorbed into small worlds, which would continuously reform and unform."

The worlds that the king of keys had absorbed, which came in a variety of sizes, large and small, were all converted into small worlds which would each be destroyed after a fixed time interval. This was necessary to prevent the sort of budding intelligence that had almost wrecked the king of keys' body. The wills of the world were like fetuses that would be allowed to grow for some time before being reverted into fetuses anew.

Via this approach, the king of keys was barely able to maintain its own consciousness.

Li Zongming frowned. "In the end, isn't it continuously destroying worlds just like the death spirit king?"

The envoy shrugged. "But unlike the death spirit king, it doesn't seek to expand limitlessly, and neither does it have the ambition to destroy the whole of the realm."

"That's hard to say, isn't it?"

Perhaps the king of keys simply hid its ambitions upon seeing what had happened to the death spirit king.

The envoy didn't dare to besmirch the name of a superior king. He immediately changed the topic. "The king of keys has particular authority even among the superior kings. After all, the core of this world was provided by the king of keys itself."

Li Zongming was shaken by the envoy's words.

The superior kings who had existed since antiquity were far stronger than he had expected. Most had grown past corporal bodies—they were all entities beyond natural law, or ones who represented natural law themselves. Each of them was unimaginably strong, but that was only to be expected. How else would they have survived the passage of time?