Chapter 354: Su Mu's Best Friend

"I lied to you! Hahaha..." The fading Longyuan threw his head back and laughed, as if finally venting all his pent-up resentment just before his death.

Su Mu couldn't help but laugh. And the man claimed he wasn't a child?

"Got you, didn't I? Did you think the Seven Kings Barrier would shatter the moment the six of us kings dissipated? Fooled you! We are merely the catalysts for the Seven Kings Barrier. Although it bears our name, its true power originates from the Land of Origin," Longyuan laughed smugly.

"What a rotten personality," Su Mu said, shaking his head in resignation.

"Six months at the shortest, a year at the longest, and the Seven Kings Barrier will definitely fall." Longyuan suddenly turned serious, his words spilling out quickly. "You've seen the situation outside. Countless nightmares are invading this place. The pressure on the Seven Kings Barrier is mounting, and it's already on the verge of collapse.

"If you don't find a solution, the world is doomed! I know someone like you has no interest in playing savior, but this isn't just about saving the world—it's about saving yourself. If the god's dream shatters, you die too."

Su Mu smiled faintly. There wasn't a single trace of panic on his face, even after learning he had at most a year to live.

"I'd do it even if you didn't ask. After all..." For a moment, several familiar figures surfaced in his mind, and the smile on his lips deepened. "There are still plenty of interesting people in this world. It would be far too boring if they all died.

"Besides, the chance to gamble against gods is pretty rare."

Longyuan froze. For a fleeting second, he seemed to see the shadow of the Mad King overlapping with the man before him.

"You really haven't changed at all. That's exactly what you used to say."

"The Mad King is still the Mad King. I leave the Seven Kings Barrier in your hands."

A speck of crystalline white light flew out from Longyuan's body and sank into Su Mu.

In an instant, Su Mu's perception spread across the entire Seven Kings Barrier. He could clearly feel the pressure the barrier was enduring and roughly estimate when it would shatter.

"And one more thing..." Longyuan paused, his body fading until it was almost completely transparent. Then, in his final moment, he roared without warning, "I hope I never see you again, you bastard!"

With that furious roar, Longyuan's remnant soul completely dissipated.

Only Su Mu remained, standing alone in silence for a long time.

After a long while, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Dropping a curse right before dying. Smooth."

Longyuan's reaction was a lot like someone playing a MOBA: frantically typing out a barrage of trash talk right as the enemy nexus exploded, ensuring his opponent had no chance to curse back before the match ended.

Even though he had just been called a bastard, Su Mu knew it was Longyuan's sincere blessing. Longyuan was dying, yet he said he hoped they would never see each other again. What did that mean?

The meaning was obvious: he hoped Su Mu wouldn't follow in his footsteps. He was telling him not to die.

As for the "bastard" part—wasn't tossing insults perfectly normal between close friends?

So, translated, Longyuan's dying words meant: Don't die. Live well, my best friend!

Such an earnest friendship actually moved Su Mu a little. "It seems my past self also possessed a lot of personal charm."

Carrying the blessing of his past life's best friend, Su Mu began to inspect the Seven Kings Barrier. He could now perceive its condition in its entirety.

That perception immediately led him to discover the flaws in the Seven Kings Barrier. Countless, densely packed Nightmare Creatures were clinging to the giant white canopy of light. Every so often, a few of those Nightmare Creatures would vanish, slipping right through the barrier.

The Seven Kings Barrier wasn't flawless. It had been established by the Seven Kings channeling the power of the Land of Origin. Boundless energy constantly surged across the canopy of light, but tiny gaps would occasionally open during the transfer of that power. If some relatively weak Nightmare Creatures got lucky and happened to be right where a gap formed, they could slip through the Seven Kings Barrier and enter the Present World.

Seeing this, he couldn't help but recall The Unrememberable he had encountered back in the Star City Abandoned District. That entity had likely sneaked into the Present World the exact same way.

A Nightmare Invasion was indeed occurring in today's Present World, but it wasn't severe. In fact, the invading Nightmare Creatures were treated like hot commodities—like rare game. Countless transcendents were waiting to hunt them down to harvest their transcendent materials.

Combining this with Longyuan's words, Su Mu roughly pieced together the history of the Present World.

First came the Dark Age, when humanity suffered bitterly under the Nightmare Invasion. Then the Seven Kings rose up, ended the Dark Age, and ushered in the Era of the Seven Kings.

The Seven Kings fought a prolonged civil war, eventually drawing out the Land of Origin. This caused outside gods—such as the Celestial Sovereign of Longevity and the Primal Angel—to grow increasingly frantic, intensifying the Nightmare Invasion.

The Seven Kings ended their civil war, and the Present World entered the Nightmare Era, plunging humanity into an extinction-level crisis. After that, the Seven Kings joined forces to establish the Seven Kings Barrier, ending the Nightmare Era and finally bringing long-awaited peace to the Present World.

This era of peace was precisely the one he currently lived in. However, the peace was fragile. With constant friction among the Seven Great Empires, chaos was bound to erupt sooner or later.

Su Mu wondered: what kind of god had dreamed up the Present World? Why did all the outside gods want to destroy its dream? Did this god possess something they all coveted?

He couldn't come up with answers to those questions right now, but a few things had become clear to him.

For instance, why had the intensity of the Nightmare Invasion increased after the Land of Origin appeared?

If the outside gods had all known about the Land of Origin from the start, they would have pushed for a full-scale Nightmare Invasion immediately, rather than waiting for the Land of Origin to surface before ramping up their efforts.

This indicated one thing: perhaps not all gods knew where the Land of Origin was. In the beginning, only a few gods had known, and they had secretly facilitated the Nightmare Invasion. Later, when the aura of the Land of Origin leaked, every god found out. They all rushed in for a piece of the pie, collectively driving the Nightmare Invasion.

Assuming the god who created the Present World possessed something they all coveted, were these outside gods actually united? Once they obtained it, would they split it equally, or keep it for themselves?

It was obviously the latter.

This also explained why the Divine Statue of the Celestial Sovereign of Longevity had appeared in the Present World. In Su Mu's estimation, the Celestial Sovereign of Longevity was likely a rather sneaky god. On the surface, the Sovereign worked with the other gods to push the Nightmare Invasion, but secretly used the Divine Statue to scour the Present World, planning to hoard the prize.

There was definitely more than one god acting like the Celestial Sovereign of Longevity. Perhaps many other divine statues were still hidden in the Present World, complete with their own corresponding cults.

"Interesting. Infighting among the gods?"

According to the current clues, there were likely two types of gods: Heaven gods and Hell gods.

Hell gods were the evil gods sealed in the Abyss, such as the Shadow God. There were likely some unsealed ones hiding in certain corners of Hell too—like the Sea God, who was said to be the incarnation of all the oceans in Hell.

Heaven gods were the deities dwelling above the surface, such as the Primal Angel.