Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 385 The Inner Demon Grows Stronger! (3k)

Mars, Utopia Plain.

Luo Qing sat on a green grassland that seemed unreal, staring blankly at the thin atmosphere.

In the distance, a giant Martian city is encased in a soap bubble, like an inverted glass bowl.

Li Bai, standing beside her, was reciting poetry in a soft, melodious voice, seemingly unaware of Luo Qing's unusual behavior.

"I sigh deeply and wipe away my tears, lamenting the many hardships faced by humankind, even as insignificant creatures."

Luo Qing was already feeling depressed, and listening to Li Bai's recitation over and over again made her ears feel like they were about to fall off.

"You keep repeating the same line over and over again. Can't you come up with something else? You're Li Bai, not a Qu Yuan parrot!"

Li Bai stopped pacing, stroked his non-existent long beard, and readily agreed: "Good! Then let's change it to another one—'Heartbroken Earth, where I've traversed, the Nine Star Formation has all turned to dust, prosperity, dinosaurs suffer—death, mushrooms suffer—neither prosperity nor death, humans and insects suffer—'"

Luo Qing covered her ears in despair.

He thought of the solar system array he had painstakingly designed, and then of the solar helium flash warning that MOSS had just sent. He felt that humanity's future was bleak, and a wave of sorrow washed over him, causing him to burst into tears.

Seeing this, Li Bai thought that his poem had failed to touch Luo Qing's heart, so he quickly changed it to another poem, with an even more mournful tone:
"Parting has always been painful for those with deep feelings—especially on this desolate autumn day—when beauty fades, flowers fall and people die, and neither knows the other's fate."

The completed poem reminded Luo Qing of her past life.

Then she thought of the countless human compatriots who had perished, the bloody battle with the three celestial immortals, and finally the scene of her fellow Daoist Jianghe's soul being scattered and his life extinguished before her eyes. Suddenly, her sobbing escalated into wailing.

Luo Qing's inner demons couldn't stand it anymore.

A wisp of black energy shot out from the nascent soul and gently comforted Luo Qing for a while.

Li Bai was completely unaware of this, and instead recited the poems with even more enthusiasm. The human insect named Yi Yi told him that good poems must be able to move people's hearts. Seeing Luo Qing's reaction, he firmly believed that he was a poet immortal who appeared only once in a thousand years.

He pulled out a wine jug from somewhere, tilted his head back as if to drink heartily, and spontaneously created the following:
"Have you not seen the sun flash across the sky, rushing to the sea never to return? Have you not seen humankind, like tiny insects, sadly reflected in the mirror, their hair as black as silk in the morning turning to snow by evening?"

Luo Qing cried even louder.

The inner demon was somewhat helpless and stood awkwardly to the side.

"Enjoy life while you can, for tomorrow you may die in vain; I was born with talents that will surely be put to use, and there are a million ways to die anyway."

"Hey you, stop reciting..." Luo Qing's inner demons tried to interrupt Li Bai's chanting.

But Li Bai had already entered a state of creative euphoria; he even conjured a guqin out of thin air and began to play and sing:
"When will the helium flash disaster come? Let me sing and wander on~ Dinosaurs and mushrooms are all dust, why not drink a cup with me~"

The inner demon rushed forward and smashed Li Bai's zither, then kicked over Li Bai's wine gourd.

But how could a mere Nascent Soul demon be a match for Li Bai? With a slight tremor of the energy string from the higher dimension, the demon was sent flying by the surging higher-dimensional energy and forced back to Luo Qing's side.

The inner demon was utterly shocked: "The high-dimensional energy contained in this guy, in terms of energy density alone, is more than that of an ordinary celestial being, right? Just what kind of monster is the god of this world?"

At that moment, MOSS's calm, electronic voice suddenly came from Luo Qing's personal terminal:
[Mr. Luo Qing, the helium flash warning has been synchronized to the observation base on Mercury. The Mercury base has launched a large number of solar probes, and various detection data of the sun have been synchronously transmitted to Earth, the rings, Jupiter and other places through quantum entanglement.]

Currently, all detection data indicate that the Sun is in its most stable main sequence phase in history, and the hydrogen inside the Sun can still fuse for five billion years, with no known signs of a helium flash.

Currently, the United Government's Emergency Response Team for the Solar Helium Flash believes it is necessary to re-examine Mr. Risk Remover's 'prophecy'. Representatives from the United Government have already begun visiting Mr. Risk Remover Sensors to inquire about helium flash-related information. I will continue to keep you informed of any further updates.

The moment the message from Little Moss arrived, the tears on Luo Qing's face vanished instantly.

He stood up with a normal expression, as if he hadn't been the one crying just moments before.

The inner demon tried to escape, but Luo Qing grabbed it and stuffed it into its body without saying a word.

"Who let you out? You've got some nerve!"

Even after dealing with his inner demons, memories continued to flood in, even overwhelming Luo Qing's vision, filling his eyes with the old stories of the Nine Provinces.

Scenes from my shared experiences with Fellow Daoist Jianghe kept replaying uncontrollably in my mind, fueling the power of my inner demons.

Luo Qing remained expressionless, simply throwing a punch.

A large number of memories were suppressed deep in his mind by his punch.

The inner demon that was about to resurface was also inexplicably punched, and it shrank back in, clutching its head and grimacing.

After calming his mind, the white-bearded Nascent Soul old monster in front of him began to change his appearance, returning to his youthful state after a year.

Luo Qing turned his head and looked at Li Bai, who was still engrossed in reciting poetry, and suddenly felt that the destruction of the solar system was not such an unacceptable thing.

Just do your best.

Luo Qing kicked Li Bai: "Stop reciting your adapted collection of Tang and Song poems. A true poet should create, not haphazardly adapt other people's works."

Li Bai jumped up, hugged the wine gourd he had just conjured to his chest, and grumbled with great dissatisfaction: "I am creating now, creating the greatest work of all time."

Luo Qing shook his head: "Wait until you can write a poem full of your own emotions before you talk to me about this. Gods can't write human poems."

Write a poem full of emotion.

This was a difficult task for Li Bai.

As a god, it's difficult for him to experience complex emotions from the bottom of his heart, even with a human body. His divinity is too heavy, completely suppressing his humanity. Li Bai said indignantly, "Then what do we do next? Continue setting up the formation?"

Luo Qing nodded: "The formation must continue. The Nine Luminaries Celestial Array is more than halfway complete and cannot be abandoned halfway. This formation is an important force for defending the solar system. However, the helium flash warning from the Risk Taker's sensors cannot be ignored."

As Luo Qing spoke, his brows furrowed deeply: "According to Little Moss, the sun has a long lifespan. A helium flash is predicated on the sun's internal hydrogen being depleted, but there's absolutely no sign of that..."

I really can't understand how a helium flash would happen. And if the universe's thought process is a neuronal process, then there should be helium flashes from other stars spreading to the vicinity of the Sun. But so far, there are no signs of helium flashes in galaxies within 50 light-years. My observations are faster-than-light, so I should be able to see them in advance.

Li Bai casually remarked, "There are countless inexplicable stellar helium flashes and supernova explosions in the universe. Otherwise, those risk mitigators wouldn't have bothered to develop a stellar propagation model. Perhaps this line of thinking even started with the Sun?"

Upon hearing this, Luo Qing's expression turned somewhat unnatural: "What a coincidence?"

Li Bai: "From a probabilistic point of view, anything is possible."

Luo Qing frowned: "You seem to really like saying that."

Li Bai walked leisurely to the front of Luo Qing: "It's not just me who likes it; this sentence is a source of comfort for all the gods in the entire universe."

"So you gods are just like humans, pinning your hopes on a sliver of hope."

Li Bai: "Probability theory is the greatest psychological comfort in this universe..."

Luo Qing interrupted him and said:
"Go and continue placing the array plates according to my instructions. The attack units on Mars are basically in place. I will test the power of the Starfire Spears later, targeting an interstellar dust cloud within the Oort Cloud. Go to the Great Ring later and embed that ring-shaped turntable into it to set up the amplification array."

Li Bai muttered to himself, "That was clearly my ring... the white dwarf material from the ring bone, and the white dwarf fish. I personally dismantled a white dwarf and gave it to the dinosaur worm."

Luo Qing: "That's even better. The whitefish are rampant on the ring. You should catch them again and stop them from eating things indiscriminately in the ring. They're like earthworms, burrowing everywhere."

Li Bai countered, "I'm going to work, what about you?"

Luo Qing explained, "I'm going to patch up the surface of the sun and add a spirit-gathering array to the Nine Luminaries Celestial Array to prevent a solar helium flash."

Li Bai: "A Spirit Gathering Array?"

Luo Qing: "Spirit Gathering Array, Energy Gathering Array, Light Gathering Array, all three combined, call it whatever you like. The core function of this array is to delay the process of the solar helium flash. Normally, the solar helium flash releases all its energy within 4 minutes. I want to extend this time to dozens of hours, and then store all the energy from the helium flash explosion into the light amber..."

Li Bai was puzzled: "Light amber is an entropy flat state, a closed system. How can you store helium flash energy in it?"

Luo Qing explained, “I can create an opening for the entropy flattening trap…she should agree, and she really likes photons.”

Li Bai muttered, "You're going to lift your clothes halfway up, huh?"

Luo Qing always felt that his analogy was a bit strange, but that didn't stop him from being full of confidence in his own ideas. "Because photons do not follow the Pauli exclusion principle, photons can overlap infinitely in all units of space, while the entropy flat trap restricts the operation of photons... The entropy flat light is essentially a battery with infinite capacity, which can never be filled."

Li Bai clicked his tongue.

He added, "You're not planning to have Lightpert release standard solar radiation energy in place of the sun after the solar helium flash, so she'll spit out everything she's ingested, are you?"

Luo Qing nodded: "Brother Bai really understands me. He does have this plan. Anyway, she has plenty of photons, and it would be a waste to keep them. It's better to make the most of them."

Li Bai: "..."

Although Entropy-flattened amber is not very likable, it doesn't deserve this much of a crime.

Just as Li Bai was about to criticize Luo Qing's attitude towards Guang Po, the other party spoke up again: "Energy is a minor issue. Even without the sun, with the heavy nuclear fusion of the dinosaurs, the cold nuclear fusion of the Trisolarans as compensation, and the hydrogen nuclear fusion of humanity itself, these three controllable nuclear fusion technologies are enough for humanity to survive without stars."

Not to mention, a light-year away, there is a white hole left behind by the carbon-based federation.

The most troublesome scenario is the Sun in its red dwarf state, where its volume would increase by hundreds of millions of times, easily engulfing Earth's orbit..."

Luo Qing was filled with worry.

Li Bai said, "You can ask me to kill the sun in advance. I just want to use the sun to write some poems, so that a helium flash won't happen."

"roll."

Li Bai made a fool of himself.

After Luo Qing finished cursing, he said, "I'll draw 50,000 speed talismans. You can help me inject energy into them. If necessary, we can push the Earth away directly. This thing is much better than a planetary engine... Mercury is still too crowded, and that little iron lump has too few resources."

"But in your formation, Earth is the core."

"Don't put the cart before the horse. The purpose of the Nine Luminaries Celestial Array is to protect the Earth. It can operate even without Earth, as long as the two attack units, Mercury and Mars, and the defense units, such as Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter, are still there."

"Once you've set up the light-gathering array on the sun, and I've set up the arrays on the other planets, what will we do? Shouldn't you teach me alchemy?"

Li Bai had already heard that the art of cultivating immortality was the greatest art, an art unique to Luo Qing's hometown!
Talismans and formations are two different arts.

Ninety-eight more are needed.

Li Bai was never satisfied.

"Let's put the matter of the pills aside for now. I believe that the helium flash must have been a sign. After the formation is completed, you will accompany me to find out the cause of the solar helium flash. It would be best to find the root cause and eradicate it in one fell swoop."

Luo Qing sneered: "I don't believe it. A perfectly good sun can just explode like that."

(End of this chapter)