Nameless was prepared to gather his energy to decimate the Dark continent in front of him. However, one second later, his mind, filled with countless gears, began to backtrack, nullifying his intention.
Then, he sobered up and realized that an external influence was affecting his state of mind, pushing him towards extremism. He frowned upon realizing the severity of this situation. Even he, the strongest being in this world, was being influenced.
No matter how proud and arrogant Nameless was, he never placed his confidence in something as unreliable as feelings. His confidence stemmed from thorough investigations of the world itself, and he had found no one stronger than himself. Even if he encountered someone stronger, his system would naturally make him one point stronger than them.
Discarding the unnecessary thoughts, Nameless took his time to review the report from his second brain. Before his mind had been influenced, leading to wrong judgments, he now realized that the data presented to him was more comprehensive than before.
But that was all. He still couldn't find any clear answers except for what he already knew. Setting aside the report and surveying the world, he noticed that his vision had expanded.
'After leaving the Heavenly Dao world, my mortal mind was influenced, causing instability in my decision-making,' he thought to himself. 'The impact of entering a larger world made me forget the right course of action. The old me wouldn't have cared about this Dark continent; instead, I would have sought a secluded place to steadily improve my strength.'
'But this mortal mind needs preservation. Without its instability, I would become a rational machine, no different from a lifeless entity. Without change, there can be no progress. Only by making mistakes can I learn something new.'
Having found his right path, Nameless chose to ignore the real world. If he were still the boy from Yellow Soul Village, he might have made excuses to explore the world to satisfy his immature curiosity. But he was no longer that same boy.
His heart no longer held affection for mundane things; all he desired now was to complete his journey and witness its conclusion with his own eyes.
Erasing his presence from the world, he lived in a small space that belonged only to him.
But there was no sense of loneliness in his heart; it felt like a fish returning to water.
'Everything is nothing but an illusion. If I don't achieve transcendence, then everything will return to dust. But how do I transcend everything?' Nameless raised his right hand and opened his palm, staring at it for a few seconds before conjuring water in his palm. A small dot sat silently without moving.
'If I compare my situation to this dot, then to escape everything, I need to jump out of this water. But how?' Instead of comparing it to a fish unaware of what happened above the surface of the water, it was more accurate to compare it to a 2D character unaware of the reader.
No matter what, they were unable to notice the presence of 3D creatures watching their lives for entertainment. But if it's only about a story character jumping out from its own story and entering the reader's world, what about the world of the reader?
What if that world is also a story for a higher-dimensional creature?
Following this logic, where would the end be? Who could tell how many jumps the fish needed to take before finally arriving at the final destination?
'Who can tell?' Nameless asked himself, feeling a bit minuscule in the grand scale of everything.
Then his gaze heated up. 'No, this is wrong. What's the point of jumping to a higher dimension? What I need to do is to jump out of that seemingly endless ladder of dimensions and exit the concept of dimension... something beyond my knowledge, something new and novel.'
Thinking like this, he couldn't help but find that his thinking sounded similar to the knowledge from his first life.
'Wait, isn't this basically jumping out of samsara and entering nirvana? The endless stairs of dimensions are similar to samsara, and that place beyond the stairs is nirvana…'
After a brief silence, he made a joke for himself. 'Maybe Buddha did exist, and he successfully became a transcendent being.'
'But even so, everyone who seeks the truth and walks the path of transcendence would eventually think about this. So maybe Buddha was just someone who was more popular than the rest of the truth-seekers.'
Nameless looked down at the small dot under the water on his palm, at the same time he looked up and found he was looking at himself, both from his physical eye perspective and his mental perspective in the small dot.
'How do I jump?' The crucial question remained the same. But without waiting for the second brain to bring a list of answers, he already had an idea that he had considered.
'If I destroy this world…'
The idea was simple: if he destroyed everything, the contrast would become more apparent—the boundary of dimension, the connection with the nearest dimension, and also the place beyond the boundary—giving him the trail he wanted to follow.
'Not a bad idea,' Nameless nodded at himself and began to ponder how to destroy the world just to see if this would work.
Time passed, and finally, Nameless finished his preparations. To destroy the world and find the path he desired, he couldn't use a simple method. He needed to destroy it in a specific way so that the contrast would appear, and he could finally extricate himself from the constraint.
With a thought, he reappeared where he was before, near the border of the Dark continent and the rest of the world. The striking contrast in painting styles between the two sides was easy to perceive. To satisfy his curiosity, Nameless looked at his second brain to see how much time had passed since he had begun his journey to transcendence.
Twenty-seven hours, ten minutes, and three seconds. 'That was rather short,' Nameless mused on his findings.
'If you truly put your own thought into it, the matter of seeking the truth wouldn't take that long, as it is not a matter of cultivation but rather fundamental perception itself. So those xianxia stories are just bullshitting.'
His gaze swept the horizon as he observed various powerful creatures in this world, but he lost interest afterward because he no longer needed them. As someone who had truly put in all his efforts, Nameless wouldn't be so idle as to gather those endless supplies of energy from the system without increasing their value.
Now, not much time had passed, and he had already created various energy sources in his inner world that could sustain him without the need for those powerful creatures.
'Now, let's begin.'
No matter how discreetly Nameless hid his existence and presence, in the end, since he had already made his move to destroy the world, some creatures were able to notice his actions, and many of them were shocked, stunned, and scared to death.
"Who is it?"
"What kind of lunatic is this?"
Various roars and shouts resonated in multiple dimensions connected to the real world, but they were unable to find any other clues except for a lunatic already on his way to destroying the world beyond salvation. It was the kind of destruction that would leave nothing in its wake.
The real world, as the anchor for numerous dimensions that might be equal or lower, began to shake. Not because of Nameless, but because countless ancient beings that only existed in myth had broken through the dimensional barrier and entered the real world.
If someone wanted to destroy this world, naturally, the location should be the real world, as it served as the anchor for the rest of the dimensions.
The grand wizards from the Magic continent exited their wizard towers and cast powerful spells to conduct an investigation. The ancestral spirits of the barbarians from the Wild continent returned to the real world from the spirit world and howled like beasts.
The "gods" from the Faith continent paved their way back to the real world from their pantheon. The mystical deities from the Mystic land emerged from their sealed lands and flew toward the sky to investigate the source of the calamity.
Hell, in mortal parlance, was known as the underworld dimension and was equal to the real world. However, it still remained anchored to the real world. The world no longer had intact control over the souls of the dead, but the underworld dimension had managed to seize this vacant function and grow itself. Even its many layers were not akin to layers of a cake, but rather constituted a vast expanse of a flat plane. Yet each of these layers (regions) could move, resulting in the constant reconfiguration of the entire underworld dimension, even in terms of time.
Below the underworld dimension lay the abyss dimension, positioned literally beneath the underworld without any dimensional barrier. Once you fell from hell, only the endless abyss remained. Within this very abyss, many creatures, forgotten by endless beings in the living world, began to awaken one after another.
Nameless had only sought to pursue the truth, but ultimately, it was impossible for him to remain hidden from the world. The grand festival of ascension began, but no one was happy about it. The small step towards transcendence that many had sought was to be enjoyed by only one person, while the rest would return to nothingness without a trace of their existence.
The path of transcendence was never meant for everyone to enjoy; it was reserved for those who always moved forward and embraced change. Meanwhile, those who clung to stability in their control would only become antiquated artifacts, forever devoid of the hope of advancement and filled with frustration when someone else took the step they could never achieve in their entire lives.