Chapter 116: Observing Constellations (Part 2/2)
Translator: Strivon
There were many people who had noticed the aberration within Luo Nan's eyes but Cat Eyes felt an intensity that was ten times stronger than anyone else.
It must be known that she was the one who had faced Luo Nan directly. Moreover, she was the unlucky fool who had received Luo Nan's torment early on.
Right now, there were chains locking her body and soul deathly tight, and a demonic look now appeared from within Luo Nan's turbid eyes. From the outside to the inside. From the inside to the outside. She fell fully into them.
The most frightening aspect of all this was the fact that she had no idea how Luo Nan did this. She did not have a shred of a clue. It was like a figment of her imagination but the trembling deep within her body and soul contained realness and substance.
Cat Eyes' breathing stagnated for about half a second. It was within this half a second period that memories were evoked of last week at Limestone Water Village Pub, that time when she became the victim of Luo Nan's demonic ritual. Fear had surged forth like the turbulent tide. The boiling emotions were seemingly able to drown her at any time. It was so much that she had the impulse to turn tail and run.
Cat Eyes' feet did not move. Actually, her entire body was frozen.
In this moment, she saw Luo Nan raise his right hand. His five fingers spread slightly open and then curved. His forefinger subtly straightened a bit, as if he was drawing something subconsciously. It also seemed that he was going to directly probe her!
As Luo Nan's arm moved forward, Cat Eyes could clearly feel her eyebrows slightly quiver... However, the tips of Luo Nan's fingers had yet to touch her. His arm had yet to extend completely, so there was still some distance between his fingers and Cat Eyes' cap. Luo Nan just tapped once from far away, the orientation coinciding with the space between Cat Eyes's brows.
With the tap of the finger came a downward stroke. It happened right after, no maybe even simultaneously. Cat Eyes's face, throat, shoulders, chest, abdomen, and even her legs burst with tremors in various areas one after another. Luo Nan's finger traveled down in a single action like a shadow following a body. He instantly traced over Cat Eyes, seemingly delineating the outline of an extremely simple figure.
Cat Eyes did not make a single move. She could not move, giving Luo Nan free rein.
This really offended Zhang Yingying who was on the side. The meaning behind Luo Nan's abnormal actions did not matter. It had increased the divide between him and the others. It made matters even worse. She immediately bellowed, "Hey! Have you gone mad!?"
Luo Nan turned his head upon hearing her voice, his gaze locking with Zhang Yingying's for the first time in a while. He reached out his hand and tapped with his finger through empty space.
Zhang Yingying was fuming; she could not move her upper body. Filled with hate and resentment for Luo Nan's behavior, Zhang Yingying forcefully kicked with her legs. She wanted to give this kid, who had fallen into a possessed state, a good teaching.
But her beautiful, slender, and snow-white legs could only lift up half way before tremors started to spread from various points on her upper body. Zhang Yingying knew that things were serious now. She went, "HEY!" and could not refrain from squirming even though Bai Xinyan had a hold on her neck. Zhang Yingying wanted to stop these inexplicable tremors and itchings. She raised one of her long legs up but it weakened and fell back down.
No matter how much Zhang Yingying tried to dodge, Luo Nan's probing finger was able to accurately match up with the tremor points on her body. Another outline was delineated in an instant. It was so fast that Bai Xinyan did not have time to release her arm and give Zhang Yingying her freedom.
Zhang Yingying was furious now but then something happened the instant Luo Nan's finger stopped in its place. Zhang Yingying's White Rainbow, which was constantly flowing and coiling around her body, oddly gave off a faint cry. The cry resonated with the tremor points on her body. Her power that she spent several hard days to purify seemed to become even more refined and clear.
She was captured by this sudden amazement.
Only Zhang Yingying knew of the changes that had occurred in her body. However, Luo Nan's otherworldly and freakish display had quite the impact on He Yueyin, who had been calm and cool-headed all this time. She could only look with bulging eyes at Luo Nan's actions and was no longer muttering to herself in thought.
Luo Nan retrieved his hand upon completing the drawing of Zhang Yingying's outline. From his perspective, he had done enough.
Luo Nan closed his eyes as he no longer needed to use his fleshly eyes. Bright starlight lit within the area covered by his mental senses.
Cat Eyes was located in that position but what he saw was not Cat Eyes. Instead, there were glittering starlights coming from ten points. There were connecting lines between these points and together they formed a simple structure. The same thing occurred at Zhang Yingying's position, though the structure there was a bit more concise.
These were like the basic compositional forms that people often used to mark the starry night; these were constellations. And the number of these constellations was endlessly increasing within Luo Nan's range of mental senses.
Although the Shield of Truth blessing from Fairchild was temporary, it was ultimately able to allow Luo Nan to understand something. He was able to understand what he could ultimately do with his current level of soul strength, provided he had a resilient enough body capable of enduring it.
The merged body and soul state had many limitations compared to the pure out-of-body state. However, there were many advantages unattainable in soul form. The most direct difference was precisely reflected within the mutual interference between the mental and material planes.
The outline of a configuration for a body and soul merging was the backbone for a high efficiency conversion of energy and information. Though this causes an explosive increase in pressure toward the fleshly body, the harm and consumption of the resulting mutual interference was lowered by over fifty percent at minimum.
In other words, the quality of Luo Nan's soul strength interfering with reality had increased by over twofold in an instant. Moreover, the disturbances he had to overcome during this process was greatly reduced as well. One of the more visible effects was a sharp increase to his mental precision.
Luo Nan had always been particularly sensitive toward energy and information, so there was not much to say in that aspect. In regards to the material plane, the embodiment of his precision could be measured by the display of his limits in applying mental clairvoyance on his body. Before, his limits of mental clairvoyance were approximately one tenth of a millimeter when observing his own body. When observing things outside his body, his limits were on the millimeter level. Here, he could only observe things with a rough estimation; it was not particularly meticulous.
However, the limits of his external precision had now easily broken through the tenth millimeter realm. The quality of the resolution had exceeded what was achievable by the naked eye. Although there was still a heavenly distance between this and a precision observation instrument on the nanometer level, this represented that everything within the range of his mental clairvoyance could be seen as if he himself was personally there. No matter the shadow, no matter the corner, it did not depend on the intensity of lighting at all. Everything could be perceived completely. Additionally, if Luo Nan focused his energy and shrunk the range, the resolution would be increased to another level. The possibilities were endless.
A sharp increase in precision was certainly good but the first thing this change brought for Luo Nan was inconvenience. It brought large quantities of useless details and garbage information.
There was floating dust, crawling insects, the dirt by the edge of walls, and of course, the background hum of electric currents. There were the jumbled sounds of humans breathing and the sound of rain hitting the rooftop of the amusement center. The information of various locations outside was included. There were the temperature variations, the exchange of air currents, and so on. The details, which were once hard to notice, all interweaved and mixed together. They packed into Luo Nan.
The information stimulated him with several layers and several angles. It would naturally be fed to the structure of his body and soul. However, the processing rate was destined to be limited by the speed of his neurotransmitters. This was the limitation of the material plane. Not everything big and small could be processed. Some information had to be rejected.
It must be stated that a blurry sort of mechanism of discerning had been formed in the human body through several hundred thousand years of evolution. The mechanism worked by focusing on the overall characteristics of a given object, rather than on excessive detail. The pressure brought on by discerning excessive detail was thereby avoided.
However, the current problem that Luo Nan was facing laid in the sudden increase of his sensing precision. What had been blurry overall characteristics was now divided into great quantities of clear details. The boundary between these two distinctions had been broken.
The clearer the details, the larger the quantity of information and the greater the consumption of analytic resources. This directly influenced the upper limit of Luo Nan receiving this information. It also limited his sensing range.
Therefore, Luo Nan had to redefine this boundary. He looked deeper into these various details for more extensive connections. He endlessly combined similar characteristics to form overall concepts better suited for his current circumstances. He interweaved and constructed orderly structures that were distinctly vivid. He started from the very beginning. He was becoming cognizant of the world all anew.