At the top floor of the House of Daena in the Akademiya, Setaria, Grand Sage Azar's assistant, had been monitoring the dream energy harvested by Akasha.
However, a portion of the dream energy harvested by Akasha each day would always disappear, but Setaria turned a deaf ear to this phenomenon.
Setaria wrote in the report submitted to the Grand Sage: 'Knowledge output has slightly decreased, but it is still within the normal threshold.'
And Azar's reply to this situation was: 'Continue to monitor the numerical changes and identify the cause as soon as possible!'
At the same time, on the highest, most luxuriant branch of the Sumeru Holy Tree, a figure had been seated there since an unknown time.
This person was Miyashiro, who had been in seclusion practicing immortal arts.
To cultivate immortal arts, the first step is to integrate with nature, and throughout Sumeru City, there was no more suitable place than the top of the Holy Tree.
That branch was clearly so thin, almost without standing room, but the figure sat as still as a bell, meditating steadily on it, as if integrated with the entire Holy Tree; if one didn't look closely, it would be completely imperceptible that there was a person there.
One of the Dusk Birds finally managed to fly to the very top of the Holy Tree, wanting to find a branch to rest on, and from a distance, it saw what appeared to be a ready-made black bird's nest at the very top of the Holy Tree.
The clumsy Dusk Bird saw the nest was empty, thinking it was abandoned by another bird, and without a second thought, it landed directly in the center of the nest.
It tested the nest twice with its hard beak, then stepped on it twice with its claws to experience the comfort of the downy feathers within the nest; it very contentedly lowered itself, curled into a ball, and sighed, marveling that it could find such a comfortable nest, truly a great fortune in its bird life.
Just as the Dusk Bird was thinking that with such a nest, it wouldn't have to worry about finding a bird mate, the nest beneath it seemed to undergo a change; not only did the originally soft and comfortable downy feathers in the nest become as hard and prickly as stone, but the 'base' beneath the nest also began to rapidly expand.
This sudden change directly startled the Dusk Bird into fleeing in a panic; it secretly vowed never to come to this strange place again.
However, after the Dusk Bird left, the originally expanded 'base' gradually contracted back, and the hard 'downy feathers' on the nest once again became soft and lustrous.
Miyashiro finally opened his eyes, and the moment he did, a profound, esoteric facial pattern began to appear on his face.
Feeling the immortal arts Chakra within him finally stabilize, he let out a long sigh of relief; after so many days of cultivation, he had finally successfully entered Sage Mode with no side effects.
He had suffered greatly during this period.
When he absorbed natural energy, there was no Sage Fukasaku to hit out his excess natural energy with a dog-beating stick; his cultivation relied solely on himself.
Once the proportion of absorbed natural energy became unbalanced, his body would rapidly petrify, and this petrification was completely irreversible; with a part of his body petrified and its functions completely halted, the feeling of losing a part of his body was worse than death.
However, fortunately, he was now in the reincarnation of the Sabzeruz Festival; as long as the dream cycle restarted, his petrified body would return to normal.
Until today, Miyashiro could no longer remember how many Sabzeruz Festivals he had experienced, nor how many times his body had turned into stone.
In fact, if simply judged by the ability to enter Sage Mode, Miyashiro had already succeeded long ago; however, that kind of half-finished Sage Mode, like Jiraiya's, not only made his appearance extremely ugly but also made his state very unstable.
For example, to enter Sage Mode, one only needs to control the proportion of natural energy to be within the 33%-34% range; the difficulty of controlling this proportion to enter this Sage Mode is not great, at most, there will be some side effects.
However, to achieve Sage Mode without side effects, the proportion of natural energy must be strictly controlled at 33.333%; the more 3s after the decimal point, the more perfect it is.
In order not to waste this once-in-a-lifetime dream reincarnation of the Sabzeruz Festival, Miyashiro continuously improved the precision of his Sage Mode.
Hundreds of attempts finally allowed him to find that crucial balance point and deeply remember that moment.
The perfect version of Sage Mode, freshly made!
At this point, one of Miyashiro's most important goals for his mission to Sumeru was already accomplished.
Miyashiro stretched, feeling completely relaxed; since his goal had been achieved, this cycle of the Sabzeruz Festival no longer needed to exist.
However, if this dream were forcibly broken, it seemed it would cause a severe mental shock to the'subject' of this dream; the'subject' of this dream... according to the information Setaria gave him, the Akademiya had not changed the choice of the'subject'.
In that case, he couldn't break it by force... Hmm, he should go find Lumine and Paimon and see how their progress is.
Meanwhile, Deena Dazed's consciousness and spirit had become extremely weak due to Akasha's continuous harvesting of her dreams; if Akasha continued to harvest her dreams unrestrainedly like this, it wouldn't take many more times before Deena Dazed's consciousness would completely disappear from Akasha, and her real-world self would meet the end of her life.
Lumine and Paimon, in order to save Deena Dazed, under the continuous guidance of Nahida, who is the Lesser Lord Kusanali, gradually discovered the truth of this Sabzeruz Festival.
Firstly, Sumeru people are not born unable to dream; rather, the Akademiya had taken all of the Sumeru people's dreams through the Akasha Terminal.
To accelerate the efficiency of dream harvesting, the Akasha Terminal, which was originally only available to Sumeru citizens and foreigners staying long-term in Sumeru, began to be distributed by the Akademiya to all tourists.
And this cycle of the Sabzeruz Festival was the Akademiya using Akasha to manipulate the power of dreams, keeping people's brains in a constant state of dreaming, and stripping their consciousness from their original dreams, with the stripped consciousness all gathered in this collective dream of the Sabzeruz Festival.
And those empty 'unowned dreams' would be harvested by Akasha; people would wake up in one Sabzeruz Festival dream after another, while their own dreams would again be harvested by Akasha, repeating endlessly, carrying out the Akademiya's mysterious plan.
This was also why Lumine's brain felt very tired even though she wasn't doing much thinking.
The Akademiya treated the residents of the entire Sumeru City as a dream-making factory, and Akasha was the dream harvester.
Using the citizens of an entire city as experimental subjects, even if such an experiment would cause irreversible side effects to some physically weak residents in the city, they didn't care; Lumine, Paimon, and even Nahida, who realized this, deeply detested the Akademiya's actions.
In any case, it was imperative to stop this dream cycle in time; this was the primary goal at present.
Lumine asked Nahida: "Nahida, how exactly can we make this cycle stop?"
Just as Nahida was about to explain the solution to Lumine and Paimon, an abrupt, teasing voice came from behind them: "Oh! So you're here? Huh? Lesser Lord Kusanali? I finally get to see your true self."
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