The sudden summoning caught everyone by surprise. The natives of the hidden world, Skully, and even Noah had become used to the Ape God's routine and capabilities, so they didn't take any precaution against that event.
Noah was staring at the Sixth Kesier rune on Skully's fur when those ancient mental waves filled the world. He experienced the helpless feeling of having an unstoppable force taking control of his mind, leaving him unable to resist.
Skully and Noah executed mechanical movements as they straightened their position and began to fly in the same direction. Other cultivators joined them as they advanced past the lava lake, and all of them had their same empty expressions.
'This is a God,' Noah thought as his body moved on its own. His thoughts were free, but he didn't have control over anything else. Even his mental waves couldn't surge out of the sea in his mind.
Noah didn't feel angry. He had done everything by the book and acted according to what cultivators had learnt in millennia living there. He couldn't predict that sudden surge of power from the God.
'To think that something so faint can turn me into nothing more than a puppet,' Noah thought as his focus went on the force that was controlling him.
The mental waves of the Ape God were almost unnoticeable. They felt like nothing more than a whisper when they reached his mind, but his whole existence became powerless at that sound.
The God's mental waves weren't heavy, but they carried meanings so deep that even Noah's mind didn't understand why it was listening to them. Still, they felt simple, as if they were just casual thoughts generated by a superior being.
More and more cultivators joined the trail of experts flying in the sky. The calling of the Ape God was inevitable, and no human living in that world managed to escape it. Entire tribes came out of their underground homes, wearing the same empty expressions as everyone else.
A crowd of human cultivators gathered on the ground too. They were slower than the existences in the sky, and their resilience was lower. However, they kept moving forward even when the travel continued for more than a month.
An army of Kesier Apes soon appeared and escorted the crowds of humans through the various regions. Their destination was a solitary mountain placed in the farthest place from the lava lake.
Noah didn't dare to imagine how stressful it was to spend an entire life as a puppet, and his respect for the natives of the hidden world increased as he experienced the summoning first hand.
The helplessness that he felt could crumble any cultivator's spirit, making it impossible for them to advance in their journey. Yet, there was an army filled with experts ready to fight back. Their only weakness was their lack of techniques, but that wasn't their fault.
'They can decide to fight even after experiencing this countless times,' Noah thought as his ambition filled the entirety of his thoughts. 'How can I allow myself to do any less?'
Noah's change of mindset didn't affect his sea of consciousness, but it made him decide to go all out to avoid the impending crisis. He had a chance to escape that situation, so he would take it.
The Ape God's mental waves had surrounded his mental sphere and kept on affecting it as he flew together with the other cultivators. His mental energy couldn't move, but it was in direct contact with the creature's faint thoughts.
Noah's mental energy had inherited the devouring properties of the magical beasts when he became and hybrid. He could absorb the wills of any living being as long as it came in contact with his sea of consciousness.
The thoughts of the Ape God carried clear traces of his will. Noah had never seen such purity and intensity even when he used the theory of the Body-inscription Spell on rank 5 beasts to condense their minds.
The amount of power that those divine thoughts contained was immense, which meant that they would expand his mind faster than any other drug or Kesier rune.
Noah knew that he could survive that pressure for an instant. The simple glance at the Seventh Kesier rune had made him collapse, but he had survived without suffering any injury.
He felt confident that he could do the same with the Ape God's thoughts if he managed to devour a minute part of its mental waves. His only hope was that experiencing a breakthrough would temporarily free him and give him a chance to escape.
The only issue was that the God's calling was still resounding in the entirety of the hidden world. Gaining a few seconds of freedom wasn't enough to make him escape the range of its thoughts.
A plan quickly formed in his mind. His tricks and assets appeared in his view, and developed an intricate strategy that gave him a chance to escape the mental brand.
'I have to reach the meeting,' Noah concluded in his mind. Even after all his reasoning, he found only one approach that could give him a chance to survive. Yet, he had to admit that pulling that off would bring his destruction into another league.
The cultivators reached the solitary mountain, and the Kesier Apes led them through rocky tunnels that led to its insides. An intricate array of passages unfolded in front of Noah's eyes, but his mind was elsewhere.
He regained focus only when he reached an empty area at the center of the mountain, and his eyes moved on their own on a massive figure sat on a large rocky throne.
Noah saw a twelve meters tall Kesier Ape sitting cross-legged on a refined throne carved out of the mountainside. The beast's hands formed a circle in front of its lower-waist. It seemed that it was practicing a cultivation technique, but no "Breath" moved around it.
Its fur was black, but it shone with a mystical light. Noah's dark matter did the same, but they weren't even close in terms of intensity. Six patches of white hair formed six Kesier runes, but the purity of the aura that they radiated surpassed any other rune that Noah had ever seen.
There was a missing patch of fur on the Ape God's right cheek. Noah didn't even need to look at it to know where the Seventh Kesier rune had come from.
Nevertheless, he didn't expect the God to turn toward him and speak human words with a strange accent that resembled an ape's cries. "So, you are the foreigner that has started this chaos. I can see it in your soul. I can sense that your power is nothing more than a side-effect to Heaven and Earth's mistake."
Noah remained speechless. A magical beast was using human words to communicate with him, and it was speaking about the core of his individuality!
"Humans are all the same," The Ape God continued. "You think that you are stronger than any other being, but you are only lucky to be born in that species. If you were beasts, you would achieve less than worms."