This time around, the fourth inquiry lasted until he spent a resounding 4,400 years of his lifespan to block the inquiry. At this point, he ran out of lifespan and had to resort to eating the creatures in his Cave Heaven to make up for the deficit.
In total, he had spent 10,000 years of his lifespan on all four rounds of inquiry. The rank 7 cultivator had also spent 1,000 years of their lifespan.
It seemed this much lifespan had reached some kind of limit because the rank 7 cultivator stopped bordering him about the mind hunter’s death.
This was undoubtedly good news for Loki. He was finally able to focus on scouring the spirit dimension like a swarm of locusts that was made of only one locust in the swarm.
His peace continued for many weeks and months. But it was briefly interrupted a few months later by the Monarch Forced Exchange.
Monarch Forced Exchange sent a message to him through the divine constellation, telling him that the Thorn House of Commerce had deliberated and was willing to accept him into their alliance. So Loki was asked to come in to officially join the alliance.
But Loki was busy, so he asked for more time. He didn’t want to leave the spirit dimension yet, and nothing Monarch Forced Exchange could say could make him change his mind.
At the end of the day, Monarch Forced Exchange gave him the grace of one year to come over and join. Loki was sure that he would be able to make it in one year, but he didn’t ask for more time.
He decided to wait until the grace period was over before asking for more time. Then he went back to eating spirit creatures.
So another year went by before Monarch Forced Exchange reached out to him. In that time, he earned a lot of law fragments and lifespan from all of the spirit creatures and spirit ores that he ate.
Since things were so good and he hadn’t reached the next level of enhancement yet, which is 10,000,000 law fragments or level 8 or 700% amplification, he decided to continue to stay and feast in second heaven.
Monarch Forced Exchange wasn’t happy to hear this. He said to Loki in anger, "If you don’t want to join us, just say so. There is no need to jerk us around like this. You’re just wasting both of our precious time."
But Loki said, "First of all, if I want to double-cross you guys, then it is a must to jerk you around like this. But I am sincere about joining your alliance. I am just busy right now."
So Monarch Forced Exchange gritted his teeth and said, "So, how much time do you need before you’re less busy? Give me a final time now. If you fail to honor this one, it will be confirmation that your sincerity is nothing but a lie."
Loki thought about how he was gaining a little more than ten thousand law fragments per day and used this to calculate how long it would take him to reach ten million law fragments.
After getting the result of the calculation, he said to Forced Exchange, "Give me two years more."
Monarch Forced Exchange replied, saying, "For a while there, I thought you would ask for at least a hundred years. Since you didn’t make an absurd request, it seems your sincerity is real."
Then he said cynically, "But this might just be like last time. You will ask for a reasonable amount of time that looks feasible and will keep our expectations high, only for you to fail to show up two years later."
In response, Loki chuckled and said, "I guess only time will tell."
Monarch Forced Exchange didn’t disagree with him. He said, "Indeed. We will see which one it is in two years’ time."
Then he stopped sending messages to Loki. Loki also didn’t have anything to say to him, so their conversation through the divine constellation ended at that point.
Loki’s life returned to silence then. The only thing that happened while he was busy was that escapade in the spirit dimension finally drew some attention from other divine beings.
The vast swaths of emptiness that he left behind from his eating spree were noticed by passing divine beings. Some of the divine beings were perplexed by the strange phenomenon, but they thought nothing more of it.
They thought the emptiness was a natural phenomenon that hadn’t been seen in a while and went on with their lives. But some divine beings were curious about why the emptiness had appeared for various reasons. And even a few of these curious divine beings were so curious that they began investigating the emptiness.
For these overly curious divine beings, the investigation into the source of the emptiness was going to be a difficult one because the divine constellation of the Blessed Heaven World had no authority in the second heaven and couldn’t see what had happened in the second heaven or record the events that it witnessed.
So the divine beings couldn’t use the divine constellation to get the answer they wanted directly. They had to go about searching for the source of the emptiness.
Fortunately, there was a trail of emptiness that they could use to find the source. Loki had left a trail for anyone who wanted to find him to use to find him. It was just that no one knew that the trial he left behind could lead to him.
For most of them, they thought the winding trail was an invisible phenomenon or something else. No one thought that following it to its end would take them to the source of the emptiness. As for the people who decided to follow the trail for one reason or another, they gave up because the trail was too long.
Loki had spent more two years creating the trail, so it would take them a few months moving at full speed to get to the end. No divine being was that free, so no one could follow the trial.