Chapter 1 Lily's Discovery

The slender cylinder Lily found appeared to be some kind of remote surveillance device. The holographic images floating around it showed areas outside of Asgard. Although Hao Ren couldn't pinpoint their exact locations, some of the iconic landmarks appearing in the images were places he'd seen while flying over Asgard in the spherical aircraft: they were all located on the outskirts of Asgard.

And on one of the surveillance screens, five or six figures could be clearly seen staggering through that scorched land. They were clearly not Asa or Vanaheimr people. These individuals wore bulky, cumbersome leather clothing and were adorned with all sorts of miscellaneous and seemingly useless equipment. Rather than survivors of the ancient "gods," they looked more like down-on-their-luck wandering warriors. These men and women roamed the wasteland, seemingly unaware that their every move was being monitored. Like scavengers, they rummaged through the battlefield's relics, each one cautious yet excited, their behavior highly suspicious.

It wasn't possible to determine the recording time from the image, but judging from the state of the battlefield, it was after the battle of Ragnarok: the magical flames in the wasteland had died down, and the tears in the sky caused by the hunter's light cannons had healed. The people appearing in the footage were clearly survivors of Ragnarok.

Hao Ren immediately turned to the Valkyrie and asked, "Is this live surveillance?!"

The Valkyrie hugged her knees and crouched on the seat, like a young animal adopting a defensive posture: "Live… surveillance?"

Vivian repeated next to her: "He's asking when these images were taken? Are they current images?"

"No," the Valkyrie glanced at Vivian with some fear, as if her memory had finally recovered slightly, and she began to remember this ancient vampire who had been a distinguished guest of Asgard more than two thousand years ago, or perhaps she was simply frightened by Vivian's "electrotherapy" just now. "This is… thousands of days ago? More days and nights ago… I don't know, I'm just guarding Valhalla, I don't know what's going on outside, I don't know…"

"The events on the Vigrid Plain were too traumatic for her, she's afraid to pay attention to anything outside Valhalla," Nangong Sanba said softly. "Classic self-protective hypnosis."

"Looks like these are recordings," Hao Ren nodded after hearing the Valkyrie's words. "After all, when we flew over here earlier, we didn't see any signs of people on the ground."

"Can you determine where these surveillance images are coming from?" Gala卓尔 turned to look at Anthony.

"No need to determine, I can probably guess," Vivian interjected. "This Valkyrie just mentioned the path to the Netherworld and the Bifrost… that should be on the southeastern edge of the Vigrid Plain. I know that place, and we'll definitely pass by there if we want to go to another dimension."

Seeing the curious gazes of Anthony and Gala卓尔, Vivian explained: "The Nine Realms are connected by the branches of Yggdrasil, and the weak points in the spatial barriers naturally cling to those branches. The Asa 'gods' built a kind of acceleration device called the 'Bifrost' between the largest branches, which allows people to cross the barriers between the Nine Realms in a safer and more stable way. The battle of Ragnarok destroyed all the Bifrosts, but those remaining gates should still be passable, at least for carrying people like us. If Odin really isn't in Asgard… then we can only go to other dimensions and see, maybe the situation is different from what I'm guessing, and it's possible that more surviving areas have appeared."

"Then let's go to the Bifrost and see what's going on," Hao Ren nodded immediately, but then looked at the Valkyrie with concern. "The problem is, what do we do with her? Just leave her here like this?"

The crazy Valkyrie heard the movement, looked up at them, her cloudy eyes full of suspicion, seemingly uneasy because she didn't know what was about to befall her.

"Are you coming with us?" Vivian asked with a smile, friendly.

The Valkyrie thought hard for a moment, then immediately shook her head frantically: "No! I must guard the palace with my sisters! There can't be a gap in the defense here!"

"Let's leave her here for now, after all, she's been like this for more than two thousand years," Hao Ren waved his hand. "We'll deal with her problem when we come back."

Everyone agreed, so after checking the other monitoring equipment in the central control room, confirming that there were no more clues here and that Odin's traces couldn't be found, the group left Valhalla.

And that crazy Valkyrie, seeing everyone was about to leave, actually followed them silently all the way to the palace gate. Most of the time she was staring intently at Hao Ren, and she rarely gave logical answers when others spoke to her, until Hao Ren was about to step out of the gate, she said nervously, "Will you return the Gungnir to the Allfather?"

Hao Ren was stunned: a pretext he had casually said earlier to calm the Valkyrie down was actually taken seriously!

But he obviously couldn't prevaricate, so he could only grit his teeth and nod: "Ah, yes, as long as I see Odin, I'll give it to him."

"Please tell him," the Valkyrie lowered her eyes, trying not to look at the sights of other parts of Asgard, pretending that the glorious city still stood tall. "Please ask him, what are the next orders… orders for the Valkyries."

"I will, I will…" Hao Ren could only nod repeatedly, then fled the place.

"That was really a close call," after returning to the spherical aircraft, he said to Vivian with a bitter face, "Dealing with mentally ill people is just asking for death, how are we going to explain it to her when we come back?"

"Don't ask me, you made up the lie, you go make it up," Vivian turned her head. "Now I just hope we can really find Odin's whereabouts. If there are really survivors in other dimensions, then maybe we can find Odin's clues there too."

It didn't take long for them to reach the location of the "Bifrost" that Vivian mentioned.

This Asgard space isn't on Earth, so there's naturally no way to determine the southeast and northwest by relying on magnetic poles, but for convenience, the Asa gods artificially demarcated the direction of each otherworld of the Nine Realms. Although their initial calculation method has been lost, Vivian still knew how to determine the southeast and northwest here according to the direction of the mountains.

Extending southeast from the scorched Vigrid Plain, all the way to the end of the plain, then crossing a dry tidal flat and a twisted small jungle, you will come to the end of Asgard.

The real end of space.

The earth stopped abruptly in front, and the continuous mountains on both sides also revealed a huge opening here, like a piece of cake being cut off. The entire land ushered in a neat and smooth fault. Looking down from the air, there was only a horrifying endless abyss and chaos below this cliff.

A river flowed from the inland to this place. The river was also cut off with the land, and the rushing river water rushed out of the continent all the way, suspended out of thin air in the vast nothingness in front, and gradually turned into an endless thick fog in the far distance: this fog shrouded most of Asgard's borders like a barrier. With some complex airflow movement, they will eventually return to the inland and turn into rain and snow, returning to the cycle.

And the most awe-inspiring thing here is neither the cut-off land nor the suspended river floating out of the continent out of thin air, but the countless huge vines extending from under the earth and spreading all the way into the void.

The spherical aircraft landed on a small highland at the end of the earth, and this small highland was actually the tuber of a certain vine. After getting out of the aircraft, Hao Ren once again stepped on the tentacles of the eldest son. He saw a dozen extremely thick tentacles extending from the ground under his feet and the distant mountains, growing wantonly and piercing all the way into the barrier-like clouds. These tentacles were identical in shape to the eldest son, but their surfaces were flashing with mysterious silver runes: each of these runes was hundreds of square meters in size.

This is the main body of Yggdrasil. These amazing giant tentacles grow and spread deep in each continent, and even spread to other spaces, eventually connecting the nine otherworlds together like a skeleton. Now these things are quietly silent, seemingly without any perception of the "tiny microorganisms" active nearby. Only in a state of dreaming, the tentacles in the distance will twitch slightly. The shaking amplitude is so small that it is almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

But it is enough to prove that Yggdrasil is still alive.

"It is indeed the biological tissue of the eldest son, but the mutation is very serious. This unit cannot determine why he grew into this," the data terminal said after scanning the shallow structure of a tentacle. "This unit doesn't dare to go too deep. There is still neural activity inside the tentacle, and it is unstable. He will definitely make a big fuss if he wakes up in this state."

"Mímir is still continuing to appease him," Hao Ren nodded. "It's not too late to stimulate this big guy after we've explored all the other places."

"Let's look for it separately," Vivian looked into the distance. "There seem to be some traces here."