313: Unexpected lag

The reality was these twenty-two gray-white cards.

The reality was one million.

Lin Yu slowly withdrew his hand.

An unprecedented sense of emptiness, mixed with a hint of relief from surviving a disaster, spread through his heart.

That power was too terrifying—so terrifying that he himself felt fear.

But at the same time, that power was far too tempting.

He had to confirm it again.

Confirm that it wasn't an illusion caused by Spiritual Power overload.

Confirm in what form that seemingly non-existent "ceiling" actually existed.

Lin Yu closed his eyes, mobilizing the residual energy within his body.

A holy light shone once more as the energies of Redemption of Light and Vitality Nourishment intertwined and flowed, rapidly repairing his double fatigue of body and spirit.

This time, he was in no hurry to act.

He floated quietly in place, waiting for a full ten minutes until his entire state had returned to its peak before reopening his eyes.

All distracting thoughts had been severed.

Whatever the result, he could accept it.

Come.

Test.

Lin Yu raised his hand, condensed energy, and slapped it down.

Same process, same formula.

A full fifteen purification instant burst potion cards merged into his body in less than three seconds.

Boom!

The soul-tearing pain descended for the third time.

Lin Yu's body trembled violently, and fine beads of blood instantly seeped from the surface of his skin, but this time, he didn't even let out a groan.

His will had already grown accustomed to this hell.

The numbers on the attribute panel surged violently before finally freezing.

[All Attributes +15,000]!

Spiritual Power: 15,500 points!

Lin Yu's consciousness sank once more into that vast, star-like sea of consciousness, and with a thought—

Multiplication!

Ghost Card!

Buzz!

A golden storm swept through this space once again.

Densely packed, layer upon layer.

Then, most of it dissipated, and the light vanished.

No more, no less—exactly six hundred and twenty-two Multiplication cards floated steadily before him, emitting solid and pure energy fluctuations.

It wasn't an illusion.

Lin Yu spat out a breath of turbid air smelling of blood, forcibly suppressing the surging emotions in his heart.

He looked at this small golden ocean before him and began the second, and more crucial, test.

He was going to stack them one by one!

He wanted to see with his own eyes where the limit of this power actually lay!

Lin Yu's will turned into a command, separating two cards from the six hundred and twenty-two.

Begin!

Stacking the first Multiplication card!

The target card's effect was multiplied by two.

Second card!

Multiplied by four.

Third card!

Multiplied by eight... the twentieth card!

Multiplied by 1,048,576!

The entire process was smooth and seamless, reaching the extreme speed without any stagnation. It was exactly the same as the results he had tested before.

Lin Yu's heartbeat involuntarily quickened for a moment.

Continue!

The twenty-first card!

The twenty-second card!

The twenty-third card!

The effect still took place instantaneously; that terrifying power growing at an exponential rate was as docile as a lamb under his spiritual control.

Could it be... there really is no limit?

This thought had just arisen.

Lin Yu stacked the twenty-fourth Multiplication card on top.

And then.

He noticed something wrong.

At the moment the twenty-fourth card merged into that torrent of power, there was an extremely slight, almost imperceptible... lag.

It was like a smoothly running machine where one of the gears was suddenly tripped by a grain of dust.

Although the effect ultimately appeared.

Two to the twenty-fourth power.

16,777,216 times.

But that process was no longer absolutely "instantaneous."

Instead, there was an extremely brief delay that he could perceive.

What was going on?

Lin Yu stopped all movement.

His total Spiritual Power was still vast, with no sign of decay.

The six hundred-plus cards were also still stable and full of energy.

Where was the problem?

Lin Yu allowed the power to dissipate as the potion's duration ended.

Could it be that he was too tired?

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes to rest.

After a long while.

Lin Yu tried again.

This time, he stacked twenty-four Multiplication cards all at once.

That sense of lag became even more obvious.

It was as if a tiny "loading bar" process existed between the command being given and the effect appearing.

The speed... had slowed down.

Lin Yu activated Eye of Analysis.

His entire vision was instantly covered by countless rushing data streams.

He locked his analysis target onto the effect chain formed by those twenty-four cards.

Lines of data incomprehensible to others flashed rapidly through his mind, reorganizing and being deduced.

A moment later.

An answer surfaced in the depths of his consciousness.

An answer he had never considered, one so simple it was laughable, yet unavoidable.

Latency.

The effect of the Multiplication card was [Your next card's effect triggers twice].

When he used one Multiplication card to act upon another Multiplication card, it was equivalent to triggering two Multiplication cards simultaneously, so the final effect was fourfold.

This wasn't just a mathematical calculation out of thin air.

Rather, every trigger of an effect was a real, tangible, actual use of a card skill.

It was just that the speed of this process was extremely fast.

At a few hundred stacks, it couldn't be perceived.

At a few thousand or tens of thousand stacks, it still couldn't be perceived.

Even at twenty Multiplication cards, representing over a million stacks, it was still so fast he thought it was "instantaneous."

But when this number jumped from one million to over sixteen million—

That originally negligible activation time for a single instance, measured in nanoseconds or even picoseconds, finally accumulated to a perceivable level after being multiplied by the base of over sixteen million.

Continuing down this path, this delay time would only grow longer in an exponential fashion.

Lin Yu's movements completely froze.

He hadn't expected this.

He really hadn't expected this.

He had gone to great lengths, endured hellish pain, broke the shackles of Spiritual Power, and glimpsed the scenery known as "Infinity."

In the end, the real sticking point actually appeared here.

He had gone to great lengths, endured hellish pain, broke the shackles of Spiritual Power, and glimpsed the scenery known as "Infinity."

In the end, the real bottleneck was actually time.

How absurd.

How... normal.

Lin Yu's stiff body suddenly relaxed.

A strange, even somewhat self-deprecating smile surfaced in his heart.

He actually felt a sigh of relief.

Yes.

A sigh of relief.

Compared to those incomprehensible, insurmountable "ceilings" constructed by the rules of the world, this delay generated by the "accumulation of single activation times" was so normal it actually made him feel at ease.