The rippling light was illusory yet real, like the passage of time that could not be seen but could be directly felt. The Time Saber lay quietly on the offering table, without the slightest unnecessary reaction.
Faced with this, Meng Qi treated it as nothing unusual and continued speaking on his own, as if he had never hoped for a reply:
"If the Heavenly Emperor can truly return, and directly recover his peak state, then there is nothing more to say. But if he still needs time to consolidate himself, I believe he will not mind having one more Other Shore ally."
"As long as he—or you—makes a move once at a critical moment, then after I attain the Other Shore, I will assist the Heavenly Emperor in returning to his peak."
After speaking in the tone of a great vow, he withdrew his gaze, dispelled the violet light in the eyes of the current Sect Master of Xuantian Sect, and removed the Inner Demon. He did not wait for the Time Saber's reaction, nor did he care whether it could relay these words to the Heavenly Emperor, who was hiding somewhere and had not yet died.
Jade Emperor Mountain still existed, and Xuantian Sect remained. The fact that no great figure had taken the Time Saber away might itself be an instance of "waiting by a tree stump for a rabbit"!
At the lowest level of the Nine Abysses, in the heart of the Nether Sea ruins, a young man in a black robe sat cross-legged. His features were delicate, yet his brows and eyes carried weariness and disgust toward the Mortal World and all things under heaven. A three-foot-three-inch-and-three-fen-long dark sword lay across his knees, its lightless blade seeming ready to sever everything with a wave of