Years II

"What is this!?" Lin Hui vaguely sensed that the purple cube was like two living souls, not inanimate objects, and that their realm was even stronger than his own.

"These are two Fusionist souls at the realm of Thought Endures Eternally existence. I temporarily imprisoned them to prevent them from using the Source Disaster to restore themselves. Initially, I kept them by my side simply because of grudges, reinforcing the seal every now and then. Later, after I awoke, I discovered that they had been put into their current state by external forces," Chongli explained.

"If that's the case, why do you say they can increase the chance of a subsequent breakthrough by one in ten thousand?" Lin Hui asked curiously.

"Because they represent two wrong paths, it's like eliminating two wrong answers for you," Chongli replied.

Lin Hui suddenly realized.

With a single grab, he collected the two purple cubes.

Next, the two began to seriously teach the subsequent cultivation methods of the inscription.

As time passed, with Chongli's unreserved instruction, Lin Hui gained many new insights into the second step of expanding the imprint. The normalized Supreme Omniscience Seal allowed him to absorb information at an extremely terrifying speed.

Chongli only needs to mention a few sentences at the beginning, and he can instantly understand a whole lot of what follows.

Some tips and tricks can be mastered instantly after being described only once.

This further shocked Chongli.

If the person sitting opposite him were a Celestial Venerable, he would naturally understand such a rate of absorption. But the person opposite him was merely an External Source.

In just two hours, Chongli had nothing left to teach...

"You know everything you need to know. What follows is a long and arduous period. As a promise, remember your commitment. At our level, promises made carry special weight even without vows. I hope you will take good care of yourself."

"Don't worry, senior. I will keep my word. If I achieve Thought Endures Eternally, I will directly use up two uses of my heart." Lin Hui nodded seriously.

"Remember what you said." Chongli no longer expected to possess Lin Hui's body; he would be satisfied as long as he could fully recover after exhausting his strength.

They dared not kill again, nor could they take it back.

The initiative was entirely in the other party's hands; he could only hope that the other party would keep their promise.

His figure faded and disappeared; he simply left.

Lin Hui remained seated, holding the two small purple cubes in his hands.

He put away the cube and began to slowly absorb it with his divine soul, following the secret technique taught by Chongli.

Sure enough, the speed at which his divine soul supported the Mother of All Things increased, which meant that he was completing the second step and forming the imprint faster.

Although the acceleration may be small, over time, this gap will widen. Over a hundred or a thousand years, it will become an incredibly significant difference.

Swish.

Lin Hui was once again enveloped in a coffin-like robe made of high-grade constant matter, isolating him from everything, and he entered a state of seclusion once more.

During this seclusion, he did not completely cut off all his senses, but instead separated a wisp of his soul to wander around him, remaining vigilant.

Another ten thousand years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Lin Hui separated a wisp of his divine soul and flew out of the Formless Belt at lightning speed, returning to Clear Jade Mountain to check on everyone's condition.

So much time had passed that he worried everyone would think he was dead.

Even if Wind Energy is still available, its absence at crucial moments will inevitably lead many people to have doubts.

Although his appearance will trigger a siege by the Source Disaster, as long as we act quickly enough, the impact can be minimized.

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Clear Jade Mountain.

"Mountain Lord, you're finally back!?"

Su Yaping knelt down, slightly excited, and bowed to Lin Hui.

"These years have been tough on you all..." Lin Hui sighed.

"We're alright. We haven't been cultivating for very long, and at first we weren't used to such a long time span, but we've gradually gotten used to it. Most of us are either in seclusion, traveling, or constantly reincarnating to experience life. But... what about the Nine Heavens Gate Sect..."

Lin Hui remained silent; he had anticipated that there would be problems with Teacher Seven Extinctions. The fact that the initial crystallization of knowledge could last so long was already quite remarkable.

"Isn't the farm's profit enough?" he asked in a deep voice.

"Some things are still missing, especially since you left and there's been no news for a long time. Part of the previous breeding farm was seized by external forces and separated from us," Su Yaping replied.

The breeding farm at Clear Jade Mountain is arguably the most well-established and tolerant of all the breeding farms.

There was no deliberate harvesting or slaughter, no intentional instigation of war, only natural birth, aging, sickness, and death, natural evolution and development.

Clear Jade Mountain only collects the crystallized knowledge from the parts that die naturally. It is precisely this benevolence that results in an extremely low rate of return.

Lin Hui inquired about the rest of the situation. The Seven Emotions Merchant Alliance had completely terminated its lease, and the Rongchang Star Lord was also in seclusion, presumably avoiding the Source Disaster.

During this period, many geniuses rose to prominence on Clear Jade Mountain, while many others perished. However, all the newcomers stopped at the fifth ring level, and no one truly broke through to the sixth ring, let alone materialize.

Below the material world, all sentient beings rise and fall, coming and going in a hurry, like passing clouds and smoke.

While they were questioning them, Xia Si, Yun Xiazi, and the others arrived one after another.

After ten thousand years apart, everyone carried a faint trace of time on them. They were no longer as naive and impetuous as before.

"Mountain Lord, when will you truly return?!" Yun Xiazi asked earnestly.

"It will take tens of thousands of years... We'll have to rely on you all for the rest of the time," Lin Hui sighed. "If you have any difficulties with your cultivation, ask me now. I can't stay outside any longer, or I'll bring disaster upon myself."

Everyone felt a chill and quickly sent telepathic messages to inquire about their confusion regarding cultivation.

"Teacher, Mrs. Xiao Xiao... do you plan to see her again? You reversed everything and revived her, but now she's old again and needs you to reverse her lifespan... This is the seventh time..." Lin Yuexiu suddenly asked.

... Lin Hui was caught in a dilemma.

In fact, he only revived his relatives at the time because of his own longing. But after the revival, he realized that the gap between himself and Xiao Xiao was too great.

His seclusion lasts for hundreds or even thousands of years, while Xiao Xiao's entire lifespan might not even last as long as one of his seclusions.

Such a union has long since transformed from one of mutual support and companionship into a purely selfish act of fulfilling his own desires.

Like now, even his own apprentice can't stand it anymore.

To preserve his own memory, Lin Hui repeatedly reversed the tense of his family and wife, once, twice, three times... even up to the present day, seven times.

This is only because Xiao Xiao possesses cultivation and has a lifespan far exceeding that of ordinary people. Otherwise, if it were an ordinary person...

"Teacher, things can't be forced. Your wife asked me to tell you not to push yourself any further," Lin Yuexiu sighed.

"Why not choose us? We can stay with you forever." Xia Si added at the opportune moment.

Material lifespans are already measured in millions of years, so what she said is indeed true.

Lin Hui remained silent.

After a long silence, he finally spoke again.

How many Myriad Stars Fruit are left?

"There are still twenty left, which are the last few payments from the Seven Emotions Merchant Alliance combined. After that, because you didn't show up for a long time, the surrounding security gradually became chaotic, and we were powerless to maintain stability. So..." Su Yaping quickly replied.

He quickly took out twenty Myriad Stars Fruit from his spatial equipment and presented them with both hands.

"I'll shrink my territory again, focus on my cultivation, and wait for my true return." Lin Hui said this, put away the Myriad Stars Fruit, and disappeared again.

Next, he went to the Nine Heavens Gate to check on his master and Black Elder's condition.

The True Lord of Seven Destructions was not inside the gate, but Black Elder was still guarding the spot without moving.

"Seven Extinctions, Hei Yin got into some trouble, so he went to help protect him. After all, he's an old flame." Black Elder replied slowly.

"How long has the teacher been gone?" Lin Hui asked softly.

"Probably over a thousand years ago, I can't quite remember," Black Elder replied. "But speaking of which, although you've been away all these years, your subordinates, the three matriarchs, and that brat Chaos Emperor, have been quite swift. The Wind Energy has covered the surrounding area, changing from a blocky pattern to a filamentous pattern, scattered and irregular, yet the area actually feels larger than before."

"Looks like they haven't been slacking off." Lin Hui smiled.

No wonder he's been in the Formless Belt all these years without feeling his soul weakened at all. You have to understand that the Formless Belt requires cutting off a part of oneself every so often to counteract that abrupt and mysterious permanent disappearance.

He kept losing, kept cutting away, yet he felt himself getting stronger and stronger.

It's likely that this was caused by the group from the previous secondary calamity frantically expanding the influence of Wind Energy.

After talking with Black Elder, he tried to find his teacher's whereabouts again, but after tracking down to a Black Disaster area, he dared not go any further. He was currently in a critical period of being besieged by the Source Disaster, and the Black Disaster was one of the forces besieging him. If he rashly entered, it would definitely cause a huge uproar.

Helpless, he made a final trip to the Heart Source Demon Palace to visit Fusheng before returning to his original form and continuing his secluded cultivation.

Time flies... What once felt like an eternity of a hundred or a thousand years to Lin Hui, during his focused cultivation, seemed like a simple nap, and the time was instantly traversed.

Ten thousand years passed in the blink of an eye. Lin Hui tried to go out once, and only after confirming that the Source Disaster was no longer surrounding him did he feel at ease leaving the Formless Belt of Natural Disasters.

However, because his cultivation was stuck at a critical stage, he simply returned to Clear Jade Mountain to continue his secluded cultivation and accelerate the formation of the imprint.

Another 100,000 years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Teacher Seven Extinctions returned midway through his journey, bringing with him the badly injured Hei Yin. The two of them stayed at the Nine Heavens Gate and never went anywhere else.

With Lin Hui's return, Clear Jade Mountain has slowly regained its former glory.

Rongchang Star Lord also emerged from seclusion and reconnected with Lin Hui, and everything seemed to have returned to the peak of Clear Jade Mountain back then.

The Seven Emotions Merchant Alliance also returned and rented the area around Clear Jade Mountain that they had previously left. In order to ease tensions, they even made a special apology for what happened last time and gave them an extra ten Myriad Stars Fruit.

Everything seemed to remain largely unchanged.

Inside the courtyard of Clear Jade Mountain.

Liu Xuezhen knelt on the ground, her face full of remorse, and slammed her forehead heavily against the ground in front of Lin Hui.

"Please, Lord Mountain, have mercy!"

Lin Hui sat upright under the Pear Tree, with Lin Yuexiu, dressed in a light purple dress, pouring tea for him beside him.

After hundreds of thousands of years of cultivation, his imprint has now basically completed the second step of outline support.

It can be said that he has now reached the level of truly Thought Endures Eternally.

Although it's just the beginning.

He had originally planned to cultivate to his maximum potential in one go, but Liu Xuezhen's pleading made him pause for a moment. He wondered what purpose this disciple, whom he had personally taken in, had taken in after so many years away from Clear Jade Mountain.

"Since you've already left, why come back to humiliate yourself?" Lin Yuexiu said calmly. "You are no longer a member of Clear Jade Mountain, and your daughter has nothing to do with us either."

Liu Xuezhen came to seek help this time, shamelessly kneeling on the ground, because her daughter, whom she had with another man after her departure, was now in critical condition.

She tried every possible means to salvage the situation but to no avail, and in the end, she had no choice but to come to Clear Jade Mountain for help.

"For the sake of me being a former member of Clear Jade Mountain... Mountain Lord..." Liu Xuezhen kowtowed to Lin Hui again.

Lin Hui opened his eyes, and countless blurry images flashed rapidly through his gaze as he stared at her.

The permanent presence of the Supreme Omniscience Seal, coupled with the terrifyingly ubiquitous range of Wind Energy, allowed it to instantly understand the cause and effect, and even the possible future developments.

"Let's go back," Lin Hui said calmly.

Liu Xuezhen shuddered, but remained kneeling on the ground, unmoved.

But Lin Hui and Lin Yuexiu had already disappeared from her sight.

In an instant, she was teleported out of Clear Jade Mountain and floated in the void of the Black Domain.

All around me were countless world spheres gliding by.

Looking at the dark void before her, Liu Xuezhen felt an overwhelming sense of despair.

This despair quickly transformed into hatred for Lin Hui's refusal to help.

She got up, wiped away her tears, and turned to fly back in the direction she had come from.

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