The Ten-Thousand-Year War Begins Again

"Back?"

Fang Lie grinned at his son as he stepped off the spacecraft, then slapped Fang Yan on the shoulder.

"You've gotten thinner."

Fang Yan did not budge, merely tugging the corner of his mouth into a smile.

"Dad, now that I'm back, I'll be going into seclusion for a long time."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

Fang Yan answered honestly.

"Maybe hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Maybe... longer."

Fang Lie fell silent for a moment, then slapped Fang Yan on the shoulder again. This time, he put considerably more force into it, cracking the ground beneath them.

"However long it takes, I'll stand guard for you."

Warmth rose in Fang Yan's heart. He said nothing, only nodded heavily.

At the summit of Sky Pillar Peak.

Fang Yan sat cross-legged atop the bluestone slab he knew best. Above him hung two moons, one silver-white and one deep blue, while beneath him stretched a crimson wilderness.

He took out Chaos Conjecture and Time Illusory Martial from his World Ring and placed them before him, one on each side.

The two tomes emanated completely different auras.

On the left, Chaos Conjecture was as weighty as the universe and as vast as a river of stars.

On the right, Time Illusory Martial was as ethereal as mist and as sharp as a blade.

Fang Yan took a deep breath and opened Chaos Conjecture first.

Fang Yan did not intend to follow the path of Chaos, but he needed to learn the Chaos Lord's way of thinking.

A supreme secret technique was not simply a pile of law-based moves stacked together. It required finding a single "path" that ran through it from beginning to end.

Fang Yan closed his eyes and sank into thought.

Wind was formless and intangible, coming and going without a trace. It could be a gentle spring breeze, or a raging hurricane.

Time flowed on mercilessly and could not be reversed. It could turn seas into mulberry fields and heroes into dry bones.

What did wind and time have in common?

A thousand years passed in a flash. On this day, Fang Yan finally opened his eyes again.

He sighed and reopened Time Illusory Martial.

Source's tome was even more obscure and difficult to understand than Chaos Conjecture.

As Fang Yan read, he gradually became immersed in it without realizing it.

Time quietly slipped away amid his day-after-day reading and contemplation.

Two hundred years later, Fang Yan began attempting to create a secret technique.

He started with the most basic moves. Having perfected the Law of Wind, he could casually slash out a razor-sharp wind blade with a wave of his hand.

But he was not satisfied with that. He tried to infuse the wind blade with fluctuations of the Time Law.

At first, the two laws repelled each other within him, as incompatible as fire and water.

The instant the wind blade took shape, the fluctuations of the Time Law shattered it apart.

The moment he mobilized the Time Law, the Law of Wind dissipated on its own.

Fang Yan did not lose heart. Every failure simply meant starting over.

Once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times...

Yinghuo Star's two moons hung in the heavens, one silver-white and one deep blue, silently watching that figure as he sat cross-legged atop Sky Pillar Peak once more and continued his long, lonely cultivation.

The wind rose, and time flowed on.

And Fang Yan was still on the road.

Ten thousand years passed quietly. In the end, Fang Yan had failed to meet his ancestor's expectation that he would step into immortality within ten thousand years.

As the Footless Bird slowly departed Yinghuo Star's docking port, Fang Yan leaned back in the cockpit seat and watched the crimson planet recede through the porthole.

Sky Pillar Peak's outline gradually blurred in his vision, eventually becoming an insignificant speck.

"Master, are you really taking only your human body?"

Little Fox Fairy's voice carried a trace of concern.

"What if, what if that Spirit Magpie King personally makes a move? She's an Invincible King!"

"That's why I left the Origin Core and the Spring Autumn Cicada at Sky Pillar Peak."

Fang Yan flicked his black robe, where God-Killing Powder had been cleverly hidden in his sleeve.

"If the human body dies, it dies. At worst, I'll spend some resources to condense another one. But if the Origin Core shatters, then I'm truly finished."

Little Fox Fairy was silent for two seconds before speaking in an exceptionally complicated tone.

"Master, your fear of death is truly one of a kind among World Lord-level beings."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Fang Yan's expression did not change.

The Footless Bird entered Dark Universe and raced toward the border of the Southern Border Star Domain at fifty times the speed of light.

That flight took nearly another two hundred years.

Inside the cultivation chamber, Fang Yan's human body sat cross-legged.

A human body's genetic multiplier was only sixfold. Even with the tenfold enhancement from fusing ten Xun Cosmic Crystals, its combat power was still far inferior to the Spring Autumn Cicada's heaven-defying strength.

Yet because of that, this body instead allowed him to think more purely from a human perspective.

Fang Yan closed his eyes, repeatedly deducing the secret technique that had yet to take shape in his mind.

"Wind secret techniques emphasize ultimate speed, while time secret techniques emphasize eternal stillness. Combining the two should be more than enough to create a supreme secret technique."

"But when it comes to truly fusing them, something is always missing..."

Fang Yan muttered, his brows tightly furrowed.

After ten thousand years of comprehension, he had thoroughly grasped the first four layers of Chaos Conjecture and the first three layers of Time Illusory Martial Arts. He could even use Time Pause, yet he could not even find the doorway to Time Acceleration and Time Deceleration.

That irritated Fang Yan greatly.

Without creating a supreme secret technique, breaking open the Origin Core to enter immortality was nothing but a fool's dream.

"Forget it. I'll look for inspiration on the battlefield."

Fang Yan opened his eyes, and a gleam flashed through them.

He rose and entered the cockpit. Beyond the porthole, the voidscape of Dark Universe remained unchanged.

Little Fox Fairy's projection sprang out from the sensor and clung to the porthole, peering outside.

"Master, we're almost at the Southern Border Star Domain fleet assembly coordinates. Estimated arrival: three hours."

Fang Yan nodded.

The reason for this large-scale Human Race offensive against the surrounding territories was simple—the Chaos Lord had broken through.

Originally, the Human Race had only two Universe Lords, Dragon Walker Lord and Source, so they could only take a defensive stance in many matters.

But the Chaos Lord alone possessed three major bodies. It was equivalent to the Human Race suddenly gaining the combat strength of three additional Universe Lords.

Even among the various pinnacle races in the early Primordial Universe, such strength was exceptionally formidable.

Even the strongest Demon Race currently had only four Universe Lords: Demon Beast Lord, Meng Tu Lord, Shock Horn Lord, and Star Lord.

Now that the Human Race's fist had grown harder, it was naturally time to extend the claws it had once kept tucked away.

The Spirit Magpie Race's Cold Nest Star Domain was the first juicy prize eyed by the Human Race on the Southern Border Star Domain front.

Three hours later, the Footless Bird exited Dark Universe.

Fang Yan looked through the porthole, and his pupils involuntarily contracted slightly.

In Xingkong, densely packed warships stood arrayed in formation.

At the very front were three flagships over ten thousand meters in diameter. Their hulls bore the Fang Family's flame totem—the mounts of Flame Ruins King.

On either side of the flagships, hundreds of warships of every class spread out in a flying-geese formation. The energy glow along their hulls connected into one vast expanse, dyeing the entire Xingkong dark red.