"Back?"
Fang Lie grinned at his son as he stepped down from the spacecraft, then slapped Fang Yan on the shoulder.
"You've gotten thinner."
Fang Yan did not budge, merely pulling a smile at the corner of his mouth.
"Dad, I'll be going into seclusion for a long time after I return this time."
"How long?"
"I don't know."
Fang Yan answered honestly.
"Maybe a few hundred years, maybe a few thousand... maybe even longer."
Fang Lie fell silent for a moment, then slapped Fang Yan on the shoulder again. This time, he put much more force into it, cracking the ground beneath them.
"However long it takes, I'll stand guard for you."
Fang Yan felt warmth in his heart. He said nothing, only nodded heavily.
At the summit of Sky Pillar Peak.
Fang Yan sat cross-legged atop the familiar bluestone, with two moons overhead, one silver-white and one deep blue, and a crimson wasteland beneath his feet.
He took out "Chaos Conjecture" and "Time Illusory Martial" from his World Ring and placed them before him, one on each side.
The two manuals radiated utterly different auras.
On the left, "Chaos Conjecture" was as weighty as the universe and as vast as the 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 walk the path of Chaos, but he needed to learn Chaos Lord's way of thinking.
A supreme secret technique was not simply a pile of laws and moves thrown together. One had to find a "path" that ran through it all.
Fang Yan closed his eyes and sank into thought.
Wind was shapeless and intangible, coming and going without a trace. It could be a gentle spring breeze or a violent 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 opened his eyes once more.
He sighed and reopened "Time Illusory Martial."
Source's manual 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 passed amid day after day of arduous study and contemplation.
Two hundred years later, Fang Yan began trying to create a secret technique.
He started with the most basic moves. Having mastered the Law of Wind, he could casually swing his hand and slash out a razor-sharp wind blade.
But he was not satisfied with that. He tried to incorporate fluctuations of the Time Law into the wind blade.
At first, the two laws repelled each other within his body, like fire and water.
The moment the wind blade condensed into shape, the fluctuations of the Time Law shattered it apart.
The moment he activated the Time Law, the Law of Wind dispersed on its own.
Fang Yan did not lose heart. Whenever he failed, he simply began again.
Once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times...
Yinghuo Star's two moons hung in the heavens, one silver-white and the other deep blue, silently watching that figure as he once again sat cross-legged atop Sky Pillar Peak and continued his long, lonely cultivation.
The wind rose, and time flowed onward.
And Fang Yan was still on the road.
Ten thousand years slipped quietly by. In the end, Fang Yan failed to meet his ancestor's expectation that he would enter the Immortal realm within ten thousand years.
As the Footless Bird slowly departed Yinghuo Star's docking port, Fang Yan leaned against the seat in the cockpit and watched the crimson planet recede through the porthole.
The outline of Sky Pillar Peak gradually blurred from view, eventually becoming an insignificant speck.
"Master, are you really taking only your human Clone?"
Little Fox Fairy's voice was thick with worry.
"What if... what if that Spirit Magpie King takes action personally? She's a King-level Invincible!"
"That's why I left the Origin Core and the Spring Autumn Cicada at Sky Pillar Peak."
Fang Yan shook out his black robe. The God-Killing Powder had been cleverly hidden in his sleeve.
"If the human Clone dies, it dies. At worst, I'll spend some resources to condense another one. If the Origin Core shatters, then I'm truly finished."
Little Fox Fairy fell 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'm honored by the compliment."
Fang Yan's expression did not change.
The Footless Bird entered the Dark Universe and sped toward the border of the Southern Border Star Domain at fifty times the speed of light.
That journey took nearly another two hundred years.
Inside the cultivation chamber, Fang Yan's human Clone sat cross-legged.
The human body had a genetic multiplier of only six. Even after fusing ten Xun Cosmic Crystals for a tenfold boost, its combat strength was still far inferior to the heaven-defying Spring Autumn Cicada.
Yet because of that, this Clone allowed him to think more purely from a human perspective.
Fang Yan closed his eyes and repeatedly deduced the secret technique that had yet to take shape in his mind.
"Wind-type secret techniques pursue ultimate speed, while time secret techniques pursue eternal stillness. Combining the two should be enough to create a supreme secret technique."
"But when it comes to truly fusing them, something always seems to be missing..."
Fang Yan muttered, his brow 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." He could even use Time Pause, yet he could not find so much as the doorway to Time Acceleration or Time Deceleration.
This irritated Fang Yan greatly.
Without creating a supreme secret technique, breaking open the Origin Core and advancing into the Immortal realm was nothing but a fool's dream.
"Forget it. I'll look for inspiration on the battlefield."
Fang Yan opened his eyes, a flash of light passing through them.
He rose and walked into the cockpit. Beyond the porthole, the voidscape of the Dark Universe remained unchanged.
Little Fox Fairy's projection jumped out from the sensor and pressed herself against the porthole to peer outside.
"Master, we're almost at the fleet assembly coordinates in the Southern Border Star Domain. Estimated time remaining: three shichen."
Fang Yan nodded.
The reason for the Human Race's large-scale offensive against the surrounding territories this time was simple—Chaos Lord had broken through.
Previously, the Human Race had only two Universe Lords, Dragon Walker Lord and Source, so it could only remain on the defensive in many matters.
But Chaos Lord alone possessed three major Clones. That was equivalent to the Human Race suddenly gaining the combat power of three Universe Lords.
Even among the peak races in the early Primordial Universe, that level of strength was extraordinarily formidable.
Even the most powerful 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 naturally had to extend the claws it had once kept tucked away.
The Cold Nest Star Domain of the Spirit Magpie Race was the first juicy piece of prey targeted by the Human Race's Southern Border Star Domain.
Three shichen later, the Footless Bird emerged from the Dark Universe.
Fang Yan looked through the porthole, and his pupils could not help narrowing slightly.
The starry sky was filled with densely packed warships arranged in formation.
At the very front were three flagships more than ten thousand meters in diameter. The Fang Family's flaming totem was engraved upon their hulls. They were the vessels of Flame Ruins King.
On either side of the flagships, hundreds of warships of every class formed a flying-geese formation. The energy radiance across their hulls connected into a single expanse, dyeing the entire starry sky dark red.
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