The Real World.
Upon the uncollapsed Timeline.
Black Prison.
Professor Yao's true body still remained beyond the crystal wall.
The void was silent. The Outer Realm Demons that had surged in like a tide earlier had vanished without a trace. Only wisps of twisted demonic power lingering in the darkness proved that they had once been there.
The breach in the crystal wall torn open by Caitou Kai had now been mostly repaired. Compared with the rest of the crystal wall, it merely looked a little thinner. Yet the Three-Headed Eight-Armed Giant Ape continued to pull strands of translucent "thread" from the void, weaving them into a net and layering it over the breach.
Until a certain moment.
The giant ape's arm pulling at the dimensional threads paused slightly. Its impassive face suddenly lowered as it looked toward the Black Prison World below, its eyes seeming to reflect countless giant apes and Professor Yao.
As a Legend, one had already stepped beyond the River of Time and Destiny.
If cultivation before Legend meant condensing one's true body and using it to strive to leap beyond the River of Time—to "step beyond the Three Realms and remain outside the Five Elements"—then cultivation after Legend meant advancing along the upstream and downstream reaches of the River of Time and Destiny.
The cultivation that followed was broadly divided into three steps.
The first step, cultivation in the early Legend stage, was to unify every trace of "themselves" that had ever existed upstream along this river. For example, Professor Yao had hunted an Arch Lich last year; the year before, he had participated in the Black Prison Battle; earlier still, he had hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of First University's Campus Cup, and so on. All such traces of his past existence were