Luo Yan wasted no words. He immediately opened his mind and peered straight into Lü Jingshun's thoughts.
He soon understood the reason.
It turned out that the secret realm had appeared above the Demon Race's territory. From time to time, monsters would emerge from it-the corpses of peerless powerhouses who had died after entering the Emperor Mausoleum long ago, revived by the strange energy within.
And so... that Great Saint of the Demon Race had "embellished" the news a little before releasing it, letting other cultivators go exterminate the monsters.
Even the Fat Shopkeeper's eyes sparkled, and he looked sorely tempted.
But when he saw Luo Yan's calm expression, he sidled over again and asked, "Are you going, Senior Luo?"
Luo Yan picked up Xiao Nannan and said, "I'm no senior, just an honest man looking after a child. Don't go calling me that! Besides, why would an honest man like me go there to die?"
Xiao Nannan offered Luo Yan the brightly colored spirit fruit she had half eaten. "Big Brother Luo Yan, Nannan saved this for you!"
Luo Yan smiled and took a bite. Eating did nothing for this puppet body of his, while his true body remained hidden in his bitter sea. "Delicious!"
The Fat Shopkeeper's eyes darted back and forth before he seemed to make up his mind. "Then I'm not going either! I'll try to outlast Boss Jin until he kicks the bucket, then buy this place and become the boss myself!"
Clearly, the Fat Shopkeeper was also a man of considerable "ambition." His dream was to outlive Boss Jin, buy the Fresh Delicacies House, and become its owner.
Xiao Nannan opened her lively, watery eyes wide. "Is this what Big Brother Luo Yan called inviting a wolf into your house?"
The Fat Shopkeeper's face darkened, but he shamelessly dug in his heels. "What do you mean, inviting a wolf into the house? Boss Jin has no descendants anyway. I'm just making sure the Fresh Delicacies House keeps running instead of falling into decline!"
Several days later.
Another piece of news stirred the entire Eastern Wasteland.
The Azure Emperor, that peerless prodigy who had ventured deep into the starry sky, had returned and immediately charged into the Emperor Mausoleum. That very day, streak after streak of green light manifested within it. Someone saw a green lotus above the secret realm, spanning the ages and manifesting across the heavens.
Rumor had it that Wan Qing had charged into the secret realm for that broken mirror, the relic his uncle had left behind.
Luo Yan frowned. The Time Mirror had been in his hands all along. Had Wan Qing not even asked around?!
Luo Yan did not set out. Instead, he remained comfortably at the Fresh Delicacies House.
As he remembered it, the Desolate Pagoda had ultimately fallen into the Azure Emperor's hands. He had buried it in his own Emperor Mausoleum, anchoring it beneath the lands of the east. This trip was sure to end safely, and he might even find a fortuitous opportunity of his own.
Not long after attaining his Dao, the Azure Emperor had tried to evolve an Immortal Domain inside the Desolate Pagoda. In the end, he had failed-not only had he failed to create an Immortal Domain, but he had also trapped himself inside the pagoda.
Luo Yan only needed to wait until the day the Azure Emperor proved his Dao and became an emperor, then have him leave himself a way out. Nothing else needed to be said.
Luo Yan refused to believe that a Great Emperor with the foundations of an Immortal King could not live for 15,000 years!
During this journey through time, he had unexpectedly traveled six thousand years farther back, arriving eighteen thousand years in the past. Yet it was not entirely an accident. The Azure Emperor had proved his Dao over seventeen thousand years ago. By arriving eighteen thousand years ago and protecting him as he grew, Luo Yan would forge a deep karmic bond with him, giving him greater confidence in dealing with the monsters that escaped from the Tianxuan Holy Land in the future.
Luo Yan had miscalculated the timeline from the very beginning. Fortunately, the accident had made up the missing time.
Secondly, Luo Yan had discovered another problem.
After taking him through the river of time, the Time Mirror needed a long time to recover. This time, more than three hundred years had passed since his arrival before the Time Mirror barely managed to awaken.
Business at the Fresh Delicacies House had grown much quieter. Many cultivators had headed to the secret realm without any prior agreement. It was an Emperor Mausoleum, after all-even the slightest gain would be an immense stroke of fortune!
Few cultivators came to visit. Luo Yan had already had plenty of leisure, and now he had even more.
Sometimes, in the dead of night when no one was around, he would even let his true body out for a breath of fresh air. It did him no damn good, of course-it neither advanced his Dao nor allowed him to cultivate. Still, Luo Yan felt he would suffocate from staying inside for so long. Getting some air now and then was better for his physical and mental well-being.
It was purely psychological.
"You're changing history..." The consciousness within the Time Mirror awakened and communicated with Luo Yan for the first time.
Luo Yan was astonished. He had thought that, with the Time Mirror shattered so badly, its consciousness must have suffered grievous damage and should have been unable to recover.
"I should have awakened 150 years ago. After absorbing some power from the origin of time, I recovered considerably. But in this space-time, the myriad Daos suppress me heavily, so I was forced to sleep for another 150 years." It had discerned what Luo Yan was thinking.
"You can hear my thoughts?" Luo Yan stared fixedly at it, unease rising in his heart.
The Time Mirror said, "You and I are one. I cannot hear your inner voice, but I can faintly sense your emotions."
Luo Yan stared at it warily for a long while, remaining silent in his suspicion.
"Where did you come from?"
"I don't know!"
"What grade of immortal artifact were you before?"
"I'm an immortal artifact?"
The man and the mirror stared at each other. One asked questions, and the other did too.
Luo Yan suspected that this fellow was being dishonest-that it had realized he was not its original master and was therefore hiding things from him.
So he took the initiative to delve into the Time Mirror and probe its consciousness, hoping to discover its origins.
The result... nothing!
Luo Yan could confirm that this fellow really had "lost its memory"!
Previously, it had remained in a muddled state, knowing almost nothing about the outside world. Only now had its consciousness awakened. It believed he was the first master to refine it and had never noticed anything amiss.
"Is there a problem with what you just said about me changing history?"
"You'll bear tremendous karma!" it said, its tone grave.
"That's all?"
"That's all!"
Luo Yan asked again, "What kind of tremendous karma?"
The Time Mirror fell silent for quite a while, as though trying repeatedly to recall something. "My previous master was killed by another powerhouse precisely because he disrupted space-time! He was a being who had become an immortal, someone with few rivals throughout the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands. Yet he was still killed in another space-time, his divine soul utterly destroyed, unable to return to life!"
Luo Yan grew wary. Even a True Immortal had fallen?
That karma was no small matter!
At that realm, one did not even need a drop of blood. As long as a single wisp of thought remained, one could return from the dead, reviving in an instant.
"How did he die?"
"He traveled through history and provoked a powerhouse in a certain period. He was crushed to death in that space-time. His physical body remained in that era, while his divine soul fell into the river of time and was scoured by the time law, leaving no possibility of revival!" the Time Mirror said. Its consciousness seemed somewhat hazy, as though it were recalling something.
"I can't remember anything else. That was the last thing I saw before my consciousness fell asleep! It seems I also alarmed heaven and earth's great Dao during that incident and was battered into this broken state."
Luo Yan's expression shifted slightly. Even with heaven-defying abilities and an exceptionally profound cultivation realm, if one died in another space-time... would that death be permanent?
Before you continue