One year.
Ten years.
Thirty years.
There was no alternation of sun and moon within the dream, yet Qing Chen could clearly feel the years passing.
For the first ten years, he could not even take a single complete step.
In the twenty-seventh year, he finally managed to sense, briefly as he lifted his foot, that the time before him was not truly one continuous whole, but countless instants smaller than specks of dust stacked upon one another.
In the fifty-third year, he moved a finger out of the present for the first time.
At that instant, Qing Chen was clearly standing where he had been, yet his right index finger vanished completely from the world. It had neither slipped into the void nor left behind any fluctuations of magic power.
It simply was not in [this moment].
In the sixty-eighth year, Qing Chen finally took his first step.
He had moved forward less than a foot, yet he was so excited he nearly wanted to throw back his head and laugh.
Between lifting his foot and setting it down, his body briefly departed from the present, advancing a foot along that gossamer-thin crack in time before returning to the present.
This was a [Time Teleportation Technique] in the truest sense.
From that day onward, Qing Chen's progress began to accelerate.
In the seventy-eighth year, he could glide three feet in a single step.
In the ninety-first year, he could already leave an afterimage of his past self where he stood while his true body emerged over ten zhang away within the very same instant.
By the hundredth year, Qing Chen stood alone upon the silver-white river, the winds of time stirring his black hair.
"So the hardest part is still being able to activate the time technique amid the