Twenty years.
Neither long nor short.
For an ordinary person, twenty years was enough for a baby to grow into a man who stood tall, enough for a middle-aged person to enter the twilight of old age.
But for Lin Ze, twenty years was merely one long period of secluded cultivation.
Over those twenty years, Lin Ze spent most of his time among the stars, adapting to the surge in power after merging with the world's will while feeding Qingtian and Mountain Lord his essence blood.
Neither of them disappointed him.
Under Lin Ze's control, it was as though Qingtian and Mountain Lord had lived through a thousand years. After a millennium of uninterrupted absorption, Qingtian had undergone a complete transformation. His golden fur had turned dark gold, his six ears could hear sounds from any corner within hundreds of light-years, and his strength had reached an inconceivable level.
Mountain Lord was no less impressive.
Beneath his snow-white fur flowed the blue-gold radiance of dragon blood. The king-shaped marking on his forehead had become a vertical scar like a sharp sword-the brand of Lin Ze's origin power, the Great Burial of Final Annihilation.
The two of them had become Lin Ze's sharpest fangs.
Among the stars.
Lin Ze hovered quietly in the void near the sun of the Shinobi World Galaxy, with Qingtian and Mountain Lord in human form behind him.
Twenty years had passed, but Lin Ze's appearance had not changed at all.
He still looked like a young man in his twenties. His white hair fell loosely over his black robes, gleaming with a cool luster beneath the starlight.
His blue Rinnegan still turned slowly. Six patterns-a clock, stars, a nebula, a dreamscape, a book, and a sharp sword-shifted within them, radiating a mysterious, profound light.
White