Qi Ze and Yan Junyu initially planned to train for a few years before returning to the Black Eye Galaxy, but they didn't expect a series of extraordinary encounters that led them to ascend from a second-class plane to a first-class plane, and they lingered in a super-class plane for nearly a century. One day, the duo accidentally stumbled upon a secret realm where they discovered a time reversal formation array. They decided to use it to return to their most desperate moments in order to alter their fates.
For Yan Junyu, his most perilous times always had Qi Ze by his side, leaving no regrets. But Qi Ze carried a deep-seated grudge, and if he could save his sect and annihilate his enemies, that would truly mean having no strings attached. They agreed on this plan and stepped into the formation array, heading for the continent of Qianyuan. However, something went awrong along the way, and they were separated by the torrent of time, each landing in a different place.
When Qi Ze opened his eyes again, he found himself hiding in a cave, with the dark night and the howls of beasts outside. A spirit sword, whose blade was already dulled, lay beside him, its faint divine glow slowly fading.
"The Evil-Slaying Sword!" Qi Ze was startled, then half-sat up and examined the sword in his hand, turning it over repeatedly. Indeed, this was one of the sect's treasuresâthe Evil-Slaying Sword. The phrase "sword qi spans three thousand miles, a single sword's light chills nineteen states" aptly described it.
Without this sword, how could Qi Ze, with his Golden Core cultivation, have escaped the encirclement of tens of thousands of experts? But something was clearly off about this time point! After the sect was destroyed, Qi Ze fled with all its legacies. The sword couldn't withstand a full-strength attack from a Great Consummation stage cultivator and was ultimately rendered useless. It was now precisely the moment when the superior spirit sword turned into a piece of scrap metal.
"Why is it this time, when we agreed to return before the sect was destroyed?" Qi Ze was filled with disappointment. He probed with his divine sense and didn't find any trace of his beloved, which deepened his sorrow.
Five days had passed since the sect's destruction. Qi Ze had originally been sent out of the domain of Supreme Divine Creation Sect by the concerted efforts of the elders, but he was detected on the way and pursued by a group of cultivators. Among them was a Great Consummation stage grandmaster who had set aside his dignity to personally attack. If not for the fact that a cold corpse would greatly diminish in medicinal value, he would have been killed already. Even so, he had sacrificed the Evil-Slaying Sword and thousands of Thunder Pills, barely escaping.
The last time, he had wept bitterly holding the spirit sword depleted of divine light, bowed heavily in the direction of the sect, and experienced the darkest, most desperate, and most helpless period of his life. From that moment on, pursuit, betrayal, and betrayal would follow him like a shadow. So vast was the world, yet there was not even an inch of land for him to stand on, and among so many people, there was not one worth his complete trust.
But back then, he had no idea what he would go through, thinking that finding his mother would make everything better.
"Mother?" Qi Ze sneered at the thought, his dark eyes filled with malevolence.
Reversing time is an act defying the heavens, allowed once but not twice. Since the destruction of the sect had already taken place, Qi Ze could only accept it no matter how much it pained him. Fortunately, he had experienced the same events once before, so adapting wasn't difficult. Now, the entire cultivation world knew that he was a fusion body, and if refined into a pill, whoever takes it could instantly ascend. This was far more tempting than divine artifacts, secret realms, or spirit veins.
Therefore, if his identity was revealed, he wouldn't have a chance of survival on the continent of Qianyuan unless he cultivated to the Tribulation Transcendence stage, becoming someone no one dared to provoke. Unfortunately, last time he was too young and his cultivation too low; he could only flee, ending up with a mutual destruction.
Hearing the thunder outside the cave, Qi Ze immediately suppressed his cultivation to the Golden Core stage, avoiding an immediate ascension to the upper realms. Indeed, after hundreds of years of training, he and Yan Junyu had continuously broken through, and they were unsure of their current level, considering that each plane had its own classification standards. If he had to describe it, their level was roughly equivalent to a celestial being.
Without sensing the aura that exceeded the limit, the tribulation clouds slowly dissipated. Qi Ze then opened his Qiankun bag to inventory his belongings. Logically, at this point, he should have carried many treasures when he escaped the sect, but in the Qiankun bag, there was nothing but what he and Yan Junyu had gathered in other planes.
"It's not a complete restoration of the past's formation array. But this is for the better. If it was completely restored, I'd just be a Golden Core stage ant again, how could I take revenge?" Thinking this, Qi Ze's depressed mood eased significantly. He took out a voice transmission jade talisman and called out, "Junyu, where are you?"
There was no response on the other end, either because they were too far apart or because he had encountered danger. Qi Ze was anxious, quickly taking out a life tablet and dripping the blood Yan Junyu had given him in advance into it. The life tablet was engraved with Yan Junyu's name and a miniature map. The blood bead first merged into the name, then condensed into a blood thread, slowly pointing in a certain direction.
Qi Ze looked closely and saw that it was the Demon Realm; his tense mood immediately relaxed. The Demon Realm and the cultivation world were separated by a thick barrier; naturally, the voice transmission jade talisman would be blocked, which explained the lack of response. With his beloved's strength, he could easily come and go on the continent of Qianyuan without fear of encountering danger.
"As long as I wasn't swept away to another plane." While murmuring, he took out a few spirit stones to strengthen the concealment formation outside the cave.
This time, he had come for revenge. How those people had destroyed the sect and looted the legacies, he would return it to them a hundredfold, a thousandfold. Even if several hundred years had passed, he still remembered the names and faces of his enemies clearly, and he wouldn't let anyone escape.
Pulling out No. 1, which had been upgraded countless times from his Qiankun bag, he ordered, "Tell your father to find me at the Spirit Water Palace in Chongming Continent."
"Where's my father?" No. 1 tilted his head to ask.
"Your father is in the Demon Realm, follow this map." Qi Ze threw him a map and a bag of spirit stones, instructing, "Hurry back, don't play along the way."
"Understood, Second Father." No. 1 put the bag into his storage space and flew toward the cave entrance.
"I've told you countless times, call me Dad, not Second Father!" Qi Ze shouted in annoyance.
"I've told you countless times, call me Thunder God, not No. 1!" No. 1 was also quite temperamental.
"You're fundamentally a wind attribute, what Thunder God!" Qi Ze was almost driven mad by this brat, regretting his own impulsiveness in upgrading No. 1, resulting in him becoming even more foolish with each upgrade.
No. 1 ignored him and silently flew into the sky, disappearing. Qi Ze meditated for a night and set out for the Spirit Water Palace in Chongming Continent the next day. The master of the palace was his biological mother, Su Huaiyun, a Cultivation stage cultivator with a single water spirit root, her strength neither high nor low, but sufficient to guard a territory.
Most of the female disciples in the Spirit Water Palace had water spirit roots. Occasionally, they would recruit water spirit root men with particularly exquisite appearances, but they wouldn't let them hold high positions. After all, the Spirit Water Palace was ruled by women, who could never marry out, but could conceive offspring with male cultivators. If it was a non-water spirit root male infant, they would abandon him. If it was a female infant or a water spirit root male infant, they would take them back to the palace to raise them.
When Qi Ze was born, his appearance was exceptionally exquisite and adorable, which made Su Huaiyun very fond of him. She immediately tested his spirit root but didn't get a satisfactory result, so she left him to be raised by his father. In a later year, she accidentally found an ancient book that said: those who made the spirit root stone emit gray spiritual light were very likely to have fusion spirit roots, not mixed spirit roots. This prompted her to recall the anomaly of that year. She repeatedly forced his father to confess and finally learned the truth.
The opportunity for transcendence was right in front of her, how could Su Huaiyun not covet it? But she was still a mother, not heartless enough to refine her own son into a pill and consume him. Yet she couldn't shake off her unease, always pondering it in her heart. Over time, she revealed the news to her most favored second son and youngest daughter, also exposing Qi Ze's identity.
Her second son, Su Wan, had water and wood mixed spirit roots, average aptitude, and whether he could advance to the Cultivation stage before his lifespan ended was uncertain. Her youngest daughter, Su Ruolan, had a single water spirit root, not bad aptitude, but a vain, arrogant, and lazy personality. After ten years of cultivation, she was still a mere ant at the sixth layer of the Qi Refinement stage.
Growing up by Su Huaiyun's side, they weren't lacking in resources, but compared to the Supreme Divine Creation Sect, they were far behind. Also, they heard their mother constantly prattle on about how excellent and extraordinary this young sect master was, so jealousy arose in their hearts. They vowed to leave him with nothing, so they spread the news of Qi Ze's special physique, attracting the pursuit of people across the land.
Back then, Qi Ze overly trusted so-called "kinship," completely unaware of their schemes until he was imprisoned by Su Huaiyun. That was the first time he realized the darkness of the human heart. If Su Huaiyun truly cared about mother-son affection, why would she reveal his secret? Those favored, like Su Wan and Su Ruolan, were merely chess pieces in her hands. She used their mouths to push Qi Ze to the brink, then assumed the guise of being pressured by the greater trends of the world, swallowing the pill made from her son's flesh and blood with a clear conscience, and even had the gall to say that once my strength soars, I can avenge you and your father.
Revenge, what a beautiful word. Thinking of this, Qi Ze laughed in a sinister manner. He put on a human skin mask, changed into coarse hemp clothes, and took down the concealment formation outside the cave, flying in the direction of the Spirit Water Palace. By evening, he found a small town to rest.
Meanwhile, Yan Junyu stood on a high ridge, his expression inscrutable as he watched the battle below. He woke up here, with no trace of his beloved. All around were desolate wilderness and desert, not a trace of green could be seen. The red sun scorched the earth, the air was hot and distorted, the violent winds carried a fishy odor, scraping against his face like a steel blade.
With Yan Junyu's strength, he naturally felt no discomfort, but the disappearance of his beloved left him particularly irritable. He was about to leave when the victorious side of the battle below glared at him menacingly, clearly unwilling to let him go.
His footsteps paused slightly, and an unconscious smile crept onto the corner of his mouth. Leaving a live mouth to ask about the situation in this world was also good, so he wouldn't blindly search and waste his efforts.