Chapter 118 - 117: Time Immunity

Chapter 118: Chapter 117: Time Immunity

The memories from the time preview flooded the Ninth Elder’s mind. Every time he was about to catch Li Ye, time would reverse.

Back and forth, forth and back. The Ninth Elder had grown impatient with the chase. His opponent could control time; he suspected he might never be able to catch him in his entire life.

He was even ready to throw caution to the wind, give up the pursuit, and just turn around to slaughter the members of the Wenda Alliance instead.

At worst, the two of them could just massacre the entire world and be done with it all.

He could preserve some of humanity’s "seeds" at most. Then, after Li Ye got bored of this world and left...

...he would just wait a few thousand years for humanity to repopulate. It was just like the cataclysm ten thousand years ago—all life had been slaughtered, but ten thousand years later, wasn’t the world brimming with vitality again?

But unexpectedly, in a flash, Li Ye gave him a new surprise.

In the time preview, he had actually managed to kill Li Ye and even seize his demonic artifact...

The memory of his head being smashed flat by Li Ye still seemed to throb with splitting pain, yet the Ninth Elder was ecstatic. He saw hope.

The hope of possessing two demonic artifacts at once: the puppet and the one that could traverse time and space.

Heaven knew, after being led on a wild goose chase by Li Ye for two days, he was sick with envy for the watch on Li Ye’s wrist.

"Keep chasing, Jiu. He can’t kill you for good. For now, we maintain the status quo. He will definitely try to find a way to increase his Skill Level and then continue to use time previews. The moment he sees in a preview that he can kill you, he absolutely won’t be able to resist making a move."

The voice of the Puppet Silk was exceptionally excited. "When he makes his real move, you’ll use all your Spiritual Power to protect your vitals. As long as you have a single breath left, we can finish him."

"Alright."

A glint flickered in the Ninth Elder’s eyes. It was as if he, too, could see a future where he held two demonic artifacts and dominated the world.

「At the same time.」

He remotely issued orders to the remaining puppets of the Three Evil Sects, commanding them to enter the Mortal World and interfere with the Wenda Alliance’s development. If necessary, they could directly carry out massacres in the Mortal World.

If he wanted to win, he couldn’t let Li Ye’s Demon Qi continue to increase.

He was a cautious man and didn’t want to get tripped up by a careless mistake.

Although Li Ye currently showed no intention of killing, taking precautions was always the right move.

It was better for the Three Evil Sects to kill people first than for Li Ye to do it to increase his own power.

...

"Alliance Leader, five hundred li to the west, there is a Sect called Fengye Temple..."

"Alliance Leader, eight hundred li to the southwest, there is a Sect called Floating Bone..."

"Alliance Leader, seven hundred li to the northeast, there is a Ghost Sect affiliate called Moon Shadow Sect..."

...

Li Ye was surrounded by Harmonization Realm cultivators.

In their youth, they had all traveled the world and knew the locations of the various Sects like the back of their hands.

Even if one of them was unfamiliar with a region, over thirty Harmonization Realm cultivators were more than enough to cover any geographical gaps in their knowledge.

「A few days later.」

Li Ye led the Ninth Elder on a chaotic chase all over the world.

By attacking his allies, he helped both them and himself increase their strength.

Occasionally, he would stop to wait for the Ninth Elder, using the man’s head to test if his own fists were hard enough and his strength sufficient, dying again and again in the process.

...

The Ninth Elder, meanwhile, followed behind him, picking up Li Ye’s scraps. Any Sect that Li Ye attacked, he would take complete control of using his Puppet Silk, then drive the puppets he controlled into the Mortal World to destroy the Wenda Alliance’s reputation.

Both were increasing their reserves of Demon Qi, each in their own way.

...

With the two streams of Demon Qi locked in a Magical Battle, the world descended into complete chaos.

The Sects they passed by would first get thrashed by Li Ye and his Harmonization Realm cultivators. Immediately after, another monster would arrive to turn the Sect’s entire upper echelon into puppets and drive them into the Mortal World...

The Mortal World, which had been prospering, was thrown into a total mess by the intervention of cultivators from both the Righteous and Evil Daos.

One moment, the imperial family would issue a decree promoting the development of the Wenda Alliance.

The next, the Wenda Alliance would be branded an Evil Cult, and anyone who joined would be thrown into prison.

A day later, the Wenda Alliance members would be released...

Then, anyone who dared to wear a watch on the street was declared a Wenda Alliance rebel...

After that, any citizen wearing a watch could go to the Government Office or a Wenda Alliance branch to receive a reward...

The Wenda Alliance branches built everywhere were demolished and rebuilt, only to be demolished again.

Cultivators from the Righteous and Evil Daos would break out into brawls on the streets at the slightest provocation...

With policies changing from dawn to dusk, the common people lived in misery. No one had a moment of peace.

...

But destruction is, after all, easier than construction.

Even though the Righteous Dao cultivators encouraged people to wear watches, when the evil cultivators started killing anyone they saw wearing one, no reward, however generous, could stir the people’s interest.

It got to the point where even when the Wenda Alliance gave away watches for free, no one was willing to wear them.

Discarded watches could be seen everywhere, on every street and in every alley.

「In just half a month.」

The Wenda Alliance, which Li Ye had worked so hard to build, had already fallen apart. The populace now viewed the Wenda Alliance as a plague...

The famous and influential figures who had previously joined were now scrambling to cut ties with the Wenda Alliance, making all sorts of high-profile announcements of their permanent withdrawal.

...

In that half a month, Li Ye’s cultivation reached the peak of the Harmonization Realm.

His strength had increased nearly tenfold compared to before.

This was mainly because his Body Attributes seemed to have hit the peak for this realm and were barely growing anymore.

In other words, his power in this world had reached its limit.

Without a Cultivation Technique to break through the Harmonization Realm, there would be no further improvement.

During this time, he used Time Acceleration to fight the Ninth Elder ten times, and he died ten times.

On the last attempt, he successfully blew up the Ninth Elder’s head.

But as a result, the Ninth Elder’s Nascent Soul emerged and used the Puppet Silk to capture him.

This outcome left Li Ye exceptionally frustrated.

To truly defeat his opponent, he had to destroy the Ninth Elder’s body and his Nascent Soul simultaneously.

It was a virtually impossible task.

He only had a split-second window to attack, making it impossible to land two separate blows...

Most critically, due to the complete collapse of the Wenda Alliance, the watch’s Demon Qi recovery rate was getting slower and slower.

If this continued, not only would it be impossible to defeat the Ninth Elder, but he might even be killed by the Ninth Elder in turn, once the watch’s Demon Qi ran out and he could no longer reverse time.

Yet, he had no way to rebuild the Wenda Alliance’s reputation while being hunted by the Ninth Elder.

It was too difficult to turn around the image of an organization that was already broken and had completely lost the people’s trust.

Expecting the people from the Upper Three Sects to defeat the Three Evil Sects and rebuild the Wenda Alliance in a short time was even more impossible. They didn’t have that kind of ability. Otherwise, the Upper Three Sects would have annexed the Three Evil Sects long ago, instead of being locked in a stalemate with them for ten thousand years.

Fortunately, the Wenda Alliance had been very influential a while back, accumulating a large amount of Demon Qi for the watch.

Now, the watch’s total Demon Qi storage could support ninety-three minutes of time acceleration and reversal.

Moreover, after breaking through to the peak of the Harmonization Realm, he had closed the speed gap between himself and the Ninth Elder. Unless the Ninth Elder used a burst of speed, it was basically impossible for him to catch up.

By the same token, this also meant that if he couldn’t find a way to defeat the Ninth Elder within those ninety-three minutes, he would never be able to defeat him.

He would have no choice but to survive like a rat for the remaining seven-plus months.

The Demon Qi consumed by a single one-second Time Acceleration was negligible.

...

A two-minute time preview followed by a one-minute time reversal for each encounter with the Ninth Elder meant he had thirty-one chances left.

Li Ye and the Ninth Elder were both at the peak of the Harmonization Realm, and their speeds were now equal. He could compress the time reversal to a bare minimum of thirty seconds, which would grant him another six chances.

It had taken him ten tries to blow up the Ninth Elder’s head. Thirty-one chances should, in theory, be enough.

The difficult part was finding a way to destroy his head and his Nascent Soul at the same time...

In that single second of Time Acceleration, no Dharma Artifact or talisman was faster than his own movements!

’What a headache!’

...

"Alliance Leader, you blew up the Ninth Elder’s head! If you can just be one step faster and crush his Nascent Soul at the same time, we’ll win!" The Daoist Sect Leader, completely unaware of Li Ye’s troubles, saw only his progress, and his tone was exceptionally excited.

"Mm, I’ll figure out a way to kill his Nascent Soul," Li Ye nodded, his tone casual, without a trace of the fear one would expect after just experiencing death.

’You get numb to anything if you experience it enough.’

After dying ten times in a row, Li Ye had already grown accustomed to the sensation of death.

’A moment of pain, that’s all there is to it, right?’

Li Ye looked in the direction from which the Ninth Elder was approaching and decided not to run anymore.

’I’ll try ten more times. No, fifteen!’

His power hadn’t truly peaked yet.

Sacrificing a teammate could, at the very least, give him a one-third power boost in an instant.

If he still couldn’t kill the Ninth Elder within fifteen attempts, he would give up on killing him and just hide for a few months before going back.

’My life is more important.’

In a little over a second, sacrificing a teammate wouldn’t be enough to consume the Team Emblem’s Demon Qi, but it would consume the watch’s Demon Qi, reducing the total time he could control.

Fortunately, it was all just a preview, not a real expenditure.

...

Unbeknownst to him,

the Ninth Elder, whose head had just been shattered, was also filled with regret.

’My head was smashed to pieces, so why didn’t I control my Nascent Soul?’

’If I had kept my Nascent Soul from popping out, maybe Li Ye would have come to attack me for real by now.’

As long as he got the watch, even if he was just a Nascent Soul, he could still reverse time and restore his physical body.

’When I use the watch to reverse time, it’s not like the watch would just return to Li Ye’s hand afterward, right?’

...

But soon,

the Ninth Elder was met with a new opportunity.

Before, the time previews had come about once a day. Today, he unexpectedly experienced a second one.

In the new memory,

Li Ye had added a wind-up move. Before attacking, he shattered Mao Xiu’s Nascent Soul with one punch, then teleported behind him.

Then, one fist smashed toward his head.

The other fist slammed into his Dantian, aiming to tear out his Nascent Soul...

The Ninth Elder was terrified.

His head was once again shattered by Li Ye, but after it broke apart, his Nascent Soul mobilized all the Spiritual Power in his body to lock down the fist Li Ye had used to grab it.

At the critical moment,

the Nascent Soul activated the Puppet Silk...

’Protecting my head with Spiritual Power?’

’It was all useless at that moment.’

When the Ninth Elder snapped out of the memory, he was panting heavily, his entire body instantly drenched in sweat.

"Damn it, he didn’t do anything, so why did his power increase again?" The Ninth Elder’s face was ashen. "If this keeps up, he’s really going to kill me."

"He did one extra thing. He killed Mao Xiu’s Nascent Soul before he attacked," said the Puppet Silk. "Jiu, we can’t keep chasing. With the Wenda Alliance destroyed, he’s realized the danger and is probably going to start accumulating Demon Qi by killing people."

"Life and death hang by a thread. Let’s start killing first! We’ll worry about the rest after we survive. You have the Puppet Silk; your killing speed will always be faster than his..."

...

The memory returned to his mind.

Mao Xiu looked at Li Ye in terror and asked with a trembling voice, "Alliance Leader, why did you kill me?"

The others looked at Li Ye in equal shock, their faces filled with confusion.

’I’ve killed you more than once, you just don’t know it,’ Li Ye thought, looking at Mao Xiu apologetically. "I was planning to use Star Shifting to help raise my Skill Level a bit, but I didn’t control my strength properly. It won’t happen again. Good thing it was just a preview..."

He stopped mid-sentence.

Because a new Derived Skill had appeared in his mind:

**Time Immunity:** A clock is not affected by time. You have grown accustomed to leaping through time; any time-based skills and Divine Abilities will no longer affect you.

’Are you kidding me?’

’Did the skill think I was a clock?’

Li Ye didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. With his Precise Timing, wasn’t he basically a human clock?

’But what does it mean that time-based skills and Divine Abilities no longer affect me?’

’Does it mean that if someone uses time-based Divine Abilities on me, they won’t work?’

’But what the hell good is that?’

’If I give the watch to the Ninth Elder, I won’t be controlled by it, but I’d already be dead by then!’

’Right now, I need an offensive Derived Skill, not a defensive one!’