Starting My Cultivation With Time Management

Chapter 944: Chapter 84: Storm and Stellar

The old man’s phantom faded from the little boat quickly after explaining the rules of the secret trial.

Now, only Qiu Changtian and Xu Yinglian remained on the boat. The two looked around, but apart from the torrential rain and the endless waves, it seemed as if nothing else existed in this world.

“So this is what the world looks like after destruction?” Xu Yinglian frowned and said.

She tried forming a seal to release Daoist Magic. The Great Bright Fire surged out from her mouth and nose, spraying forward in a vast, overwhelming inferno.

The blazing flames evaporated all the rainwater in their path. White mist swirled and intertwined with the downpour, yet it didn’t create the fiery sea she had envisioned.

As Xu Yinglian stopped channeling her True Yuan, the large expanse of fire was quickly extinguished by the torrential rain, and the world returned to its watery shroud once again.

“This environment is too harsh, suppressing all non-water system Daoist Magic and magical treasures,” Xu Yinglian said with a frown. “But… just this storm and rain alone don’t seem strong enough to kill a high-rank cultivator.”

“Hmm,” Qiu Changtian suddenly pointed to the distance. “Junior Sister, look.”

Xu Yinglian followed his gaze and saw a shooting star tearing through layers of dark clouds. It trailed a blue flame like a tail, ripping apart the endless curtain of rain and plummeting far into the distance.

“What… is that?” Xu Yinglian asked in shock.

Even from such a great distance, she could sense the immense heat of the falling star. The clouds, torn apart at its passage, expanded outward from the gash in the sky. Massive amounts of mist surged and rippled with the waves of its shock.

“That’s a fallen star,” Qiu Changtian said with a sigh. “Junior Sister, if that star were to hit us directly, would we survive?”

“No,” Xu Yinglian immediately judged.

Not only because of the searing heat but also because of its terrifying, mountainous size. Unless an Immortal capable of moving mountains and filling oceans was present, what could possibly block such a catastrophe?

“It all comes down to luck,” Qiu Changtian sighed again. “If we’re unlucky enough to get hit by such a star, there’s no way to survive. Moreover, even if we aren’t directly struck…”

Before he could finish, they saw a short, white wall suddenly rise in the direction of the star’s impact.

At first, it was only slightly visible, but it quickly grew taller—or perhaps just closer—until it transformed into a tsunami, towering thousands of feet high, crashing down toward their tiny boat!

In that instant, both of them formed seals simultaneously.

Xu Yinglian spat out the Crimson Feather Nine Phoenix Fire, and its golden filaments sliced through the tsunami, cutting it in half at the waist. Qiu Changtian unleashed Tai Yi Thunder, blasting a massive hole in the rootless water wall so their small boat could slip through.

Before they could even catch their breath, they noticed a second tsunami wall rapidly approaching in the distance… Naturally, a giant tsunami caused by a fallen star couldn’t possibly come in just one wave.

The second, third, and fourth waves followed… By the time the seventeenth wave hit, its height had decreased to merely a hundred feet.

Xu Yinglian was about to form a seal again when Qiu Changtian pressed down on her hands.

“Rest for a while, Junior Sister,” Qiu Changtian said.

“I still have plenty of True Yuan,” Xu Yinglian stubbornly replied, though her breathing was uneven and her voice trembled slightly.

“If I run out of True Yuan later, I’ll need you to save my life,” Qiu Changtian said with a gentle smile.

The statement was so skillfully worded that Xu Yinglian quickly relented.

Indeed, if both she and her senior brother exhausted their True Yuan here, how would they deal with dangers that came later?

Xu Yinglian sat cross-legged and entered meditative concentration, racing against time to restore her True Yuan, ready to take over when her senior brother could exert himself no longer.

Qiu Changtian chuckled inwardly. Ordinary Nascent Soul cultivators faced with this situation naturally had to worry about endurance. But he possessed a First Grade Immortal Infant; the density and abundance of his True Yuan rivaled even that of Earth Immortals.

Repelling these tsunamis was no more than a trivial expenditure of energy.

However, the tsunamis were merely the aftershocks of the fallen star. If more and more stars began to plummet, even if he could withstand the tsunamis, the small boat beneath them, a magical treasure, might not endure the relentless forces.

And if the stars fell too close, the difficulty of resisting the tsunamis would increase significantly. It was imperative to find a place of refuge.

But refuge… If a sanctuary capable of withstanding apocalyptic catastrophes already existed, why would he need to seek the Heaven-Mending Stone?

As Qiu Changtian pondered this, the Kunlun Mirror suddenly spoke:

“There’s an island over there!”

The mention of an island immediately snapped Qiu Changtian to attention.

Wasn’t that a natural refuge?

After all, with the volume of rainfall and the surging waves as they were, the undercurrents beneath the ocean’s surface must be incredibly perilous. If they accidentally fell into the water, they could be dragged away to who-knows-where without even having the time to cast any Daoist Magic.

But if they reached an island, though the rain would persist, the environmental interference would diminish significantly, thereby greatly increasing their chances of survival.

With that thought, Qiu Changtian activated the Tianyuan Yiqi Sword, placing it horizontally at the rear of the boat, and began propelling them rapidly toward the island.

Xu Yinglian, feeling the vibrations beneath her, opened her eyes to see the faint outline of an island emerging through the distant rain curtain.

As they approached, she suddenly stood up and asked doubtfully:

“Is that an island?”

“It doesn’t quite look like one,” Qiu Changtian squinted as well.

Typically, unless the soil was of particularly poor quality, most islands would have some vegetation such as trees or bushes growing on them.

But this island was completely barren. There wasn’t even a gently sloping beach—it appeared as if it had abruptly erupted from the sea, almost like…

“Junior Sister,” Qiu Changtian said suddenly. “Doesn’t this island resemble the peak of some mountain range?”

Xu Yinglian shuddered in alarm.

She extended her Divine Sense along the edge of the island, probing downward.

At the limits of her range, she sensed the submerged portion of the island extending steeply downward without any sign of a seabed nearby.

This island was, in reality, the peak of a massive mountain range rising from the extreme depths of the ocean floor.

Or, perhaps even more unsettling, this might indeed have been the peak of a mountain. But now the sea level had risen so catastrophically that almost the entire landmass of the mountain had been submerged, leaving only this tiny protrusion above water…

At this thought, Xu Yinglian couldn’t suppress a shiver.

If even a mountaintop could become an island, didn’t that mean the plains where the Human Race once thrived now lay buried under the immense depths of the sea beneath them?

Qiu Changtian wasn’t particularly surprised. After all, he already knew that the world resembled a hollow glass bead, submerged in the depths of an ocean. Once the glass surface cracked, it was inevitable that the interior would fill with water over time.

As the world approached its ultimate collapse, no one would survive… but as long as he lived longer than everyone else, he would pass this trial!

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