Chapter 683: The Final Breakthrough! (Two-in-One)

Hearing the River's words, the Messenger's eyes widened.

He hadn't expected this at all. Yan Jing seemed to just be sitting there, but he was actually enduring endless cycles of reincarnation.

"Three hundred cycles... how many years is each one?"

The Messenger looked down at the River beneath him.

The River's voice was calm and powerful:

"The longest lasted tens of thousands of years. The shortest was still one or two thousand."

"His soul is just too resilient. No matter what predicament he falls into, he always tries his hardest to find a way out, causing every cycle to drag on for an exceptionally long time."

"In some ways, this seems like a bad thing, but in others, it's the exact opposite."

"Precisely because he gives his all in every cycle, he managed to break through after only three hundred or so attempts."

The Messenger was still reeling from the shock of cycles lasting anywhere from millennia to tens of thousands of years. Hearing this, he completely froze.

"If three hundred or so is fast, what does slow look like?"

"If someone's talent is average, they would typically need twenty or thirty thousand cycles,"

the River said calmly.

The Messenger gasped.

"Twenty or thirty thousand cycles?!"

"For that kind of person, the cycles pass very quickly. On average, a cycle lasting a few decades is already considered good."

The River slowly continued, "That is why the Stone and I did not choose wrong. He is a true genius. Even without us, if he had been born in a great era, he would still become a regional powerhouse."

"What a pity. It all comes down to fate."

The Messenger opened his mouth to reply, but his gaze suddenly trembled. He looked down at Yan Jing.

He saw it—Yan Jing's eyelashes twitched.

"He's going to succeed."

The River spoke. "He is only missing the final step."

"Originally, it would have been best for him to take this final step himself, but he can't wait any longer. To return from the reincarnation of his consciousness, he needs an anchor point. However, this happened too hastily, and we didn't prepare one."

"An anchor point?" The Messenger looked utterly naive.

"What does that mean?"

The River slowly explained, "It means he needs an object that was on his person before he fell into the cycle of consciousness."

"Aren't there plenty of those?" The Messenger stared at Yan Jing with wide, earnest eyes.

"The clothes on his back, his shoes, his socks, his underwear—"

"No. He is breaking through via me, so he needs an item that carries the aura of time." The River didn't bother explaining the finer details, instead unleashing its weird energy.

Instantly, a heavy aura of time spread outward. Droplets from the River of Time slowly saturated the entire space from top to bottom.

"He doesn't have an anchor point, so I can only retroactively provide one."

Terrifying weird energy surged, driving the waters of the illusory river to churn relentlessly. Caught in the middle, the Messenger failed to react in time and choked on a massive mouthful of water.

"Hey, can you really handle this? Isn't your condition already terrible?"

"I have no choice. Don't worry, once I finish this, I'll still have a sliver of strength left—just enough to explain things to him,"

the River slowly said.

The Messenger furrowed his brows.

Having spent this recent period alongside the River, he had discovered that the guy was actually quite decent, nowhere near as terrifying as the rumors claimed.

Even though the River's current display of power was incredibly majestic, even he could see the faint undercurrent of weakness hidden beneath the turbulent waters.

The River truly couldn't hold on much longer. It wasn't just talk.

But just as those waters transformed into monstrous waves and were about to crash down around Yan Jing—suddenly.

An equally heavy, or perhaps even purer, aura of time bloomed from Yan Jing's body.

The Messenger took a deep breath and looked toward Yan Jing's chest.

There, a small bottle materialized from another space and slowly rose.

Inside the bottle, a droplet of clear yet dazzling liquid flickered with a fluorescent glow, slowly pushing open the stopper and emerging.

"What is that?"

The Messenger looked at the River.

"..."

The River fell silent. A few seconds later, it slowly spoke.

"It's my water."

"It is water from my peak."

As it was now, the entire river combined wouldn't be much stronger than this single droplet.

It had no idea how Yan Jing had obtained this drop of river water. But as long as he relied on it to break through, he would truly be taking that final step on his own. His strength would reach genuine perfection.

"Oh fuck, he swallowed it!"

The Messenger gaped, though his voice was small.

The pinky-sized droplet simply slid past Yan Jing's lips and vanished into his mouth.

"..."

After several seconds of silence, a terrifying boom erupted from Yan Jing's body.

Every inch of his bones, every fiber of his muscles trembled.

His body was already flawless, with absolutely no impurities left to expel. Yet it was currently squeezing and compressing with all its might, trying to force out non-existent filth.

In the end, his bones, muscles, and blood all reached their most perfect state through this grinding compression.

Terrifying weird energy blossomed around Yan Jing. His hair transformed into a kind of iridescent white.

That white was pure and unblemished, its edges surging with a seven-colored radiance. Every passing second seemed to reveal a different hue as the light continually crept downward.

Yan Jing's eyebrows and eyelashes also turned to that same pristine white.

Finally, the transformation stopped at his lips.

It didn't turn his lips white, but merely sapped a trace of blood from them, adding a touch of icy coldness.

The next second, Yan Jing opened his eyes.

"Crack—"

In a flash.

The Messenger felt as if he heard the thunderous sound of glass shattering. The entire gray space spiderwebbed with cracks before explosively bursting apart.

It was as though the world they inhabited had been upended and destroyed, depositing them into the true reality.

The surrounding grayness vanished. Stagnant time began to flow, and up in the sky, dazzling stars surged, aligned, and spiraled.

But just as the Messenger was completely captivated by those vast, mysterious stellar tracks...

Suddenly, the River's voice echoed beside him.

"This is his world."

"What do you mean, his world?"

The Messenger blinked in confusion.

He thought they had shattered the River's time-freeze through the shockwave of Yan Jing's weird energy and arrived in the real world.

Yet now, the River was telling him that this was Yan Jing's world.

What did it mean by Yan Jing's world?

He couldn't understand.

That was, until Yan Jing stood up and sighed. The entire world then rippled irregularly like crumpled paper. Following that, space folded over on itself, shrinking into a ball that dropped right into Yan Jing's palm.

And beneath that crumpled paper lay the exact same silhouette of a world as the one they had just seen.

"This..."

Sweat beaded on the Messenger's forehead.

It wasn't merely panic, nor was it the fear that Yan Jing harbored any malice toward him.

It was purely the raw anxiety a lower-dimensional organism felt when looking upon a higher-dimensional being.

Yes, anxiety.

That was all the Messenger could think in this moment.

He felt his hands shaking uncontrollably.

Facing the current Yan Jing, he felt like he could die at any second.

It would only take a single breath from Yan Jing.

"Perfect. A perfect advancement."

The River slowly spoke, "Even in the outside world, this belongs to the most flawless echelon."

"You now possess the qualifications to fight across realms against the outsiders."

"While you don't hold the advantage in terms of artifacts or abilities, your foundation is more than just a little stronger than his."

Yan Jing spoke slowly. "I haven't adapted yet."

"Adapting to this kind of power will take time."

"Huu..."

Yan Jing exhaled a long breath.

The Messenger's body melted like butter.

First, he dissolved into a viscous liquid, and then crumbled into powder, scattering into the air on a gust of wind from an unknown source.

The very next second, Yan Jing gently flicked a finger, and the Messenger's body reconstituted itself right back in its original spot.

At that moment, he was still stuck in the exact state he had been in right when he died. Once his mind caught up, he snapped indignantly, "Hey! You've killed me twice now!!!"

"Shouldn't you go kill someone else for a change?! You can't just keep picking on me!"

Hearing the Messenger's words, the corners of Yan Jing's mouth curved up. "My apologies. It wasn't on purpose."

Only then did the Messenger remember the vast disparity in Tier between Yan Jing and himself. He hurriedly turned away and coughed twice. When he spun back around, his face was plastered with a massive smile.

"Aiya! I was just joking, Lord Yan! That was my newest deadpan joke. What did you think of the delivery?"

"Not bad at all."

Yan Jing nodded with a smile.

"It was very funny."

"As long as it's funny, as long as it's funny!"

The Messenger gave two awkward laughs, then immediately turned away.

"I'm all out of jokes, so you two can carry on."

With that, he plunged headfirst into the River, minding his own business as he started to dive.

"I want to adapt to this power, just to be safe."

Yan Jing looked at the River.

"You are out of time," the River of Time slowly said.

"So you want me to sacrifice myself for you."

"Yes," Yan Jing nodded.

"Since you have to leave no matter what, I hope you can lend me one final hand."

"Later on, if I have the chance, I will find a way to reshape your life."

"Reshape my life... haha..."

This was the very first time Yan Jing had ever heard the River of Time laugh since they met.

It wasn't a pleasant sound, utterly devoid of emotion or inflection.

"That is no easy task. You must reach at least... at least the Desolate Heaven Realm."

The River provided an answer.

Yan Jing committed it to memory.

"I will do my best."

"Alright, then I will give you a hand,"

the River slowly said.

"Thank you, Senior."

The next second, a sky-blotting mist rose from the River.

The water within the river was evaporating, transforming into clouds and mist that diffused across the heavens and earth.

The Messenger, who had been swimming to his heart's content, thumped onto the dry ground. He lifted his head, stared at the clouds and mist in the sky, and gaped.

Every droplet of that mist resembled a pearl—more brilliant than the stars, more dazzling than any jewel. It was as if every single bead contained a real world of its own, brimming with countless forms and the myriad faces of life, cycling through the four seasons and constantly changing with the flow of time.

The mist billowed like the wind, rising within the shattered void. Sometimes it howled like a raging gale; other times, it was as tranquil as a great marsh beneath the setting sun. It obscured the illusory worlds in the sky, even illuminating the entire pitch-black spatial rift, stretching out vaster than the heavens themselves.

And right now, all of that mist was swirling toward a single point.

That point was Yan Jing's position.

Every time a drop of mist fell...

...it birthed an entirely new world. Yan Jing stepped into it, tempered his body, and by the time he emerged, an entire year had passed.

Watching this awe-inspiring spectacle, the Messenger was too shocked to speak.

So what if the waters of a heaven-reaching river flowed backward? So what if someone tore open the sky with their bare hands, or pierced the stars with a single arrow? Right now, in front of the scene unfolding before him, none of those feats were even worth mentioning.

"This life has been worth it..."

That single thought surfaced in his mind.

...

...

The Domain War had ended.

The Cat Ship secured first place in the Domain War without any suspense.

Though they faced a coordinated ambush from the Surface World Coalition when entering the Surface World...

But...

It was exactly as the old saying went.

Like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, or a swarm of locusts devouring crops.

No matter how vast the farmland was, it could never stuff the locust swarm to death. It could only delay the inevitable.

And Mao Si had successfully been crowned the strongest Lord of the Domain in this iteration of the Domain War.

Moreover, he was the strongest Lord of the Domain in history, completely unprecedented.

In the past, even if a Lord of the Domain won, the most they got was a larger territory.

But this time was different.

All of the territory belonged to Mao Si.

Yes, all of it.

Every single Domain had been conquered by the Cat Ship.

Now, it was truly a case of 'all the land under heaven belongs to the cat.'

However...

For some unknown reason...

In the past, whenever such a grand coronation for the victor took place, anomalies would ripple through the heavens and earth.

Yet this time, there were none.

There was absolutely nothing.

It was terrifyingly quiet.

Aside from Mao Si acquiring the Domain power of all the Lords of the Domain...

Nothing else happened.

What was going on?

Everyone was guessing.

This Day of Godhood didn't seem nearly as fierce as the ones recorded in the history books.

Instead, it exuded a certain eerie weirdness.

It felt like a bustling wedding banquet where the couple getting married were actually corpses, casting a bone-chilling coldness over the bright lights and festivities.

And this perspective was ultimately confirmed by those entities who had lived through the previous Day of Godhood:

"Something definitely isn't right. The last one was far more intense than this, and everyone who won got exactly what they wanted."

"It felt like the descent of a golden age."

But regardless of the outcome of the Domain War...

The proceedings still had to run their course.

The revelation of the gods.

It had already begun.

Deities and Buddhas filled the skies, their phantoms permeating the entire firmament. Those figures that were originally mysterious, unknowable, and utterly imperceptible were now revealing themselves in the heavens.

There was a massive kite entirely covered in fangs that could blot out the sky. There was a Frost Queen sitting on a throne of clouds, capable of freezing half a Domain with a mere wave of her hand. There was a headless War God blanketed in arms, clutching every conceivable weapon...

Those figures flickered into existence one after another. Every single one radiated a terrifying aura, as if any being that stood before them would be ruthlessly crushed, strangled, and destroyed.

It made it impossible to muster even the slightest thought of resistance.

Among those figures was a pitch-black tall tower.

That tall tower stood atop the clouds. Up at its peak, invisible to ordinary people, a pair of thick, muscular arms thrust out from the windows on either side. Plunging from an altitude of tens of thousands of meters and spanning thousands of meters across, they dangled from the sky like two inverted mountains.

Unlike the other entities, no deities approached its vicinity. Instead, a wide berth of empty space was left entirely around it.

This was solely due to its Pathway.

The Pathway of [Victory].

The most intensely competitive Pathway in the entire world.

Yet the entity within the Black Tower didn't seem bothered by this phenomenon at all. If anything, it exuded an indescribable sense of satisfaction.

He was called [The Tower].

The Deity of [Victory], The Tower.

He didn't need to associate with anyone else.