Chapter 1226: Missed a Thousand Years

Chapter 1226: A Millennium Missed

The erstwhile Aurora Beyond-the-Heavens!

Now the Azure Heavens!

Within its bounds, vast and boundless universes, endless fields of starry skies, contained countless celestial bodies.

They were, originally, all shining, each scattering its own starlight.

But at this precise instant, across the entirety of the Beyond-the-Heavens, innumerable stars darkened in unison.

It was as though all light had been utterly drained away.

At the absolute center of this near-infinite Beyond-the-Heavens—a region so vast that a mortal, or even a low-tier cultivator, could not traverse it in a lifetime—a colossal black hole manifested.

This black hole appeared silently, without a sound!

And above the black hole lay a spiderweb, relentlessly expanding outward!

White hair served as the silk threads, severed heads as the nodes; as it continuously broadened, the aura of a True God surged violently within it.

Simultaneously, with the eruption of this divine breath, every single head upon the spiderweb opened its mouth, sending forth a whispered invocation.

"Bimos!"

"Bimos!"

"Bimos!"

The sound was inherently formless, but upon this spiderweb, endowed with divine intent, it actually transformed into strands of divine authority, converging at the exact center of the web.

There, consequently, a figure gradually manifested!

Half-man, half-spider!

Across its entire form, seventy percent of its body shone golden!

With its emergence, the whispering grew even more intense, and the aura of its return reached its absolute pinnacle—the majesty belonging to a True God flooded the starry sky at this very moment.

As for the spiderweb, suspended within the starry expanse, Xu Qing’s Immortal Embryo could be seen standing tall, its visage majestic and its eyes flashing with a cold, piercing glint.

His right hand was raised, and directly above his head hovered an immense Immortal Palace, brilliant with immortal light.

And the gaze he directed outward was fixed precisely upon that figure in the central region of the spiderweb!

The very instant he looked, Xu Qing’s right hand abruptly descended.

The Immortal Palace roared with a deafening boom.

Working in tandem with the black hole beneath the spiderweb, striking from above and below, it further galvanized the power of the entire Beyond-the-Heavens.

It sought to suppress!

And that half-man, half-spider figure also abruptly lifted its head at this moment, opening its golden eyes; the moment it stared at Xu Qing, its gaze clashed invisibly with his.

This was a blending of sights, a mutual staring of souls, and moreover, a contact on the level of primordial substance.

The moment they connected... everything before Xu Qing’s eyes seemed to flicker for a brief instant.

Yet in the next breath, it restored itself.

Everything within his sight showed no superfluous alteration; the Immortal Palace, as usual, came crashing down with a resounding roar, pinning itself upon the spiderweb.

The half-man, half-spider figure struggled, but having not fully completed Its return, It seemed utterly powerless against the sheer weight of this Beyond-the-Heavens.

Yet It was clearly unwilling to submit, and so, whether it was divine authority or divine majesty, both rose up in unison.

Xu Qing’s entire body trembled violently, blood spraying from his lips as both his fleshly form and his soul were torn asunder, yet in the end... what he displayed now was the power of the entire Beyond-the-Heavens, pried loose using himself as the fulcrum.

Thus, after paying a tremendous price, he succeeded.

He thrust the spiderweb, along with the half-man, half-spider figure atop it, down into the massive black hole below amidst a deafening, earth-shattering roar.

Allowing this suppression to finally come to a close.

And his exhaustion, too, welled up profoundly at this moment, so Xu Qing naturally chose to sit cross-legged atop the black hole that suppressed the True God, absorbing the ceaseless stream of primordial substance emanating from within.

While recuperating his own condition, he also allowed his Immortal Embryo to continuously grow.

He seemed to forget the passage of time, and forgot his mission as a Logistics Emissary, immersing himself entirely within this cultivation.

And the harvest was immense.

His cultivation base, from the early stage of a Quasi-Immortal, climbed continuously, until a flash of time...

Ten years passed.

When Xu Qing opened his eyes, his cultivation base had already reached the level of Great Perfection of a Quasi-Immortal.

That sensation of the pinnacle, along with the feeling of seeming omnipotence, caused a momentary look of distraction to appear in Xu Qing's eyes.

But very quickly, he recovered, and also recalled the scene from ten years ago, remembering his experiences as a Logistics Emissary; after all, to a cultivator, especially one like him, ten years of cultivation was merely a brief moment.

"There is still enough time; with one more step forward, I can return to Vangaurd!"

Thinking of this, a look of anticipation appeared in Xu Qing's eyes as he stepped out from the Beyond-the-Heavens where he resided, and when he reappeared, he was already in the Heavenless Zone where the statue prison he had departed from was once located.

The loss of the statue and the disappearance of the prison meant that the jailers, the warden, and the other cultivators had already left.

However, Xing Huanzi and the others had not departed; they were still here waiting.

The moment they laid eyes on Xu Qing, each of their expressions rippled with emotion.

Thereafter, they left together, returned to the Logistics Department, and handed over the gains from their mission; subsequently, under a succession of other tasks, the reputation of their squad gradually spread throughout the entire Nine Shores Beyond-the-Heavens.

Ultimately, they were deployed to the battlefield.

The battlefield lay between the Fourth and Fifth Star Rings, and upon that battlefield, their squad repeatedly achieved meritorious deeds, even capturing a divine maiden alive.

That was, after all, the offspring of a God Lord!

By virtue of this merit, Xu Qing's prestige also soared greatly, and simultaneously, the matter of the Aurora Beyond-the-Heavens belonging to him had also spread far and wide.

For a time, the name of Xu Qing resounded through the ears of all cultivators.

All of this, in Xu Qing's personal experience, clearly felt as though it passed very slowly, yet imperceptibly, it slipped away, seeming to pass very quickly instead.

Until, on the battlefield, during a certain mission, he encountered a God Lord hailing from the Fourth Star Ring!

In that battle, even though he was capable of contending with a Lower Immortal, he was ultimately no match.

The cultivators of the squad all perished in battle.

He himself was heavily wounded, escaping death by the skin of his teeth; he fled into time and space but was still pursued, and in the end, he could only choose to enter the Chaotic Sea of Time and Space, concealing his tracks within that endless chaos.

Though he evaded the fatal calamity, his injuries within that Chaotic Sea of Time and Space were far too severe, and he himself became lost, drifting along with the turbulent currents until he sank into the depths of time and space.

No one knew how much time had passed before he finally woke up.

Then, he struggled to return.

Relying on his own luck, as well as his understanding of time and space, after enduring failure time and time again, he sought a way out amidst a thousand hardships and ten thousand tribulations.

Finally, on a certain day, he found the node of return.

Stepping out from there, he returned to the present world.

Upon his return, he saw that the war was still continuing, except... a terrifying truth, following his return to the cultivator coalition, also mirrored itself into his perception.

This truth made him tremble, made him unable to believe.

For the present time… was already a thousand years past his disappearance!

This truth made Xu Qing tremble, stirred in him a fierce anxiety, a deep dread—he chose at once to flee the battlefield, using the very method that had brought him to the Fifth Star Ring to return to Wanggu Continent.

On the journey back, he dared not ponder what Wanggu might have become; a thousand years… he had missed a thousand years.

Until at last, he stood beneath the vault of Wanggu’s sky.

His eyes lost their light.

Wanggu was utterly changed from when he had left.

Gods walked everywhere.

The human race was extinct.

Empress Li Xia had vanished without a trace.

He went to the ancestral lands of humankind, to the entrance of Huangtian—collapsed, buried.

He went to Nanhuang Province—now sunk beneath the Endless Sea.

Huang Yan was dead.

Xu Qing silently sensed it all.

Until a sigh echoed beside his ear—

a sigh strangely familiar.

Xu Qing turned quietly, gazing at the old crone who had appeared beside him.

Her face seemed faintly recognizable, and around her fluttered a withered butterfly.

“Before Master faded into stillness,” the crone rasped, “she said you once asked her for the way to leave—and promised you would return on time.”

“A thousand years have passed. You are far, far too late…”

“And now that you’ve come back… what meaning is there left?”

She was once the disciple of that palace mistress in the Xia Immortal Palace—the little butterfly herself.