Master of the System

A fight between two false immortals was boring. As people who had nearly indestructible bodies and inexhaustible minds, they could fight for days or weeks or even months without tiring. When two false immortals fought against each other, unless one side had an overwhelming advantage in terms of ability like Grandpa Vremya’s impossible-to-guard-against black holes, the fight often became a stalemate. It might’ve been entertaining to watch at the start, but as the endless repertoire of abilities went on and on, inevitably, the viewers would get bored. Grandpa Vremya had long since turned his attention away from the two women who were duking it out. Instead, he was transcribing his knowledge onto dozens of jade slips.

Once Grandpa Vremya passed his tribulation of the spirit with the help of the destiny fruit, there wouldn’t be any reason to come back to the lower dimension. Under normal circumstances, once someone passed their tribulation of the body and tribulation of the mind, a god would make them into one of their apostles through the system to prevent a repeat of what happened to the god of the sword. The god would use the system to bring them to the higher dimension, allowing them to skip the tribulation of the spirit. However, since the dimension Grandpa Vremya was currently in was isolated by Vremya’s bellybutton, the only way to ascend was through the destiny fruit or through Karta’s or Pravos’ help. Once Grandpa Vremya became a god himself, he could easily create a system to help Azalea and the phoegons ascend. In fact, if he wanted to, he could help the whole Moon Lotus Sect become immortals; however, he didn’t want to because that would be way too much work. Instead, Grandpa Vremya planned on repaying his karmic debt to the sect by leaving behind multiple cultivation methods and perhaps a few treasures that could act as fortunate encounters for the younger generation.

“You aren’t capable of hurting a single hair on my head. Why don’t you stop this pointless struggle?”

Grandpa Vremya raised his head. The calling from the fruit was getting even stronger, and Jade must’ve noticed it; otherwise, why would she be willing to negotiate with Rachel at a time like this? However, Grandpa Vremya wasn’t concerned. He knew how unreasonable Rachel could be for someone who should’ve ran purely on rational thoughts due to the severance of her emotions. There was no way Rachel would quit harassing Jade unless some external force physically made her incapable of doing so. As for Bullet King, he had flown out of sight. Grandpa Vremya wasn’t sure what the false immortal was thinking, but it didn’t really matter.

“Shouldn’t you take into consideration the fact that I spared you?” Jade asked. “Instead of trapping you, I could’ve easily ended your life instead, but I didn’t.”

“You must not have heard the story about the farmer and the wolf,” Rachel said with an expressionless face. “One day, a farmer finds an injured wolf—”

“And the wolf eats him after being nursed back to health,” Jade said while glaring at Rachel. “I know the story. I just didn’t expect you to be a wolf.”

Rachel shrugged. “Anyone would become a wolf after being trapped inside a bubble for half a millennium.”

While the two conversed, they were also competing with spiritual energy. Waves of water surged through the land, but waves of ice met them and froze them in their tracks. However, the ice couldn’t advance either, the two forces in a deadlock. While they competed through spiritual energy, they also competed physically. Rachel was swinging her sword while Jade was avoiding and deflecting the slashes with a blue sash. Occasionally, the sash would whip towards Rachel when the ex-sect leader showed an opening. They had already been fighting for three days, but other than the destroyed environment, it was practically as if nothing had happened during that time.

A strong fluctuation caused Jade to furrow her brow. She broke away from Rachel and dashed towards Grandpa Vremya, but the ex-sect leader was relentless. Rachel summoned ice wall after ice wall, slowing Jade down while targeting her from behind with an endless volley of icicles. A burning white line streaked across the sky like a meteor, heading towards Grandpa Vremya as well. As for Grandpa Vremya, he stowed his jade slips, chair, and table—all of which he had taken out of his interspatial ring—and climbed to his feet. The moment he stood up, a vine phased into existence a few feet away from him. He walked over, taking his time. Although the destiny vine had appeared, the fruit had yet to show itself.

Upon seeing the vine, Jade’s eyes turned bloodshot. If she could go back in time, she would’ve killed Rachel instead of trapping her, but how was Jade supposed to know the weakling she had trapped would trigger her tribulation to escape and pass a second tribulation in less than five years? Jade gritted her teeth and reached into her interspatial ring. No matter what the cost, she had to stop Rachel’s pursuit to create a brief moment in which she had to overpower Grandpa Vremya. Like how an ocean could hold an uncountable number of things inside of it, Jade also held hundreds of thousands of treasures; she was a bit of a hoarder. Getting rid of items was similar to cutting off her own flesh, but for the sake of her ascension, Jade was willing to do just that. Hundreds of spiritual treasures appeared behind her—each one an item soul-seed cultivators would fight each other to the death for. With a pained expression, Jade willed them to detonate, blasting herself forward while forcing Rachel back.

Contrary to Jade’s expectations, Grandpa Vremya didn’t block her path with a black hole. In fact, it seemed like he didn’t care about her presence at all. The old man simply waved his hand, and a black hole appeared near the tip of the vine where a flower had rapidly grown in the last ten seconds. Was he planning on destroying the Snow Fire Lightning Fruit before it even had a chance to form!? “What are you doing!?” Jade shouted, her heart already in pain from losing her precious treasures. “Is everyone from the Moon Lotus Sect a raging lunatic!?”

Above the group, the burning white line came to a halt, revealing Bullet King’s BAR. With a wave of his hand, over a hundred coalition warships appeared. All of their cannons glowed with a yellow light, and a bombardment rained down from the sky. In response, Grandpa Vremya placed a black hole above his head. It forced the trajectories of the beams to change, allowing him to avoid them without even moving. The flower from the destiny vine swelled up, ballooning into the shape of a teardrop. However, before it even had a chance to become a fruit, it was swallowed up by the black hole Grandpa Vremya had created earlier.

Jade and Bullet King watched as the Snow Fire Lightning Fruit winked out of existence before it could even exist. Their one chance at ascension had disappeared just like that. However, Grandpa Vremya didn’t look at their expressions or care about their thoughts. With a flick of his wrist, the black hole flew towards him and sank into his body. For the first time in his life, Grandpa Vremya released the spiritual energy of a fruit inside of himself, dispersing the black hole, letting the energy within the destiny fruit flow through his body. He took off his interspatial ring and flicked it towards Rachel. It flew past Jade’s head on the way to the ex-sect leader, but the former didn’t even respond, still staring in disbelief.

Rachel caught the ring. “What’s this?”

“Give it to Azalea,” Grandpa Vremya said. His eyes glazed over as his body glowed with a golden shine. Moments later, he disappeared, his existence no longer within the lower dimension. For the avatar of a god, the tribulation of the spirit was simply a formality. The tribulation revealed the existence of the gods living in the higher dimension, and if one didn’t have the courage to exist in the same plane as them and showed any hint of hesitation, their spirits would be eaten by the titans that dwelled between the dimensions. As such, there was no way Grandpa Vremya would fail. He passed his tribulation and ascended with ease.