The Desolate Era (Web Novel)

True God Shiyu was highly skilled in defensive techniques and fleeing maneuvers, precisely because he was someone who valued his own life dearly. He obediently bent the knee and submitted.

Ji Ning soulscoured him, took his three Chaos treasures, then left.

“He was so astonishingly powerful and dazzling, even amongst True Gods and True Immortals. As expected, there were some marvelous reasons for that.” After soulscouring him, Ning had learned that True God Shiyu had once acquired the legacy of a deceased World God along with four Chaos treasures. The Heavengazer Tower of Radiance was one of the four. True God Shiyu had traded two of the other Chaos treasures for a ‘Darkwind Skysplitter Cudgel’. His possession of this cudgel was an important part of the reason why he was able to fight back against Elder Gods and Ancestral Immortals despite being a mere True Immortal.

True God Shiyu had learned powerful divine abilities from that legacy, but alas, all of those divine abilities were sealed with a lifeblood oath. Not even soulscouring him had allowed Ning to acquire them.

Ning had searched through the memories of many True Gods and True Immortals by now. Each of them had experienced special encounters which had allowed them to reach this level of power.

Whoosh. Ning landed atop a mountain. He waved his hand, producing a small tower before him.

The tower was completely silvery-white in color, and it was covered with a faint aura of golden light. The tower was shaped just like a pyramid. Ning held the small tower up with one hand, sending his senses inside of it. He could sense that spacetime within the tower was rather chaotic. Normally, spacetime should be extremely stable and hard to disrupt. Daofather Subhuti was capable of affecting spacetime, and this little tower was also capable of it.

“Bind.” Ning immediately sent his divine power into the tower, binding this Chaos treasure. As he bound it, he immediately made it suppress its aura. It became quite unremarkable to behold, no longer emitting any golden light at all.

Before being bound, a treasure would generally emit an aura of power. After being bound, everything was up to the desire of the treasure’s owner. It would be very easy to change its appearance.

“In I go.” Ning willed himself inside. He disappeared from the mountain. The only thing left was the pyramid-shaped tower, levitating in the air at the peak.

“Eh?” Ning looked at his surroundings. This was a region that merely had a perimeter of three hundred meters. The region was pyramid-shaped and seemed extremely stable, but the flow of time was clearly quite different inside here.

“How strange.” Ning raised his head to look at the pyramid-shaped region he was in. At the very tip of the pyramid, circles of dim light could be seen where spacetime was rippling faintly. These dim circles of light could be also be seen at each of the four corners of the pyramid. Ning’s divine power filled the entire tower, and thus he could use it to ‘see’ the many divine runes that were constantly flowing through the insides of the tower.

“It has changed spacetime, and in an extremely stable manner.” Ning sighed softly in amazement. “Although Mother Nuwa was able to do this, that was only with a grand formation. In addition, it was only possible in a set location that couldn’t be moved. This Chaos treasure, however…the person who created the Heavengazer Tower was most likely even more formidable than Mother Nuwa, the creator of the Six Paths of Reincarnation. But of course, Mother Nuwa entered the primordial chaos long ago. I imagine she’s even more formidable now than she was in the past.”

“Ten times.”

Ning’s thoughts and memories were linked to his clones in the outside world. He could thus naturally sense how much more quickly time was progressing within the tower. The difference was quite obvious.

“Time to speed up the flow of time.” Ning immediately began to test out the process of further speeding up time. His Immortal energy began to rapidly deplete, and the flow of time began to speed up as well, going from ten times to twenty times, then thirty times. His energy began to deplete more and more rapidly as the tower’s energy consumption began to skyrocket.

“At twenty times the normal rate of time, I use up energy at the same rate as I replenish it.”

“Thirty times the normal rate of time starts to take a bit of effort.”

“Forty times…I can still handle it.”

“Fifty times…getting difficult!”

Ning came to a halt after increasing the flow of speed to fifty times that of the outside world. He smiled. “My true body and my Primaltwin are both inside the tower; this places a major burden on it. However, when my true body is outside battling, I can have my Primaltwin calmly spend its time meditating in the tower. That’ll be ideal.”

The white-robed Ning immediately left the Heavengazer Tower, leaving behind only the black-robed Ning.

“Maintaining fifty times the normal flow of time…I’m still using up a lot of energy, but it’s much easier now than before.”

“Sixty times…the energy usage is getting fast again.”

“Seventy times…”

“A hundred times…this is getting difficult.”

“Two hundred times…energy is being used up way too fast.”

“Three hundred times…the amount of energy being used up is astonishing.”

For the sake of getting a better sense of how much energy would be used, Ning continued to furiously increase the flow of time.

Four hundred times! Five hundred times! Six hundred times! A thousand times!

At a thousand times the normal flow of time, half of his energy was consumed in an instant. Shocked, Ning finally came to a halt.

“There’s a limit to how much the Heavengazer Tower can speed up the flow of time.” Thanks to his control over this treasure, Ning could tell that there was a limit to its power. He nodded to himself. “According to what I just sensed…a thousand times should be that limit. However, I can only maintain that speed for two seconds. Training requires time. I need to at least be able to train for a hundred years worth of time in the outside world. A hundred years of time in the outside world translates into thousands or tens of thousands of years within the tower. If I use up energy too quickly, no amount of spirit-pills will suffice.”

He spent a few moments calculating and pondering. In the end, given that the Endwar was looming, Ning decided to take the risk of maintaining a flow of time that was a hundred times that of the outside world’s!

“I’ll need to prepare some extra Great Firmament Immortal pills to stay at this speed for an extended period of time. It’s now time to return to the Three Realms.” The white-robed Ning put the tower away, then left the prisonworld.

The Primaltwin remained inside the tower. It needed to spend time meditating on the Dao!

Ning’s goal was to master an entire Heavenly Dao! He could only do this upon returning to the Three Realms. There was no way to meditate on other Daos when within the endless primordial chaos. Upon mastering a Heavenly Dao, Ning would have a chance of becoming an Ancestral Immortal or an Elder God. His power would definitely surpass that of an overlord-class Daofather by then!

However, Ning didn’t dare to feel too confident. The Lord of All Fiends was an Elder God himself! He had been able to escape from the clutches of Mother Nuwa, who had broken through to become a World God, and he was the person who worried Ning the most. In addition, more than half a chaos cycle had gone by since the end of the Primordial Era. That was enough time for a minor figure to become a mighty one! How powerful were the two alliances? Hard to say. Things would only be made clear when the Endwar came.

And…what was the cause of this great war?

It was still a mystery!

Although he already stood at the very peak of power in the Three Realms, Ning still wished to reach even higher heights.

Within the endless Void.

Ning appeared out of nowhere. He stared at the distant Solar Star, blazing with seemingly infinite heat, then gave the icy Lunar Star a glance as well.

“The Three Realms.” Ning murmured softly to himself, then took out a message talisman and filled it with his Immortal energy, notifying his master of his arrival.

“Disciple.” Subhuti’s voice echoed within the empty space around him.

“Master, I wish to return to the Crescent world,” Ning said.

“Very well.” Instantly, a spatial whirlpool appeared in the empty space around him. Ning gave the spatial whirlpool a hard look. He could now vaguely sense that aside from changing space, this whirlpool also made slight alterations to time. The Crescent world didn’t exist in the same temporal dimension as the rest of the major worlds of the Three Realms, which was why the other major powers had no way of finding it at all.

Ning stepped into the spatial vortex and disappeared from the Void.

Blue skies and white clouds greeted his arrival.

Ning appeared in the middle of the air. “Eh?” Ning glanced downwards with surprise, seeing a beautiful island off in the distance.

“Master actually led me here?” Ning was quite surprised, as he thought that the whirlpool would’ve led straight to Mount Innerheart.

“Eh? Uncle White. Little Qing. And…my daughter Brightmoon? All of them are on the island?” Ning became even more surprised. His ‘spare’ Primaltwin clone was still by his daughter’s side, albeit quietly hidden. It wouldn’t make an appearance unless his daughter was in grave danger. Upon arriving, Ning could sense that his Primaltwin was right at that island. Clearly, his daughter, Little Qing, and Uncle White were there as well.

“She’s already a Celestial Immortal. Why is she staying on this island?”

“In the past, Master always brought me directly to Mount Innerheart. Why has he brought me here, this time?” Ning felt quite curious, but he still flew downwards. As he moved closer to the island, he could sense his heart clench involuntarily. Ning gave the beautiful island a closer look, and as he did his face blanched as though he had seen something terrifying.

“This formation…it’s so mysterious, but even the tiny bit of it that I can sense is utterly terrifying.” Ning felt dread in his heart. He was already an overlord-class figure, but he could still feel a vague sense of danger emanating from this island.

“Disciple, come in.” Subhuti’s voice suddenly rang out.

“Yes.” Ning quickly landed. Although this island held a terrifying formation within it, the formation didn’t act to impede him at all. Ning was able to easily and safely land on the sandy beaches, and as he did he immediately saw a distant group of Immortals flying around in the skies above the island. He also saw a number of linked palaces that radiated mighty auras.

“Isn’t that the Carefree Immortal Palace of Exalted Celestial Carefree? That’s a top-grade Protocosmic estate-treasure.”

“And…that’s the Three Realms Dragonrover Ark of Daofather Snowdragon?”