Ling Chen’s head slammed against the corner of the sandalwood table, and the sharp pain made him black out.
In the instant his consciousness blurred, he seemed to fall into a long river of blood, and some familiar yet strange memories surged like a breaking dam—
The memory first froze in a sunlit classroom.
The math formulas on the blackboard hadn’t been erased yet, when the students in the classroom stirred with commotion due to the arrival of the weekend.
“Ah ah ah—!”
But suddenly, Mu Xi, who was sitting in the front row, screamed a few times, convulsed, and then collapsed. Her skin began to crack, and her blood vessels protruded like wriggling earthworms.
She was his childhood sweetheart.
“S-save me…” She reached out to Ling Chen, her eyes still holding traces of human fear.
The next second—
“Crack!”
Her lower jaw ripped open, sharp fangs pierced her lips, and a scarlet tongue flicked like a snake’s.
The entire classroom instantly descended into madness.
Ling Chen was pushed down between the desks, and a sharp pain shot through his calf—a mutated classmate had bitten through his tendon.
The moment blood gushed out, he felt something so hot it threatened to make his whole body explode, burrowing into his bone marrow through the wound.
I… I’m going to become a monster…
Fear and intense pain caused Ling Chen to pass out.
When he regained consciousness, only severed limbs remained in the classroom. Mu Xi was squatting on the podium, slowly gnawing on half an arm, blood dripping down her pristine white school uniform.
Their gazes met in the gore.
“Ling Chen… Gege?” The mutated Mu Xi tilted her head, then suddenly giggled, “You didn’t die either?”
In the gloomy equipment room, an iron storage cabinet was violently twisted into a cage.
Ling Chen curled up in the corner of the rough cage, his right arm reduced to bare white bone—the regenerational ability of the mutated caused the wound to repeatedly heal and then be torn open.
Mu Xi hummed an off-key school song, offering a piece of fresh human flesh to his mouth.
“Eat up, this is your arm~”
Seeing him stubbornly keep his mouth shut, she suddenly flew into a rage, her nails growing long and piercing his cheek:
“I told you to eat! You have to eat!!”
Amidst the bloody mess, he was forced to swallow his own limb.
The memory shifted again, and he found himself confined in a cold laboratory, his limbs bound by alloy chains, and tubes inserted all over his body.
“A mutated individual whose self-awareness has not been eroded… a truly perfect experimental subject.” A researcher wearing a gas mask coldly recorded data.
When the military cleared Linghui Academy, they discovered a miracle—a mutated individual kept in captivity by other mutated individuals, yet remaining conscious.
“Special mutated specimen! Immediately send to Research Institute B7!”
Under the incandescent light, a scalpel cut open his skull. The person in the protective suit wrote in a logbook: “Subject X-09, pain receptors retain 200% sensitivity…”
One night, the laboratory was attacked by a horde of mutated beasts. He seized the opportunity, bit off his own wrist with his teeth, broke free from his restraints, and crawled through the pool of blood.
Behind him was the burning laboratory, before him endless darkness.
“I must survive… I must make everyone… pay the price!”
The memory suddenly jumped ten years later.
On a surveillance screen in an underground base, a man covered in bone armor was tearing open an explosion-proof door with his bare hands. Amidst the alarms, he crushed the supervisor’s glasses, leaned down, and whispered:
“Remember? You once cut out three hundred twenty-seven pieces of my liver.”
As blood splattered across the surveillance camera, he licked his fingertips:
“Now, it’s my turn.”
The final scene seemed to be a long time after the period of being dissected, yet it was the clearest, as if it had just happened a moment ago.
That was the frozen Arctic glacier.
Figures of all kinds surrounded him from all directions, their roars echoing in the blizzard:
“Ling Lunatic! You massacred seven hundred thousand survivors, you deserve to die a thousand deaths!”
“Hand over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), and we’ll spare your life!”
He clutched his bleeding chest with his right hand, his left hand transformed into a slender bone sword, barely supporting himself in the dark, icy wilderness; they had surrounded him for three days and three nights.
“Ling Lunatic, thirty years ago, when I was about to break through, you led a group to hunt me down, and used despicable methods like sneak attacks to pierce my heart! This caused my advancement to the next realm to be delayed by a full 20 years! Today is your death day!”
“Blood Asura, even though you are an Evolver, you have wantonly massacred your own kind, your sins are too deep. Even if you and I are from the same faction, I cannot save you, but if you hand over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), I, this Asura, can spare your life!”
“Yes, hand over the guangyin gui (sundial of time)!”
Ling Chen listened to the waves of curses, condemnations, and pleas from the crowd, a cold sneer in his heart. If he really handed over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), would they truly let him go?
Clearly, it was just talk. If they genuinely intended to let him go, they wouldn’t have surrounded him so tightly from all directions, making escape impossible.
There were hundreds of people trapping him. If these hundreds were ordinary people, he could not only kill them all but even use them as blood food to recover some of his injuries.
But the lowest-ranked among them were at the same level as him, which made things much more troublesome!
And what gave Ling Chen the biggest headache were the ability users.
That’s right, the ability users and the mutated, who had been hostile to each other for hundreds of years—in the past, these two groups would meet, exchange no words, and immediately fight to the death, never stopping until one was annihilated!
Now they were actually united, all for that tiny sundial in his hand—
The guangyin gui (sundial of time)! A spiritual artifact rumored to reverse time!
“Since you’re unwilling to hand it over, then I’ll take it myself! Ling Chen! Die!”
In the distance, a mutated individual, half-human, half-horse, with flickering patterns at the corners of his eyes and a greedy expression, roared, unable to suppress the fervent desire for the guangyin gui (sundial of time) in his heart, and charged out!
As long as! As long as time is reversed, everything is worth it!
His four horse legs galloped like thunder, reaching within ten meters of Ling Chen in the blink of an eye. His sturdy horse legs were about to kick Ling Chen to death in the next moment.
However, at that lightning-fast, life-or-death moment, Ling Chen revealed a smile.
A scale-shaped pendant on his chest flashed with light, and a huge bloody glow streaked across the sky, vanishing in an instant.
The demi-centaur quasi-Asura’s movements stiffened, and a fine bloodline appeared from head to toe.
What finally rushed before Ling Chen were two neatly severed halves of a steaming corpse.
A few drops of blood splattered onto Ling Chen’s face, but he paid no mind, instead quickly extending his right hand. Just as he was about to tear off a piece of flesh, the corpse instantly vanished.
“Damn spatial ability user!”
Ling Chen cursed inwardly, yet still smiled at the people around him. He couldn’t show any weakness at this moment!
The previously restless crowd, seeing that smiling face, immediately became as tightly fixed to the ground as tenons in mortises, the apprehension in their eyes once again overriding their greed.
“Ling Chen, if you hand over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), I will return your flesh and blood, and help you build a spatial barrier to heal your injuries!”
“Ling Chen, I acknowledge your extraordinary talent and hard-won cultivation. As long as you hand over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), I will not only help you recover from your injuries but also assist you in breaking through again.”
“Ling Chen…”
Hearing these words, Ling Chen merely chuckled. He had seen countless such scenes over the past three days. Believing this was less reliable than believing God would truly descend to specifically save him.
Once he handed over the guangyin gui (sundial of time), he would immediately be devoured by his own kind, who would rush him. His crystal core, evolved from his heart, would certainly be dug out, and even his bones would be made into weapons.
The corpses of their own kind were extremely precious, high-quality flesh and blood for mutated individuals of the same rank, and even for ability users, they held immense value for cultivation and research.
He was now at the end of his rope. They dared not attack forcefully, simply because they feared the scale on his chest.
But that was his last chance to activate that scale, because he had no more lifespan left.
The scale-shaped spiritual artifact Ling Chen wore on his chest was called the reverse scale pendant. Its effect was simple and brutal: it consumed 100 years of the user’s lifespan to amplify the power of a single attack by a hundredfold.
“Alas, has it finally come to this?”
Ling Chen sighed softly, slowly raising the guangyin gui (sundial of time) in his hand. After these three days, he had probably figured out the state and activation method of this spiritual artifact.
Thinking of this, Ling Chen wanted to laugh, a bitter, absurd laugh.
Many people present had misunderstood, thinking that such a sacred spiritual artifact with time attributes required a specific ritual to activate.
But in reality, it only needed some spiritual energy infused into it, and it would function just like any ordinary spiritual artifact.
However, the drawback was that its wind-up time was a bit long, so…
A grand smile suddenly bloomed on Ling Chen’s pale face, carrying an air of insane arrogance, his expression so exaggerated that his features were slightly distorted.
Everyone’s faces changed drastically, and they retreated rapidly!
They didn’t know Ling Chen was activating the guangyin gui (sundial of time), but they saw Ling Chen smiling.
This was Ling Chen’s signature smile; whenever he showed this expression, it meant he was about to make an incredibly insane decision.
The last time he showed such a grand smile was when his cultivation hadn’t fallen, when he had torn apart the long-famous Grand Divine Official of the Demon Suppression Division, and then, in the main hall of the Demon Suppression Division’s council, brazenly cooked him into a meat paste and served a bowl to everyone present.
And everyone present at that time was an elder of the Demon Suppression Division.
At that time, that Ling Lunatic was still the arrogant Blood Asura. When he was questioned by the allied forces of the Hall of Light, Mount of Gods, Thousand Buddha Caves, and Daoist Academy, his reason was: “Cultivation was too slow, just relaxing my mind.”
That playful smile seemed to linger even today.
And after many years, he once again revealed such a smile.
Everyone watched him tensely through the pitch-black polar night, and Ling Chen indeed made a move!
He slowly raised his right hand, which had been covering his chest, and slowly turned his palm to face the crowd—
Clutched in his five fingers was a black jade disc, covered with golden markings and exquisite patterns, resembling a small piece of starry sky.
At this moment, it was emitting a strong golden light!
“guangyin gui (sundial of time)!”
“Ling Chen, you despicable scoundrel!”
“Oh no, he actually activated the guangyin gui (sundial of time)! He must have used some method we don’t know!”
Seeing this scene, everyone’s eyes burned with extreme fervor! They rushed towards Ling Chen regardless of everything!
However, it was too late; the guangyin gui (sundial of time) had already slowly floated into the air!