The morning light, filtered through the thousand-eyed crystal of the tower's dome, shattered into specks of golden sand on Ling Tian's nose. Su Meier's nine tails spread out like a plush carpet, their tips slightly pink from the sun.
"Brother Ling Tian, your grinding teeth last night shattered three domino tiles." She squinted, pulling back her pressed tail tip, which still had gilded dust from the card table clinging to its fur.
Ling Tian withdrew his arm from her hair and said with a smile, "That's better than someone's sleep-talking, 'This pig's trotters are so delicious, save me a bite of that grilled fish.'" The jade dragon sword lightly tapped the steps, activating the teleportation array to the fifth heaven.
The two slowly tidied up the remnants in the crystal light. Su Meier complained while combing her tangled tail fur, "If the fifth heaven has any more Restrictions, I'm going to tear down the Tongtian Tower and use it as a dressing table!"
"Leave the tower-demolishing to me." Ling Tian flicked away the star dust clinging to his clothes, chuckling as he looked at the dark, spiraling staircase leading upwards, "After all, someone can't even tie a sword tassel properly."
"I'll bite you!"
"Hahahaha..."
Amidst their playful banter, the two entered the teleportation array.
The Fifth Heaven
The first thing that greeted their eyes was an endless golden desert, with sand dunes undulating like the backs of giant beasts, their surfaces glowing with eerie blue phosphorescence. Red Immortal cacti, shaped like ghostly hands, dripped water that evaporated into purple mist mid-air. Not far away stood an inverted pyramid, its base a vortex sucking quicksand towards the inverted sky.
The moment they entered the pyramid area! The jade dragon sword's body was suddenly covered in yellow-gray sand mist. Ling Tian was alarmed to find his palms wrinkled, and the silk ribbon tying his hair faded and rotted in an instant. When Su Meier's nine tails coiled around him to retreat, the white fur on her tail tips had already turned withered yellow—the flow of time in this Realm was so abnormal!
Suddenly, millions of hourglasses descended from the sky, each glass chamber sealing the entire Lifespan of a certain Cultivator. Ling Tian saw himself rapidly aging from a young child to white bones in one hourglass; in another, Su Meier's nine tails were being devoured by time, turning into a bald tail.
"What is this place?!" Ling Tian stepped on the Jade Dragon and flew into the air, but he saw a terrifying truth: the entire layer of space was a giant hourglass, and they were standing in the flowing time sand!
At this moment, a Time Sand Guardian walked out from the sky. Its massive body was pieced together from countless memory fragments, and ancient armor was etched with the vanished patterns of a sundial. Stardust drifted beneath its hollow faceplate, and the bronze hourglass suspended in its palm continuously inverted, each grain of sand falling from its spout blossoming into a wilting sand-flower mid-air, only to fall instantly. The chains wrapped around its waist were woven from solidified time, and each sway caused a ten-zhang radius of space-time to freeze.
"Whoosh!!!" Ling Tian blew a bone whistle, and the sound wave impact forcibly stunned the Time Sand Guardian for a breath. Ling Tian instantly swung his sword towards the Guardian's brow, but the sword edge strangely weathered and disintegrated upon touching the target.
The Time Sand Guardian's fingertip traced across the Void Realm, and the dome of the fifth heaven suddenly collapsed into a giant hourglass. Ling Tian watched helplessly as his palm regressed to the tenderness of a child's, the jade dragon sword clanged to the ground, and the Dragon patterns on its spine faded at a visible speed, as if a thousand years of time had washed over it in an instant.
"Profound Ice! Freeze!"
Su Meier bit her tongue, and the ice crystal array formed by her fox blood barely solidified three zhang around her. Her nine tails fanned out like a peacock's display, each tail hair reflecting a different timeline: the third tail on the left showed Ling Tian's future as white bones, while the fifth tail on the right showed her own tragic state of regressing into a young fox.
The Time Sand vortex in the Guardian's chest suddenly surged, and Ling Tian was alarmed to find his Dantian Qi Sea collapsing. The Spiritual Qi of his Foundation Establishment Stage was compressed into a Qi vortex, and the jade dragon sword even let out a whimper like a young Dragon. He staggered, trying to form hand Seals, but found that he couldn't even recall the most basic Sword Control Art—time reversal was erasing his Cultivation memories!
"Flame Dragon! Burning Body!" Ling Tian bit his tongue, and the Flame Dragon Bloodline forcibly boiled amidst his regression. Red Dragon patterns pierced his child-like skin, and his fifty-year-old adult body struggled to reassemble in a blood mist, but his temples were already stained with an indelible frost white.
The Time Sand Guardian's bronze hourglass suddenly inverted, and the pyramid's projection rose from the sand sea, causing illusions to appear before Ling Tian's eyes. The illusion showed his tenth birthday: the wooden sword given by his Master was held in his young self's hand, and in reality, the jade dragon sword actually began to turn into wood grain!
Ling Tian's bare hands pierced through his young self in the illusion, and the fragments of the wooden sword cut his palms, leaving them bloody. The real jade dragon sword recovered for a moment, its edge barely reaching the Guardian's throat. However, time ripples spread, and the sword tip regressed into an unsharpened meteor iron the instant it touched the target.
Ling Tian suddenly remembered something, formed a hand Seal with his right hand, and his Natal Talisman brush appeared. Dipping it in his tongue blood, he carved the "Counter Talisman" from the Myriad Talisman Guide into the Void Realm! This Talisman could reverse the attributes of an enemy's spell, lasting for three breaths.
Every stroke Ling Tian made was accompanied by the Burning of his Lifespan! The Talisman was complete!
"Reverse! For! Me!" Ling Tian activated the Talisman.
"Crack... crack... crack..."
The Guardian's Time Sand vortex paused for the first time. Ling Tian seized this fleeting opportunity and plunged the jade dragon sword into the Guardian's chest. The Flame Dragon Power contained within the jade dragon sword surged out violently, flowing back into the hourglass along the Dragon patterns on the sword's spine, and the wails of countless living beings immediately echoed within the Guardian's body.
"How dare you... reverse My Law..." The Time Sand Guardian's mechanical voice carried the reverberations of three hundred different ages, from childlike voices to the hoarse cries of the elderly, intertwined in a roar. Its bronze hourglass exploded into stardust, and the giant pyramid projection began to collapse.
When the last grain of time sand fell, Ling Tian knelt on the ground, watching his hands, sometimes tender and sometimes aged, slowly return to normal. Su Meier's previously bald fox tail also recovered its snow-white fur at this moment, and both of them finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, a Time Hourglass slowly descended from the sky: when the hourglass is inverted, it will forcibly reduce the opponent's Cultivation by one minor Realm for a quarter of an hour, usable only once.
Looking at the Time Hourglass in their hands, the two recalled that since entering the tower, although there had been layers of peril, the rewards they received each time amazed them. They looked up at the dome, their curiosity about the Legacy at the top of the tower growing stronger.
After experiencing so many life-and-death battles, Ling Tian now felt that his Nascent Soul Early Stage Bottleneck seemed to loosen.
"Meier, I think I'm about to Breakthrough. Please be my Protector." Ling Tian said. Su Meier understood and set up a Spiritual Qi barrier around him.
Ling Tian closed his eyes and sat down, the jade dragon sword resting across his knees. When he entered introspection, the Nascent Soul figure in his Qi Sea spontaneously formed hand Seals. The Flame Dragon Bloodline, tempered by the time sand, surged like lava, incinerating all the old injuries accumulated during those life-and-death battles. Outside, Su Meier's nine tails spread out in an array, watching as Spiritual Qi spontaneously condensed into a pale golden cocoon around the young man—this was actually the rare "Heaven-Bestowed Spiritual Metamorphosis" of the Nascent Soul Realm.
A golden Dragon scale appeared on the Nascent Soul figure's brow, and its previously illusory limbs gradually solidified. The scattered residual time power within the tower was even drawn in, forming twelve temporal wheel phantoms around Ling Tian. The jade dragon sword suddenly chimed, and the Dragon patterns on its spine detached from the sword body, transforming into a small crimson-gold Dragon that coiled three times around the Nascent Soul, finally solidifying into a Flame Dragon tattoo on its right arm.
Su Meier lightly tapped the Void Realm with her toes, and her Heavenly Dao Dantian reflected a perfect grand circulation: three hundred and sixty acupuncture points inhaled and exhaled Spiritual Qi, aligning with the movement of the star map. When the seventh temporal wheel phantom merged into his Dantian, Ling Tian's golden cocoon cracked in response, and the escaping pressure caused Su Meier's tail tips to tremble slightly—that aura already carried the profound and enduring power of the Nascent Soul Middle Stage.
