Chapter 1063: The Spirit of the People

Xiao Nanfeng's red, blue, and purple world trees did bring him some relief, but far less than the Superior's golden tree brought her. Intense pain wracked Xiao Nanfeng's body, preventing him from wielding his full strength. Even so, he was so much stronger than the Superior that he was barely able to hold out.

Meanwhile, he tried using all sorts of secret techniques to escape—from the three Qing Grandmasters' to former cursed kings', but all the techniques dissipated in the face of the vortex of black mist.

𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He then tried to flee toward the exterior, but bizarrely enough, the more he tried to escape, the closer he found himself to the center of the vortex.

The vortex of black mist encircled the two cultivators as it grew stronger and stronger, making it increasingly difficult for him to move. He frowned anxiously.

As the Superior continued to attack, she tried to undermine Xiao Nanfeng psychologically. "You won't be able to flee. The cage of time nullifies all laws. Except for the Darkborn, no other can escape this prison."

Xiao Nanfeng suddenly narrowed his eyes as he latched onto a critical notion he might otherwise have overlooked. "If the Darkborn are the only ones who can escape from it, why would you bother continuing to attack me? Are these cages of time subject to temporal restrictions themselves?"

"Hm?" The Superior frowned.

Xiao Nanfeng continued his train of thought. "These cages of time appeared out of nowhere. Doesn't that mean that they'll disappear out of nowhere, too? You're simply taking advantage of the opportunity to attack me while it's around!"

The Superior glared at him. "And so what if you've figured it out? How much longer will you be able to last?"

Xiao Nanfeng laughed. "If this is all you can do, I can persist indefinitely."

Though he didn't have the upper hand, he was confident that he would be able to resist the Superior's attacks. His body was in pain all over, but it was hardly life-threatening.

The Superior sneered. "You know nothing about these cages of time. Do you really think you're only being bound? Why don't you touch your chin and see for yourself?"

Xiao Nanfeng frowned. He punched the Superior and sent her away as he felt at his chin—only for his eyes to widen in surprise. He now seemed to have a small beard.

That was impossible. He had always meticulously maintained his appearance, shaving off whatever facial hair that grew every morning. Once he reached a certain level of cultivation, he even suppressed the growth of his beard entirely. It would take nearly a hundred years for him to grow as much stubble as an ordinary man daily.

But at the moment, his beard was roughly an inch long.

How much time had to have passed for that to happen? Thousands of years?

Xiao Nanfeng examined himself carefully. There were faint signs of aging in his body—though of course it was negligible at his level of cultivation.

"Something's wrong with the flow of time..." Xiao Nanfeng murmured in shock.

He retrived a storage gourd, but it rapidly decayed before his eyes. In the short time it took to block another of the Superior's attacks, the treasure had crumbled fully into dust.

He had assumed that the vortex was interacting with him via physical forces, but that simply wasn't right. It was a matter of time.

Time itself was eroding his body at an accelerated rate. It was time that had corroded the gourd.

The Superior grinned smugly. "This is a cage of time, one of the profound mysteries of black holes. Anything that enters a black hole will age and decay. No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, no one can resist the passage of time. One breath is enough to take ten years away. Ten breaths, a hundred years; a hundred breaths, a thousand years! Can you endure that? You may be young, and your level of strength might grant you an incredibly long lifespan, but how long can it last? Time is the greatest force in the universe, Xiao Nanfeng. You cannot defy it!"

The Superior continued to fight Xiao Nanfeng while mocking him verbally.

Even so, Xiao Nanfeng's initial panic quickly subsided as he regained his composure. Everything circled back to his original question: if this cage of time could truly exhaust him to death, then the Superior's actions made no sense.

He called out, "If the cage of time can kill me that easily, why are you risking yourself by fighting me? Just what are you hiding?"

The Superior frowned. She was indeed hiding a major secret, but she refused to reveal it.

Xiao Nanfeng immediately said, "We exchanged information in the past. Why don't we do it again? Wouldn't you like to know how I managed to trigger a spiritual advancement so quickly?"

The Superior glanced sharply at Xiao Nanfeng. Of course she did. She was certain that Xiao Nanfeng was bound to die, only for him to pull off an impossible feat. That didn't make sense at all!

Even so, she refused to exchange information with Xiao Nanfeng. "I am curious, but I'd rather you die."

Xiao Nanfeng grimaced.

The two cultivators resumed their fierce battle. As time passed, Xiao Nanfeng's beard grew longer. He continued trying various secret techniques to escape the cage of time, but to no avail. None of his techniques succeeded, and he could not sense the outside world. Even his qi barrier couldn't resist the onslaught of time.

He attempted to use his nine-colored tree's long-distance retrieval, but he couldn't even sense it.

He retrieved his Divine Seal of Dazheng and tried to retreat into its internal space—but the seal itself began to decay in mere moments. A few wisps of fortune seeped out and rapidly dissipated.

"You can't escape from the cage of time. Just accept your death, haha!" The Superior roared in laughter.

Suddenly, Xiao Nanfeng's eyes lit up. He discovered that, though the fortune within the seal was also being eroded away, it was doing so at a slower rate.

A realization struck him. "I've just discovered something that can resist the power of time," he called out probingly.

"What? There's no such thing—except for my golden tree, at any rate," the Superior replied confidently.

Xiao Nanfeng scoffed. "Your golden tree? It absorbed countless strands of willpower and emotions while I nurtured it. Doesn't that mean that those emotions and willpower are the key to resisting time?"

The Superior's brows furrowed, even as Xiao Nanfeng's eyes brightened. "In other words, the will of the people resists the power of time!"

The Superior's heart thumped. She forced a smile. "The will of the people? Heart force, you mean? Try it, then. Haha!"

Xiao Nanfeng had naturally attempted to use his heart force but to no avail.

"You're still trying to mislead me, aren't you? All this fighting is meant to distract me from discovering the truth of time."

"How laughable!" the Superior retorted.

Xiao Nanfeng's mind grew more and more clear-headed. "The will of the people, their spirit, is timeless. It can be tempered and passed on through generations. It is fortified against time. Of course, it may still slowly erode, but while it persists, it remains a bulwark against erosion."

The Superior glared at Xiao Nanfeng. Her mind was churning. Xiao Nanfeng's intuition was beyond belief.

Xiao Nanfeng continued, "The golden tree collects emotions—the ephemeral spirit of the people. Fortune is the collective gratitude of a kingdom's people, itself an example of collective will. If that's the case, then my fortune ought to work just like your world tree."

He coated himself with fortune from the Divine Seal of Dazheng.

Golden light shimmered across his body. He suddenly felt far more comfortable than before. The forces that had threatened to tear his body apart had subsided to a far more manageable degree.

The Superior blanched, not having expected that Xiao Nanfeng would discover this use of fortune so quickly.

"As expected!" Xiao Nanfeng laughed loudly as he continued to probe the Superior.

The Superior frowned. "As expected of an opponent that even I acknowledge. Who else would have been able to discover so much in so little time? It's true that fortune is a shield against time, but just how much fortune could you possibly have?"

Xiao Nanfeng pursed his lips. That, too, was true. His fortune was being depleted at an exceptional rate. Just how much longer could he survive within this cage of time?

Even so, he didn't want the Superior to get too cocky. He retorted, "That's none of your concern. All I need to do is outlast you."

With fortune protecting his body, he was able to move far more agilely than before, and his attacks grew proportionally stronger. Once again, he was able to overpower the Superior.

She was sent flying with an exasperated expression on her face.

"We'll see just who lasts longer—your fortune or my golden tree!"

The Superior punched at him as the two cultivators began to engage in heated battle once more. She seemed vexed. Despite not being able to overwhelm Xiao Nanfeng, she continued to fight him relentlessly.

Before long, Xiao Nanfeng noticed that something was amiss. The Superior was trying to speed up the rate at which his fortune drained—the more vigorous their battle, the stronger the effects of time on his body, and the more quickly the fortune dissipated.