A rift suddenly appeared in the middle of the sea.
From it, an old man with brown hair, opulent blue robes, and calm eyes stepped out.
Gazing at the horizon with indifference, his eyes moved directly toward the Nanyun Continent.
After setting his direction, just as he raised his hand to open a rift in front of him, one suddenly opened beside him.
"Huh?" A confused sound left his throat as he looked at the portal with curiosity.
He waited, as it was likely an ally following him at the last moment. After all, only someone who had followed the trace left when he previously opened a rift in the Central Continent could arrive exactly beside him like that.
Of course, it could be a coincidence, but that would be even more marvelous. In such a vast world, with only a few thousand people capable of opening void rifts, arriving exactly at his side at the same instant he arrived would be far too incredible.
However, while he waited for his allies, seven people stepped out of the portal, catching him by surprise.
And the three in front, who looked as old as him, had no aura he could sense, while the other four only had the auras of Soul Formation cultivators.
Frowning, he found it strange that he didn't recognize any of them, and a wave of caution rose in his heart.
Especially the three elders in front. Since he couldn't sense their auras, they were likely in the same realm as him, and that was what troubled him the most. Tribulation Transcendents were not numerous, and their faces were basically known among each other.
"Who are you? Which family do you hail from? And why are you here?" the old man asked firmly, a trace of doubt in his voice.
But the three men merely smiled at him.
"Us?" One of the elders, the one with shadowy eyes, smiled maliciously. "We are your death!"
As soon as he spoke, he immediately attacked, his fingers shaped like claws, aiming for his dantian.
The old man from the Central Continent widened his eyes in surprise. He couldn't fight three Tribulation Transcendents alone, but he wasn't afraid.
As long as he didn't die instantly, a battle at this level would be felt by high-level cultivators across the entire planet within seconds, and reinforcements would arrive in moments.
So, just as he was about to burn his energy ostentatiously, both to defend himself and as a beacon for his allies, his body suddenly froze.
The man with shadowy eyes in front of him, whose hands were advancing toward his dantian at high speed, began to move slower and slower, until it seemed he was advancing an inch per minute, perhaps even slower.
But at that moment, the old man's eyes had already gone blank, and his consciousness was elsewhere.
When he came back to his senses, he found himself still floating above the turbulent sea below, but those people had vanished.
Confused, he frowned as he tried to understand what had happened. Suddenly, he started, noticing a figure nearby—someone he hadn't sensed at all, devoid of any aura.
"What—"
The words died in his throat when he saw that the person on the other side… was exactly identical to him.
'What the hell is going on?!'
The old man began to grow anxious as his eyes narrowed, going on guard.
"Who are you?" he asked after taking a deep breath and scanning the surroundings for traps.
But the other person simply walked toward him in the air and suddenly lunged like lightning.
Already prepared, the old man summoned a yellow defensive spell, but the opponent did not stop. He drew a sword, exactly identical to the one the old man also had in his storage ring.
With another step, he appeared directly in front of the protective barrier that had just formed and brought his sword down with ferocity.
At that very instant, a powerful sword intent emerged, accompanied by a sword's cry that seemed to echo across the world, and behind the clone, a massive illusion of a mountain appeared.
As the sword descended, the old man turned pale. Enormous weight pressed down on the barrier, forming cracks.
And the pressure did not come only from the front, but from all directions, preventing him from escaping. It was as if he were being buried alive.
The old man's energy began to be consumed at an extreme rate to sustain the shield, and his spiritual roots started to burn under the intense drain.
Gritting his teeth, he thrust his hands forward and, with a surge of energy that made him groan from the pain of his overheated roots, he detonated his own barrier, blasting the clone backward.
Without hesitation, he continued draining energy into an attack spell, as the clone, unharmed by the previous explosion, was already advancing again.
The old man drew his sword, which also resonated loudly, as a powerful sword intent rose along with the illusion of a gigantic stone sword behind him.
Swinging it toward his opponent, the spell he had been preparing earlier was unleashed together with it, wrapping the blade in earthen energy, amplifying its reach and sharpness.
The clone, at the same time, simply swung his sword, relying solely on the mighty mountain sword intent.
In an instant, the outcome was decided.
The mountain's pressure was unstoppable, shattering the spell that enveloped the sword and then cracking the metal itself, which barely held for a few seconds before splitting in two.
With the sword broken, the illusion of the stone sword also collapsed.
"NO!"
The old man's hoarse scream echoed as the clone's blade broke through everything with violence.
Slash!
A sharp sound rang out as the blade flashed through, along with an arm flying through the air before falling straight into the sea and disappearing.
"Ahhhh!" A scream of pain echoed as the old man, now disarmed and missing an arm, retreated, clutching the stump of his shoulder.
He breathed heavily, his body drenched in cold sweat, intense fear in his eyes. His gaze turned anxiously toward the Central Continent, but for some reason, no help had arrived.
The old man decided he needed time.
"Stop!" He breathed with difficulty, and to his luck, the clone actually stopped. "Wait, I am an ancestor of the Dong family, and we have many treasures. We can negotiate. If you kill me, you won't gain as much. My storage ring doesn't have much, but I can give you more rewards alive than what you can take from my dead body."
Speaking as fast as he could, the man tried to negotiate with that strange and terrifying clone of himself, which did not behave like him at all.
But deep inside, anger burned silently in his eyes. All he needed was to buy time for his allies to arrive, and then, together with them, he would kill the bastard in front of him—the imposter wearing his skin.
The clone did not respond to the man's words and, strangely, remained still, waiting.
Although he did not know what that thing or person intended to do, the old man was satisfied to wait and kept his guard up, quickly swallowing a healing pill to recover. Perhaps there wouldn't be time for his arm to regrow, but at least his roots, burning from overuse, would calm down.
Thus, time passed, bringing an increasingly ominous feeling.
No one arrived, and an hour had already passed.
He had tried to deceive himself before, telling himself that perhaps his allies had mistaken the pause in the battle for a quick victory on his part, since his soul lamp had not gone out, indicating he was still alive.
Because of that, after some time, in desperation, he began to pulse his energy as a clear signal, and the clone merely watched indifferently as all of it happened.
But with so much time having passed, he could no longer deceive himself. Something was very wrong.
He turned to the clone, grinding his teeth in anger and apprehension.
"What did you do?! Set up an isolation barrier in the area? But how did you know I would come out exactly here to set this up?" he asked, both with hatred and fear.
It was then… that the clone finally opened its mouth.
"Your time is up."
A simple sentence, spoken in exactly the same voice as the old man, didn't answer him directly—but it completely froze him.
Like a blur, the clone advanced, crossing the distance in an instant, and delivered a skilled sword strike that the one-armed old man barely managed to block with his already exhausted energy.
Then came the second strike, which, like a trail of light, sent a head flying upward, leaving behind a long trail of blood.
At the same instant, the world around them cracked from top to bottom.
And, with an explosion, everything disappeared like a shattered illusion.
The old man's eyes widened, and he screamed in fright as his head was torn off. But when he felt his body, he realized he had not lost his head nor his arm.
However, pain invaded his being, and when he looked down, a hand had pierced through his abdomen and grabbed his soul.
Within those fingers, curved into a claw-like shape, numerous seals appeared, paralyzing his soul and compressing it to fit in the palm, quickly severing it from the body.
That hand belonged to the black-eyed old man who had attacked him before the illusion began.
"Damn you!" In panic, he raised his hand to try to counterattack with what little of his soul had not yet been sealed and disconnected.
But the moment he tried, he froze…
'I-I don't remember any spells!'
Shock coursed through his being. He tried to recall the spells and techniques he had used over tens of thousands of years, but nothing came to mind.
It was as if everything had been erased, or more precisely… stolen.
Thus, that instant of hesitation was more than enough for the attacker to completely capture his soul and violently pull it out of the body, as the light in his eyes faded.
"Let me go! Let me go! You will pay dearly for what you've done!"
Furious roars echoed nonstop within the palm of ancestor Mo Yexuan, the dark-eyed old man. In his hand, a small soul struggled violently to escape, but it had no real strength left to resist after the seal.
The now soulless body began to fall toward the sea, but from ancestor Mo's body, countless shadows emerged from his cloak, capturing the corpse in midair and enveloping it like terrifying black ink.
Soon, a new Shadow Soldier rose, floating there, its energy fluctuations matching those of a cultivator at the 3rd level of Tribulation Transcendence.
Thus, the first shadow capable of causing real changes in the world was born, and the Infinite Dao Sect became a little stronger in silence.
Storing the still-raging soul in his sleeve, Mo Yexuan closed his eyes, deep in thought.
Aotian was reflecting on everything that had happened.
First, he discovered the danger with the missions.
Then, he planned to intercept the envoys of the ancestral families before they reached their destination.
And for that, he needed a control point, which was located in the sea. A Tribulation Transcendent only needed two jumps to go from the Central Continent to one of the Mid-Continents, and in the middle of the path was the sea.
So, countless missions were created to find the point where they would land.
[Mission: Survive
Description: Survive the calamity awaiting the continent, if the ancestors of the Infinite Dao Sect wait at point X in the sea, and elder Bao uses the ability at hour X, minute X, and second X.
Participants: Cultivator X.
Danger Level: Fatal]
Thus, he placed various people from different areas of the continent as targets to predict the level of danger, until he found those that resulted in fatal.
In other words, these people would be struck by the calamity, and it was easy to find them, since the calamity would apparently affect many.
After that, it was just a matter of creating thousands of missions to identify the points and timings, until reaching the following result:
[Danger Level: Safe]
Fortunately, this task did not become impossible due to the range of the Treasure Radar ability, which now, Bao Wuji, at the 1st level of Tribulation Transcendence, reached a terrifying radius of 500,000 miles to find Transcendent-Tier treasures.
However, since he was trying to locate the cultivators by the treasures they carried in their storage rings, he could be more flexible. After all, such cultivators didn't carry only treasures of Transcendent-Tier, so the Void-Tier radar could also detect them, as almost no cultivator would normally cross the sea.
With that, he had a search radius of five million miles when looking for Void-Tier treasures.
Such ultra-long range greatly reduced the number of missions created to find the key point to intercept the enemy.
Normally, searching for exact times through missions would trigger restrictions that prevented the danger level from appearing. Perhaps it involved the unpredictability of time and Aotian's own actions, affecting what is possible in the long term, hence the restrictions.
But within the limit of one day of investigation, it was still easy to detect the danger level of an exact moment and location. Even so, he believed that this limit could improve with the ascension of the avatars' realms, making the ability broader.
After all that, he had found the correct time and place to use the Treasure Radar ability.
And as soon as he followed those steps, a point lit up on his mental map, which was a cluster of treasures existing in the same location. Without wasting time, a rift was opened, and they came face to face with the enemy.
Without wasting time, Mo Yexuan, from the Shadow Pavilion, attacked, and Zhao Wenming, from the Heritage Pavilion, in order not to create a battle that would draw attention from others, forcibly used Soul Challenge.
In the battle that followed within the illusory world, restricted to using a copy of his opponent's body, which had an earth-element root, Aotian fought by activating the mountain sword intent he had discovered through his own studies—an intent perfectly suited to that root.
He then fiercely defeated the opponent using a superb sword technique, the result of synthesizing hundreds of Void-Tier sword techniques stolen over the past month.
Finally, he waited just as the opponent wanted.
With one hour passing in that extremely accelerated world, on the outside, Mo Yexuan finally managed to cross those few feet to the opponent, capturing his soul.
Then, he finished the opponent in the Soul Challenge and, as the victor, forcibly took all of the opponent's techniques and experiences.
Unfortunately, that body was not suitable for the Phoenix Dao and had far too little energy to effectively wield the Dao; otherwise, Aotian could have tried to use it in that real battle.
In the end, the old man's soul was captured, and his corpse converted into a Shadow Soldier.
Aotian, or rather, Mo Yexuan, opened his eyes, having finished reflecting on the battle.
He then looked at one of the outer elders of the Shadow Pavilion behind him.
The man nodded, and his body and aura began to change until they became identical to those of the previous old man. Although now he appeared to be at Tribulation Transcendence, his true realm remained unchanged.
Mo Yexuan nodded and waved his hand in the air, creating a rift, into which the new old man stepped without hesitation, disappearing from the spot.
The ancestor of the Shadow Pavilion then looked at his companions and smiled faintly.
"Come, let's read his memory later to specifically discover his plans. For now, we still have to intercept three more rats."
With a malicious glint in his eyes, he opened another rift and entered with everyone, in search of the next target.