Chapter 736: The Power of Time and Legacy

The successful evolution of the Timepiece Chessboard was an immense upgrade for the Heavenly Ruin itself.

Even though the transformation was complete, exploration of the River of Time Ruins was far from over.

The new ‘Time • Reversal’ feature on the Timepiece Chessboard required not just immense Dark Energy, but also the rare Source of Time to function.

As it stood, this River of Time Ruins was the only place he knew of that could produce such a resource.

The Source of Time might not be as sought after as Hunyuan Copper, Eternal Stone Brick or Primal Chaos Qi, but it was even rarer. Now that the opportunity was here, he intended to stock up as much as he could.

Still, stockpiling wasn’t up to his own wishes—the River of Time Ruins had already been nearly picked clean after decades of searching. Only the last small section remained, and even in the core, there wasn’t going to be much Source of Time left.

……

Inside the mirror warship, Song Chi projected his mind, piloting the vessel forward on its course while sparing part of his attention for the replicated Timepiece Chessboard component at his side.

Unlike the Timepiece Chessboard on the main Heavenly Ruin—now evolved into a prismatic extremity quality—this replicated board was still just prismatic high-grade.

But compared to nearly a hundred years ago, when the last great war left only two uses of the ‘Nine Lives Game of Life and Death’, the replicated Chessboard’s 361st piece now had far fewer cracks running across it.

{Nine Lives Game of Life and Death: The 361st piece of the Timepiece Chessboard is a special “nine lives” piece, housing tremendous power over life and death. It grants you the power to resurrect or erase a chosen target (the target’s rank must not exceed the component’s enhancement rank). But each use fractures the piece further. After nine times, it shatters completely, and this power randomly transforms into a new property. Current use: 8/9.}

That’s right. The ‘nine lives’ feature was back up to eight out of nine uses again.

Why? Because he’d already reset the mirror warship in advance.

Ever since he realized the Source of Time here would let the Timepiece Chessboard evolve, Song Chi had naturally prepared for this exact scenario.

Once the Chessboard became a prismatic extremity component, Mirror Image Split could no longer replicate it. So, over the past decades, to squeeze the most from both Mirror Image Split and the Chessboard, he’d already performed a reset on the mirror warship.

With a hefty cooldown between uses, what did waiting a few months matter?

Looking back, that preemptive decision turned out to be absolutely the right call.

Even if the Timepiece Chessboard couldn’t be easily mirrored anymore after the evolution, right now there was one mercy: until he dismissed the mirror warship or used up its remaining eight revivals, the prismatic high-grade Chessboard would stay put!

Sure, it wasn’t like having unlimited replications, but at least it’s better than nothing.

……

Swish!

Brilliant golden light filled the warship’s control room as the sixth-tier Doomstar Race member activated the Market Projection Token, causing familiar purple mist energy to quickly condense outside.

A moment later, a half-step ninth tier Omniverse Market projection appeared, looming above the mirror warship.

With a half-step ninth tier purple mist avatar backing them, exploration sped up massively—and, crucially, temporal energy seeping into the ship dropped sharply.

The mirror warship had been reset partway through the operation, but the time erosion on the hull since then was still a real threat.

Before, that might not matter, but now each time the Timepiece Chessboard lost a revival, it was gone forever. Without a fix for mirroring prismatic extremity components, Song Chi wouldn’t risk wasting a precious extra life unless he had no choice.

“Hmm…”

He made a thoughtful noise.

His eyes locked on the eternal black light ahead.

After so long spent searching, this last stretch of the River of Time Ruins was finally combed through—he never expected a final surprise to show up at the end.

Black-grade oddities had turned up over the decades, but only rarely. What mattered more, none could be converted into a battleship component. So this last supreme black oddity got his hopes up.

“A key?”

As the market projection beamed the dazzling black object aboard, Song Chi finally saw its true shape.

And there was something else: the black-glowing key wasn’t coated in any Source of Time.

“No Source of Time sealing it off, yet it’s been fine here all along. Don’t tell me…another time-related oddity?”

The thought came to him instantly, though he didn’t dwell on it. The truth would be obvious soon enough.

He focused, and a new attribute panel swam into view.

[Oddity: Key of the Temple of Time Inheritance]

[Grade: Black]

[Convertible: No]

[Note: Proof of inheritance from the Temple of Time, which stood at the end of the River of Time across several eras. If you can find the temple, this key will let you receive its highest legacy.]

Song Chi read over the panel again and again, eyes shining with undisguised delight.

He knew nothing about the Temple of Time. The Song Family’s current foundation wasn’t nearly high enough to touch such secrets.

But just the name ‘Temple of Time’ sent a chill down his spine. Only something unimaginably powerful would boldly claim that title—and the fact that it had “stood at the end of the River of Time for ages” in the description spoke volumes.

“Ages” here clearly didn’t just mean tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. It likely referred to grand epochs—eras of the multiverse or even the Shattered Sea of Stars.

Even just the era of the Shattered Sea of Stars has stretched on for ten million years.

If his guess was right, the temple’s origins were beyond imagination.

‘Maybe it’s even more incredible than the Bodhi Inheritance Tower…’

That thought flashed through Song Chi’s mind.

He remembered the Bodhi Inheritance Tower was also extraordinary, so it was only natural to compare the two.

Of course, no one could say which was stronger. Only after Song Chi improved his strength and went searching for the origins of both could he ever find the real answer.

Putting the Key of the Temple of Time Inheritance away, Song Chi focused on the outside world again.

The River of Time Ruins was fully explored now. In the future, it might keep producing more stellar oddities and Source of Time, but that would take a very long time.

The good news: after upgrading the Timepiece Chessboard, he’d stocked up nearly ten batches of Source of Time. For now, the Time • Reversal feature would be usable for the foreseeable future.

For any more, though, he’d have to search elsewhere—unless he was willing to wait tens of thousands of years here.

He steered the Heavenly Ruin’s mirror warship toward where the Clan Elder and the others had parked their own ships.

After a quick word with the three, Song Chi didn’t linger. He maneuvered the ship completely outside the range of temporal energy, then used the Superbody Compression Plate to shrink the warship down and stored it within the Heavenly Ruin’s main vessel.

Even so, the mirror warship still took up a huge chunk of the hold. Good thing he’d just installed the Void Vault component, expanding the internal space severalfold; otherwise the situation would’ve been much worse.

Before this, he’d never bother with such trouble—he’d have simply dismissed the mirror warship and resummoned it a few months later. But now things were different.

If he dismissed it, the next mirror warship he summoned wouldn’t have the Timepiece Chessboard anymore.

Song Chi summoned back the mirror warship, returning once more to the market.

He left the job of collecting time energy to the Clan Elder and the other two. It would take a while, so Song Chi took the chance to enter the Full-Attribute Cultivation Chamber.

Over the last thousand years, the great war left him no opportunity to properly focus on the Guiding Technique. That was why he’d only just broken into level 73.

To be fair, that wasn’t slow—one level every five hundred years was upper mid-tier speed for a seventh-level Guiding Technique. But that was only if you compared him to an ordinary Star-Annihilator-class Captain.

Once a Star-Annihilator-class Ship is born, it leaps straight into the elite ranks.

Could Song Chi really judge himself by common Star-Annihilator-class Captain standards?

Of course not.

What’s more, after two millennia of war, the Heavenly Ruin was now among the strongest of the elite ships. Truthfully, the vessel was already capable of vying for a Star River-class Battleship.

With that kind of platform, a captain sitting at level 73 on Guiding Technique really didn’t fit.

At this pace, it’d take three to four thousand years to max out the seventh-level Guiding Technique—and that’s not counting the massive gap between levels seven and eight. Five thousand years at minimum, which Song Chi couldn’t accept.

“Let’s hope this Wizard’s Mana Training Chamber can surprise me!”

In the Full-Attribute Cultivation Chamber’s innermost room sat a large, high-tech training pod.

As a marvel of the Witcher Civilization, the pod was made for humans, so when Song Chi slipped inside, it fit him perfectly.

He tapped several buttons on the panel, and right away, the hatch began sliding shut—everything about it screamed advanced technology.

The instant the pod fully sealed, waves of special energy wrapped around it, fusing with the already-rich Dark Energy in the training chamber. The mana around the pod grew terrifyingly thick, flooding the interior with untold power.

“Perfect!”

Inside, Song Chi felt every cell in his body loosen up. Even without running the Guiding Technique, pure Dark Energy streamed through every muscle and bone, pouring deep into his flesh.

No wonder, he realized now, his older brother Song Yan had managed to break through on the technique after just a few decades.

Song Chi had become a Star-Annihilator-class Captain even earlier, plus with the chamber and all those aged deepwater pearls on top, he should’ve been far ahead on Guiding Technique progress.

And he was—until two decades ago, when Song Yan’s Guiding Technique also broke through to level 73, even eclipsing Song Chi’s own progress at that stage.

Now it was obvious: the Wizard’s Mana Training Chamber made all the difference.

Basking in the rapid surge of Dark Energy within, Song Chi downed a Superior Body-Tempering Elixir mixed with eighty thousand years’ worth of deepwater pearl essence.

The elixir hit him like a bonfire, fiery energy gushing from his gut, rushing out to every corner of his body. Together with the pure Dark Energy, it rapidly honed and strengthened every inch of his flesh and bone.

Time crept by as Song Chi melted into the rhythm of cultivation.

With every higher level, progress on Guiding Technique slowed, so he hadn’t felt improvement this clearly in ages.

But Song Chi wasn’t satisfied. As soon as the elixir’s effect faded, he grabbed another item from the storage capsule he’d left in the pod from the start.

This time, it was a spirit peach, glowing with a soft, holy light.

Not like the Jade-Blood Peaches from the Cultivation Sanctuary, this peach was larger, brimming with even richer energy—it was a Saintspirit Peach he’d brought back from the Sacred City’s treasury vault.

Both were types of Immortal Peach, but the Saintspirit Peach was several grades higher. As soon as it entered his belly, superheated energy, far stronger than the last elixir, filled his body.

This energy was much wilder, but still within his tolerance—and it let the Guiding Technique advance many times faster.

It wasn’t that the previous combo of elixir and deepwater pearls was weak; Song Chi’s body had just developed resistance after so many years using them. Swapping in another high-tier resource naturally amped up the effects.

A single Saintspirit Peach held nearly unfathomable energy. Even with the training pod’s boost, it took him months of absorption, but by the end, he’d made a huge leap forward at level 73.

By his usual pace—one level every five hundred years—the Saintspirit Peach alone would’ve saved him fifty years of hard work.

Because it worked so well, Song Chi wasn’t about to stop. He churned through his supply—one Saintspirit Peach after another.

In a flash, more than a decade went by.

On this day, while Song Wujian and the others kept remotely running the battleship replicas to gather time energy, the Cultivation Chamber’s doors finally opened. Nearly twenty years later, Song Chi stepped out from his seclusion.

It had taken sixteen years, but his Guiding Technique had just topped level 74, after starting from barely twenty percent at level 73.

A rate like this would floor any veteran Star-Annihilator-class Captain.

Crossing a whole level in only sixteen years—when most would need two to three thousand? They’d be jealous out of their minds.

But Song Chi knew the truth: it was all thanks to layered boosts.

In sixteen years, he’d burned through a dozen Saintspirit Peaches and plenty of Superior Body-Tempering Elixirs mixed with aged deepwater pearls.

But that wasn’t all—he’d had the Full-Attribute Cultivation Chamber, the wizard’s training pod, and even a boost from a seventh-tier Mist Snakefolk Lord. With so much support, a leap like this became possible.

Now, though, it was over—seventeen years of cultivation and all his Saintspirit Peaches and prized deepwater pearls were gone.

Without these resources, his progress would slow down again.

Still, thanks to the training pod, he was advancing faster than he did during the war.

He figured, with all his focus, level 74 to level 75 would only take about three hundred years.

Not a bad pace any more, but still not good enough for him.

If the pod was just for him, he could make peace with it. But it had to be shared—the pod was something Song Yan got by trading, and all four of the family’s Star-Annihilator-class Captains needed their turn. Once he lost access to the pod, progress would slow again.

“No, I need to find some more high-grade training treasures—or I’ll never get anywhere at this rate…”

Mind made up, Song Chi left the market behind.

Dragon-Spine Continent. Dragon Whale Hall.

With a distant rumble, a figure moved rapidly from the outside toward the hall.

Pushing through the hall’s veil of Chaotic Mist, Song Xuancang spotted Song Chi, seated atop a Starry Throne high overhead.

“Xiaochi, you called for me—need something?”

Skipping any pleasantries, Song Xuancang came straight to the point.

A thousand years of war had built up his ship as well. Just like Song Chi and the others, his one bottleneck now was Guiding Technique.

Before being summoned, he’d been in seclusion, focusing on breaking through.

Song Chi knew that, so he got right to business:

“I want full details on the Evil Buddha Continent!”

“Evil Buddha Continent… Xiaochi, are you planning…?”

Instinctively, Song Xuancang started to probe deeper.

But something made him pause halfway through the question.

The Evil Buddha Continent—a seventh-level Living Floating-Land—was a strange one. Its native extraordinary system came from a corrupted ancient Shizhu lineage. The place was choked with mutations and the scent of blood. Even though major powers like the Yaohan Kingdom and Saint Roland Kingdom had known about it for nearly four thousand years, they’d never fully tamed it.

“Here’s everything our clan has—every record we own about the Evil Buddha Continent…”

A few taps on his Quantum Comms Wristband, and the files soon reached Song Chi’s own wristband.

While Song Chi pored over the files, Song Xuancang hesitated, then spoke again:

“Xiaochi, your combat strength is unmatched now, but when it comes to the Evil Buddha Continent, I have to warn you: unlike regular seventh-level floating-lands, there are bigger secrets hidden there. Be careful. Don’t get reckless!”

Song Chi, knowing his cousin’s serious nature, nodded and grew more cautious himself.

Anyone who could sit atop the family as Patriarch for two millennia was not to be underestimated.

If Song Xuancang saw fit to warn him, he wasn’t about to dismiss it.

Having thoroughly studied the materials, Song Chi knew far more about the Evil Buddha Continent than before.

The clan’s records described it as an early-stage Seventh‑Tier Floating-land, but it was swarming with local Lord-level natives: nearly ten—a mix of three seventh-tier Evil Buddhas and five seventh-tier Lingzhi Meat Mountains.

Backed by the floating-land’s own powerful will, these eight local Lords were on another level entirely.

Scanning through, Song Chi’s attention locked onto the information about the five seventh-tier Lingzhi Meat Mountains.

The only reason he was suddenly interested in the Evil Buddha Continent was because of the Lingzhi Meat Mountain—especially those at the seventh tier.

Unique to this continent, these towering fungi grew from deep underground—no one knew exactly what they were.

They looked disgusting, true, but they were also the continent’s most valuable resource.

Inside every Lingzhi Meat Mountain, various amounts of blood-flesh lingzhi would naturally grow—their main function was to drastically boost Guiding Technique cultivation at the same tier.”