Chapter 1277 The Kun Fish
[AN: I made a mistake in the previous chapter. The sect only gave Wang Wei one Paragon Puppet, and the other was a Longevity Resource. I've modified the last chapter. He still asked Wu Hong for a pair of weapons he would use later, but he only summoned one puppet.]
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Five Feathers fused with the void while observing the Heavenly Beauty Palace. She frowned deeply, 'No wonder Time Eater, who was usually so eager to return home, was acting so nonchalantly about this mission. He knew something was wrong.' She understood why the latter did not fight so hard to be the one who sent a projection to rescue that stupid dragon.
'Why is she here? And is she responsible for the dragon's misery?' Five Feathers pondered. After her projection returned to the Eternal Ascension World, it rushed to this place, but she did not dare enter because she sensed Empress Wu's aura.
Throughout her long reign, Five Feathers was wary of only a handful of individuals, even a few of whom she feared. Empress Wu belonged to the latter.
'Now, what am I supposed to do?' Five Feathers knew she could do nothing if that woman wanted to kill the stupid dragon. And if she tried to interfere, the fate of her projection would be the same. Simultaneously, she knew that if she failed this mission, the others would take this opportunity to attack her. Some might take into consideration the fact they had just lost the dragon and be more understanding, but that bastard, Undead Phoenix, won't care about such a thing.
Five Feathers found herself in quite a dilemma. However, someone broke her thinking session before she could make a decision. She looked at the thing that rushed toward her with undisguised fighting intent.
"Hmm? A Paragon Puppet?" Her first thought was that this was one of those stupid people who had escaped the cleanup. During her reign, she faced many assassination attempts from people with low cultivation realms who accidentally got their hands on Paragon Tier Artifacts, arrays, puppets, etc. However, the result was always the same — their eventual destruction.
"No, this is not just a puppet. It's you, Wang Wei."
"You're quick to catch on."
"You can hide your face, aura, and everything else, but you can't hide that disgusting destiny," Five Feathers sneered.
"Noted," Wang Wei said. He realized he needed a superior method of hiding his destiny due to their resonance with the parasites. In the future, if he ever tried to assassinate one of them, such news will be crucial.
Five Feathers stared deeply at Wang Wei, her eyes not hiding her profound hatred.
"Normally, I don't mind beautiful women looking at me, but you're ugly, so please stop that," Wang Wei said calmly.
"Is this poor attempt at riling me up? I expect better from you," Five Feathers replied. She knew she was beautiful, so such words meant nothing to her.
"This is what I mean. Your face might be one of the best in the world, but your temperament and inside are so rotten that it's disgusting. Plus, I'm willing to bet my life this is not your original face. Some of your features resembled Empress Wu and my ancestor, the Sword Empress, too much. Others might not be able to detect them, but I can."
"You!" Her anger drastically increased the temperature, burning the surrounding void. "I already had enough of you." Five Feathers summoned the River of Time with a thought and entered it. She pointed at the river, and a small fish the size of a palm suddenly floated to the surface. Her finger released a red energy that isolated that fish from the others and the river.
Immediately afterward, she turned into this enormous fish the size of a universe before plunging into the river, swimming downward against its current. Five Feathers encountered significant resistance from the river but pushed herself to navigate against the current of time.
She tried her best not to notice the significant amount of time was passing as she swam. Luckily, the bastard Wang Wei was young, so she did not have to travel far before reaching the time point before he proved the Dao. After arriving at her temporal destination, she left the river and transformed into her human form.
'He should be in the lower dimension, so I'll need to be extra careful and send a projection,' Five Feathers thought as she looked around. She was in an invisible state to ensure no one noticed her presence. She knew the consequences of messing with time, so she was careful not to create any butterfly effect. She had isolated the bastard's Time Mark, meaning she could kill him without any consequences.
'Wait, something is wrong,' she figured out. Her eyes looked in the distance at an elderly man in a cave with a Heaven Will before him; it was apparent he was about to fuse with it and prove the Dao.
'The Time Mark is not Wang Wei's, but someone else's. Did he already develop a technique to hide his Time Marks with others?' Five Feathers was furious. She thought she could get rid of that bastard and prolong her reign over the world, but who knows, she was being played for a fool.
"Damn it," she muttered before slapping her hands and instantly annihilating that elderly man. From now on, the White-Hair Five Claw Emperor no longer exists in the world as he's been erased from time. Five Feathers returned to the River of Time, but this time, she did not turn into a fish but her phoenix form.
She was all white with five distinguished feathers releasing divine lights serving as her bird tail. She flew upstream the river until she reached her period, which was the presence from her perspective.
"So, that's how it is," Wang Wei muttered as he watched her action. "There is a mythical fish called Kun. When in the water, it is a fish. However, it longs to be more; it longs to escape its fate as a fish, as a creature of the ocean. So, it broke the shackle placed on it by Heaven and Earth, jumped out of the water, and turned into a gigantic bird with a wingspan of 30,000 miles.
"Emperors have broken the shackles of life and death, achieving immortality and even peeping at the essence of eternity. Empyreans broke the shackles of Samsara. With their true self, they can experience infinite reincarnation, and they would not lose their identity.
"Meanwhile, Paragons have broken the shackles of time. Time is no longer linear for them, and if not for the restraint of Heaven and Earth, they could probably play with it as they pleased."
Wang Wei was in a trance due to this sudden epiphany.
'No, Paragons have not escaped the shackles of time. They've removed most of Time's restraints on them. If they could completely remove it, then they can achieve Half-Step Transcendence. They will truly stand above the River of Time.'
With this epiphany, Wang Wei's understanding of Time Dao drastically increased, which then increased his overall understanding of Fate Dao. So, his cultivation rapidly rose from 78% to 80% Grand Dao Source. 'This is great timing.'
[Time Duplicate]
'As expected,' Wang Wei thought. He quickly duplicated his Paragon Puppet due to his new understanding before handing it to the other staff. However, Wang Wei did not immediately let the duplicate take action but asked it to hide in the void for a sneak attack at the right time.
'I'm glad I did not have to ask her for help. That would be an awkward way for our first meeting.' According to Wang Wei's original plan, he would have to ask Xun Junyao's help with her Copy Dao if his method did not work.
'Now, everything is prepared.' Wang Wei did not underestimate Five Feather Phoenix because of how Blood Dragon acted. He understood that one of the primary reasons the blood dragon's battle was so terrible was because of how emotional he was.
Blood Dragon saw Xun Junyao as the love of his life, but she played with him and destroyed him emotionally. Considering his minimal battle experience, the entire fight became a joke due to his poor mental state.
However, Five Feathers was not Blood Dragon. Their battle experience might be similar, but her mental state was perfectly normal. Additionally, she seems more ruthless, given that her first action after meeting him was to find his Time Mark and erase him from the past.
"You bastard," Five Feathers yelled as soon as she returned.
"Why are you excited? It's not my fault you acted so rashly," Wang Wei shrugged. "Oh, by the way, watch out."
Five Feathers was momentarily puzzled before she sensed something and raised her head. Wang Wei's 11 Fate Palaces were arranged into a formation above her head and released a terrifying gray light. Five Feathers reacted swiftly by opening her mouth and firing a fire beam to block the attack.
However, Wang Wei would not let such an opportunity pass by. He appeared beside her and smacked her face with his staff, sending the proud phoenix flying thousands of light years away from this location.
'This should be far enough,' Wang Wei thought. He did not want their fight to affect the Heavenly Beauty Palace and possibly removed the seal he had placed, allowing these people to escape or release the information about the blood dragon.