.

Two pairs of dark eyes opened, calm and serene, without a trace of confusion in them as they blinked and moved, curiously examining the surrounding environment.

The place was dark and silent, as if the world itself had decided to shut down.

No change in temperature, no element suggesting a physical location.

This could clearly lead one to think it was a spiritual place, or perhaps a mental one.

Most likely a sea of consciousness.

The figure who had just woken up was neither lying down nor leaning against anything, but standing upright, his body stable even without him realizing it.

The surface beneath his feet was like a black mirror of water, reacting to the contact but not allowing him to sink.

Though its clarity was partly veiled by the surrounding darkness, it still allowed something to be seen.

Chains, long and thick black chains, each link so large it stood at the same height as the figure himself.

They were scattered in various points of the floor below, emerging from who knows where, all of them stretching upward, rising from the watery surface, all pointing toward a single point.

Up above, the chains interlocked, wrapping around a large transparent sphere that emanated a faint violet light, with thin bolts of lightning crackling across it.

Although the sphere above appeared very large and translucent, nothing inside could be seen, at least not at first glance.

Yet at its very center something was there, something luminous, suspended, an inexhaustible source of light that illuminated the surrounding space within a certain range.

The figure, whose features were partly visible thanks to the luminous sphere above, tried to look at the center of the sphere

He was about 1.75 meters tall, long hair tied back, black eyes and a face slightly above average.

"You surely took your time getting here," a sudden, unfamiliar yet somehow slightly familiar voice resounded beside him. The young man's figure did not seem surprised, and in fact his curiosity only grew as he responded to the source of the voice.

"Was it you who saved me?" he asked, recalling his final moments of life.

He was certain he had been killed after emerging from the cave by what was most likely the true form of the creature inside the cocoon

He had already sensed a trail of corruptive energy being released somewhere in the mountain, and realized that part of whatever restriction had been binding the creature had been undone.

That awareness was the only thing that allowed him to react in time, forcing Liang Yuexin away from the place.

He knew escaping would not have helped, with or without her. Not against such a being. There simply wasn't time.

He knew the creature was after him, and if he fled, it would have caught him immediately. But if she escaped instead, then perhaps , just perhaps, it would ignore her, and so he chose to push only her away.

For one who had intended to live his life to the fullest, strangely this decision did not bother him. On the contrary, the thought that at least one of them might be saved gave him, for some reason, a sense of relief.

No, it wasn't just that. There was something else, though he wasn't sure what it was, only that he had the feeling he would discover it soon.

"Saved you? Hmm, you could say that, but it wouldn't be entirely correct. It would be more accurate to say I only saved myself." The figure spoke, taking his eyes away from the sphere of light.

Hm?

Zhu Rong was confused by that answer, and just as he was about to ask, he couldn't help but notice the figure of the person more clearly.

A little taller than him, sharper, more refined facial features, yet for some reason very familiar.

He had long black hair tied back, a pair of black eyes like his own, but they emanated both emptiness and depth at the same time, something Zhu Rong himself lacked.

He wore a black robe with golden engravings, simple yet refined.

The familiarity with that figure grew ever stronger, and how could it not? After all, the figure resembled his older self.

The man who looked like him spoke again.

"Truly a magnificent work, there's no denying it," he said, referring to the great sphere of energy suspended in the air.

Zhu Rong, who hadn't had the chance to observe it closely, couldn't help but turn to where the man was looking to see what he meant.

His gaze fell upon the object at the center of the sphere, and then he saw it.

Suspended there was a long, sharp object with a dark blade as smooth as obsidian, a simple yet refined hilt, and connecting the two a crystal plain yet alluring, from which a powerful violet glow radiated.

It was the divine grade weapon he had forged before being struck down by the heavens.

He had always wondered what had become of it, destroyed, or perhaps intact and lost somewhere, maybe still lying where he had fallen, who knows

He did not know, and had no way of finding out, so he had accepted the only explanation he could reach at the time.

That perhaps it no longer existed, that time itself had been completely inverted, and the only thing that had remained intact through it all were his memories.

But there it was, here in his sea of consciousness, as he stared at the object that had been his greatest work of art,

his opus magnum, and his pride.

"Tch, to think it had always been here… but why didn't I sense it before?" he muttered as various emotions flickered in his eyes before vanishing as quickly as they had come.

"Divine rank items are different from the normal ones you know. They are spiritual objects that have reached a level where they completely transcend the concept of mere objects.

This one in particular… one of the materials you used was rather unique, and look where it has brought you," said the man who resembled him, as if referring to his reincarnation back in time.

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