Chapter 516: The First Revelation

Chapter 516: The First RevelationThe monarch of stars made time a river; Suiyue, an hourglass. Their perception of time was different, and the technique they received was likewise different.

For Zhang Lie, time was a clock. His past life was the night; his current life, the day. A clock displayed only twelve hours of time—when the clock hands pointed at '12', it could refer either to midday or midnight.

Zhou Ying had already finished sketching out all twelve stelae, and she was trying to piece together her revelation by putting the twelve stelae in certain orientations.

As he looked at what Zhou Ying was doing, Zhang Lie suddenly had a thought. He walked forward, lifting up the heavy stelae as though they were as light as feathers. He arranged the twelve stelae into a dodecagon, each marking one hour of a clock. The engravings on each stele continued seamlessly from one to the other.

"Just like this."

Each hour had its own unique engraving, but each hour also simultaneously represented two times at once. His past life was independent from his present life. He lived in the present; he lived in the past.

Unlike Suiyue, Zhang Lie infused his revelation into his blades rather than use it to strengthen a mental image. After all, at his core, he was a fighter.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

A pair of blades appeared in his hands, the sword Guicang and the saber Hanguang, the weapon-type post-peak-grade soulshards he had obtained from the golden rocs. One represented the day, and the other the night, always twelve hours apart.

As the sword shot forward, Zhang Lie appeared by the wall of the vault in the blink of an eye. The members of Team Zenith stared at him in shock.

In the past, if they concentrated and strained themselves, they could barely see Zhang Lie's motion as he drew his blade and thrust forward. This time, however, they couldn't catch even the barest hint of movement.

If Zhang Lie wanted to kill any of them, none of them would have been able to react in time; the same would be true for any enemy below the level of a sura monarch.

Zhang Lie slashed forward with his saber, gleaming with the complexity and majesty of the passage of time. Where the strike landed, the vault which the monarch of stars had commissioned with great effort and expense began to decay.

The members of Team Zenith turned to their captain with shock and awe. "Have you already developed your revelation to this extent, Captain?"

"More or less." Zhang Lie had just barely managed to evoke the sensations and concept he was going for, but it remained to incorporate the most important of his revelations: his reincarnation. This was yet an incomplete technique, but Zhang Lie was in no rush.

Sun Mengmeng asked, "What's your new technique called, Captain?"

"For now, it's only a simple infusion of my revelation into my blades, and I haven't developed it into a full technique yet."

"What side effects does it have?" Yang Ze followed up.

Zhang Lie frowned as he scanned his body, then smiled. "As far as I can tell, it hasn't affected my body at all."

Zhang Lie's bladework was somewhat weaker than the techniques that the monarch of stars and Suiyue had developed, but he was certain that, once he incorporated the notion of reincarnation into it, it would become far stronger than either of those two examples.

Upon seeing Zhang Lie's display, Fang Yi seemed to get closer to his revelation, but it was still somewhat hazy in his mind.

"Captain, could you describe your revelation?"

Zhang Lie described his analogy, though he had to keep his reincarnation a secret. That was the secret closest to his heart, that he couldn't reveal even to his trusted confidantes.

Upon hearing Zhang Lie's recounting, Fang Yi sat cross-legged on the floor of the vault, his spear lying beside him. The other members of Team Zenith returned to their own contemplation or watched him quietly.

"Time flies quick as lightning, and old age comes for us all."

Fang Yi's eyes suddenly opened wide as he thrust forward with his spear, as quick as lightning. Black thunder skimmed past the members of Team Zenith, and a swathe of Fang Yi's hair turned white.

"Time passes like wind, leaving naught but smoke behind."

His spear blurred like a cloud of smoke before shooting forward once more, draped in Fang Yi's revelations, intent, and meaning.

As he leapt backwards, a clone appeared where he stood, mirroring his movements action for action.

When Zhang Lie asked for the name of his new technique, Fang Yi replied, "[Born of Lightning, Swallowed by the Wind]."

Fang Yi's techniques were built on the foundation that Zhang Lie had taught him, but they were uniquely his own. The first part of the technique would cause his opponents to decay, but it would also affect him to a lesser degree. The second part of the technique spawned a clone, a temporal echo of his own actions.

Fang Yi was certain that combining the two parts of the technique more seamlessly would dramatically increase its impact, but this wasn't something he could achieve as yet.

Li Feng again asked the same question—what were the drawbacks?

Fang Yi replied, "[Born of Lightning] ages you, whereas [Swallowed by the Wind] might destabilize your memories."

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Fang Yi thought for a moment. "To be more precise, it destabilizes your perception of time. When my temporal echo was present, it was difficult for me to figure out which was the true me—the one who had struck first, or the one who was about to strike."

Zhang Lie hmmed. "The manifestation of your echo leads to a duplication of your memories and senses."

It wasn't a particularly serious drawback, and the technique was certainly worthwhile.

Upon seeing Fang Yi's success, the other members of Team Zenith tried even harder to glean what knowledge they could from the stelae, but no matter what they tried, they didn't have any success. The only ones who managed something were Zhang Lie and Fang Yi.

Time and space were fundamental principles, and it was fiendishly difficult to comprehend and incarnate even part of it.

Fang Yi's combat abilities were on par with the rest of Team Zenith's, but he had unparalleled talent in comprehending, understanding, refining, and constructing new techniques in both Zhang Lie's past and current lives...