Chapter 293 Failure "...Time..."
"...Time..." These were the two vague words left for Sang Zhitao before the Heavenly Dao collapsed.
"Time?" Sang Zhitao opened her eyes, full of confusion.
"How is it?" Because there was no fluctuation after the last successful repair, the three of them thought that the repair was successful as well. However, after seeing Sang Zhitao's expression, they couldn't help but feel uneasy.
Sang Zhitao shook her head hesitantly: "It failed."
"What?!" the three exclaimed in unison.
"Why?" Ying asked anxiously. "The other two continents are fine, aren't they?"
"It's not that the Soul Spirit Continent failed, it's that all the continents failed..."
"What?!" This time the exclamation was even louder.
In the Sky Continent, in the Elf Forest.
Having finally escaped the calamity that had been weighing on her, the Elf Queen, now in a more relaxed mood, invited the Dragon Girl, Gaius, and Helene, among others, to a small gathering.
"I told you to help me manage the country, and you ran away faster than a rabbit!" Gaius couldn't help but scold Michal when he saw him following behind Hele.
Mikhail touched the tip of his nose, lowered his head, and seemed obedient, but after Gaius finished speaking, he couldn't help but retort: "I am fighting for the survival of all mankind."
“Yes! How great you are!” Gaius glanced at him sideways and said with disdain, “Now that the crisis is over, shouldn’t you go back and help me? Can you bear to let your old brother like me shoulder such a big country all by myself?”
“That’s why I want you to have more children,” Mikhail interrupted before he could finish.
Gaius slapped him hard on the back, making Michal stumble forward a few steps: "Why aren't you married! You're not getting any younger!"
Mikhail swayed.
Gaius's face showed unease. He coughed lightly and sighed silently, "Whatever."
Mikhail lowered his eyes, concealing the deep pain within them, and once again put on that gentle and refined smile: "I understand, I understand."
"Alright, stop talking and come eat something." The dragon girl couldn't help but call out to them when she saw them chatting.
The three of them walked towards the long table.
"Your Highness!" Before they could exchange more than a few words, an elf rushed over.
"What's wrong?" The Elf Queen asked hurriedly when she saw his panicked expression.
"The Hollow Men... the Hollow Men have appeared again!" The elf's eyes were filled with undisguised fear, and his voice trembled slightly.
"What?!" the seated people exclaimed in unison. "How is this possible?!"
Before they could react, Hailey received a magical message from the Guardian Tower.
He took a deep breath, his face grim as he glanced at the memory bottles at everyone's waists, before hesitantly saying, "The mute people of the Magic Continent have lost their voices again..."
The Elf Queen and the others looked down at the memory bottles that had reappeared at their waists: "How could this be..."
"Report!!" Another elf burst into the hall. "Your Highness, a crack has appeared on the western side of the forest!"
"What..." The Elf Queen looked around, momentarily bewildered. "It wasn't this early before..."
“Time is speeding up.” Hailey’s gaze swept over the kneeling elf and slowly turned to the clear blue sky outside.
The Elf Queen and her companions followed his gaze in bewilderment, only to see the sun, which had just been in the east, rapidly moving westward at an incomprehensible speed. In the brief pause they took, the sky was tinged with orange-red.
Soon, night fell over the Elf Forest.
"Can we get in touch with you?" Gaius turned to look at Helene.
Hailey shook her head: "You did not leave any contact information."
"What do we do now?!" Gaius's face turned pale.
"Beep!" Hailey received another magical message.
"The higher-ups of the Magic Continent want to meet with us."
Gaius looked at the others.
Although they had been cooperating with the people of the Magic Continent, they had never actually met in person, and they didn't know whether this meeting would be good or bad.
Despite these thoughts, neither the Elf Queen nor the Dragon Girl wanted to miss this opportunity to meet.
Sang Zhitao of the Soul Spirit Continent was unaware of the chaos between the two continents, but she could guess a thing or two from the changes in the Heavenly Dao.
"What do we do now?" Ailiya looked at Sang Zhitao. She had just tried to contact her brother using the Magic Machine but couldn't reach him. She was worried and for a moment forgot the fear Sang Zhitao had instilled in her. She even spoke to Sang Zhitao with a slightly complaining tone, "Isn't there any way?"
Looking at the sky, Sang Zhitao felt the rapid passage of time and felt that she had overlooked something, but she couldn't find anything specific for the time being.
"Let's rest for the night first," Chris said, having someone prepare some food before approaching Sang Zhitao. "This isn't something that can be figured out in a short time."
Sang Zhitao nodded, walked to the table, opened a jar of jam, picked up a piece of bread, cut it open, and spread some jam on it.
Across from her, Aria frowned and glanced at Lin Xiao beside her: "Why did you cut the bread first? Wouldn't it have been easier to get your hands all messy if you had opened the jam first?"
Lin Xiao looked at her, puzzled: "It doesn't matter, right..."
Aria shook her head and explained, "Wouldn't it be more convenient to do it in order?"
"The order doesn't matter. On the contrary, if the jam is opened too early, it might dry out at the edges because I'm slow at cutting the bread. Timing is more important than the order."
"I still think it's better to follow the order."
The two of them started arguing about whether the order or the time was more important.
Considering they were guests at someone else's home, the two didn't argue for long. After realizing they couldn't convince each other, they stopped arguing, packed their things, and prepared to rest.
Sang Zhitao's mind was filled with the scene of the collapse of the Heavenly Dao, so she didn't disturb Chris and Ying's reunion and returned to her room.
She lay in bed, staring at the slightly yellowed ceiling, her mind filled with the final hints from the Heavenly Dao and the three scenes of the Heavenly Dao collapsing that she had witnessed.
Sang Zhitao exhaled heavily, her fingertips waving in the air like playing a zither, but unfortunately, the Heavenly Dao did not give her the slightest reaction.
"Where exactly did things go wrong..."
Her mind inexplicably drifted to the conversation between Aria and Lin Xiao: "Time... order..."
"Time, sequence...chronological sequence!" she muttered the two words. Just as she was about to fall asleep, she suddenly woke up and sat up abruptly in bed.
She walked to the window and saw the sky suddenly brighten. Her brows furrowed even more: "Time is still accelerating. What went wrong?"
"Enemy attack!!!" The piercing alarm interrupted her thoughts and roused the silent capital city.
"Your Excellency!" Aria's voice rang out from outside the door.
"I'm going straight to the city wall," she shouted at the doorway, and before the other party could reply, she flew out of the window.
When she landed on the city wall, she saw countless monsters swarming around the capital city.
"How could there be a sudden enemy attack?" After Aria flew over, Chris and Shadow followed closely behind, leading their people up the city wall.
“The Great Cycle has begun.” Chris looked at the monsters outside, her face showing no fear. “The monsters attacked the city twenty-eight days ago, and since then, there has been a Great Cycle every seven days, and they will come back once a year.”
"How can you be sure it's the Great Cycle and not their fixed siege day?" Before Sang Zhitao could speak, Ailiya asked.
Chris pointed to the crack in the city wall: "There used to be a crack there, which they made when they attacked the city. On the first day of the Great Cycle, the crack will disappear and then reappear."
Sang Zhitao understood the meaning behind her words and turned to look at the palace in the distance: "Is it because repairs are useless after the Great Cycle begins?"
Chris was silent for a moment, then nodded: "Although we have all the memories of the loop, we still can't live a normal life. You can't imagine that the bowl you broke yesterday will reappear in front of you today, or the weapon you repaired seven days ago will be destroyed again seven days later."
"The feeling of having lived through many days in your memory, but the objects around you reminding you that you are still stuck on that day and nothing has changed is too hard to bear."
Ying held her hand, silently comforting Chris.
Sang Zhitao nodded thoughtfully.
"So we're just going to stand by and watch?" Arya pointed to the countless monsters in the distance. "We can't just do nothing, can we?"
Chris nodded: "We don't have to do anything. It'll be like this again in seven days anyway, and they won't be able to break in."
"Let's just get it over with once and for all." Sang Zhitao flexed her fingers. "Anyway, if we miss today, who knows how long it will take to gather all these guys together."
Chris opened her mouth, unsure of what to say for a moment.
Ying, on the other hand, carefully pulled her back a few steps.
Ailiya and Lin Xiao retreated to the back without prior arrangement.
Seeing this, the others looked at each other and hesitated before taking a few steps back.
Seeing the group of people leave on their own, Sang Zhitao raised an eyebrow before opening her arms to face the countless monsters in front of her.
To her, these monsters were not intimidating at all; instead, they seemed like a pile of delicious food waiting for her to savor.
"Break!" "Collide!"
Just like in the forest before, with her two sentences, countless monsters in front of her turned into palm-sized pieces of meat, obediently flying into her sleeve.
Just like before, she threw all the pieces of flesh from the humanoid upper body, as well as any pieces of flesh that didn't suit her taste, outside the city walls.
Looking at the empty wilderness, the people standing on the city wall stared blankly at Sang Zhitao.
Sang Zhitao turned her head and saw everyone looking stunned. She couldn't help but turn around and take a few steps forward.
Unexpectedly, besides Lin Xiao and his two companions, there was also Chris being held by Ying. Everyone else came to their senses and unconsciously took a few steps back, their eyes filled with admiration and fear.
Sang Zhitao couldn't help but roll her eyes.
When Chris saw the public's actions, she turned to look at Sang Zhitao and her eyes immediately filled with guilt and apology.
Before she could say anything, the old man from the Ministry of Magic excitedly leaned against the city wall, looking out at the mountain of flesh: "Good stuff, good stuff!"
"Teacher?" Chris was somewhat surprised that her teacher, who never left the Ministry of Magic, was here.
"Could you please help me refine the energy of these things? We mortals are simply incapable of doing this." Unexpectedly, the old man from the Ministry of Magic ignored her and instead respectfully walked up to Sang Zhitao.
Sang Zhitao scratched her cheek with her fingertips: "I haven't tried it."
"It's alright, even if we can only refine one ten-thousandth of it, it'll be fine," the old man continued.
Chris, having already learned about Sang Zhitao's identity and the value of that mountain of flesh from Ying's whispered explanation, couldn't help but show a hint of eagerness on her face.
"It can still be refined. I should have kept that pile before." Aria walked forward and looked at the mountain of flesh that was almost as tall as a city wall, feeling a little sorry for the pure energy.
Sang Zhitao glanced at her sideways and said speechlessly, "That batch of purified material won't be of any use to you either."
As she spoke, she pointed to the old man: "Only when his cultivation level is high enough can he absorb it."
Sang Zhitao stretched out her hand and said as she read, "He counts as one, Hailai counts as one, and the Dragon Girl and the Elf Queen barely count."
"Of all the people I've met, only these few are capable; the rest are simply committing suicide."
Hearing her say that, Aria could only suppress her regret.
Sang Zhitao ignored her and stretched out her hand, chanting a few incantations.
Soon the mountain of flesh disappeared from everyone's sight like a melting block of ice, and Sang Zhitao had a sphere with a diameter of nearly half a meter in her hand.
She held the sphere in both hands and rubbed it back and forth for a long time before finally reducing the half-meter-wide sphere to a size of twenty centimeters: "This is the limit."
She handed the sphere to the old man: "Later, find a usable straw, insert it, and suck in one drop every ten days. You'll break through soon."
Having absorbed all the fragments of the world, she could now discern the old man's level of cultivation.
He had already reached the level of a God of Law. If there were no gods in this world, he would definitely have become an excellent god. It's just a pity that he can only stay at the level of a God of Law now.
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