After being reborn, the villain comes with a spoiler tag.

Huo Yu turned his gaze to the depths of Black Mountain—just as the yin-yang symbol in his mind spontaneously resisted the strange fluctuations from behind the stone wall, the peculiar feeling that had lingered since he entered Black Mountain finally became clear to him.

"It's time."

He spoke slowly, revealing the truth that touched upon the very core of this place.

“Deep within the Black Mountain lies a place where time is distorted and chaotic. The closer one gets to its core, the more intense this distortion becomes. The strangeness we are experiencing on the periphery is merely the aftershock of its leakage.”

Time—has always been the most mysterious and unpredictable of the three thousand Daoist arts.

All living beings in the world know of its existence, yet no one can truly see its form or touch its substance. Only through the changes of external things such as the rotation of the sun and moon, the withering and flourishing of plants, and the rise and fall of life can we indirectly verify that formless and intangible power.

For this reason, supernatural powers and secret techniques related to time are extremely rare in the Spirit Realm.

Occasionally, rumors circulate about fragments of secret techniques related to time found in certain ruins or ancient books, which invariably lead to bloodshed and conflict. However, the authenticity of these claims is often lost to the dust of history along with the deaths of the seekers, making it difficult to verify.

The immobilization technique that Huo Yu used earlier was a rare immortal technique that could interfere with time.

However, this method can only be applied to a single target, and its effect is merely to cause a brief pause in time.

The fluctuations in the laws of time that emanated from behind the stone wall were entirely different in nature from "stagnation"—

It was a more violent, more fundamental state of chaos. The flow of time lost its unified scale here; acceleration, stagnation, looping, and rewinding overlapped, forming a disordered turbulent current.

The reason why Huo Yu and Long Yucheng could not see the result after the sword energy came into contact with the stone wall was because the time state presented around the stone wall was discontinuous—one moment they might see a scene from ten years ago, and the next moment they would jump to a scene from a hundred years later.

Within this time, there are countless broken and missing fragments of time, like pages of a book that have been roughly torn apart, scattered in the chaotic and disordered timeline.

In other words, Long Yucheng's sword energy was neither blocked by the material structure of the stone wall, nor was it neutralized by some force.

Instead, the sword energy vanished from their sight in that "moment" as it pierced the stone wall, whether thrown into the distant past or into the future yet to come.

Upon hearing Huo Yu's explanation, Long Yucheng felt a bone-chilling cold rush up his spine and spinal cord, instantly reaching every part of his body, even causing his fingertips to tingle slightly.

"What if we hadn't dodged that shockwave in time..."

He spoke slowly, his voice slightly hoarse from the tightness in his throat, with a barely perceptible tremor.

"Will it, like that sword energy, be swept into the turbulent currents of time, and from then on... vanish without a trace?"

This thought sent a chill down his spine, and his eyes, as he looked at Huo Yu, were filled with the lingering fear of surviving a close call.

Huo Yu took in the shock surging in Long Yucheng's eyes without saying a word. He simply raised his hand and covered the black-clad youth's right hand, which was tightly gripping the bladeless sword. The fingers were white from excessive force, and the force was so great that it seemed as if he wanted to crush the hilt of the sword.

The moment his fingertips touched the back of his hand, Long Yucheng's taut body trembled almost imperceptibly. His fingers, which were gripping the sword hilt tightly and were almost stiff, obediently loosened their grip, allowing the bladeless sword to fall into Huo Yu's other hand.

As the longsword left his hand, the taut lines on the young man's shoulders suddenly relaxed, as if a huge burden had been lifted from his body, and his straight back also relaxed slightly.

"It doesn't matter."

Huo Yu raised his eyes, his gaze calmly meeting Long Yucheng's. His voice was deep yet exceptionally clear, carrying a reassuring power.

"Now that we know its nature, we can find a way to deal with it."

Their fingers intertwined silently, and a reassuring warmth flowed from their skin, which was pressed tightly together, into Long Yucheng's meridians. Like ice melting in a spring stream, it silently dissolved the bone-chilling cold that had permeated his entire body.

Long Yucheng grasped Huo Yu's hand in return, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, the panic and lingering fear in his eyes had vanished without a trace. The starlight that Huo Yu knew so well shone brightly in his eyes once more, with an inextinguishable tenacity and fervor.

"I understand, senior brother."

His tone was calm, yet carried an unwavering resolve.

"Forget about the temporal turbulence, just get through it—what's next?"

Before he finished speaking, the young man in black had already straightened his back unconsciously, his eyes burning with eagerness, clearly looking like he was itching to take action.

Seeing how quickly he adjusted his emotions and regained his usual high morale in an instant, Huo Yu smiled faintly and said:

"First, improve your cultivation level."

Long Yucheng was clearly taken aback by such a simple and unpretentious answer. He didn't react for a moment and blurted out instinctively:

"what?"

Seeing the young man's clearly stunned and somewhat bewildered expression, Huo Yu finally couldn't help but smile, a faint but genuine curve appearing on his lips, and explained slowly:

"Although there is a direction for the solution, the higher one's cultivation level, the greater the chance of success. Black Mountain has stood here since ancient times and will not suddenly grow wings and fly away."

Long Yucheng met Huo Yuhan's smiling gaze, only to see a rare hint of mockery flash across Huo Yuhan's unfathomable dark eyes, like a ripple on an icy lake, before returning to its usual calm in an instant.

Now, reflecting on that clearly mocking remark, the young man in black belatedly realized—

He had been tricked without making a sound by his senior brother, who was usually very sparing with words, straightforward in his actions, and almost completely devoid of the word "joke"!

This stark contrast made Long Yucheng blink first, then he couldn't help but chuckle. The last bit of heaviness and tension in his heart caused by the unknown also vanished.

"What senior brother said is absolutely true!"

He echoed loudly, his tone regaining its usual lightness and bubblyness.

“There’s no such thing as too high a cultivation level! Let’s go back first and see how Senior Brother’s city construction is going. Maybe we can be of some help.”

Huo Yu nodded slightly, but did not rush to leave. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he channeled his immortal power into the bladeless sword in his hand, unleashing a sword aura with a wave of his hand.

"Boom——!"

A deep, resounding roar echoed through the valley, and countless massive boulders tumbled down, carrying with them a cloud of dust, instantly burying and sealing off the rift leading to the Hou beast's lair.

After ensuring that no more ignorant people would stray into this place and cause further unknown changes to the stone wall, Huo Yu then concealed his aura. The golden light on the bladeless sword gradually faded, returning to its ancient and restrained appearance.

With a slight twist of his wrist, he smoothly handed the bladeless sword to his side, which Long Yucheng tacitly took. The two of them glanced no further at the completely sealed forbidden land behind them and walked side by side out of the valley.

The crystal-clear lake reflected the departing figures of the two, and in that instant when light and shadow intertwined, it seemed as if countless ethereal silhouettes from the past and the future existed simultaneously in the mirror.

In the next instant, all the illusions vanished like bubbles, leaving only the vast and desolate valley floor, faithfully reflecting the gray, seemingly unchanging sky above.