“How to dispose of these three Fire Seeds… is your concern.”

Tu Ling’s answer surprised Gu Shen.

Gu Shen looked at the person beside him with some astonishment.

“What? I’m not the owner of the Fire Seeds… What I’ve been doing all these years may seem like I’m choosing ‘successors’ for the Fire Seeds.”

Tu Ling smiled and said, “But in reality, the Fire Seeds are always free, and no one can truly arrange their destiny. Now that they’re delivered into your hands, I only hope that you can properly handle these three Fire Seeds.”

Gu Shen could choose to keep them for himself and slowly comprehend them.

Or he could choose to share them.

“I understand your meaning.”

Gu Shen nodded, gratitude in his eyes.

Mr. Tu Ling’s avatar had been stationed in the Time Dojo for many years, and now he was willing to hand over the authority to dispose of these three Fire Seeds to him… which meant that he had already acknowledged him.

“I will definitely properly handle these three Fire Seeds.”

Gu Shen took a deep breath.

“Very good. With those words from you, I can rest assured.”

Tu Ling smiled.

Gu Shen noticed that the radiance emanating from Tu Ling at this moment was spreading like ripples.

He suddenly realized a very important issue.

How long had Mr. Tu Ling’s avatar been stationed in the Time Dojo?

Six hundred years had passed in the outside world, but how much time had passed in the dojo?

“Every drink and every morsel is predestined. Using the art of ancient inscriptions will inevitably require a price.”

“Clone Technique and Teleportation Technique are both extremely life-consuming techniques. Every step and every stroke taken by the various ‘me’ in history is the fortune bestowed upon me by the Starship Community back then.”

Tu Ling looked at Gu Shen and murmured, “I originally thought that 540,000 years of life was a very long time. But if that time is used to promote the ‘progress’ of an entire civilization, then one person's 540,000 years is actually very short… I may not be able to accompany you on the return journey ahead.”

Gu Shen was stunned.

He had just heard this line not long ago!

“Don’t look at me with that expression. I’m not going to die.”

Tu Ling scolded with a smile, “It’s just that this ‘clone’ stationed in the Time Dojo has now completed its mission. I’m going to disperse this body to avoid a large amount of fate from dissipating…”

He paused slightly.

Tu Ling raised his eyebrows and suddenly regained his youthful spirit, saying proudly, “How could someone like me die like this? Although there’s not much life left, it’s not something anyone can exploit. Don’t worry, I’m still alive, and I’m living very well!”

“…”

Gu Shen was momentarily speechless.

However, looking at Mr. Tu Ling beside him, the corners of his lips couldn’t help but curl up. This was the Tu Ling he knew!

“By the way, since you’ve decided to choose new owners for these unclaimed Fire Seeds, then give the Fire Seed of Love to Chu Ling.”

Tu Ling slowly spoke.

This was the last thing he entrusted.

“Chu Ling is an AI lifeform that I created using the ‘Lord of Love’ as a template. Her existence is like the ‘illusion’ of the Fire Seed of Love.”

Tu Ling said in a low voice, “If one day you can pull out that ‘Sword of Extinguished Fire’ in the real world, then the Fire Seed of Love will reignite, Chu Ling will have a body, and she will have her own life… I don’t care about the ownership of the other Fire Seeds, but I need to intervene in the ownership of this one.”

If the Five Continents World wanted to establish a new [Deep Sea], it needed to find a pristine spiritual sea for the [Source Code].

And the Fire Seed of Love was the best array box.

“This matter needs no instruction from you.”

Gu Shen said with a solemn expression, “Even if I hadn’t met you, this Fire Seed of Love would definitely belong to Chu Ling.”

This was not only Gu Shen’s expectation, but also the will of the Lord of Love!

“No one is more suitable for this Fire Seed than Chu Ling.”

Gu Shen gave his promise, “I guarantee to you that I will definitely be able to pull the ‘Sword of Extinguished Fire’ from the throne and reignite this Fire Seed.”

“Oh… So confident?”

Tu Ling said with a smile.

“Of course. Doing something again that I’ve already done once in a dream… What difficulty is there?”

Gu Shen’s voice was calm but extremely confident.

And this time.

There was no longer any response.

The faint fluorescence enveloping Mr. Tu Ling dissipated in the void, and the void in front of Gu Shen transformed back into millions of mirror shards, reflecting his childlike self at this moment.

The entire Time Dojo became empty, lonely, and desolate.

Gu Shen stretched out a palm and touched the ancient inscription array pattern left by Mr. Tu Ling in the Time Dojo. Cyan light surged and engulfed him.

Soon, he arrived in front of the starship left behind by the Lord of Molten Iron.

This starship was completely black, like a long sword, and was not as wide and huge as the Initial, but it exuded a fierce killing intent.

It could be seen that… this starship was a “defective product.” The original body must have been destroyed in a super storm, so only this few hundred meters of the ship’s tip remained.

Mr. Tu Ling spent a long time completing the repair of the tip of this black ship.

This was no longer a ship, but more like a sword!

Gu Shen’s spirit entered the starship, and the dark void was ignited by dim flames. He watched the relics of the previous civilization slowly light up with fire, and a complex emotion that he couldn’t explain ignited in his heart… Mr. Tu Ling placed many drawings and calendars inside the cockpit. The interior of this defective starship was like a history book. As long as one observed carefully, one could see the footprints left by Alan Turing walking in the long river of time.

Tu Ling was a traveler who wrote a thick travelogue.

And Gu Shen was the lucky reader.

“Starship… start.”

Gu Shen’s voice ignited in the void, and this black starship shot out instantly.

Gu Shen, sitting in the cockpit, left a wisp of mind stream power to control the airship in the main cabin.

This was the end of the [Old World]. Theoretically, turning the ship’s tip around and returning was the “shortest” route, but Gu Shen did not do so.

Because he vaguely had a premonition in his heart.

The “shortest” path may not be the “fastest.”

The void of the [Old World] was discontinuous and fractured. When Mr. Gu Changzhi left the Time Dojo, he encountered a super storm on his return journey… Perhaps his premonition was related to this, but Gu Shen decided to bypass the “shortest” path. He made an astonishing decision and continued to move forward towards the end of the world!

If…

This world was really a sphere.

Then the end of the [Old World] at this moment should be at a certain vertex of the sphere. Making this choice, Gu Shen was both following his inner spiritual induction and verifying that conjecture that no one had ever verified!

Now he had finally embarked on the return journey.

But Gu Shen’s heart was not relaxed because of this.

Because he knew that this return journey… would probably take a long time.

Although Gu Shen had comprehended the ancient inscriptions of the [Gate] of the Traveler race in the dream world, this was the real world. He couldn’t open doors as casually as in the dream world. Once he encountered a storm, he would not have the opportunity to restart.

Gu Shen now wanted to know what stage the war in the Five Continents had reached.

But on this return journey, he knew he couldn’t rush.

He left a wisp of mind stream power in the main airship cockpit, and the remaining eight wisps of mind stream power were all allocated to the Time Dojo.

Gu Shen decided to awaken the teachers, senior sisters, senior brothers, and Mr. Rust Bone who were sleeping in the Time Dojo.

……

……

North Continent, Gu Fort battlefield.

This former throat point was no longer called a fortress, because of the protracted war… The broken gap in Gu Fort had become the largest battlefield in the North Continent. Dark clouds shrouded the area, and the [Umbrella Defense Line] of that year had completely become history. Central City chose to strategically abandon Gu Fort and retreat seventy miles to rebuild a new “Giant Wall.”

The pain of having the throat cut out was etched in the hearts of every North Continent citizen.

Standing on the new Giant Wall and looking out, one could see countless sunken “fragments of stars,” vaguely pieced together into the shape of a large umbrella. And the umbrella was covered by dense shadows.

The Traveler race had already taken root outside the Gu Fort battlefield.

Low-level Buriers, who reproduced extremely quickly, launched offensives on this battlefield every day. The area between the Giant Wall and the Umbrella Defense Line was traversed by a majestic starship as towering as a mountain range. The Initial, supported by a Source Energy shield, was connected to the North Continent land, blocking the gap in Gu Fort in an unadorned manner.

Outside the Source Energy shield was the so-called Gu Fort battlefield.

This was an unprecedented “war of attrition.” The Buriers were like bloodsucking leeches. Their purpose was to consume the “Source Energy shield” energy of the Initial. This starship was indeed huge, but trapped in Gu Fort, facing the endless siege of low-level Travelers, it only had one path: “holding on”… To ensure that the starship’s energy was sufficient to withstand external pressure, the superhuman army of the North Continent fortress began to intervene in the battlefield. The four major legions and the Investigation Legion, under the command of the Commander of the Purple Rain Legion and Lin Lin, took turns fighting, constantly annihilating the Buriers, whose proliferation and reproduction were like a virus.

Over the years, the war had maintained this “balance.”

Balance…

Seemed to be exactly what [Deep Sea] wanted to see.

……

……

Snowflakes fluttered.

Da da da!

Gunfire tore through the dark clouds and snow mist of the Gu Fort battlefield. The elimination squads of the Investigation Legion emerged one after another, walking out from inside the Source Energy shield.

The current combat system of the Investigation Legion was a team of eight, divided into areas under the command of the central control channel, to complete daily battlefield elimination tasks through the cooperation of teams.

The leader who first stepped out of the Source Energy shield was a mental-type superhuman youth.

His forehead was burning with the silver radiance of a vertical pupil, checking the superhuman aura within a radius of several hundred meters.

[Source Eye] was the most suitable superhuman ability for deploying combat missions.

Li Chen, the rookie who followed Gu Shen on the maze mission back then, was the commander of this daily elimination mission. He led five teams, responsible for the “Burier annihilation” within a 300-meter radius of the northwest A area of the Gu Fort battlefield… This mission was not too heavy. Now he had become the captain of the seventh team of the Investigation Legion.

Due to the promotion of the Lion Awakening Code, the Five Continents civilization had completely entered the superhuman era, and the number of team members in the Investigation Legion had expanded tenfold.

He had nearly three hundred superhuman elites under his command!

The [Deep Sea]'s attack on the Gu Fort battlefield… had always been a continuous, insidious force, like leeches sucking blood, determined to fight a protracted war.

And the strategy adopted by Central City was to “counter every move.” The four major legions tried their best to annihilate the Buriers, ensuring that the Source Energy operation inside the Initial would not approach a state of overload.

But today, Li Chen vaguely felt that something was wrong.

The density of Buriers in this area was much lower than before!

At this rate, the seventh team could complete the clearing of this area in at most two hours…

“Captain——”

A rapid shout sounded!

The mental link of [Source Eye] suddenly trembled, and a wail for help came from Li Chen’s side.

His pupils contracted.

The next moment, the haze-shrouded fog was suddenly pierced by a sharp iron thorn. The body of the Investigation Legion member who had just spoken suddenly split open. The sharp iron thorn cut him into two halves like a long sword… This was the tail wing of the high-level superhuman lifeform “Mist Eater” of the Traveler race. After so many years of the Gu Fort war, the North Continent soldiers had already learned the level distribution of the Traveler race.

The body of the “Mist Eater” was like steel, and ordinary red-silver bullets and purple-silver bullets could not cause damage!

Its status in the Traveler race was equivalent to a “Fourth-Order Superhuman” in human civilization. Only superhumans with their own domains could effectively damage “Mist Eaters” in single combat!

The “Traveler race” was a place with an extremely strict hierarchical system.

The appearance of Mist Eaters often meant that the subsequent attack would not only include “Buriers,” but may also be accompanied by attacks from higher-level superhuman lifeforms.

Among the “combat-type superhuman lifeforms” of the Traveler race, beings of a higher level than Mist Eaters were called “Gray Dragons.”

In the battle where Gu Fort was torn apart that year.

Gu Shen manipulated the Red Shadow to kill a “Gray Dragon.” The combat power of a Gray Dragon was equivalent to a Title in the human race…

“Retreat! Retreat!”

Li Chen realized that something was wrong, but it was too late. “Everyone in the seventh team, retreat!”

“Swish swish swish!”

Iron thorns swept through the fog, bringing out a puff of blood. The members of the A area of the northwest battlefield retreated while quickly emptying their magazines, but with little effect. Most of the bullets did not hit, and one could vaguely see an extremely agile figure moving through the cracking sounds. This Mist Eater was of a very high level, and it seemed to be an absolute powerhouse even among “Fourth-Order Superhumans!”

It wreaked havoc on the battlefield, but Li Chen did not step forward to stop it.

Because Li Chen manipulated [Source Eye] to look in a deeper direction, he saw the shadow of the Mist Eater, which was probably a small mountain nearly three meters high.

But that was nothing, because behind that small mountain, there was also a ten-meter-high “big mountain” standing tall.

Behind the Mist Eater, there was also a Gray Dragon.

“Puchi!”

A slight explosion suddenly sounded in Li Chen’s ear.

The Mist Eater, which was constantly moving through the snow fog, as fast as lightning, and for a time was like entering an uninhabited land, exploded without warning!

Hot blood splashed all over Li Chen’s face.

Li Chen, who was a Fourth-Order mental-type superhuman, was stunned in place.

The Mist Eater… just died like that?

He turned his head in a daze and saw a fist with finger tiger knuckles.

Everything just happened too fast. He didn’t see the trajectory of that punch at all, and he didn’t even see that it was a fist!

What made it even more unbelievable was… the owner of the fist was a little girl.

She looked thin and small, only sixteen or seventeen years old.

The little girl slowly retracted her fist. She stood beside Li Chen, without the mental radiance of [Source Eye], and without any special superhuman aura. She just stood there plainly.

The black cloak whizzed in the strong wind.

“Let your people retreat first.”

The little girl tilted her head slightly, rubbed her wrist, and made a crisp cracking sound like fried beans all over her body.

She took a step forward, stood in front of Li Chen, and her gaze fell into the depths of the snow fog.

“I’ll take care of that big guy.”

(End of chapter)